| A Deepness In The Sky |
Article Index for A |
Website Links For Sky |
Information AboutA Deepness In The Sky |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY | |
| science fiction novels | |
| 1999 novels | |
| hugo award winner for best novel | |
| john w. campbell award winner | |
| libertarian science fiction | |
|
The book deals with the discovery of an intelligent Alien species on a planet orbiting the bizarre, appropriately named On/Off star, which spends 215 of every 250 years almost completely dormant, releasing almost no energy. During this period, the planet freezes and its fauna goes into Hibernation . The planet's inhabitants, named 'Spiders' by the humans, have reached a stage of s (pronounced '' Ho '', presumably named after Zheng He ); and the Emergents, an Autocratic culture that literally enslaves selected human minds. After suffering decimation due to a disease they call "mindrot", the Emergents have learned to engineer the disease and to use it to their advantage as a form of Mind Control . They use it as a weapon against the unwitting Qeng Ho expedition, infecting them during a meeting with a time-delayed variant of the disease. As both groups of humans approach the On/Off star, a surprise attack by the Emergents, timed to coincide with the mindrot symptoms, leaves both fleets crippled. They have perforce to work together and wait for the Spider civilization to achieve a greater technological maturity in order to help them refurbish their ships. Emergent culture uses mindrot primarily in the form of a variant which technicians can manipulate in order to release Neurotoxin s to specific parts of the brain. An active MRI -type device triggers changes through Dia- and Paramagnetic biological molecules. By manipulating the brain in this way, Emergent Manager s induce a state they call Focus , in which Focused persons become completely obsessed with a single idea or speciality, essentially turning them into brilliant Appliance s. Many Qeng Ho become Focused against their will, and the Emergents retain the rest of the population under Mass Surveillance . The Qeng Ho trading culture gradually starts to dilute this Totalitarian régime, however, as the Emergents discover certain benefits of tolerated and restricted Free Trade ; and the two human cultures merge to some extent over many years of forced co-operation. The book discusses some of the problems of trying to maintain an interstellar trading culture without access to , uses terms such as Kilosecond s and Megasecond s. Only one concrete connection links ''A Deepness in the Sky'' with '' (with only a solitary planet and several Asteroid -sized Diamond s), and the discovery of " Cavorite mines" on the planet appear as possible leftovers from the passage of the system through the center of the Galaxy . Vinge retails speculation that the Spiders descend from an ancient star-faring civilization, and that the Antigravity material and other strange artifacts have connections with that civilization. At the end of the book, Pham announces his plans to free all of the Focused in the entire Emergent civilization, and, if surviving that, to embark on a journey to the Center Of The Galaxy to find the source of these strange artifacts (''A Fire Upon the Deep'' reveals that he died during this journey, and that one of the god-like Powers re-assembled his body parts and memories to use as a puppet). With this work Vinge introduces .) EXTERNAL LINK |
|
|