A Deepness in the Sky

This book was long, and while I liked it more that Cosmonaut Keep, I still felt disastified by it by the end. Many of the concepts were fantastic, but like Cosmonaut Keep, the characters and story were so so. A shining light in this brown sea of sameness was Pham Nuwen. Sure he may be the quintessential badass "I've seen more than you can possibly imagine, kid" character, but at least he and his motives were complex and interesting. The idea that shone through with him is
the using of selective radio transmissions to effectcultures to advance, but still depend on you while you slowly glide across space in cold sleep was just sheer brilliance. However, and idea that started off interesting and debased into Deus-Ex Machina was the localizers, which started off and data collectors and manipulators and became an omnipresent control device for Pham.

Overall, Deepness was more flawed than polished, and while I don't regret reading it, I certainly would not read it again.

Deepness in the Sky

I really don't have a whole lot to say about this book because it is one of those books where it was o.k. to read it once, but once was enough. I was annoyed by how the spiders were almost exactly like humans in every way. It is my opinion that if you are going to use a species with no human characteristics they should not behave like humans. The book also seemed too long for the amount of complexity and details it contained by about 400 pages, maybe more. A book as long as this one should be like "Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton which is even longer (I haven't read the sequel to that yet). I probably won't read anything else by Vernor Vinge, at least not until I run out of books that I want to read, by authors I like better.

Deepness in the Sky- Far out...

First of all, let me just point out that I didn't fully appreciate how space opera-y this book was until I started reading the Neuromancer book. Already I can see that space opera and cyber punk are massively different. In Deepness in the Sky, the story is soaked in drama, while this new book is so lush with details I wouldn't be able to pick drama out of it if the story was a remake of Romeo and Juliet.
Frankly I liked this book a bit; at least in comparison to Cosmonaut Keep anyway. In truth much of the drama that kept occuring with the humans got in the way of my real interest in the book- the Spiders. I mean different worlds, space flight, Focus; it all got pretty boring in comparison to the aliens and all of their different yet similar problems. The reason I like this book so much was because of the completely different way of life the Spiders lead.
With the OnOff star always shaking things up, they had to hibernate for decades at a time, only to wake up to different extremes of weather. I loved the effects on the Spider society and traditions this odd sun caused. Like how the babies had to be born at the start of the new sun and how some were expected to be killed off during the next Dark. And the war- God I loved the war. Especially how in depth the author went as to how the Spiders fought each other.
Drilling toward each other, trying to stay awake longer than the enemy, and eventually walking in the oh-so-scary Dark; gotta love it.
In the class dicussion I heard some arguments or complaints or what-have-you concerning the author's inventiveness and the number of similarities between the Spider technologies and our own. Things such as Spider airplanes, cars, and nuclear power were all seen as unoriginal concepts. Now while it is understandable how some might perceive the author as lazy, one really has to ask, what should the aliens be using? I mean is it really that unbelievable that at some point an alien race would invent something like a car to make travel easier? The Spiders didn't have wings (although apparently the cats did), how else were they going to fly through the air? I know it is hard to accept such similarities, but how can one man really speculate anything so incredibly alien that it entirely unlike what mankind has already invented? Let's see you do it... I rest my case.
Well, all in all, I rather liked this book, although it may just be because it was better than that laughable read Cosmonaut Keep. Regardless, I have managed to pull some things from Deepness in the Sky that I may be able to apply to my own writing in the future. My goal in this class is to expand my reading interests as well as hone some sci-fi writing skills. Though my journy is still long from being over, I feel that after this read, I am that much closer to realizing a truly unique style of writing.

book is over yay

the one thing this book truly lacked over all else is description. it did not explain what any of the human characters looked at all and barely explained what the spiders in general looked like.
also it was to long for what it was. other than that it was a good book albeit confusing.

It's finally over, and what a long strange trip it's been.

