This is a work of science fiction brilliance. Human beings in search of technology supposedly buried away on the edge of the Milky Way unwittingly unleash an ancient evil. One lone family escapes this Power soon to be known as the Blight and succeed in outrunning this evil. The Blight with alarming alacrity invades numerous solar systems and turns them into mindless zombies willing to do its bidding. Bad news for the Human species. In the midst of all this Humans are blamed for releasing this malevolence and various aligned alien species start attacking all things Human. As per usual their is one thing -Countermeasure- which can destroy the Blight. It lies however with the children of the escaped family and they are unaware that they possess it or how badly events have taken a turn for the worse. The family has crash landed on a primitive planet "Tines World". Populated by marvellously conceived aliens the parents are slaughtered and the children separated and kept apart by events leading up to and after the surprise ambush. The siblings are viewed with both trepidation and awe. This planet, medieval by Human standards is at a peaceful unease and leaders of two unfriendly kingdoms vie for information from brother and sister in the technological advances and upgrading of weapons of war. Time is running out for one of the siblings and though a rescue mission is on its way, that vessel is also in danger of not arriving. Space opera at its finest .This novel has some various ways of explaining of how the Blight and Humans are viewed through the Usenet also known as the web of a million lies. A Fire Upon The Deep is over five hundred pages of science fiction space opera perfection. If you don't own a copy, or is one who has never read it, do yourself a favour and rectify this omission from your library post-haste.





This prequel, set some thirty thousand years preceding the events of the Hugo award winning novel A Fire Upon The Deep detail how two disparate star faring races paths converge. The mercantile Queng Ho and the autocratic Emergents meet above the planet Arachna, both with similar aims but totally different ideas on how to utilise the solar system. The planet is inhabited by an arachnoid species whose world and entire evolution has been controlled by its sun. Nicknamed the On/Off star this unique star undergoes tremendous vacillations within its structure. For two hundred and fifteen years the star turns is a quiescent monster that burns dimly, for the thirty five years that it flares and burns it awakens the native flora and fauna on its solitary orbiting planet. After the Queng Ho are maliciously ambushed by the Emergents at the beginning of their joint venture in orbit, where the fleets almost mutually annihilate one another, the Emergents emerge with a pyrrhic victory. Neither surviving personal from the battle will leave the system for many decades. Into this novel Vinge creates two very distinct themes. The subterfuge and complete animus that exists between both sets of personal drips with a malignancy that percolates throughout the entire novel. He masters how people are allowed to stew in their hatred's for many years. Characters such as the completely despotic Emergents' Thomas Nau and Ritser Brughel are cold blooded and relentless manipulators of all they survey and control. On the Queng Ho side, we are led to experience how the suppressed minority try to retain their kinship and solidarity by passively resisting the insidious assimilation they live with every single moment of their lives. Qiwi, EzrVinh and Pham Trinli are an almost powerless triumvirate who patiently seek to assuage the loss, suffering and torture their lot experience. The second theme is the natives of the planet Arachna themselves. Known as Spiders; these multi limbed sentient beings are under total observation by the unseen eyes of the human fleet and in this there new and inchoate emergent stage they begin to rapidly approach an information age and then a nuclear age. Jealously eyed from orbit, the Emergents' and the focused slaves cruelly referred to as Zipheads (some of them captured Qeng Ho) continuously monitor their development and in certain cases manipulate their progress. The spiders role is of paramount importance as the Emergents' dire need, when the time is right, is to take over their industrial centres. This is one marvellously written novel but it doesn't flow very well. The amount of time that various characters, and indeed complete watches spent in coldsleep is never properly conveyed. The intensely monitored crew, overseen by the brilliant but inscrutable Anne Reynolt I felt made it impossible for the brilliant Pham to orchestrate his plan of salvation for the Qeng Ho, yet somehow he manages it. Finally, one caveat I have is that somewhere in this middle of this book a certain event occurs, which is not revealed until the final few chapters. It simply did not add up. In fact it detracts from the role the Zipheads and the brilliant Spider scientist Sherkaner Underhill were undertaking. A secret in kept in the author's mind and then exposed in such a bombastic manner was a non sequitur vulgarity as it could never have been reasonably guessed. This book has a few flaws but overall I enjoyed reading this slightly slow paced and claustrophobic adventure.

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