A fire on the deep

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A fire on the depth (original title: A Fire Upon the Deep , 1992) is the first novel in the series of zones of thinking of Vernor Vinge . The novel won the Hugo Award in 1993 . The second novel is A Depth in the Sky , set long before the events of A Fire on the Deep .

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prolog

In the Milky Way there are different zones in which different technologies are possible: In the core of the galaxy, no complex devices are possible (the thoughtless depths ). The earth is in the Slow Zone . Farther to the edge of the galaxy is the hereafter , where travel faster than light is possible. Even further outside, the transcendent begins , in which powers rule: civilizations, beings or computer programs that are transcended .

part One

A group of people from the Straumli area entered the lower transcendum and discovered an archive that is billions of years old and is no longer connected to the network. There people unleash a power that spreads virus-like in the galactic network and assimilates technology and forms of life. The people flee and with them a kind of antidote comes out of the sphere of influence of the plague (in the English original The Blight ), as the threat is called. The ship of the people, a couple of parents with their two children Jefri and Johanna, flies from the transcend to the bottom of the afterlife in the hope that the plague will not reach them there. After a crash landing on an Earth-like planet, the parents are killed by native pack creatures. The children are separated without knowing of the survival of the other and held by two factions of the pack creatures. Four to six of the dog-like creatures form a pack with human-like intelligence. The individual pack members communicate via sounds and thus coordinate sensory impressions and actions. Together they make up a personality. The civilization of the pack beings is in a medieval cultural stage with feudal social structures and castles.

On the planet of the pack beings, the Flenser faction tries to establish contact with the other people in the galaxy with the help of the boy Jefri, the puppy pack Amdi and the crashed spaceship. The Flenserists hope that it will provide unimagined technologies to defeat the other faction of the "wood carvers". Jefri is exploited and deceived by Prince Stahl.

Johanna is with the wood carvers. At first she is not cooperative like Jefri, but the pack beings learn the language of the people from Johannas Datio (a mobile computer) and acquire knowledge. Finally Johanna begins to trust the wood carver and the pack of pilgrims.

At Relais , a relay station of the galaxy-wide network in the Middle Beyond , many peoples suddenly become interested in people because they triggered the plague catastrophe. Ravna Bergsndot, the only person on Relais, meets Pham Nuwen, who, as it turns out, is a genetic reconstruction of a historical spaceman. Pham was created by a power that cares about people and sees itself threatened by the plague. Nuwen serves this power as a medium and organizes an expedition to the bottom of the afterlife , because it turns out that there is something that the plague is urgently looking for (be it to destroy it or to use it). Members of the expedition will also be two skrode riders, Bluestalk and Green Clam, actually sessile plant-like creatures that are mobile with the help of a device and only have a long-term memory. Aeons ago, according to the legend of the riders, a well-meaning power created these little carts, which are also equipped with computer components for a short-term memory and enable the riders to think consciously.

Ravna gets in contact with Jefri and learns of his position. The Skroderider's ship, Aus der series II , is being equipped for an expedition. However, the spread of the plague leads to an attack on relays, which is completely destroyed in the process. Ravna, Pham and the Skroderiders can just escape with the Aus der Reihe II . The power that communicated through Pham is murdered by the plague. Shortly before, however, she can transfer parts of herself to Pham.

part two

Two races against time begin: The row II must reach the planet with Jefri, the crashed ship and the suspected antidote. A military conflict flares up on the planet between the Flenserists and the wood carvers.

On the month-long journey, Ravna helps the Flenserists to get gunpowder, cannons and radio transmission through radio contact with Jefri. The wood carvers learn something similar from Johannas Datio.

The series II is discovered at a stop and pursued by an alliance that has set itself the goal of destroying all people, as punishment for unleashing the plague. The plague continues to spread, enslaving colonies and civilizations. Only messages that are transmitted over the network can ruin an entire civilization in the far beyond. Pham discovers that the Skroderiders were originally created as a sleeper breed by the plague. With simple codes, Skroderiders can be "turned around" and made helpers of the plague. This is done with green mussels on the "Harmonious Peace" station. A conflict arises between Pham, Ravna and Blueshell, as Pham wants to kill Blueshell and Green Clam, while Ravna hopes that Blueshell has not been perverted.

Eventually, Series II is being pursued by three fleets: the Alliance Against the Humans, the Plague Fleet, and Sjandra Kei's Security Society. The security society wants revenge on the alliance for the destruction of the Sjandra Kei human colony. During the hunt there is a shift in the zones of thinking: the fleets are suddenly in the slow zone, in which the ultra-wave drive does not work and travel faster than the speed of light is no longer possible. Such disasters occur once in hundreds of thousands of years. After days, the conditions change again and the fleets are back in the lower beyond.

Ravna succeeds in persuading the security society to decimate the plague fleet, namely - at the direction of Pham or the personality parts of the power - such ships with ramjet propulsion, which can also move reasonably slowly. The Alliance fleet is fleeing in a panic, stuck in slow forever, in case the zones should shift again. People now only have 48 hours ahead of the plague fleet.

Part three

The series II finally reaches the planet and intervenes on the advice of Prince Stahl in the conflict: the woodcarver's troops are attacked with the high technology of the people. Pham discovers the girl Johanna. It quickly becomes clear that Jefri was deceived and who the real villain is. Prince Stahl wants to have Jefri killed and let stones fall on the ship with the antidote to destroy it. The tide turns, however, and Bluestalk's life is sacrificed to save Jefri. Prince Stahl is partially killed.