You know what the length and pacing of this book reminded me of? Hours of level grinding in an old-school RPG to beat a boss that totally trashed me the first time I tried him, only to discover there's a wicked simple and quick strategy to win without power-levelling. This book was dragged out for almost no reason. Seriously, it's good to plan out a story a bit, maybe storyboard it a little, but this was too much. My advice to Vinge would be to flesh out the characters deeply before even starting the story, and then plug them into a setting and writing the story based on how the characters interact, it's that simple.
The humans were shallowly made, but the spiders, while more deeply developed, were just odd. Star Trek has shown us that we can make aliens easily be slapping weird clothes and make-up on a human and having them not get along with the "real" humans and somehow they got away with that, but the spiders were too close to being like humans to be believable despite what Star Trek did.
Now the story is over, and the ending was reasonably satisfying. Mostly it was because of what happened to the Emergents and how I love to see the bad guys suffer, but also because of the nice hook up between two important Qeng Ho, who shall remain nameless to avoid spoilers. It didn't really surprise me that they ended up that way, after all is it not normal for a teenage girl to endlessly pester the older guy that she has a crush on? Oops, said too much, must go now.

Pacing! Contrivances!

Before I actually start talking about the book, I'm going to take this moment to state that I actually mostly liked this book. I enjoyed it more than Cosmonaut Keep. But it's by no means a favorite, and I don't feel inspired to read the rest of the books in this particular arc. I guess I 70% liked it. Not that it gets a score of 70%, but I 70% liked it. I put this preface here because most of what follows will be complaints.

Pace and contrivances. These are the two biggest issues with this book.

The first; contrivances. I realize that any thing that is not a factual retelling of a real event will be totally contrived, not in a negative connotation, but in a literal connotation whereby I mean to create a desired outcome through a scheme or planning. So, I was talking to my wife about why I didn't like Harry Potter, and ultimately it comes down to the number of contrivances. A staggering amount. In order for Z to happen, A through Y must happen, and to top it off, we discover C through H, M through R, and T through W through horrible exposition. As I said before, I realize that any kind of story is at base level, contrived, but with the best books, there's a particular balance where the contrivances feel natural. And these Deepness in the Sky and Harry Potter are not that.

In fact, reading Deepness at times felt like I was back in art school, and that one kid wouldn't shut up about his undercover super spy hoagie wizard anthropomorphic fairy kitten dog samurai epic. I kind of just go, “oh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. I see. Uh huh. Uh huh.” That is: I don't feel engaged. Everything feels so planned and plotted that it doesn't really feel like there's any room for me to speculate or even just simply be curious. Or, to use another metaphor, it would be like listening someone say something like, “The radio is indeed a marvel and a mystery!” and then listen to them then follow up that statement with an excruciating explanation of how the stereo really works. And anticipating that explanation. I can't wonder because I know it's about to be sapped from me.

And then pacing. I'm not entirely certain what to say on this, other than it wasn't quick. Even the parts I found interesting (the history of Pham Nuwen) got stale and old after 20 pages of listening to Pham argue the practicalities of an empire. I get it: he wants an empire. Next chapter please. And the spiders! I hope they actually live in slow motion, because otherwise there's no real reason for their chapters to just seem like endless chasms across which I must bravely leap.

And let me discuss the spiders really quick. I understand that there is a number of us who actually enjoyed those chapters, even if those numbers may only number in the “couple” or the “few,” but honestly, they were completely unnecessary. All the information you learn in the spider chapters, you completely relearn in all the space chapters. Literally. I think not only was my time wasted by reading those particular chapters, but space was wasted. I would often skip entire spider chapters, and I never once felt like I needed to go back and reread what I skipped because I was still told everything.

Their civilization in general wasn't really spider like either. It felt like his intentions were confused: try to humanize something completely inhuman. Which is probably a worthwhile goal in literature, but when you pretty much just write this equation: spider X human + 1950/human = 1950 spiders, you've not exactly gone through many pains to make the alien civilization seem all that alien. Or human. It was an operation that, to me, failed on both fronts. And the names were stupid too. But that's really moot.

Back to the pacing: it's been my experience that as something moves closer to the end, it's pace quickens. Your interest is piqued, more things are happening, a multiplier effect happens. In this book, I definitely felt the first two, but for some reason, it still felt like it did when I knew barely anything about the characters or the events. It kind of felt like how they keep prolonging Battlestar Galactica by putting a year long commercial break smack dab in the middle of season 4.

