Post Description

In A Fire Upon the Deep, Vinge has created a genuinely new and unique concept of the nature of the galaxy where the laws of physics vary with location. The greatest potential for intelligence lies furthest from the center, at the edges where computer-like superminds far beyond anything possible in a biological brain can be found. Myriads of sentient species have moved physically and intellectually, over an evolutionary time scale measured in billions of years, toward the region on the galactic rim known as The Beyond and The Transcendence, where god-like entities known as Powers exist. Their concerns are mostly incomprehensible to lesser beings, but occasionally a Power turns its attention back to the rest of the galaxy -- with the potential to do untold damage.

In the center of the Milky Way are the Unthinking Depths and the Slow Zone, regions where only simple creatures and technologies can function. When a team of scientists in the Straumli Realm of The Beyond discover and release an ancient Transcendent artifact, they unknowingly unleash an awesome power, the Blight, which destroys thousands of worlds by enslaving all natural and artificial intelligences.

From this disaster, a ship escapes with a family of scientists and their two pre-adolescent children, Jefri and his older sister Johanna, aboard. (They are notable examples of juvenile characters in an adult story that are not sickeningly cute or obnoxious!) They are shipwrecked on a planet in The Slowness, their parents killed and the youngsters taken captive by particularly fascinating aliens of a medieval-level society called the Tines. These beings, four-legged creatures who run in packs, are individually no smarter than dogs or rats, but when they coalesce in packs of four or more, they form self-aware unitary persons of surprising abilities.