Prequels and sequels: a correction

Science fiction | Vernor Vinge.

Thanks to Glenn Costello (many thanks!), I correct an error in the last few posts.

It turns out that my favourite in the series, A Fire Upon the Deep, Children of the Sky, and A Deepness in the Sky, which is Deepness, was actually written last, and is a prequel. The other books are not, as I thought, sequels.

So read them in the order above, and you'll be happier. Vinge's writing in Deepness is an order of magnitude tauter than in the previous books. I liked them in this order: Deepness best, followed by Fire and last, Children. Strangely enough, that's the order I read them in, too. But that's just coincidence.


A thought now strikes me: I guess we may, after all, find out what happened to Sherkaner Underhill.

Happiness in sheer anticipation!

First world problems of the future

Science Fiction | Vernor Vinge | Children of the Sky

So I finally finished Children of the Sky. Indeed, once I started on it again, it was unputdownable.

This is the follow up story to A Fire on the Deep, which is a sequel itself to A Deepness in the Sky. The last two books in the series could well have been published as one book, since the events follow so closely and the characters are shared between the books (except the ones that got killed in Fire, but Vinge is no George RR Martin, thank goodness, and is thrifty with the deaths). One major difference between these two is that the villains this time include humans as well (oh! the horror!).

Ravna revives the surviving children from the cold sleep boxes, and they all grow up into young adults, with no real adult supervision along the way, given how much time Ravna spends on frantically preparing to confront the Blight. And if you've read Lord of the Flies, you know what's going to happen then. Well, not really, the Tines do a good job of adult supervision, for what it's worth.

In the meantime, one of the old villains steals a dataset and ties up with a Tine in another country, a brilliant inventor, if somewhat erratic. This villain continues with worse villainy in this episode.

Ravna faces slow technology, slow progress, fast talking villains, perfidy and kidnapping. On the plus side are her loyal friends (though one is getting paranoid) and, well, loyal frenemies. Good guys turn out to be bad guys and vice versa.

The children are led astray by smooth villains who object to the available technology not being used for things they were used to in the high-tech Beyond. Complete First World Problems complaints! You want to shake sense into them. But are they wrong in their worries?

Good eventually triumphs, as in all Vinge's books, but, as usual, only squeaking through in the very last hour. (Hmph, in Deepness, they did their squeaking through in the last few pages-- we were down to single digit numbers of pages by the time the villains were vanquished-- so either Vinge is getting slow in his older age, or this story is not supposed to be as tense a read).

I dunno, you may cavil, but I liked Deepness best and I still wonder what Sherkaner Underhill got up to. There is, however, a possibility that there will be another sequel coming up. Ravna has yet to take on the Blight. On the other hand, even a major talent like Vinge may quail at taking on that encounter. He needs to exercise, eat protein-rich diets, fish oil, yoga and things before sitting down and cracking his knuckles for that one. The Blight is a Metavillain.

Next up, I will be covering my re-read of Terry Pratchett's Jingo.

Whatever happened to Sherkaner Underhill?

Science fiction | Vernor Vinge | A Fire Upon the Deep


I must confess, I was greatly excited to find that Vinge had written not one, but two, sequels to A Deepness in the Sky. I really wanted to know what happened to Sherkaner Underhill and the rest of the supersmart aliens who found humans cute.


Well, I never did. The sequel, A Fire Upon the Deep, takes on the iconic Pham Nuwen part 2. You know, I know, everyone who read the first book knows, that Pham Nuwen was a legend. A solver of impossible problems (not really, but it will be a spoiler for Deepness if I tell you more). He's back, after several thousand years of being left for dead.

But let's back up a bit. Fire begins with humans well settled in the outer reaches of the galaxy. For unspecified reasons, Vinge decided that going to the centre of the galaxy to find higher technical civilisations wouldn't work. As you get deeper in the gravity well, therefore, tech slows down, sapients become stupider, things go bad. As you move out, though, things speed up, magic becomes possible: antigravity, FTL travel, transcendent intelligences, the works. Every species' goal, then, is to investigate every possibility of becoming transcendent itself. With help and shortcuts from older transcendent Powers, if possible.

However, they know from the gww (galaxy wide web, ha ha, not that Vinge calls it anything but the Net of a Million Lies), that the process of waking up old archives is fraught with danger, and carefully locate High Lab far away from civilisation. Except they make the mistake of bringing their kids along.

Anyhow, low bandwidth communication between species (I suppose in the early days of the Net, a speed of several kbps was considered to be really cutting edge futuristic) tracks the progress of the new transcendent, which turns out to be an ancient evil that ensnares all the humans on High Lab, except the kids, which the Countermeasure helps two adults to save in coldsleep boxes, and transport at great risk to a world in the Slow Zone, where they hope to set up a signal and call for help.

But there are native intelligences on the planet, some things which are a bit like large, dog-sized long-necked ratlike creatures, which, we slowly realise, are made up of packs. Individuals have no intelligence; only a pack of several individuals is intelligent, but too many together, and the 'mind-noise' destroys intelligence again. Vinge is good at inventing aliens.

These critters are at a medieval history level, and some of them attack the ship, kill the adults and several children. 8 year old Jefri and his 13 year old sister Johanna, who dubs them Tines, become the surviving pawns in the low-level power play.

In the meantime, in the high-level power play, Ravna Bergnsdot, the lone human in the internet hub called Relay, is approached for help in understanding a human found in a really ancient dead ship, who is found to be revivable after all, and like no modern human. Pham Nuwen is back. Or is he? You know, I know, that Pham is real. But does Ravna, and more to the point, does Pham?

How the super evil, the Blight, then attacks, and how Pham and Ravna race to save the children as well as the galaxy, is the rest of the book. There are a few more aliens to meet on the way, don't worry.

Vinge specialises in the known evil plot and the unknown villain. You see this first in Grimm's World, the first part of which I read way back soon after it was first published (Eeee, I just dated myself!) and then again in Deepness, which was one suspenseful book, and you see it again in the maneouvering of the tines.

Now, I shall proceed with the third book in the series, which, as you already know, I made the mistake of reading 11 chapters of, before realising I was building up spoilers and reading out of sequence. Sigh.

No, actually, I will finish rereading Neal Asher's Gridlinked, which I stretched out a hand and picked up to read a couple of pages of, in a free moment, and which I then compulsively started from the beginning and am reading through to the end in a helpless fashion. Then I will get back to The Children of the Deep, which I left at another unexpected-villains-start-winning point, always a depressing stage in any book, and particularly with a master like Vinge. When I review Gridlinked, I will muse about ruthlessness in writers, and whether it is a good thing or not, with side comments on George RR Martin.

On the minus side, I never did get to know what happened to the inimitable Sherkaner Underhill and his lovely family. Wail.

Multiplexing, oh, no!

Now, how did I get into this fix?

I'm reading three books together.

Children of the Sky I started by mistake, thinking it was the sequel to A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. It's not. It's a sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, which is the sequel to A Deepness in the Sky. Facepalm. I was already 11 chapters into it (with attendant spoilers, wail!) before sense struck, so now I'm reading the right sequel.

And the third? That's The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley, which the resident teenager insists that I've read already since it's been lying around the house for years. This is entirely possible, which means I have the delicious situation of having completely forgotten the entire plot. Given that Varley has a completely stupendous imagination, this is a treat for me.

Reviews later. Bear with me. I have to read three of them at once.

In the meantime, in the next post, I will mutter a bit about Fatal Cure by Robin Cook.