In The Peace War and Marooned in Real Time Vinge took one idea, did a thorough working through of its consequences, and used it to build a whole future history on. A Fire Upon the Deep is rather different, being a space opera on the grand scale. It contains enough big ideas for a couple of books: distributed consciousness and personality in a dog-like race on the verge of a technological revolution, a heterogeneous universe where the laws of physics change with distance from the galactic centre, a galactic USENET (complete with ignorant, banal, and simply bizarre postings), Powers from the Beyond and lots more. But none of that is pushed too hard, or allowed to interfere with the plot, and A Fire Upon the Deep is a splendid entertainment, among the most compelling light science fiction novels around.

May 1993

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