Pham and the parts of power come into contact with the antidote. He gains knowledge of the nature of the zones and, with the help of the antidote, creates an incredible tidal wave that extends the slow over a segment of the galaxy and exposes the area of ​​influence of the plague to the slow. After this show of strength, Pham dies. The plague fleet is stuck in the slow, all ships with ramjet propulsion are destroyed. Ravna, green mussel, Johanna and Jefri are also stranded on the planet of pack beings.

In a message from the network, a civilization tries to contact the area affected by the tidal wave. It becomes clear that the slow has extended from the hereafter even into the transcendent and destroyed the plague.

Critical consideration

The novel is particularly interesting due to four aspects and clearly sets it apart from other works of the space opera genre : the idea of ​​different laws of nature in different regions of the universe, the vision of (out of control) nanotechnological AI, the beginnings of the Internet, and the concept individually untalented, but collectively more intelligent pack beings.

Laws of nature

Vernor Vinge designs a physics whose high-tech application, typical of science fiction, does not seem to contradict the classical (not even relativistic) physics known to us, even on closer inspection: he postulates that the laws of nature are not the same everywhere, and enables us to have effects that seem impossible due to completely different, natural framework conditions. Among other things, gravitation and thus the curvature of space (?) Seem to be decisive, although Vinge does not explain this in more detail. A look at the galactic map attached to the novel, which shows an onion-skin-shaped structure, allows us to draw this conclusion. There are:

  • the thoughtless depth around the galactic core: only primitive life is possible here, the electromagnetic constants in this region do not even allow the organization of higher brain structures, let alone complicated technology. The spaceman who happens to end up here suffers “dumbing down”, possibly even death.
  • the slow zone , in which our solar system is also located: here the physics works as we are used to, there is technology on an electromagnetic basis, and the speed of light forms an impenetrable barrier for signals and matter due to relativity.
  • the beyond , which includes the outer spiral arms: here additional (quantum?) physical effects are added, the ultradrive allows space travel faster than light , whereby the jumping speed can be greater, the further one moves to the outer edge of the beyond . Computer systems develop unimagined abilities, complex AIs can arise. The network of highly developed galactic civilizations naturally has its focus here.
  • the transcendence , in which physical processes can take place with unimagined speed and the acceleration of technological development is once again boosted by powers of ten (which is why it is so interesting for the civilizations of the hereafter ). This is where really high-tech cultures can develop, which over time, however, more or less involuntarily - this is an unpleasant side effect of this region - transcend into god-like collective intelligences, the powers , which in turn either end after a relatively short period of time (20 to 50 years) die for unknown reasons or disappear into an even more incomprehensible plane of existence. The plague also has its origin here.

By the way, the zones are not regular or static, but change their boundaries fluctuating - which is important during the showdown of the story.

The plague / blight (mildew) / perversion

The entity that takes on the role of faceless evil in the novel has similarities with the "Borg" of the Star Trek universe: As a combination of nanotechnical particles, paired with high, emotionless intelligence, it is stored in an archive of old "recipes" after an eons of sleep. re-engineered out of ignorance and almost instantly infected the research team. It can also spread to the afterlife solely through data traffic (intelligent AI protocols) - Vinge anticipates the threat to the IT world from computer viruses, Trojans and other malware, which was certainly not that great at the time the novel was written, although its virus can also attack and compromise organic intelligences. The protagonists speculate (which the author does not confirm from the neutral point of view) that the plague could be an out of control, ancient weapon from an earlier galactic war.

Internet, email and Usenet

Much of the storyline takes place in the news threads of galactic civilizations. What seems natural to us today was only known and used in the university environment when the novel was written. However, Vinge does not extrapolate the technology he is familiar with into a technically advanced future, but leaves all boundary conditions as they were at the time the novel was written (bandwidth, restriction on text transmission, lack of image transmissions, the structuring of the newsgroups). He very lovingly reproduces the typical weaknesses of the discussion forums: participants who do not even know exactly what the ongoing discussions are about, the typical know-it-alls or even the paranoid. For the normal reader of the time, this was new and revolutionary. From today's perspective, the network traffic described by Vinge appears as lovingly dusty as Jules Verne's visions - here, in fact, reality has not only overtaken science fiction, it has even overtaken it.

Pack creatures

The packs of Tine's World stand in contrast to individuals or god-like supra-beings that otherwise often populate science fiction - and yes, here too - are dog or ferret-like "animals" that only develop intelligence when they are physically close. The networked brains do not communicate chemically or electrophysically like the human brain regions, but with a “language of thought” located in the ultrasound range - a kind of acoustic telepathy, so to speak. Vinge creates an extremely interesting society from this: packs have to stay close together in order to function as an entity, but on the other hand must not move too close to other packs, because otherwise the thoughts get mixed up and the individuality of the pack is lost (Vinge describes large packs with 50 or more individuals whose minds are reduced to the level of dogs due to the oversized number (the optimum is 5 to 7). Packs are also quasi immortal: If an individual dies, a new one (often cub from a female in the pack) can take his place. Changing the pack is also possible, although not popular, as it is apparently very unpleasant. By the way, there is sex only between packs, not within (which incidentally leads to the fact that the Tines temporarily lose their minds during the mating phase due to the unfamiliar proximity to strangers to the pack). The figure of Flenser (predecessor of the dictator Lord Steel ) is practicing a pre-technological version of eugenics: he tries to create better tines through targeted inbreeding and arbitrary combination of tines.

expenditure

The 1995 edition contains a map of the galaxy with the zones of thinking drawn by Mirjam Wehner.

literature