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Summary: A sweeping, enthralling, brilliant science fiction novel
Review: Vinge wants to make me give up any notion of ever becoming a science fiction writer. In this book, he provides an epic from two viewpoints. The first is the Spiders, natives of a planet orbiting a Sun that blinks on and off in a bizarre, 200-plus year cycle. Their entire culture is geared around surviving the "Dark," the time when there is no sun. They are just entering the equivalent of our 20th century, and the far-seeing among them envision a day when they will no longer have to go dormant during the Dark but will have the technology to allow them to remain active and to maintain their civilization.The other is of the Emergents and the Qeng Ho, spacefaring civilizations come to investigate the Spiders and their mysterious sun. Those two factions battle on another for supremacy, the Emergents initially taking control with the aid of a treatment that turns humans into what they call "Focussed," sorts of autistic idiot savants, lacking in humanity but capable of brilliant feats of intellect. Telling too much more would give it away, but the epic sweep goes on as characters on both sides plot for control and success while growing increasingly aware of one another-the spacefarers in particular preparing for first contact once the Spiders pass the hurdle of developing the equivalent of the Internet. A sweeping, enthralling, brilliant science fiction novel.
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Summary: This Book Does Everything Right
Review: Arthur C Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology begins to resemble magic. "A Deepness in the Sky" puts me in the mind of a corollary to this theory: any sufficiently advanced fiction begins to resemble life. Even science fiction. I picked up this book with no small measure of apprehension. I'd read "A Fire Upon the Deep" some two years earlier, and put it down with the conviction that it was the best sci-fi novel I would ever read. I'm not sure if this book has proven me wrong, but it has come closer than I would have thought possible. Mr Vinge combines a fertile, bottomless imagination with the technical savvy to make his ideas plausible and the literary ability to make them absolutely wonderful and infinitely engaging. He does not sacrifice his characters on the alter of technology; far from it. We watch each of the main players -- Pham Nuwen, a crafty, ancient spacefarer pursuing a mad quest to unite all of humankind throughout the Known Galaxy; Sherkaner Underhill, a gentle alien genius who almost single-handedly propels his world toward a technological quantum leap in the space of single generation; Qiwi Lisolet, a gifted trader and engineer who somehow manages to hold on to her innocence despite half a lifetime of deprivation and loss; and many more -- grow and develop throughout this huge story. When the book ended, I felt like I was saying goodbye to old friends. The technology melds seemlessly with the story. Although there are enough neato gadgets and mind-bending concepts for several books, none of them seem forced; each is an integral part of the plot, and, like a Queng Ho garden, grows organically out of weft of the narrative. Mr Vinge also has a gift for portraying alien races in a way that is both familiar and ... well, alien. He succeeds here even better than he did in "A Fire Upon the Deep", relying on a clever narrative technique to present them to us through the prism of our own human mannerisms, foibles and idiosyncrasies, but occasionally pulling off the mask to reveal just how un-human they really are. Mr Vinge isn't content with portraying them as human beings who just happen to have exoskeletons and too many legs; they are their own entities, fully realized, and yet very familiar. All in all, this is an exciting, enlightening, fascinating and even occasionally uplifting read. Much recommended.
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Summary: Hard Space Opera
Review: If Kim Stanley Robinson is the James Michener of SF, than Vernor Vinge is the James Clavell. 'Deepness' is as good as adventure writing gets - ridiculously grand, riddled with with betrayal, battles, and melodrama - but the novel is so long, and Vinge has such a great sense of human nature, that you will end up tied to these characters far more deeply than you would suspect at the outset. I also enjoyed A Fire Upon the Deep, the precursor to Deepness, but it is not necessary to read it in order to understand this one - they are only loosely connected. Enjoy.
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Summary: Excelllent world building
Review: Like Vinge's other books, I found this to be not ideal for light bedtime reading (the way the book is written requires you to pay attention and think about what you're reading to get the full effect), but it was excellent. Multiple plot-lines, the inclusion of many characters that aren't obvious "good guys" or "bad guys", several complex yet understandable human and non-human cultures, and a good exploration of the murky ethical delimas of advancing technology all combine to create a well-woven web. Highly recommended to anybody looking for a non-formulaic SF tale.
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Summary: Incredible.
Review: Simply one of the best science fiction books I've ever read. Truly original and filled with, surprise!, emotion. Yes emotion. I was really touched by the plight of the spider civilization and the story was just great.
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Summary: Top notch hard science fiction. Great ideas, great story.
Review: If you're a fan of hard science fiction you've probably already read this. As with his earlier book "Fire Upon the Deep", the book to which this is a loosely attached prequel, Vinge tells a thick, rich story filled with mind-bending tech concepts and surprising plot twists. His descriptions (for example, characters struggling to get through a lake suddenly made weightless in zero G) are very well written. Mostly, he does a really great job of creating a sense of what alien minds might work like. Here, it's intelligent spiders. In Fire Upon the Deep, the aliens are packs of dogs with group minds. But instead of trying to rehash the previous story, he takes elements from the first book- protagonist Pham Nuwen, aliens, and cool science-- and lets them go their own way. You'd think that such a long, dense tome would have you skipping to the end. But he keeps you in there all the way through. In the world of hardcore sf, Vinge is an insider still at the top of his game.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but flawed...and too looong
Review: There is much to like about this book, the story of delegations from two seperate human cultures, one based on trade and the other on slavery, whose conflict leaves them marooned near the planet of the Spiders. In order to justify their trip and make their return home possible, they must wait for the alien culture below to attain a certain level of technology. There are interesting speculations about the nature of interstellar and planetary societies and imaginative extrapolations on technology. There is also plenty of good old-fashioned scheming and political maneuvering among the humans. It's much too long but, it's a good read. My major complaint with the novel comes from Vinge's treatment of the alien Spiders. Although he presents an interesting rationale for the extremely anthropomorphic approach he takes, it still never sat quite right with me. There are significant differences between Spider and human society, yet Vinge downplays the alienness so much that it often seems that we are reading about just another human culture. As a result, the various alien subplots were sometimes tedious reading. The end of the story didn't quite play fair, either. Perhaps it's my own fault for being an inattentive reader, but I missed any clues Vinge might have left as to the ultimate nature of the communication between the humans and Spiders. Therefore, the resolution seemed to come out of left field.
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Summary: Best SciFi to come along for quite a while.
Review: Perhaps the story is not entirely plausible but it was still an excellent read. Lots of clever ideas to remember. This is the best scifi reading I have encountered for maybe a couple of years.
Rating:
Summary: awesome
Review: simply brilliant.
His characters are very realistic and his aliens are strange and real at the same time.
this book was a very satisfying and absorbing read.
Rating:
Summary: I had an alien encounter
Review: Vinge's writing brought me into a mental meeting with an alien race! This is what science fiction is all about.
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