Spiders humanized, humans de-humanized

Through reading A Deepness in the Sky, a single thought kept crossing my mind..."the spiders seem to be more human and deeply characterized than 90% of the actual humans in this book". That might just be a product of the author introducing a device which strips humans of their natural personalities...or of the fact that the author deliberately chose to completely remove most emotions from most of the humans. Sure, you get good characters like Pham Nuwen, or the occasion emotional outburst from Ezr...but on the whole, i felt that the human side of the book was very inhuman, and fell into the analytical trappings that bind most science fiction. In my experience this seems to happen often in this type of science fiction...the author gets so hung up in the science, and the overly drawn out plot, that he often forgets that what makes a story great are the characters that drive it.
On the converse, you have Sherkaner Underhill, a brilliant mad scientist far ahead of his time. I felt that he was the best character in the book, simply because he had a human aspect that nobody else had; the desire to explore. everbody else had these paper thin motives...i want to rule everything...i want to get my 45 year old girlfriend back...i want Thomas to love me because apparently i am a 30 year old with a 13 year olds emotions...but not Sherkaner, he had the completly human desire to explore the possibilities that his imagination had thought up. And one of those possibilities was complete social reform on a deep level. It was if he was Einstein, Oppenheimer, Columbus and Joan of Arc all rolled into a spider...who didnt actually know any real science. He even had an evil religious antagonist to bring him down.

all in all i found the book interesting, but the length was not needed...at all. it was well written (unlike this blog), but the story just didnt want to get to the story till about 200 pages from the end. i give it possibly a B+...A-?

Hehe, everyone is making their posts the night of, aren't they? >.<

Anyway, I suppose I share the sentiments of my fellows about the length of the book; a lot of drawn out technological explanations contributed to it, but what else are you expecting with space opera? The convoluted names of everything [deepness isn't just in the sky with stuff named the Unthinking Depths. the Beyond and the Transcend], the scope of the plot, the conflict between different groups, a bit of familial drama, sinister illness, the future of an entire species hanging in the balance; all of these have evolved to be very stereotypical of space opera. I guess the over abundance of tech-talk went the way of Episode I [midichlorians anyone?] and can tend to do a lot to demystify a good experience. 

However I think that the intensity of the plot is enough to balance out the denser parts of the book, once you plow through it. 

Die Emergent Scum!

When I first set out to read this, I thought that this must be better than the last one, please let it be better! Well so far it's been better, but it's still slow and way too long and it doesn't help that I have so many books at home that I'd rather be reading. Then I got to the point when the true purpose of the mindrot disease was revealed, and that pissed me off. So now I read on with the hope that the Emergents will get what's coming to them, those stupid meatbags. Especially Tomas Nau, what with the way he caused the death of Qiwi's mom and then covered it up, then took advantage of her, oh he needs to die slowly for that.

Finale to "Sky"

Well the book was overly slow and many many pages could have been deleted from the whole book.
I am kind of in the middle about how the Spiders were written as being people, the only difference was that they were spiders, everything else about them was talked as if they were people.
The "Finale" where the supposed big battle would take place between the Traders and the Spiders, Vs the Emergents was very sad, But Pham knew that that was when it would happpen. Over all I am glad that I read this book is was pretty well done, excpet for some parts that could have been taken out and whatnot.
The love that was placed in there was very low, which was good, the last book we read had randomness in it, and this was something that wasn't important but had to be put in there because it is human nature to love.

The finality of the darkness.

[Note: I e-mailed Paul and he said to post the blogs from A Deepness In The Sky here, so here it is].

Some spoilers ahead maybe?


This book was perhaps one of the longest which shouldn't have been. I wonder if there is actually a reason for this, if we were meant to feel the angst and helplessness the Qeng Ho felt; although on my end it just transferred to borement.
That being said I think it had a good plot, it was sound albeit the weird things such as the flying kittens (seriously? Seriously...) and Trixia wanting to be semi-focused.
I think that it had a lot of cliché points, such as the end of Nau in the hands of Qiwi; it was finalized (finally!) and I felt better, but possibly this is the point of Space Opera.

