Rating: 
Summary: Golden Age SF with Modern SF Sensibilities
Review: This is a book I have bought several times
over the years to GIVE to friends and acquaintances - it's that much of a joy. "Fire Upon The Deep" hearkens back to Golden Age SF with it's galactic scope, plentitude of aliens, and last minute deus ex machina. What makes this a sheer wild joyride is that the novel is still hard SF with cool Information Age perspectives on archives, networks, email and AIs. Somehow, Vinge managed to get it all together and still maintain that sense of wonder which blesses good SF. This is the book I give to people to get them hooked on science fiction
Rating:
Summary: good old-fashioned high drama space opera
Review: Hey, I liked it and found it darn good entertainment. We're not talking about highbrow literature here. We're talking about good old-fashioned high drama space opera (think Star Wars) - Heros, villains, alien cultures, a life or death space chase, two kids in peril, and last but not least, the internet
Rating: 
Summary: Fire Fizzles
Review: Some of the subject matter and ideas, especially pack-consciousness and gradient zones of galactic consciousness, have real intrinsic appeal, but the development here is unfocused and cobbled, and eventually, after a long long, take your potted plant for a walk, long time, fizzles with a whimper.
Hugo or nogo, "Fire" reads like a careless and bloated first draft: way too much undramatized exposition, i.e. telling about what the characters are thinking and doing and feeling, telling about every thing that's happened elsewhere and else when, even on occasion witlessly telling what is going to happen; sliced onion plot layers--all tears no taco; a perfunctory ooze of sentimentality which slathers further insult on the redundant, extraneous, cliched characters. And, by Yoda's grizzled jowls, turning telepathic puppies and sentient shrubbery into tiresome house guests is...well it shouldn't be done.
If you're not primarily a sci-fi fan, you may find a modicum of arsenic to be more efficacious.
Rating: 
Summary: Vision - Amazing; Plot - Nifty; Characterization - Uh...
Review: Vinge has done something really impressive here - he's taken a thread started in Stapledon's "Star Maker" - the idea of a multitiered, multiracial, infnitely varied cosmic ecology - and thrown in the concept of "the internet" (or rather, what the internet might well become). The vision is such a gorgeous jewel that building a plot is not too difficult - you just find a way to explore the vision.
An earlier reviewer (who gave this book a "3") complains that the characters are razor-thin and undeveloped. He's right - there's so much vision and plot going on that characterization does get tossed by the wayside. Nonetheless, I still think the vision and the plot are much more worthy than just a "3."
P.S. for character, plot, and vision in a more seamless whole, see "Nova" by Samuel Delany.
Rating:
Summary: second best SF book ever
Review: Next to Snow Crash, this is the second best book I have ever read in the SF field - and I have read thousands (100s a year for last 30 years.)
It is almost two books in one. The plot only ties the books together at the end. Each brings up unique concepts that I never recall reading about before - and this is tough to do in this field.
It is worth the price just to read about the interstellar networking and what they do about virus contamination. It is also one of few books that treat humans as minor players on the galactic scene. If you wonder how networks might evolve in the future, this is a most excellent read. See also Snow Crash, my number one favorite of all time which has nothing much in common with this except both are by great authors - I buy everything they publish.
His other books are well worth grabbing if you see them anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Un livre difficile mais profondement original
Review: Ce n'est pas un livre que l'on peut lire d'une traite. la manière dont est décrit l'avenir est tellement différent de ce que l'on a l'habitude de lire que s'en est déconcertant. Mais pour qui arrive à entrer vraiment dans livre. La surprise est de taille, Vernor Vinge reussi un tour de force avec un roman très novateur et des moments forts
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This was probably one of the best books I've read in the last 5 years; the concepts were cool, the technobabble was cool and the characters were interesting
Rating: 
Summary: I feel sorry for Science Fiction
Review: Do you know why they have day-time TV awards? Because those shows are so bad, they'd never win an Emmy. Do you know why they have Emmy's? Because most TV shows wouldn't stand a chance against good movies in trying to get an Oscar.
I'm trying to figure out if scifi has become the day-time TV of literature, or just the TV shows of literature. I read some reviews of this book. I think to myself, I read a bunch of old sci-fi in the 70's and early 80's, maybe I should try something new and see what's up. If this book were up for some kind of award in "writing", *not* sci-fi writing (like a day-time TV show going up for a Nobel prize), it wouldn't even be considered.
I read the book, and I kept thinking, this is something of an interesting story, although I've just bumped into my 34th razor thin character, but.... this guy just isn't that good a writer. It makes me want to ask sci-fi fans, do you ever read stuff by honest to god GOOD authors, who can craft
a sentence? Make something so real you think you've been there? Ever grab a book by John McPhee, who can write? Or maybe stumble across something by Mark Twain?
Two things struck me at the same time. As I was reading the book I thought "hmmm, did they make love a little while back.... uhh, yeah, they did. Now I remember." Like everything else in the book, the "love scene" was so....
(oops! almost said "stiff and wooden" but that might be
taken as the wrong way)... rigid (there!), that it just didn't come across as something that has *happened*, it came across as something I just read about. Good books draw a picture that you can confuse with your own memory. This book struck me as a detailed story line that could then be handed over to a real author to write a book from.
As I was trying to remember if they had made love or not, a highly literate and well read friend told me about a sci-fi book I should read, he really liked it. Given what I was reading, I said "Is it well written" and he chuckled "Well... it's science fiction, but a good story!"
Is this where sci-fi is these days? I guess Romance and silly Fantasy novels are the trash-TV of literature, but sci-fi is at best looking like a Charlie's Angels re-run.
Rating:
Summary: "Dune" Meets "Star Wars"
Review: One of the great books of SF! The giddy thrills and excitement of George Lucas's "Star Wars" trilogy mixed with the grand scope of "Dune". (Read the Vinge article in November ROLLING STONE.) A great, big fat book of wonders
Rating:
Summary: Ideas, plots, space opera, so, so good.
Review: Others below, especially the ravers, have described the outline pretty well. If you read for ideas, preferably
within a book thats fun but not trash, this is for you. I especially liked the "Practical Theology" subplots, transcending etc. I know the Net of a million lies is not
new, but it gave some welcome breaks in the main narrative
and made a galaxy-wide plot seem more real life somehow.
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