SF Reviews - nuwen.net

This is not a horror novel. It's SF with a strong horror theme. Stross has invented some very scary things which have convincing motivations and are grounded in a science fiction background. Now, in general, horror has a problem. It doesn't make any sense. In order for monsters to destroy civilization, it has to exist in the first place. Humans have a hard enough time building technology and societies in the absence of nameless terrors from the murky depths. Therefore, in order for a self-consistent horror story to take place, there has to be something that counteracts the monsters.

Stross achieves self-consistency in the following manner: monsters exist, just not in our universe. There is something that advanced civilizations do which attracts monsters - namely, certain kinds of computations. This is a pretty neat idea, resembling the rationalization of vampirism as a viral infection.

In fact, the book The Atrocity Archives (plural) contains both the novel "The Atrocity Archive" (singular) and the novella "The Concrete Jungle". They both take place in the same universe (well, you know what I mean). Stross provides plenty of the intricate detail that is necessary for a story's universe to feel as big and complete as the real world feels, but he also leaves intruiging mysteries lying around. And some of them are in cabinets full of musty files stamped MOST SECRET and given nonsense code names.

Eschaton 1/2

This is a post-Singularity Stross novel. However, even though A Fire Upon The Deep is really good, and other Stross novels are really good, that doesn't make Singularity Sky really good. It's actually disappointingly weak. If I had to single out the main reason why this novel is weak, it would have to be that it tells a story where three cultures/entities interact. The first is the culture of the New Republic colony, which has rejected advanced technology and is apparently a pretty crummy place to live. I say "apparently" because the colony and its citizens aren't well characterized at all. The second is the culture/entity of the Festival, an interstellar fleet that has achieved an economic singularity but not a technological singularity. Past the economic singularity, a culture becomes post-scarcity. Post-scarcity cultures have been rather common in science fiction for quite some time now; the United Federation Of Planets is mostly a post-scarcity culture, although starships are still somewhat hard for them to construct. Another example: Iain M. Banks' Culture is definitely post-scarcity. In SF, the economic singularity is not a very new idea. The Festival is too weird, and its motivations too obscure, for it to be really compelling. The third actor in this novel is the Eschaton, an entity that has gone through the Technological Singularity. The Eschaton is far more interesting than the Festival, which in turn is far more interesting than the New Republic.

The problem is that the novel devotes the least time to the Eschaton, and the most time to the New Republic. The plot isn't terribly interesting, and I find it hard to remember what actually happened. Strong plots are memorable; weak plots aren't. Now, the Eschaton is cool, like Old One from A Fire Upon The Deep. The Eschaton is also different from Old One - the big E plays a different role, being the only superhuman intelligence on the stage. That's also the problem. Superhuman intelligences are hard for writers to deal with - being superhuman, they have to stay at the edges of the plot so that the story can remain comprehensibly human. I would say that Singularity Sky is proof that solitary superhuman intelligences are even harder for writers to deal with, since their actions are unopposed. In the end, all that the Eschaton does is make some wickedly awesome threats and pull some obscure strings. And that's underwhelming.

Eschaton 2/2

This novel is a sequel to Singularity Sky. It's also an improvement upon the first story. There's a boring McWorld colony, but it gets nuclearated within the first few pages. The enemies are more comprehensible and more menacing. And most importantly, the Eschaton plays a greater role in events.

Indeed, this would have been a great novel if it had a real ending. The problem is that the central question, which becomes obvious from rather early on in the plot, never gets resolved. It's not like there are tantalizing hints that are left scattered around, making the ending an exercise left to the reader. There just isn't an answer to the question. Iron Sunrise has interesting human characters, and some exciting action (what isn't exciting about blowing up a star?), but I can't recommend it very strongly.

Zones Of Thought 1/2

This is my favorite work of fiction. Along with a very small number of other novels, it sets the standard by which I judge everything else. To put it another way, I now consider Vernor Vinge to be the best fiction writer who has ever lived. (Isaac Asimov is still the best nonfiction writer who has ever lived.)

One of Vernor Vinge's most celebrated ideas is that of the [Technological] Singularity. When the progress of technology proceeds not steadily but increasingly faster, and such progress is sustained for long enough, the potential exists for the accumulated change to be incomprehensible to ordinary humans. Anticipated by several other great thinkers, Vinge was the first to set forth the idea clearly and give it the name by which it is now known. He called this possible event the Singularity because our ability to predict the future would simply break down, just as general relativity breaks down when attempting to describe a gravitational singularity. The fundamental step on the path to the Singularity is usually imagined as developing artificial intelligences, or humans directly interfaced with computers, that have the ability to increase their own intelligence. Things rapidly get out of hand from there, and before long you have a superhumanly intelligent entity, which is to a human as a human is to a cat.

