A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge is brilliant and his A Fire Upon The Deep has got everything that really good science fiction should have.

In his Zones of Thought universe, Vinge has divided the Milky Way galaxy into zones in which technology, thought, and intelligence increases the further you move from the galactic core. These zones–the "Unthinking Depths," the "Slow," the "Beyond," and the "Transcend"–allow for fascinating dynamics that Vinge uses with great aplomb. In the Unthinking Depths, biological intelligence is impossible, so space ships that accidentally end up there are stranded as their crews become too stupid to even manage the ship. Humanity is said to have originated in the Slow, though only one branch of humanity–descended from Norwegians–appears to have escaped the Slow limits against faster-than-light (FTL) travel and communication and inability to create artificial intelligence. Ending up in the Slow–which has boundaries that are constantly moving–is a major hazard to space travel in the Beyond.

The Beyond allows FTL travel and communication, as well as artificial intelligence. Species there are connected by a network that is, in sophistication at least, not quite up to par with the modern internet, but not dramatically indistinguishable from the blackboards and net groups of the early days of the Internet. Call the Net or, more derisively, the "Net of a Million Lies," it has a lot in common with our modern World Wide Web in that just as much of the content is driven by paranoia, guesses, speculations as by news and information. Also like the real "net" the Net is the main source for information and news.

And this was published in 1992.

Meanwhile, there's the Transcend, an area so far out from the core that the entities there are beyond the understanding of the beings in the Beyond, almost god-like. They interact with species in the Beyond, but only peripherally.

Yet, it is from the Transcend that the villain appears, gobbling up and destroying whole civilizations throughout the Beyond in days and weeks.

Vernor would be clever with a space opera in this kind of setting, but he doesn't settle there. While battles and plots are unfolding in the top of the Beyond, a parallel story is happening down in the Slowness. A ship of human lands on an unexplored (to them) world, find a species that is capable of thought–and personality–only when it works in packs of three or four or more. Medieval technologically and culturally, they find themselves in the midst of a war. Watch as two children and a dataset reverse engineer technology that we find so common that we take it for granted: radio, black powder, and more.

A Fire Upon The Deep is incredibly interesting, and Vernor, who thinks of everything (as Jo Walton notes), weaves a lot of really complex elements out of what is, really, just a hunt for a MacGuffin. It's very cool.