Book Foo: Vinge!

[newnumber6]

Finished: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Starting: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Still reading (Wednesdays): The Timeline Wars by John Barnes (reread)

Non-spoilery (except basic plot info) thoughts on the Vinge novels behind the cut...

Really liked rereading AFutD... probably more than the first time I read it. I was actually surprised because there were a few things that I remembered happening that it turns out never did - I suspect it was because I was so taken with some of the ideas in the first novel that I imagined how it might have been extrapolated even more. And that's sort of the feeling I'm left with here... I like the story, but I was reluctant to leave the world and situation behind because it was just so damn fascinating. I wanted to read more about the Tines world, to see what they'd be like in a few thousand years. Hopefully Vinge will write another Zones of Thought book in the near future (call it The Skies Alight With Flame, maybe?) that'll let me get my wish.

Started is his other ZoT book, A Deepness in the Sky, a prequel (but one that should not be read before AFutD) set thousands of years before AFutD, and in another part of the galaxy, with a segment of mankind's exploration of a star that behaves strangely, turning on and off in a mostly predictable way. Actually, two separate segments, long-separated offshoots of Earth meeting for the first time, and the conflict that begins as both discover intelligent alien life on a planet surrounding the star. Haven't gotten far enough into the reread (only a few pages before I was done laundry) to get any new impressions though. Still, looking forward to it.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Have you read the Sir Apropos Trilogy by Peter David?

[bareedy.livejournal.com]

sorry, that was me.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't.

[occamsnailfile.livejournal.com]

Obligatory spoiler warning stuff.



I actually have read Deepness without having read AFutD. I enjoyed the book and finished it swiftly, but it seemed like the author relied upon spacefaring nomads being really moronic about the possibility of their guests carrying weird diseases.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not so much that you need to read AFutD to understand anything in Deepness... you don't (though as I understand it some things are a little more clear if you understand the whole 'zones of thought' concept introduced in 'Fire', though I don't think I noticed that the first time around, and some other moments in Deepness that might make you go 'a-ha' if you've read Fire)... it's just that one of the minor mysteries of Fire is whether Phan Nuwen's memories and personality are real or (in whole or in part) a fabrication of the 'God' that revived and recreated his thousand-year-dead corpse. Reading Deepness kinda spoils that because, hey, his adventures are for the reading, so I always recommend reading them in publication order, although it's not _that_ big a deal as both stand alone pretty well.

I'm still not far enough into it to have noticed the issue you raise on my second reading, although I don't recall it bothering me a whole lot the first time around. We'll see if it sticks out now that it's pointed out.