A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge (1991)

The idea of ultra-powerful superintelligent beings is as old as humankind, and a staple of fiction from The Bible to The Matrix. In most stories the superintelligence is something singular, perhaps accidentally created, or unique, or slightly-less-than godlike in the mold of Iain M. Banks’ artificial Minds. We can understand the logic of Jehovah or Zeus by understanding their cultural contexts, or Minds because Banks gives us access to their amusing conversations with each other, or Agent Smith’s because we know of his purpose and contempt for humanity.

In A Fire Upon the Deep, transcendence is a natural stage in the life cycle of civilisation. The galaxy being split into three zones radially outwards by some law of physics or perhaps by ancient and powerful transcendent technology. The first section, the largest and closest to the core is the Unthinking Depths, where computation is so slow as to make interstellar travel virtually impossible. Then the Slow Zone, where things speed up a little, and civilisations like our own become possible. The Beyond is next, itself split into further sections, where highly advanced civilisations travel with ease between stars, build impossible megastructures, trade, and maintain the Relays, an incredibly ancient communications network and library analogous to the internet. Anything past the Beyond is the Transcend, where the ineffable Powers frolic, some of which used to be civilisations so advanced they left behind their material bodies (biological and cybernetic) to become gods. Most eventually disappear entirely, some stay for a while to manipulate galactic events for fun and profit. But the transfer of civilisations along this ladder is not necessarily straightforward: depending on the movement of the Zones, a high-tech civilisation may fall back into primitivism.

It is in such a galaxy that our descendents (for whom Earth is a million-year-old fairy-tale) live. An archaeological team uncover a Perversion, a transcendent Power intent on assimilating all sufficiently advanced civilisations and reshaping the galaxy for unknown and perhaps unknowable reasons. The only survivors, a teenage girl and her young brother crash land on the closest habitable planet, dominated by aliens with an unusual physiology, and a culture roughly medieval, with all the brutality and ignorance that may suggest. However, this planet is only just straddles the border between Slow Zone and Beyond, making advanced computation extremely difficult. As news of the Perversion spreads, a team is put together (including an expert on “Applied Theology”) to track down the survivors, and find out if the Perversion can be stopped.

Even with the deeper themes of theology, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of science, at heart A Fire Upon the Deep is a fast-paced adventure story, accessible to everyone, young and old alike. In the tradition of the best space opera, there’s love, tragedy, betrayal (actually, quite a lot of it), terror and joy. But at the same time the reader is always made aware of that main theme – perhaps one of scifi’s raisons d’etres – human curiosity (or any sentient being’s), its horrors and triumphs, and the tension between creator and creature.

“No one really knew how long Transcendent beings lived, but it was a rare Power that stayed communicative for more than five or ten years. They lost interest, or grew into something different – or really did die… Ravna guessed that the true explanation was the simplest one: Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.”