A Fire Upon the Deep - Aliens and AI and Internet Trolls, oh my! (no spoilers book review)

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge is an incredibly ambitious novel that successfully combines all kinds of interesting ideas into one tightly woven, gripping story. It won the Hugo award in 1993. We give it a 4.75 / 5. Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Timestamps 00:00 Intro 0:41 Summary (no spoilers) 1:34 The review (4.75 / 5) 2:30 The Tines - our first aliens 6:40 The villains 8:15 The Scroderiders - aliens on segways 12:24 The AI 14:58 Predicting internet trolls 17:03 The interwoven plot 19:19 Similar book recommendations #booktube #scifi #hugonauts #fireuponthedeep #bookreview Similar books we recommend: Children of Time / Children of Ruin - Adrien Tchaikovsky Startide Rising - David Brin Ancillary Justice - Anne Leckie A colony of humans sets up in the transcendence, the part of the galaxy where computers work so well AI can ascend and become godlike. The humans start tinkering with an old artifact, and naturally, they awaken an ancient power. The reborn AI / god sets off on a reign of destruction, and soon is killing even other deities. A single ship escapes with the secret to save the universe and jets off through the beyond to the very edge of the slowness, the sector of the galaxy where the speed of light is an immutable law and computers don’t work very well. It crash lands there on a primitive, medieval world populated by doglike aliens called Tines, and two children are the only survivors of the crash. Meanwhile, in the wider world, the race is on to reach the crashed ship. Two humans and two tree-like aliens called Scroderiders are alone, pursued by the agents of the death god, trying to reach the kids and save the galaxy. This is a book that is full of big, interesting ideas that are seamlessly woven into an incredibly entertaining story - it will absolutely keep you turning the pages and staying up too late reading. One of the bright spots is the incredibly inventive aliens that Vinge has created. The Tines are dog-like aliens who live as packs that are joined by telepathic communication, allowing 4-8 bodies to function as a single individual. Because they are a pack mind, they can bring in new members over time, which has all kinds of interesting implications (they can live for hundreds of years as they bring new singletons into the pack, and try to engineer their own personalities by curating those new members). Then there are the Scroderiders - essentially giant kelp riding segways. Their mounts also give them short term memory, and they periodically unplug to take a break and exist in the moment. As such, they're an incredibly interesting way to think about the existential value of technological and knowledge-seeking progress versus contentment, and what truly makes us happy. The aliens alone would have been enough to make this an incredible book, but Vinge also explores AI in a really novel way. In the transcendent zone of the galaxy the AI is so advanced it is effectively godlike, and barely cares at all about humans and our petty problems. Vinge was the first author to flesh out the idea of the singularity, or the idea that AI could begin to advance so quickly that it surpasses human intelligence in a runaway effect, and he explores a possible end state of that universe here in Fire Upon the Deep. Vinge was also incredibly prescient about the future downsides of the internet. Many of the chapters start out with messages or comments threads on the Galactic Internet that show how other species and entities are reacting to the plot of the story. However, much of the information on the net isn't true, and its clear many people are spinning larger events to their own benefit - serious prescience for a book published in 1992, given the current state of the internet, and the propaganda and outright lies being spouted by all kinds of countries and individuals. And finally, the whole book is tied together into an incredibly tight plot that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. Vinge doesn’t have to step out of the story to convey his themes and ideas, and at the end everything lands at once, and its exciting as hell!