A Fire Upon the Deep

By: Vernor Vinge

Narrated by: Peter Larkin

Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.

Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought", but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.

A Fire upon the Deep, which began the Zones of Thought series, is the winner of the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

©1992 Vernor Vinge (P)2010 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award, Best Novel, 1993

Great story , fun listen the voice can distract

Enjoyed this as it continues to tie this universe together , but I find the voice distracting as it plays characters - still I will recommend this project

Unique sci fi fairytale.

I really loved the idea of the zones in the galaxy dictating the intelligence of aliens but its never really expanded upon, the thynes are a very interesting alien species that are unique to imagine. there's intelligent plants that drive around in little machines, a red headed space Frankenstein dude, a superintelligent space net virus, and Shrek

Great story, but the female and child voices are painful.

The story was very interesting and engaging, but the narrator used really annoying voices for the children and women that sounded nothing like a female voice or a child’s voice.

Transcendent SciFi

I read Fire in the Deep years ago and only really remembered that I liked it and the concept of slow zones in space. I decided to listen and finish the series. I love Vinge’s SciFi, and this doesn’t disappoint. I thought some of the voices used for the young pups were annoying.

Uneven

There are parts of this book they were excellent, and I really liked, but it was uneven. Certain characters I could really get behind, but others I had no vested interest. It’s OK.

Just not a good listen

I am in agreement with a lot of the reviewers on here. This is the kind of book you buy because you want to spend time digesting the author's ideas, and audiobook is the wrong format for that kind of intellectual exercise.

The entire beginning of the book is basically bungled. A strong prolog makes you think the story is going in one direction, and you're basically waiting for any indication that that plot line will advance. Then you're treated to pages of disjointed narrative, as hive mind dogs fight, and every fight among them seems to be described by language similar to "a furious struggle", which is about as descriptive as the dust covered fights in cartoons.

The narration has cartoonish voices for the characters, as others have said, which is really distracting. It often feels like every character is a child.

I decided to stop listening around chapter 5 because I realized that I didn't really care what happened to the established characters, and I didn't want to hear about the new character that was being introduced.

Might be worth reading in print, but I highly recommend you skip this audiobook version.

Interesting idea, wasn’t too enthralled with the story

The zone idea was cool but the characters they followed were meh didn’t really care about any of them. Also the monster never really felt real just vaguely out there and a threat

Not a fan

The aliens in this story are very unique and that's about all that was good.
No real plot, super powerful unexplained event to end the story, multiple name for each character made to hard to follow, random long unnecessary new feeds turned me off.

A book that will leave you asking why

I am positive that there is an audience for this book. Perhaps I am not it. However if you like your Sci fi to have some logic behind it then give this one a pass. Too often I found myself asking the question of why. Why is the galaxy like this? Why would the characters do that? Why does the plot need so much finger waiving to explain things?

Good ideas here, but not enough to carry the story

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I enjoyed the space opera side of this story, but not the medieval side. I found myself dreading when the story would come back to the Tine world thread. Many novel thoughts within this story, but not enough to carry it for me. I give one more star to the ideas than I would otherwise to the story proper.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

More space opera and less Tine story line. And to be honest, not a lot of excitement in the journey. I wanted to like this story more, but just couldn't. Still, the ideas and the narrator took me to the end, which is further than they would have without Peter Larkin.

Any additional comments?

I had never listened to Peter Larkin before, but will wholeheartedly do so again. He was great. Had this story been by a narrator I thought less of, I probably would have given up about halfway through...