A Fire Upon the Deep

Written by Ben on April 28, 2018, 2:51 p.m.. Last Edited on June 23, 2020, 6:15 a.m..

- A Fire Upon the Deep: I really miss the Skroderiders

Written by Vernor Vinge

Published in 1992

Hugo Award Winner 1993

The famed Qeng Ho Trader and Galactic adventure Pham Nuwen is back from the dead after he has been literally pieced back together for one last adventure. This time he is teamed up with the only human librarian within 20,000 light years and some sentient house plants, known as the Greater Skroderider. They are out to rescue some kids from a doomed science colony who are stranded on a world at the very bottom of space inhabited by medieval psychic dog creatures, all the while they are being chased by an evil AI resurrected from the Great Beyond bent on murdering all civilizations getting in its way.

Although written first, A Fire Upon the Deep is set in the far future, well after Vernor Vinge’s other get Pham Nuwen space adventure A Deepness in the Sky takes place. The two stories are more or less independent of each other. I lucked out and read A Deepness in the Sky first which really helped foster my man crush on Pham Nuwen.

Like all Vernor Vinge books, A Fire Upon the Deep is full of complex plots, multiple points of view, kick ass characters , and plenty of hard science based speculation. Of course this isn't surprising coming from the man credited as coming up with the idea of the 'singularity.' (The point where computers become smarter than us).

I think one of the coolest ideas in A Fire in the Deep is Greater Skroderider. The Great Skroderiders are a five billion year old race of sentient plants that essential role around the Universe on their six wheeled buggies that are tricked out with brain implants allow them to become formidable space merchants.

I also loved the Tines. They are a race of dog like creatures that live in packs of four to eight dogs that essential each form a single shared mind/person. They live in a big, dirty medieval world racked with warfare.

A Fire Upon the Deep does what good SciFi does best. It take you from your small little human world and drops you into the head (or eight) of an living, breathing, alien as they try to make sense of their world and the changing university around.

If you are hard SciFi nerd who isn’t afraid of some heavy speculative fiction, I highly recommend A Fire Upon the Deep.

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