The Children of the Sky (Zones of Thought)

My expectations for this novel were impossibly and unfairly high. The Hugo winning A Fire Upon the Deep is my favorite work of fiction. Vernor Vinge is easily my favorite author. That said, I have doubts about The Children of the Sky getting a Hugo for Mr Vinge. Onward to the details. Be forewarned that there are a few medium spoilers and at least one major spoiler ahead. Plus, some speculation regarding the next book in this series. The Children of the Sky is a very enjoyable book that develops, but does not settle, the story of the Tines, Ravna Bergnsdot, Johanna and Jefri Olsndot. A new evil character is introduced, and the familiar ones are there too. I disagree with another review here, I do not find the bad guys to be cartoon like and simple. I think Vernor Vinge understands evil very well. That is a part of what makes his novels so interesting and so thought provoking. From misguided well intentioned evil, to kill them all mega death evil, and every shade in between. The biggest thing I didn't like about The Children of the Sky is the similarity of the Tines planet plot in A Fire Upon the Deep. This is beyond (no pun intended!) merely being in the same setting. For instance, both novels have Johanna in a perilous escape by sea journey on a small craft. Both novels have a perilous but better prepared long overland journey. At times, I felt like I was reading a rewrite of those portions of A Fire Upon the Deep. Second, I prefer Grand Scale Science Fiction. Sure, there is talk of other worlds, Zones, and the Perversion. But The Children of the Sky isn't truly Grand Scale, it takes place on one planet. My last complaint is that the current status of the Blight (aka the Perversion) gets only a few paragraphs in the entire book, and the lack of resolution with regard to the Blight. Despite the above, I'm giving The Children of the Sky five stars. This is still a great book. Vinge still stands above the rest. Vinge is so thought provoking, beyond mere entertainment. One example is the Blight Deniers. They are a pernicious group, some well aware that they deceive, others are innocent tools of evil who believe that they know a secret truth. The Blight Deniers example can be projected onto so many modern real world circumstances. Moon landing deniers, evolution deniers, presidential birth certificate deniers, climate change deniers, AIDS deniers, they all share a common method of operation with the Blight Deniers in The Children of the Sky. I'll end this review on a speculation. Due to the circumstances (a Zone surge in progress) I'm having a hard time believing that the cloud of firefly like insects around Pham's grave is coincidence. When we get the next book in this series, I predict some sort of resurrection of Pham Nuwen through Countermeasure. If my speculation turns out to be correct, it will be interesting to see if Pham returns whole and human, or as the formerly human Transcendent memory of Pham Nuwen.

This story takes place ten years after A Fire Upon The Deep 's closing events. Ravna Bergsndot tends the out-of-commission starship Out of Band II, watches the skies for the slowly-approaching Blight fleet, and watches over the Children released from Oobii's cold sleep containers. The Children have adjusted to Tines World, making friends, building homes, and in some cases having children of their own. And they have formed beliefs of their own. One group, who become known as the Deniers, no longer accept Ravna's account of the Blight's destructiveness. Nor do they support preparations to deal with the Blight's fleet. These issues lead to deep disagreements. The Tines themselves also experience change. Some comes from technological development accelerated by Oobii's databases. Personalities also change as packs add new members. Woodcarver takes on a puppy and develops a sharper, almost paranoid aspect. Flenser, reduced to a four-pack, is as crafty as ever. But evil seems to have left him. Explorers from Woodcarver's domain learn more about the southern Choir, a vast mob of singletons that may not be as mindless as it seems. There are new alliances and new inventions. And the traitor Vendacious is still dipping his snouts in where he is not wanted. I enjoyed reading this book. The Tines are fascinating and the author explored new aspects of their one-from-many nature. Political intrigue among the humans took directions I did not expect. But the book did not live up to my enjoyment of the previous book nor of A Deepness in the Sky . Part of the reason may be the absence of the parallel-plots-that-converge structure both of these books have. I had under-appreciated how much this structure helped with pacing and building suspense. There is some sub-plot switching in this story, but to lesser effect. The absence of a high-tech, off-world story line is part of another problem: The neglect of off-world events almost entirely. This was not all bad, because it did build suspense about the activities--and proximity--of the Blight fleet. But the absence is felt. By late in the story even Ravna has become something of a Denier, thinking more about affairs among the Tines than about the larger context. I do see how this, and a few other events I won't mention, set up nicely for a sequel--and I will elbow my grandmother in the throat to get the very first copy. Maybe this is the natural middle-of-the-story letdown that you see even in The Two Towers and The Empire Strikes Back . Even understood, it disappointed a bit. So there is a downside. But don't let it stop you. Get to the bookstore, grab your Kindle away from the kids, fork over extra for over-night shipping--get this book and read it. You've been waiting for years to hear more about the Tines and their refugee humans. Here it is. And while you read it... watch the skies for more.

