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Summary: Another Classic by Vinge
Review: Vinge delivers another classic SF novel, one which one deservedly won the Hugo. While not as vast in scope as Fire Upon the Deep, Deepness in the Sky presents intriguing concepts, exciting action, and a satisfying--and suggestive--ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding page turner with a bit of Deus Ex
Review: I really wanted to give this 5 stars but the ending, which I will not spoil, come out of nowhere for me. So, I give it four and a half. :-) It is an outstanding read with a too tidy wrap up. Great characters, a truely vile antagonist and an epic scope that boggles the mind. Vinge has a great talent in merging "space opera" with "hard scifi."
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining
Review: A very entertaining novel that is really two stories in one. The book follows two parallel story lines, one for the humans and one for the aliens. The story lines converge at the end for the exciting finish. Both story lines keep you on the edge of your seat with suspense. The science was adequate with decently developed characters. The only problem I had with the book was the improbable surprise ending that seemed a little rushed to end the novel in a timely manner. Otherwise, I would highly recommend this to any science fiction fan.
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Summary: The most evil monsters ever seen in Science fiction.
Review: This book has the best and most powerful depiction of evil I have ever seen.The giant spiders are attractive and interesting people. The real monsters, are, of course, human, at least in form and ancestry. The grotesque evil of the commie-fascist emergents makes this book frightening and disturbing. The humanity of the spiders, and the inhumanity of some of the humans is a nice combination. What really makes Vinge's depiction of the emergents great is that they are all too understandable. One could oneself easily act as they acted. They are a mirror in which one sees the monster inside oneself.
Rating: 
Summary: "Hard" SF Can Be Sloppy
Review: It says a lot of negative things about the state of science fiction that A Deepness in the Sky is considered the year's best SF novel (Hugo Award, 2000) -- and thus, by implication, the best novel about computers. I used to enjoy Vinge's fiction a long time ago, when SF did more hand-waving than it does now, and he wrote light-hearted stories about star-hopping librarians. But he has simply not kept up with computer science and technology, despite his pretensions to the contrary. He gives us a future in which the programming art has advanced less in the next 3,000 years than it has in the last 10. He tells us that in the future, all calenders will be measured in the number of seconds since 00:00:00 1-Jan-1970 GMT (a system that wouldn't work even if everybody had an embedded Unix box, never mind an epoch where many people spend years at high-tau). And finally, he reguritates endless truisms about "what computers can't do" -- and applies them in situations where they are extremely dubious, even if you buy into all that Dreyfus mystical nonsense.
Rating: 
Summary: Traditional Serious Science Fiction
Review: A Deepness in the Sky is a traditional serious science fiction novel in the best sense of the word. The novel is full of serious scientific ideas interwoven in a dramatic plot. If I have a criticism it is that with the novelist's desire to span so much and include the viewpoints of so many people, I would occasionally lose track of characters if I were not paying close attention. The novel chronicles the arrival of two of humanity's factions, one almost purely capitalist, and the other almost purely authoritarian, to a newly discovered star system and a newly discovered form of intelligent life, the "spiders." A conflict quickly erupts between the two human contingents both who want to maximize the discovery of the spiders to their own benefit. This is a big and serious book that tackles a lot of issues and introduces a lot of ideas, even so it has a touch of the poetic that really makes it something special. The book is an investment to read, but it is worth the time involved.
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Summary: Spiders have feelings, too.
Review: I just finished A Deepness In the Sky, and I was highly impressed with what Vinge was doing in this novel. His characters, human and alien alike, had more depth than most people I meet on the street every day -- their wants and needs were both clear and understandable. The plotting was typical of Vinge, ticking away with Swiss-movement precision and full of surprises. As to the Spiders, Arachna, and the OnOff star -- well, it was one of the best examples of worldbuilding I've ever seen. I thought the parallels between Arachna and post-WWII America and Europe were both exquisite and entirely apt for the story that Vinge was telling. And Focus is quite possibly one of the best s-f concepts since David Brin invented Uplift. Deepness is one of the best books I've read all year.