I did enjoy the description of the plants Dr. Ali came up with though, and much of that was well-described; as well as the spiders' world, I thought of them as persons and I believe that is how the author wanted them to be.
I did get a sense of Star Trek while reading some of this book, but it was different even though similar.

Now the localizers, they were certainly a piece of work to come up with, don't they die? I mean don't they get destroyed or are they biomechanical somehow? I kept thinking that as Pham Nuwen seemed to be almost godly with them, also, someone please explain to me the anti-gravity, it was just somehow a part of some material or did it just occur naturally in the planet at a certain place? There are things like these that are fuzzy for me, but I suppose this is not hard sci-fi.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book more towards the end when the wait was FINALLY over and everything unfolded, otherwise I think this book should have been shorter, perhaps it was also so the Spiders could develop, even so I liked this book more than Cosmonaut Keep.

holy wack unlyrical lyrics..
okay so first of all im so confused by all the different relationships in the book. why God why? are there so many different, confusing and all over the place relationships?
also, when i first read about elizabeth's description i was so turned on!!!lol. she sounds hot!!!

Like being cut in half

Well, its pretty hard to find a place to start but I gotta say that this book is divisive in a lot of ways. Now that's a statement that doesn't really mean much so I'll expand on it. Obvious divisions in the book include the switching between stories every chapter, changing between third and first person every time, and as many have pointed out before me: the book is divided between a slow beginning and launching into action much later.

At first when I was reading the book the constant switching around and unexplained phenomena just had me confused more than anything. Communists to traders, gravity skiffs to wet tech, hackers to sailors. It was pretty much just a sea of unintelligible text that I couldn't figure out what to do with. As I read on however the settings, characters, technology, and spacial time distortion all kind of filed into place in a way that made them easy to understand; instead of having an supernatural or unearthly feel, everything just felt very familiar.

I ended up really loving the switching between near future and distant future. I don't think I'd have faired well reading just on or the other. They had the feel of a spy novel and a fantasy adventure story. If I had to read one or the other I'd probably have lost interest but when combined it allows Cosmonaut Keep have a fairly dynamic feel to it and it helped me enjoy both styles. One is as technical, witty, and the atmosphere is dramatic and tense. The other is more laid back about fantastic technology and it allows for more inspection of history over current events. The story with Gregor Cairns also had better imagery I thought and I found myself more drawn into the alien setting of the distant future than the paranoid and conspiracy heavy hacker's world. I'd think I would understand the near future earth better than the deep space story but the writing kind of defied my intuition.

In the end I feel a bit ambiguous when I try to express how I feel about the book. It was a tangled, horrid mess but I kinda think: so were the lives of almost every character main character, so it balances itself out. Jadey is an American Agent deep in commie territory with her cover blown; Matt has to flee the planet because he very quickly got into other people's data way over his head; Gregor has to sort out his romantic, professional, and family lives as the collapse into each other; and Elizabeth is flung into an inept adventure of grand scale and even grander consequence and all she can think about is her perpetually clueless crush. The only character who seems to know exactly where his towel is would be the Salasso, the stoned saur at the back of the airship. Telling a story like this in a strait forward and clear way would just be wrong.

Anyway, I guess my final review is that this book is confusing, creative, and as an end result: highly amusing. Good but not epic. At least the pot smoking dinosaurs didn't disappoint at all.

An Author Stoned

Throughout the course of this book, I've noticed a lot of trouble with organization and delivery of information, among other things. At first I just thought the author was just trying to do something different, that it was his intention to let us sort things out ourselves instead of putting it all on the table in plain english. Even that, however, does not excuse the shoddy job of putting this thing together. Then it hit me: all the casual pot-smoking, the alien conspiracies, and the government cover-ups and corruption all led me to one conclusion. And that conclusion is that it's highly probable that Ken Macleod is a total stoner. Not only that, but he could've been baked while writing this thing, which would explain a lot. I'm not against the green herb at all, having had some before, but c'mon man, business before pleasure! There's a reason that ideas that you get while high sound stupid when you pull yourself together, and that reason is that the smoke chokes your brain, making you into a stupid person for awhile. Not the best state of mind to be writing a book in.
I guess I'm expected to write a review of some sort for this book, so here it is. The story was complex and not fluidly organized, something that I as well as others have not taken well to. It was also slow in the beginning but did get better halfway through, that's one thing it's got going for it at least. When it comes to slow beginnings Stephen King is the worst so at least Macleod isn't that bad.
The setting of the high-tech near-future and the low-tech distant future seemed fairly original from my standpoint, a plus for this book.
The characters weren't completely shallow, however they appeared to be only fleshed out to the extent that Macleod could say that he gave them depth and not be lying, kind of half-assed really. I don't care one way or another, I'm just not accustomed to it that's all.
We really could've done without the romance factor here and reading about sex was kind of awkward, but at least he didn't get too descriptive about it most of the time.
My final rating for this story is 3 out of 5 stars, and my advice to anyone reading this is to not decide whether or not to read this book based on the opinions of one man, official critic or not. It did win some kind of award after all, that's got to be worth something.

