A Deepness in the Sky

24 March 2000

>pnh@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>>I _would_ like to say that, although I am not Vernor Vinge's editor (that
>>would be Jim Frenkel) and this is not my book, A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY is one
>>of the best traditional-SF novels I have ever read.  I read it two months
>>ago and my head is still ringing.
>
>Can you give some more information on this book? 

It's set 30,000 years before A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, about 8,000 years in our
future.

It involves (among other characters) Pham Nuwen and the Qeng Ho.

It's set in the galaxy of the Zones of Thought -- but no one in the book
knows about the Zones.  It's all in the Slow Zone, and all involves sublight
travel.  As a result, the sense of scope is, oddly, _greater_ than in AFUTD
-- the people in it really are dealing with immense spans of time.

It contains one (1) race of absolutely wonderfully-done aliens, from whose
point of view we see part of the story.

It's an extraordinarily well _written_ clockwork thriller.  I have noticed
for a while that each successive book by Vernor Vinge is twice as
well-written as the previous one.  In 2009, I expect him to win the Nobel
Prize for Literature.

"So high, so low, so many things to know."

-- 
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : pnh@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh