Science Fiction Review
joester recommended Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, a 1991 novel that imagines, among other things, a pan-galactic Internet, canine group minds, and these wack ETs called "skroderiders," which are surf-dwelling plants rolling around in mobile pots that have sophisticated cybernetics to do their short-term thinking for them. It's a good book, a bit of a nail biter at the end, and only suffers slightly having the market necessity of two plucky adolescents among the main POV characters. As usual it's more fun to bitch than accentuate the positive so here are some quibbles:
1. SF writers--especially writers of space operas--have a hard time now that it's abundantly clear that relativity and distance will keep the earth isolated forever from the rest of the universe and we're going to have to solve our own problems. Vinge's solution is to imagine the Milky Way as an onion with different layers of spacetime: we're in the "Slow Zone" midway between The Unthinking Depths near the center and The Beyond further out, where faster than light travel is possible. Much of the book takes place in The Beyond, where people (including our descendants) zip hither and thither. I do wish Vinge had bored us with a half-page of Greg Egan-like physics to explain why he thinks all this is possible--for reasons other than to move the story forward.
2. There are a few weird continuity gaps. Most notable is a portentous statement early on in the book that the accidental placement of a human boy in a kindergarten/kennel with one of the abovementioned canine group minds would change the course of galactic history. In fact, their union acts mostly as a drag on the plot. The group mind is bred for mathematical genius but its sole invention is a kind of telepathy amplifier that one of the characters uses and then abruptly stops using. The relationship of boy and dogs is mainly just a cool, slightly offbeat friendship--no hint is given later why it might be important.
3. The mechanics of the canine "telepathy" that enables six dogs to act as one, operate tools, etc. are only sketchily explained. In some places Vinge refers to "mind noise" that passes among the dogs allowing them to share memories and sense data, including tastes and smells. Elsewhere he describes their communication as a vibration through organs called "tympana" which seems to indicate the data is exchanged through high pitched shrieks. Much could be communicated this way--as with our modems--but it's doubtful that smells or other people's internalized memories could be instantly, palpably transmitted. Again, a bit of physics (or biochemistry) might have helped.
Anyway, these are minor points. I'm already absorbed in the prequel, written in 1999, called A Deepness in the Sky. I still believe in science fiction even though much of its Modernist rationale has gone away.
I was wondering if you were liking Vinge. I just finished The Peace War and the sequel Marooned in Realtime. They are also very good (although only the second is teenager free). Fun if even for just the fact that the first book is set in the year 2050 and the second once takes place fifty million years later.
I just found this and figured I'd give you the link and read it after, thereby absolving myself if it's crap by way of ignorance.
Just finished A Fire Upon the Deep too. I enjoyed the fact that he didn't waste time on lengthy back story pseudo science explanations, but still developed a detailed and coherent universe. Having also read Greg Egan's Diasopora, I even kept thinking that the Vinge's 3 tiered universe might be a digital, or matrix-like construction. Egan is great but I think his efforts at underpinning fiction with real-world plausibility get a bit forced.
I wasn't asking for a pseudo scientific explanation, just a half page explaining Vinge's novel idea that different laws of physics apply in different parts of the galaxy! It seems to me if everything moves faster in The Beyond, stars would crash into each other out there. And it is most unfair for you to complain about Egan being forced and then use his ideas to fill Vinge's storytelling gaps! Seriously, though, if there's any purpose left to SF as opposed to pure fantasy it ought to be some commitment to empirical principals and logic, on the way to all the fun stuff. Otherwise it's just playing with the tropes of our childhood to tell stories.
I agree with you that "it's abundantly clear that relativity and distance will keep the earth isolated forever from the rest of the universe and we're going to have to solve our own problems." I heard a talk with Lee Smollin on the radio the other day about the extraoridnarily likely existence of parallel universes. Is it just me or is that old news? It's like, yeah yeah, if you have infinity then you gotta have everything, including not only life on other planets, but other planets exactly like ours and every theoretical variant mutation of ours. Very clever, but so what? We'll never come close to experiencing any of these mathematical probablilities. SF, on the other hand, can run various thought experiments on the conceptual experience of being just one inahibted world of many. I don't feel the need for hypothetical (even if plausible) science in my science fiction these days, I need to emotionally/conceptually chew on the science we've got. And doesn't most literature play with the tropes to tell stories? I thought that's how it worked. That said, I concede the point that it's not fair both crticize Egan and rely on him to bolster Vinge. (posit: Vinge is to Egan as Stephenson is to Gibson...or...Vinge is Mozart to Egan's Bach...)
"I don't feel the need for hypothetical (even if plausible) science in my science fiction these days, I need to emotionally/conceptually chew on the science we've got" seems self-contradicting to me. How is telling fairy tales with made-up science "chewing on" science? Chewing up, maybe. I'm not a purist (I feel like I have to keep reiterating that)--only saying that there's genre bending and then there's laziness. To write a "science fiction novel" where things patently couldn't happen and then say "Oh, I'm just playing with tropes" seems spurious. And I don't think Vinge is even saying that.
By the way, if I haven't already recommended it, Thomas Disch's The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of is a good discussion of the genre by someone who worked in it for years stepping slightly outside of it to make a friendly self-slap. His criticism of Egan's virtual world novels (such as Permutation City) is that anything can happen there, so there are no rules to sink your teeth into.
Vinge is from the Bay Area and I kept reading sites saying that he's one of the best writers in SF and thinking that it was odd to bring that up. Surley where he lives doesn't make that much difference in the argument!?
Now I'm completely on board and no longer an idiot.
