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(More customer reviews)Some have questioned the relation between A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep, complaining that, aside from being in the same universe and sharing one character, that they have nothing in common.
I beg to differ.
A Deepness in the Sky is a Fire Upon the Deep turned inside out. There is a brilliant symmetry between the two novels and I definitely believe that either novel is enhanced by the reading of the other.
AFUtD was grand space opera. It was also representative of what Mr. Vinge hopes the future can be: unlimited vistas and boundless advances in technology. As a consequence, the book had a tendency to focus on its grand vision to the detriment of its characters, who ended up feeling flattened by comparison (read some of the Amazon customer reviews for AFUtD to see what I mean).
ADitS, by contrast, represents Mr. Vinge's fear of what the future may hold for us. If technology does, in fact, plateau at some level and if the technological singularity is never achieved, Mr. Vinge predicts that humanity will be doomed to an endless sequence of technological rises and falls. ADitS makes, in my opinion, some very good cases for this. As a consequence, even though the book is chock full of high technology, with respect to our civilization, and even though it imagines humanity spread among the stars, it manages to convey a sense of claustrophobia - especially for those who have read AFUtD. Because the universe is so "cramped", the focus of the novel is directed (with almost painful intensity) upon the characters of the novel.
This novel is long and it has more than its fair share of depressing aspects. I can not, however, think of anything that ought to have been subtracted from it. As for the sense of pessimism, I think that it is absolutely critical to read this in context of the largert universe presented in AFUtD. Yes, the characters, and their cultures, are trapped within a cosmological box, but it's a box that DOES have an open end. An opening that will, more importantly, be found by Pham Nguwen... just not yet.
In sum, I think that this is a true tour de force and an entirely apt sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep.
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