A Deepness In The Sky takes place thousands of years in the future. The Singularity is nowhere in sight. Humanity has accomplished great and majestic things, but has also encountered sobering limitations that prevent the accomplishment of even greater things. The culture central to the story, the Qeng Ho (pronounced "Cheng Ho"), is a group of interstellar traders who journey from world to world in Human Space, trading technologies. The Qeng Ho fly fleets of enormous starships - one ancient dream that has been realized - but these starships are strictly slower than light, crawling between the stars at .3 c. Because dreams of faster than light travel came to nothing, space remains vast compared to human lifetimes, even with cryosleep and life extension technologies. Humans have colonized worlds, starting from Old Earth, and they have steadily increased the reach of Human Space. However, planetary civilizations tend to destroy themselves within a few thousand years, either losing their technological heritage or completely eradicating themselves. The Qeng Ho profit by trading with worlds either recolonized from scratch or crawling back up from a bad fall. Yet the Qeng Ho traders live a precarious existence as well - after arriving at a destination, their mighty starships need to be refitted by a functioning planetary civilization with high technology. Otherwise, the most that they are capable of is turning around and limping back to where they came from (and praying to the Lord Of All Trade that the planet they originally left doesn't collapse during the long journey back). Immortality, artificial intelligences, starfaring aliens - Human Space is devoid of these things which were first imagined during the Age Of Failed Dreams. There are radio traces of alien civilizations, but they're too far away to ever make contact with or even converse with.

And yet... perhaps not. The novel begins with the discovery of spark-gap radio emissions around a drastically variable star. Someone is rediscovering radio... or discovering it for the first time. The Qeng Ho send an expedition to this variable star. Upon arriving, they meet the representatives of a civilization never previously encountered by the Qeng Ho. These Emergents, as they style themselves, have also sent a fleet of ships, and they are very keen on making first contact with the aliens. Will the Qeng Ho and the Emergents work together to contact the aliens on the planet below, or will they destroy each other in the process? Are the aliens discovering high technology for the first time, or are they a fallen colony of starfarers not yet encountered in Human Space?

This novel is filled with extraordinary characters, both human and alien, who inhabit a richly detailed universe and planet, respectively. Enigmatic puzzles, astounding treachery, secret abilities, and the fundamental limitations of the universe await. A Deepness In The Sky contains many clear insights, sometimes mentioned so casually as to not attract attention. To take an example from the Prologue, "The fact that the Forestry Department had partitioned the urban networks was a very bad sign for Triland's future". In the middle of a conversation between characters, Vinge makes an important point about political control of computer networks and simultaneously sketches out the background of a world that has its own problems, yet is only peripherally important to the main story. The masterful structure of the story also contains many subtle and important points, some revealed along the way and some never explicitly revealed.

I implore you in the strongest possible terms to read this novel. You will not be disappointed.

Zones Of Thought 2/2

This novel was published before A Deepness In The Sky but takes place later. I strongly recommend reading them in chronological order, not publication order (for reasons that cannot be explained without spoiling the whole point).

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

More than anything else, science fiction is about big ideas. This is what sets SF apart from other genres. While reading a Tom Clancy novel, I don't expect novel geopolitical insights. I expect to see stuff blow up and people get shot. Action-packed plots and detailed characters with understandable motivations are all well and good, and the lack of them has doomed many SF novels, but having them isn't enough. Great SF novels are woven around one or more big ideas. The best big ideas are surprising and new. For example, one of the big ideas in Foundation is the development of sociology into a quantitative, long-range, predictive tool and the wielding thereof.

Most SF novels count themselves lucky to have one surprising, new, skillfully executed big idea. In A Fire Upon The Deep, there are so many big ideas that it's hard to enumerate them all. In many cases, these big ideas are not just new, they are unique. That is to say, they aren't found in any other novels. I have trouble thinking of even one other SF author who has such exclusive domination over such a vast set of ideas.

I would even go so far as to say that Vernor Vinge has invented a new genre: computer science fiction. This is distinct from "science fiction with computers", not to mention cyberpunk. Computer science fiction explores the ultimate limits of computation, the interaction between computation and intelligence, and the transformative effects of computation on societies.

Yes, I'm being vague as to what this novel is all about. It's very difficult to describe it without spoiling it. I can say that it gives unbelievable context and depth to A Deepness In The Sky. They are each standalone (the prequel because it comes first, the sequel because it was published first) and yet they are inextricably linked.

I can also say that the Known Net is the niftiest SF network ever. Even the Qeng Ho Net pales in comparison. It is mind-blowing to realize that this novel was published in 1992, before the invention of the World Wide Web. A Fire Upon The Deep makes the present Internet look dated, and not the other way around.

Vernor Vinge hopes to write a third novel in the Zones Of Thought universe, although the setting is still uncertain. (It might be a sequel to either of the first two novels, or it might be something else entirely.) I traditionally refer to this third novel by its conjectured name A Skyness Preposition The Noun. Words cannot describe how much I am looking forward to reading it.