This is the end

Cosmonaut Keep was... eh. The guy had some really good ideas, but he didn't unveil them until hella late, and by the time he did I kind of feel like maybe I should have known about it earlier. Mostly because earlier was when I was confused about what was going on, but now that he's talking about it, I kind of already figured it out, or just don't care anymore.

The book certainly does pick up in the latter have, and stuff does actually start to happen, but it's never really enough. It's like this one time, I sat around with my friend, and we came up with the coolest sci-fi story ever. We worked out the protagonists, the antagonists, the climax, the resolution, all that. But we never actually published it. That's what I feel like this was: the author telling me about a really cool story, but not actually telling me the story.

And I feel like some (many) things were a little (a lot) contrived. Like when Salasso gets into the disagreement with his dinosaur pals, so they go talk to the kraken. That was an entire 10 page section that could have been cut. It didn't add anything. Sure, we get more veiled references about “gods” and the saurs actually having come from earth, but once again, these are things we already kinda figured out, or don't really care about anymore.

The book didn't have any head slapping, “oh my God!” moments either. Matt would be going on and on about some deep mystery that he's very much obsessed over, and my eyes glaze a little and I just say, “uh... ok. I don't get why that bugs you.”

I guess that's how I ultimately feel. The book wasn't horrible, and not the worst thing I've ever read, but it certainly felt clumsy and poorly written. I was expecting to see the reason why this guy won the grammy, and the tony, and the best day time TV supporting actor award, but I didn't. And I kind of don't really feel like going onto the next books to see if they know why.

Oh, before I forget, there's the issue of all the pot in the book. Why? What purpose did it serve? And it's not that I have an ax to grind against pot, I could care less. It's about as consequential to me as to whether or not you use single or two ply, but this guy was hella obsessed with it, but I don't see what it actually added. And the pilot smoking pot on the station? Really? ExSqueeze me? Baking Powder? The US government does have an ax to grind with smoking pot. Bigass time. They pretty much wouldn't let her fly anymore if she tested positive. Bah. Whatever. This guy gets jolly over an excess of pot references for no good reason, so let him have at it. It fits with the rest of the book being clumsy, etc.

And the love interests. I felt kind of blindsided by it. Especially the bit with Lydia. I'm sure it had to have been somewhere else, but hell if I find it. All of a sudden, Gregor's got two babes, and one of them is totally ok with three ways. And the line about Elizabeth “doing the most surprising thing with her tongue and foreskin” was the grossest line I've ever read in a book ever. I read it 3 times. Twice to make sure I'd read, and again out loud to make sure I wasn't fuckin with myself. Mostly, this is how I feel like the sex scenes were handled in this book: imaging you're on a beach. It's a cool, windy day, but the sun is out, shining brightly. The waves are lapping gently against the shore, and you can see dolphins playing in the distance. Oh look, there are two people doing it! Man, they are really going at it! I think they might want to slow down. They might pull a muscle or slip a disc.

That's how I felt.

Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

To all those that didn't want to give this a chance, you won't regret reading past the halfway point of this book. It gets faster then, with space travel and revolotion and visiting a Saur city and all that, and at that point you stop getting meaningless, incomplete, and confusing information flung at you so you can enjoy the experience better. Now, we move towards the end of the road.

