|
In my previous
reaction I described A Fire Upon the Deep as a
masterpiece. This is undoubtedly true. If Vernor Vinge had never
written another book, A Fire Upon the Deep would have
stood as a monumental accomplishment, firmly cementing Vinge’s
reputation as one of the best science fiction authors to ever
practice the craft.
So it was even more impressive when A
Deepness in the Sky, Vinge’s next book, was even better.
I first read A Fire Upon the Deep
and A Deepness in the Sky back in 1999, shortly after A
Deepness in the Sky was first published. Reading those two
novels for the first time – back-to-back and in such close
succession – was a one-two punch which I could only compare to
reading, in my much younger days, Asimov’s I, Robot and
Foundation Trilogy back-to-back. Or Clarke’s Rendezvous
with Rama and Childhood's End. It would go unmatched
until several years later when I was awed by reading Bester’s The
Stars My Destination and The
Demolished Man for the first time.
Despite the fact that I’d read them
before, I still found it hard to accept, as I finished A Fire
Upon the Deep, that A Deepness in the Sky was truly
as superior as I remembered it to be. But as I picked up the
second book, which takes place during an earlier epoch of the
Zones universe and serves as a very light prequel of sorts, I
discovered to my delight that my memories were not false: Vinge
actually managed to ascend even higher on the pinnacle of
excellence.
On reflecting on these twin masterpieces,
it’s interesting to note that both of them – and Marooned
in Realtime immediately before them – feature truly original
plots. Looking at Vinge’s earlier works you can find a
cornucopia of originality, but the plots are structurally quite
familiar: Tatja Grimm's World
is fundamentally a coming of age story. The
Witling is fundamentally a great escape story serving as
a vehicle for a Campbellian “let’s extrapolate a nifty
idea” story. And so forth.
But while you can certainly draw parallels
between other stories and various elements of A Fire Upon the
Deep and A Deepness in the Sky (the former is hardly
the only story to feature “rescue the kids” and “defeat
the evil menace”), there are deep structural elements in both
stories which are only possible because the unique elements of
Vinge’s universe. In A Deepness in the Sky, for
example, Pham’s lifelong dream and the faux-Singularity
offered to him in the form of the Focused can be crudely
compared to an Empire based on slavery, but the fundamental
differences make a mockery of the premise.
(All those who find personal joy in
stripping out every relevant and meaningful distinction within a
story so that you can cram it into half a phrase and then claim
that there are only thirty plots or seven plots or one plot in
the world can calm down: I know you exist. Your obsession with
dogmatizing a mildly interesting intellectual game that can
occasionally serve as a useful tool is noted. I pity you in
general. Let’s leave it at that.)
Moving beyond the freshness of the plot, I
am also struck profoundly by the depth of the plot. Vinge
creates an utterly unique setting, populates it with dozens of
vividly drawn characters (both human and evocatively alien), and
then paints his story on a canvas spread across half a dozen
centuries – casting his net far into the past and cascading
into the future. And perhaps the most remarkable achievement of
it all is that Vinge manages to handle the incredibly complex
edifice he has erected with such adroit skill that the reader is
never left at a loss.
Once again, the familiar Vingean strengths
can be found peppered throughout the story: Villains drawn with
vivid and believable detail. Myriad casts of deeply drawn
characters brought together through chance and fate to form a
tale of epic proportions. Complete and detailed realizations of
not only entire societies, but entire societies going through
massive upheaval and change.
In fact, re-reading A Deepness in the
Sky after reading Vinge’s other works was an interesting
experience because I had seen Vinge’s earlier experiments with
some of the themes and elements which can be found here: A
deeper appreciation of the Singularity served to add greater
resonance to the work. The society going through a technological
revolution was touched on earlier in Tatja Grimm's World,
but is handled in a completely unique fashion here. And so
forth.
I find this reaction has become something
of a rambling discourse, and not an entirely satisfying one at
that. So I will draw it to a close with these words: If you have
not read A Deepness in the Sky, then you have almost
certainly missed out on the finest science fiction novel of the
past decade.
GRADE: A+
|
|
Link
|
