Rating: 
Summary: Should have worked on it another year or two.
Review: There are the makings of a truly great work here, but it seems that in impatience to get it out it was not entirely completed. I really enjoyed the space-opera tone and the grand scale, but the various long sections of Spider life, hanging out in Benny's bar, etc. seemed to be allocated a disproportionate amount of space compared to the short shrift given more momentous plot events. Near the end many new Spiders whom we don't know are introduced. Other characters we have come to know well are abandoned summarily. All of a sudden the book is over, like at the end of Return of the Jedi with muppets dancing around the fire. And what about the cavorite? An anti-physics bomb that's dropped to tick away unnoticed. Vinge has the knack for getting us into the passenger seat, showing us interesting places, and getting us to the endpoint, but he needs to pace and conceptualize the tour better.
Rating: 
Summary: Better that the Hugo winner it "prequels"
Review: Vinge wrote the far-future space opera "A Fire Upon the Deep" in the early nineties and it won the Hugo. This book is a prequel of sorts. It's set in the same universe, but on a much smaller scale. Pham Nuwen, who was a supporting character in "Fire" (as a ressurected being), is seen here in his own time circa AD10,000 -- and 10s or 100s of thousands of years before "Fire." There are three interwoven plot lines. One is the struggle between the "Emergents" and the "Qeng Ho" as they form an uneasy alliance-for-survival in the wake of a disasterous space battle around a pre-industrial world. The Qeng Ho are free-market traders who OWN interstellar trade in human space. The Emergents are slavers, and have the upper hand. Both sides are waiting for the downbelow aliens to achieve industrial capacity so they can go home, but the Emergents want to enslave the aliens when that time comes and the Qeng Ho wants to trade. WHo will have the upper hand in the final hour? Meanwhile, we have the aliens themselves struggling through something much like our 20th Century, in a world that has VERY severe weather (the sun turns on and off). Will they survive both their own problems and the arrival of the humans? And lastly we have the back-story of Pham Nuwen, who wanted to rule human space (for it's own good), but was thwarted at the last moment. Thanks to the cold-sleep required by slower-than-light travel, Pham is 3000 years old -- maybe 300 awake -- and has been in hiding for 800 years since his "betrayal" at the hands of his friends. Even though he's Qeng Ho (their founder actually), he sees the Emergent's methods as being a path back to power. What is Pham's story, why was he betrayed, and what will he do to pursue his dream? A great story, well told.
Rating: 
Summary: Make your own decision
Review: It took me a year to read the hardcover. That'll tell you more about me than the book. Read it, because it does pick up the pace in the last third of the book and you won't know what you're missing if you don't. Up to you. You have to remember that Vinge will make you "See" his universe. The detail he provides in A Deepness in the Sky paints the background for the setting and character behavior (obviously). Vinge will make you "think" like his characters, too. Get to know Pham, Spiderkind, a world of wonder, the progression of progress and what makes a man bid his time until...Well, read the book. Great author. Good story. Took me a year...make your own decision.
Rating:
Summary: Sadly, a readable wanna-be.
Review: As a premise, I enjoyed immensely Dr. Vinge's earlier works (Across Realtime, A Fire Upon The Deep, and a collection of short stories about some creatures revisited in A Fire Upon The Deep). A Deepness In The Sky, albeit still readable, was a disappointment. This is a first-contact story about an alien race very dissimilar from mankind in biology and environment. The story, however, is hinged on attributing to these aliens human-like emotions and behavior. These aliens think and feel like people trapped in weird bodies, depriving a first-contact epic of much of its value. What's left is a sweep of some ideas that will later come to fruition in A Fire Upon The Deep, and too much melodrama dressed in rivets and plastic. The ponderous length of this novel suffers from a sagging middle, which stretches on, and on, without clear escalation or development (except melodrama). Narration borrows a bag of features from juvenile literature: starkly drawn characters, captivating but painted in primary colors; pre- and pubescent heroes, intent on drawing the reader in the story by charm rather than intrigue; a naive trust that things will work out for the best . . .. On the good side, there are sparks of brilliance in the inventiveness, but not enough to keep up the pace through too many hundreds of pages. It's a passable read, but--in my opinion--not a great one.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful on many levels
Review: I loved this book; I bought it immediately when it came out, then did not stop reading it until I finished. Others have reviewed the plot; and I won't do that. What I keep going back to, in my mind, is his history of civilization that is in the background of this book. The thousand years between now and the setting of this book is unsettling, disturbing, and completely believable. The fact that 'programming' of that day is almost completely archaeology is also just right. Read this book. Then read the rest of Vinge -- you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: An Awesome Read
Review: This is a stupendous book, one of my all-time favorites. It's 'Clancyesque' in detail, length, font and I did NOT want it to end! Killer concepts ( focus) & detail. a fitting partner for A Fire Upon the Sky...for those who like heavy sf & storytelling, complex but engrossing, or for those who simply like a heck of a long good read, you've found it........I will buy the next sight unseen!
Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Review: Those who complain that this story drags on better go back to reading cheesy sci-fi with little character development. My thought on finishing the book was 'do I have to leave so soon'? Interesting in particular is the notion that the Qeng Ho get by relatively well without a government to direct them. The Qeng Ho show--I'd argue--that not all corporations are evil; this is radical given the modern tendency to vilify business. Hopefully Vinge's next book will tackle Pham's assault on the Emergent empire.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Read This Book First
Review: Until I read the reviews here, didn't realize this was the prequel to another book. That would explain my problem with "Deepness". Not only was it confusing, I really didn't care about any of the characters. Were parts of the book good? Absolutely. Did it drone on too long. Yes! Except for the spiders, I found myself not caring if everyone else died.
Rating:
Summary: Vinge vincit
Review: Vinge has done it again! This is a delightful continuation of the Zones of Thought series (which also includes _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and a short story called, I think, "The Blabber" -- it's in either the _True Names_ anthology or the _Threats_ anthology). I certainly didn't find the book too long. Indeed, it wound things up a bit too quickly. I did have a few criticisms of the book. The spiders are not as interesting as the aliens in _Fire Upon the Deep_. The villains are made a bit too over-the-top villainous. One of the main characters, Ezr Vinh, is a bit ... well, boring. One of the book's major plot devices seems stolen from Orson Scott Card's _Xenocide_. And -- I'm being vague in order not to give too much away -- one character's romantic affections are transferred too quickly and easily from one person to another without time for development. But I still give it five well-deserved stars, for three things especially: 1) The portrayal of Pham Nuwen. This is above all his story, and he is an utterly cool character with a tragic background that gradually emerges in bits and pieces. I need to go back to _Fire Upon the Deep_ now to remind myself of what happens to his character later. 2) The complexity and ingenuity of the plot. This is a book one needs to reread in order to say, again and again at various points, "oh, so THAT's why so-and-so is doing that; now I have a whole new angle on it." 3) The portrayal of the clash between Qeng Ho ideals and Emergent ideals. (Again, I would have preferred it if the Emergents had been sincere and well-meaning people dedicated to their mistaken ideals; it would have made a better story. But ....) This is not really a story about the distant future. It is about today. The Emergents' attitude toward the Qeng Ho is remarkably similar to the attitude of contemporary governments like that of China -- or, to a lesser degree, the U.S. -- who are desperately seeking to contain the forces created by the Internet and free market exchange, without daring to squelch those forces entirely since they themselves now depend on them. And it is about the ability of the Internet and free market exchange -- on which civilized progress depends -- to triumph over such bureaucratic obstacles. The clash of visions between the Qeng Ho and the Emergents is the clash between those who value voluntary, mutually beneficial cooperation and those who value centrally imposed control.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible scope
Review: Vernor Vinge doesn't do things by halves. Just consider the fact that this is, technically, a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep. It's a prequel that takes place (at least) thousands of years earlier, involving societies unknown to those in Fire, and there's only one common character (and as it is he had to be assembled from parts by the more powerful beings featured in Fire). So, in short, the universe in A Deepness in the Sky is completely unrecognizable. But it's just as well-drawn. The Qeng Ho ply the stars, eternal traders who have (with a few exceptions) decided that economics are more important than politics. The Emergents base a society on mind-controlled slave labor (the "Focused") and the bits of technological knowledge the Qeng Ho allowed into the public domain. And then there are the Spiders, the first nonhuman intelligence encountered by humans, who live in a bizarrely harsh environment. The Spiders' emerging technology has the power to change their lifestyle, but old taboos die hard and the Spiders risk annihilating themselves. Enter the Qeng Ho and Emergents, racing to exploit (benignly or otherwise) the Spiders. Or, rather, let them not enter, but instead fight among themselves and lurk in the sky, monitoring Spider development until the time is right to make an appearance. Vinge has done an excellent job of rendering the Qeng Ho (past and present) and the Spiders. His approach to aliens--focus on their recognizable motives, and slowly slip in the nonhuman details--makes sure that readers identify with the Spiders as characters first, aliens second. The picture of the Emergents leaves something to be desired. At least among the leaders, Vinge hasn't humanized his monsters, or offered an adequate explanation of their sociopathic tendencies. (The fact that this is a quibble, rather than something that destroyed my enjoyment of the novel, is a testament to Vinge's scope.)
| 
