Vernor Vinge

A Deepness In The Sky

In this reviewer's opinion Vinge's last novel, A Fire Upon The Deep, was the best space opera since Niven & Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye, except that Vinge's humans were as interesting as his aliens. The news that Vinge was working on a prequel following the earlier adventures of one of the main characters from A Fire Upon The Deep was - to put it mildly - welcome. The only problem was that as Vinge continues to hold down an academic post he takes far too long to produce a novel.

Now A Deepness In The Sky is here, and I can forgive Vinge the long delay between novels. This is by some measure the best new novel I have read in some time. If Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace was worthy of a Hugo and Nebula, then I'd say that Vernor Vinge should start preparing his acceptance speeches and ordering a new trophy cabinet right now.

The Qeng Ho are a race of traders, travelling between the scattered worlds occupied by humankind in ramscoop vessels and using cryogenic storage to minimise the number of subjective years spent "on watch" between the stars. Medical science has advanced to the point where a human being can hope to live for at least a couple of hundred subjective years in their prime, and as long again with some reduction in vigour. The combination of long lifespans and long periods spent travelling in cryogenic stasis between the stars means that while contact with the Qeng Ho culture is one of the few common bonds uniting 'sessile' human civilisations, the Qeng Ho themselves have become a uniquely attenuated branch of humanity, with some members of families going their separate ways on trading voyages and returning to find their children dead and buried while they have aged only a couple of decades. The Qeng Ho have watched human societies rise and fall several times on countless worlds, and have the patience and the long-term perspective to set out on voyages realising that if their target society has fallen then they may have to wait some years before they have customers who are worth trading with. The one certainty is that human civilisations will fall eventually. The Qeng Ho use the interstellar nets to distribute sufficient knowledge to allow customer civilisations to pull themselves up to the point where they are likely to be worth trading with, but have no illusions that they can save a civilisation from collapse.

Now, the Qeng Ho are sending a trading expedition to the OnOff star, situated in a system which has long puzzled human astronomers. Every 215 years, like clockwork, the star ignites in the space of seconds and acts like an ordinary star for 35 years, after which it dims again for 215 years. Given the extreme hostility to life the OnOff star's cycle implied, there was never any reason to expect trade, so the Qeng Ho never visited the OnOff system. However. by the end of the OnOff star's last cycle the Qeng Ho had detected faint radio transmissions coming from a planet orbiting OnOff. In all its years of exploring humanity's corner of the galaxy, no alien race the Qeng Ho had encountered had ever been found to have developed a technological civilisation: here was a trade opportunity to tempt the Qeng Ho to mount a major expedition even though OnOff was well off the beaten track.

As the Qeng Ho expedition approaches the OnOff system, it detects another expedition approaching from a human civilisation calling themselves the Emergents. They had only recently recovered from industrial collapse themselves, and like the Qeng Ho they wanted to be at OnOff when it next ignited in order to find the source of the radio signals. Neither expedition really trusts the other, and sure enough treachery ensues and the two fleets are crippled. Now the Qeng Ho and Emergents must work together and rely on the inhabitants of the OnOff system's sole planet to develop the technology to repair the fleets.

From this basic scenario, Vinge develops a story which may lack the galaxy-spanning scope of A Fire Upon The Deep but which is equally compelling. At 605 pages, his story of the Qeng Ho, the Emergents and the inhabitants of the OnOff star's planet is not terribly long by modern standards but Vinge packs a lot into that space. Along the way Vinge springs several surprise plot twists on us (some of which are very subtly hinted at along the way - this novel repays a close reading) and engages in a lot of speculation about the implications of the 'edge' the Emergents have over the Qeng Ho for humanity in general, the way the Qeng Ho and Emergent cultures mix and affect one another over time while they wait for the OnOff system's inhabitants to develop technologically, and the morality of their plans for those inhabitants.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that Vinge's characters are just cardboard cutouts whose sole function is to be pushed around a chess board to illustrate some ethical debate. Vinge's characters are extremely believable, and have to confront their share of personal dilemmas and learn to live with the consequences of their decisions, for themselves and those they love.

As in A Fire Upon The Deep, Vinge demonstrates his ability to depict interesting, utterly non-human aliens. At first sight the inhabitants of the OnOff star's planet may seem mundane by comparison with the earlier novel's Tines, but - and I am deliberately being vague because I have no desire to spoil one of the novel's best moments - I urge readers to finish the book before making any judgements about the quality of Vinge's world-building.

A Deepness In The Sky can be enjoyed at several different levels, and is undoubtedly going to be one of the most talked-about novels in years. It takes place in the same universe as A Fire Upon The Deep but does not demand that you have read the earlier novel to appreciate it. Anyone who is a fan of the intelligent space opera of authors like Iain M Banks, Peter F Hamilton, David Brin, C J Cherryh or Larry Niven needs to read this book now. The rest of you should read it anyway, because novels this good deserve the widest possible audience.

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