The Zones of Thought Series: A Fire Upon the Deep, The Children of the Sky, A Deepness in the Sky

Zones of Thought #1-3

by Vernor Vinge

Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

A Fire Upon The Deep — Fleeing a galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle.

The Children of the Sky — Ten years have passed on Tines World, and Ravna and the children have survived a war. While there is peace among the Tines, there are those among them—and among the humans—who seek power…and no matter the cost, these malcontents are determined to overturn the fledgling civilization that has taken root since the humans landed.

A Deepness in the Sky — Thirty-thousand years before A Fire Upon the Deep, two human groups, the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds, stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

1899 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 13, 2017

About the author

Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon The Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999) and Rainbows End (2006), his Hugo Award-winning novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/vernor...

Reviews

[William Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books one and two continue a single narrative which is never completed. Book three is basically a stand-alone story with only passing reference to the original narrative that you had grown to love and with which you would expect.. closure. There is no real closure to either story. It was fun, but the story is unfinished.

[Vajnis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A trilogy where the two first books where great(like 4 stars!) and the last book where dull and uninteresting. Couldn't even finish reading it. Very disappointing.

[Christoph Wagner · Rating 2 out of 5]

An amazing first book. But in book 2, there is a scene (if only, many, many pages!) that reminds me of a bad horror movie. You know when someone does something, and you scream "Nooo! Don’t do it!"?

Now imagine that in slow motion. Really slow motion. For 20 minutes or more, we see an extremely obvious betrayal. One with very few nuances and that becomes so obvious that even a blind person would be able to see it. And it’s still going on. Everything exactly, as one would imagine it to happen (and believe me, I’m not one of those people who normally sees things coming, this is really sledgehammer level).

I kept skipping over pages and it just wouldn’t end. At this point I decided to just stop reading. I was getting too annoyed by this part.

If you think you can get over something like this, the rest of the trilogy might become better again. But I can’t.

[Nathaniel Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic series that ends on a bit of a question. The telling of the stories from start to finish (I read them in release order) is fantastic, and truly shows a spectacularly deep history and development of believable and lived-in feeling characters. I hope there's a follow-up some day to The Children of the Sky. The way the story just stopped in the middle of all this intrigue really left me wondering what becomes of the Tines, the children, and how long it takes for the attackers / rescuers to find their way to them.

[Kevin K · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel contained all three books in the Zone of Thought Series.

Book 1 - was enjoyable with an interesting premise, although one of the protagonists was very "Mary Sue", I also think that Vinge didn't describe the rules of the universe until too deep into the book.

Book 2 - Sure it had aliens in it, but I think it'd largely be considered a politic story vs. sci-fi. Reading progress slowed.

Book 3 - Waste of time. Muddled and overlong. Was a slog.

I had high hopes, and books 2 & 3 took the wind out of my sails.

[Jonathan D McMillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jam packed with ideas

There's so much in these books that it's a little overwhelming to think back on it all. The aliens are truly alien and yet the human condition is explored and examined with them. There are so many neat ideas in these books and just one of them would be enough to hang a whole story on. Amazing!

[Jordan Couch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I strong contestant for my favorite book and favorite series of all time. I even love the last book children of the sky even though it's a little weird and deviate from the plot of the first two.