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Summary: An Unexpected Delight
Review: I picked this book up at my local book megastore. It had won a Hugo, got some reviews and I was desperate for anything resembling the kind of SF that used to give me that old-fashioned "Sense of Wonder". It's a very long book, so let's not beat around that bush. It starts of intriguingly, but it does take a while for the story to start. It was a little disconcerting to read the Spiders written so "human", but as the book explains much later, this is for our benefit. A spider view of the events on their world. It was also taking forever to get into the meat of the story. It was interesting, but I didn't think much of it. Then two events happen that hooked me. The first is when the Spider protagonists make an epic journey into the dark night of their world to score a final victory against the religious fundamentalists. The second is The Debate. It's difficult to describe why it works because all the long build up begins to pay off, and I got goose bumps when Sherkaner Underhill (the main Spider protagonist) proclaims "... there is a Deepness in the Sky, and it extends forever." It's those kind of moments that first got me into science fiction. Those moments that look to the far horizon and sees the grand vistas that lay beyond. Then it gets better. I wish I could tell you exactly how the story comes together, but it was *so* surprising that I just can't even hint at it. The threads come together in such a surprising and fantastic way I jumped up from my bed to re-read certain passages several times. If you want that epic *BIGNESS* of space opera, but done with a hard science sensibility, this is the kind of book for you. If you want that good old' looking to the far horizon and daring to look beyond, this book is for you. It might not sit well with hard-core post-modernists who consider plot and character secondary to style, but for the rest of us, this is a magical work. This is the first Vernor Vinge book I've read, and to tell the truth, I can't wait to read his earlier stuff.
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Summary: Exceptional science fiction story
Review: Like a previous reviewer, I had just about given up on the SF genre. Then, I read this book, because I thought it would illuminate some of Vinge's ideas about the "singularity." I don't know that it really did that very much, but it turned out to be one *terrific* story. Unlike, for instance, Kim Stanley Robinson in the Mars trilogy, Vinge doesn't deluge you with huge amounts of technical detail; but he does introduce enough of it to make the story interesting as SCIENCE fiction. He introduces the idea, and gives you just enough of it so that you can connect the dots with your imagination. Unlike Clark, and Robinson, and others, he imbues his novel with a real sense of high drama. Like Gibson, he uses cyberspace concepts liberally, but unlike Gibson, he has characters to whom I can relate. Some reviewers have said that these characters are a bit lacking in depth--but I say that the depth they are lacking is itself realistic--these are people in extreme situations, and their lives are restricted in just the ways that real people would be "flattened" by such things. Imagining a race of intelligent spiders is a very ambitious notion, and it has to lead to some very improbable scenes; but I think Vinge has imagined them about as well as anyone else has. And the more attempts are made, the more subsequent writers will have on which to build even more fastastic worlds. One thing I find really fascinating is the very notion of slavery in a setting like this, the *exquisite* mechanisms of control that would be required to maintain it, and the brittleness that control might have in the face of a determined saboteur like Pham Nuwen. Think carefully, though, about the memes that may be getting injected into your brain as you read this. One thing that bothers me a little is the way one individual is built into such a central figure, in each of the environments. In the case of Pham, it's probably both plausible and necessary (wide conspiracies are hard to keep secret). But to have one genius responsible for so much of the progress on the spider world seems a real stretch. And think on the traders-->good guys, slavers-->bad guys angle, in relation to current global reality. You may be being soft-peddled something, to use the obvious play on words. OTOH the spiders seem to do most of their impressive stuff through their public institutions, so the book doesn't seem to be voicing an extreme political agenda. The problem of legacy software getting out of hand is something I find troublesome, partly because I see it happening already. The value of computers should be in their ability to help in keeping things ordered. If they introduce even more exquisite forms of disorder, that calls into question whether we're on the right course, to say the least. The copy editing left a bit to be desired. There were lots of random typos, and quite a few missing words--more than I'm used to in this kind of book. Unlike some reviewers, I didn't think the ending was too rushed, or OTOH too drawn-out. Still, for all the important "good guys" to live did verge on the unrealistic just a bit. There are some important questions left unanswered here, and apparently AFUTD doesn't address them; so a true sequel, that picks up where this story leaves off, I'd welcome. All in all, I found it engrossing, and look forward to reading *A Fire Upon The Deep* soon.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I had just about given up on the S.F genre when this intriguing title caught my eye. I was initially taken in by both the interesting title and the "thickness" of the book. This book, to me anyway, was one of those that you purposely read in slow-mode, so that there would be something to look forward to when your day allows a few minutes to read. I can't really add anything to the other reviews on this page. The plot, character development and "universe" that were printed on these pages was truly extraordinary. For what it's worth, this book has my endorsement.
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