Open Source Subsulture References

I feel like I could go on about this story for a very, very long time. The plot devices, the similarities between the two stories told, the view of Humanity and the other races of the universe. These are all wonderful ways to go. Since it's 1:30 in the morning, however. I will have to make my post short er than I'd like and write on the geek references and open source culture references that few, if any people in the class should be expected to understand.

The story opens with a line from Zork: "You are in a twisty maze of passages, all of them alike" Setting my expectations for the author's geeky knowledge rather high. I was not disappointed. Information wanting to be free is an ideal of open source enthusiasts and data pirates. If information can be transmitted near-instantly and copied with negligable recources, one can expect that it should be free. Anything which has no cost to copy should be free (Or so some would say)

The conflict in the book plays very much like the conflict seen between those who want information to be free and those who would want you to pay (To pay them of course) for access to this information. The book even mentions that Linux (The free information) had won out over Windows (The not-so-free information) in the future. I'm unsure if this is foreshadowing as the crew of the brightstar don't entirely win. They did succeed in giving Humanity the gift of long distance spaceflight and on the Internet, once information is 'freed' it isn't going to be put under control.

I will be reading the rest of this series. I liked the author's particular slant on technology, government and politics. Seems like a guy I'd gladly drink with.

I haven't explored all of my points but my brain doesn't seem to be letting me so good night, all you crazy cats. (I also think Cairns is a significant name for a navigator. eh?)

Decent Story

I found this to be a decent story. I liked the Gregory and Elizabeth side of the story better than the other side of things, it was much easier to understand. There was too many acronyms and when the characters would start in on a computer process it felt way to tech savy for a normal person to understand.
With the second story in and of itself the plot line was easy to follow and it gave a clear definition of what you were seeing in your head. There were, however, too many characters and they were not told where they all came from. Sometimes they would just pop up in the middle of a scene or at the end of a scene without any indication that they were there for any part of what was going on.
I did find myself, in some small fashion, loving Elizabeth for her feelings towards Gregory, but I have always been a sucker for a love story. Gregory in his own fashion was like alot of men I have had the pleasure of knowing, falling in and out of love easily. I also liked how the saurs where in a way protecting some of the knowledge that they have, it seemed almost like as the saying goes, too much knowledge in the wrong hands, kind of thing. I loved the fact that the two of them were Biologists, it was wonderful to have a book get into the scientific side of nature, and the world around them.
All in all I believe I would read the rest of the series just to see if the story gets any better or if it continues along the same lines as it left us.

Slow Beginning

This book's progression is kind of slow, not Stephen King slow thankfully but still pretty sluggish. I rather liked Matt Cairns' side of the story better since his had some more action to it earlier on, and who doesn't love reading about an outlaw rebelling against a corrupt government? That, and Jadey seems to be hot too LOL. Earlier I mentioned that dinosaurs should not smoke pot because we don't want them to be more hungry, but now I see another problem with that as well. Okay sure, it would be a bit much to expect Cheech and Chong level of comedy there but the pot-smoking aspect of this story doesn't bring any laughs to the table at all, and that's so wrong. I hope things pick up soon, introducing a new antagonist to the story would help. We already have the commies but that's not original, they've always been the bad guys. Also, in regard to Gregor falling in love with Lydia, I must add that he appears to be totally whipped and that's funny, LMAO!

The stories converge

Cosmonaut Keep's two story-lines converge over the course of the last two thirds of the book, concluding with the last chapter of the book remaining in Matt Cairns first person perspective instead of switching to the third person perspective that the far future chapters have always been written in up to that point. The path that the convergence takes is interesting because it covers why the crew of the Bright Star showed up at Mingulay and explains much more about the culture of the saurs. I think that the deeper insight into saur and kraken cultures that the book provides as it gets closer to the end is important for understanding how everything fits together but is also partly to maintain the balance between the near and far future aspects. The book definitely has a much faster pace for the last two thirds but at the same time seems to scramble for things to keep it going. If the author (Ken Macleod) wanted to provide fewer details the book could have easily been 100 or so pages shorter. Another aspect that fewer details would have provided is that the mystery and imagination that is persistent for the first eight chapters would have remained. To put it simply, there is less material that encourages enthusiastic discussion in the last two thirds of the book.