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Science Fiction Review
joester recommended Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, a 1991 novel that imagines, among other things, a pan-galactic Internet, canine group minds, and these wack ETs called "skroderiders," which are surf-dwelling plants rolling around in mobile pots that have sophisticated cybernetics to do their short-term thinking for them. It's a good book, a bit of a nail biter at the end, and only suffers slightly having the market necessity of two plucky adolescents among the main POV characters. As usual it's more fun to bitch than accentuate the positive so here are some quibbles:
1. SF writers--especially writers of space operas--have a hard time now that it's abundantly clear that relativity and distance will keep the earth isolated forever from the rest of the universe and we're going to have to solve our own problems. Vinge's solution is to imagine the Milky Way as an onion with different layers of spacetime: we're in the "Slow Zone" midway between The Unthinking Depths near the center and The Beyond further out, where faster than light travel is possible. Much of the book takes place in The Beyond, where people (including our descendants) zip hither and thither. I do wish Vinge had bored us with a half-page of Greg Egan-like physics to explain why he thinks all this is possible--for reasons other than to move the story forward.
2. There are a few weird continuity gaps. Most notable is a portentous statement early on in the book that the accidental placement of a human boy in a kindergarten/kennel with one of the abovementioned canine group minds would change the course of galactic history. In fact, their union acts mostly as a drag on the plot. The group mind is bred for mathematical genius but its sole invention is a kind of telepathy amplifier that one of the characters uses and then abruptly stops using. The relationship of boy and dogs is mainly just a cool, slightly offbeat friendship--no hint is given later why it might be important.
3. The mechanics of the canine "telepathy" that enables six dogs to act as one, operate tools, etc. are only sketchily explained. In some places Vinge refers to "mind noise" that passes among the dogs allowing them to share memories and sense data, including tastes and smells. Elsewhere he describes their communication as a vibration through organs called "tympana" which seems to indicate the data is exchanged through high pitched shrieks. Much could be communicated this way--as with our modems--but it's doubtful that smells or other people's internalized memories could be instantly, palpably transmitted. Again, a bit of physics (or biochemistry) might have helped.
Anyway, these are minor points. I'm already absorbed in the prequel, written in 1999, called A Deepness in the Sky. I still believe in science fiction even though much of its Modernist rationale has gone away.
- tom moody 4-22-2005 1:44 am
I was wondering if you were liking Vinge. I just finished The Peace War and the sequel Marooned in Realtime. They are also very good (although only the second is teenager free). Fun if even for just the fact that the first book is set in the year 2050 and the second once takes place fifty million years later.
- joester 4-22-2005 6:40 am
I just found this and figured I'd give you the link and read it after, thereby absolving myself if it's crap by way of ignorance.
- joester 4-22-2005 6:52 am
Just finished A Fire Upon the Deep too. I enjoyed the fact that he didn't waste time on lengthy back story pseudo science explanations, but still developed a detailed and coherent universe. Having also read Greg Egan's Diasopora, I even kept thinking that the Vinge's 3 tiered universe might be a digital, or matrix-like construction. Egan is great but I think his efforts at underpinning fiction with real-world plausibility get a bit forced.
- sally mckay 4-22-2005 3:48 pm
I wasn't asking for a pseudo scientific explanation, just a half page explaining Vinge's novel idea that different laws of physics apply in different parts of the galaxy! It seems to me if everything moves faster in The Beyond, stars would crash into each other out there. And it is most unfair for you to complain about Egan being forced and then use his ideas to fill Vinge's storytelling gaps! Seriously, though, if there's any purpose left to SF as opposed to pure fantasy it ought to be some commitment to empirical principals and logic, on the way to all the fun stuff. Otherwise it's just playing with the tropes of our childhood to tell stories.
- tom moody 4-22-2005 6:06 pm
I agree with you that "it's abundantly clear that relativity and distance will keep the earth isolated forever from the rest of the universe and we're going to have to solve our own problems." I heard a talk with Lee Smollin on the radio the other day about the extraoridnarily likely existence of parallel universes. Is it just me or is that old news? It's like, yeah yeah, if you have infinity then you gotta have everything, including not only life on other planets, but other planets exactly like ours and every theoretical variant mutation of ours. Very clever, but so what? We'll never come close to experiencing any of these mathematical probablilities. SF, on the other hand, can run various thought experiments on the conceptual experience of being just one inahibted world of many. I don't feel the need for hypothetical (even if plausible) science in my science fiction these days, I need to emotionally/conceptually chew on the science we've got. And doesn't most literature play with the tropes to tell stories? I thought that's how it worked. That said, I concede the point that it's not fair both crticize Egan and rely on him to bolster Vinge. (posit: Vinge is to Egan as Stephenson is to Gibson...or...Vinge is Mozart to Egan's Bach...)
- sally mckay 4-22-2005 8:03 pm
"I don't feel the need for hypothetical (even if plausible) science in my science fiction these days, I need to emotionally/conceptually chew on the science we've got" seems self-contradicting to me. How is telling fairy tales with made-up science "chewing on" science? Chewing up, maybe. I'm not a purist (I feel like I have to keep reiterating that)--only saying that there's genre bending and then there's laziness. To write a "science fiction novel" where things patently couldn't happen and then say "Oh, I'm just playing with tropes" seems spurious. And I don't think Vinge is even saying that.
- tom moody 4-22-2005 8:31 pm
By the way, if I haven't already recommended it, Thomas Disch's The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of is a good discussion of the genre by someone who worked in it for years stepping slightly outside of it to make a friendly self-slap. His criticism of Egan's virtual world novels (such as Permutation City) is that anything can happen there, so there are no rules to sink your teeth into.
- tom moody 4-22-2005 8:44 pm
Vinge is from the Bay Area and I kept reading sites saying that he's one of the best writers in SF and thinking that it was odd to bring that up. Surley where he lives doesn't make that much difference in the argument!?
Now I'm completely on board and no longer an idiot.
- joester 4-22-2005 9:07 pm