I consider Fire Upon the Deep & Deepness of the Sky to be among the greatest sci fi books ever written. So it was disappointing for me to see how inferior this book was. It is simply not in the same league. Positives: Hard Sci Fi: The world is interesting as always, and Vinge expands on the Tines by giving a variation of their species. That was well done. He further expands on the technology, its limitations in the Slow Zone and all the impossible technology the "Children" (survivors of the crash) miss so much. Also interesting. His creation of the alien Tines is thorough and mostly well done, although I felt their civilization bears far too much similarity to our own considering how very different they are from us. Still, I enjoyed them. Plot: Plot was actually both positive and negative. Sometimes, the plot would race forward and you would hang on the edge of your seat. But other times - most times - it was a chore to read; all in all, very haphazard and amateurish. Many parts dragged, or were highly repetitive. It felt like a case of a lazy or indulgent editor. With top editing, Vinge would have been told to re-write much of it and scrap other parts. Many sections were utterly unnecessary - the same thing would be said later, or the conflict presented was repeated later - and this was especially frustrating given that IT DOESN'T HAVE AN ENDING! Negatives: The main negative was what I just said: No ending. I mean exactly what I say, not "no ending for some major points" I mean "no ending." It just ends in the middle of the major conflicts. Really this is just inexcusable, particularly since so much of the book could have been removed with zero difference in plot or conflict. I really, really, really resent books that end without resolution. It is supremely self-indulgent of the author - sorry, guys, I was just too lazy to finish this! - and it is dishonest to present the thing as a discrete book. Rainbows End ALSO lacked an ending - no resolution of ANY of the main plot questions - and we still haven't seen a sequel. So it's especially annoying given that this is the SECOND book Vinge disappoints. Characterizations: His villains are preposterous. They are just Evil in a silly, cartoonish bad guy way. As in, 'Bwa ha ha, I vill take over ze planet!' One of the humans is supposed to be some political genius simply because his parents were -- this was another very silly thing Vinge kept insisting that if your parents are x, you are x. He did this with every Child character. For instance, another child's parents were the equivalent of janitors, with practical hands on skills, so therefore, ipso facto, his son was exactly the same. I don't know where Vinge learned genetics, but he needs to go back to school for this one. Anyway, the character that was supposed to be this political genius plotted on a cartoonish level so that you could see his machinations a mile away. Actually, in some ways he exhibited the same foolish hubris the Straumli folks were supposed to have, but rather than pursue that angle, Vinge just kept asserting - via other characters - that he was a genius and also 'evil.' Most other characters are the same level of shallowness, particularly the humans. (I was reminded of Asimov, whose robots often seemed to have greater depth than his humans. Here, the Tines were more complex than the humans. Back to the preposterous 'genetics,' Vinge makes this big deal that the Children's parents were supposed 'geniuses' so therefore the children are 'geniuses' too. This was cloying and not believable. Yes, if your parents are very intelligent, you stand a higher change of being smart too-but not a guarantee by any means. If you have a large enough sample, you should find a range of intelligence in the "Children" even if we accept the parents were all supposed geniuses. But even that assertion was just annoying. Who CARES if the parents or "Children" are all 'geniuses"? How does this forward the plot in ANY way? According to the previous book, they let loose the Blight due to Hubris. This has very little to do with "genius" and indeed the 'genius' part makes it less interesting as it is not universal (and anyway, their whole society funded their Lab so the hubris was in their civilization.) Ravna was also really annoying to me. After Ravna does a series of stupid, passive things, another character tells her she's not a 'fool' but rather a pure heart. Um, where did this Ravna come from? She certainly wasn't like this in Fire. I felt like Vinge wanted her to act in such a way that would further the plot he wanted to write, so he changed her character. In other words, characters (also Jeff & Amdi) arose from plot necessity rather than the other way around as a pro should write. I'd recommend the book but with the caveats that a) it has no ending b) large parts are very slow and weak c) some characters are really silly. You will need accept that this is not up to Vinge's usually brilliant standards. You can still extract an mildly interesting read, with some very good parts, and a few great parts. I wish Vinge would get a better, more honest and brutal editor, someone who is willing to tell him the truth rather than merely flattering him. He has the potential to be an absolutely brilliant sci fi writer. It's painful to see his gifts so squandered.

Two of the best science fiction books of the last few decades were written by Vernor Vinge. These are the classic titles A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky (see MadProfessah reviews by clicking on the links.) These books were published in 1992 and 2000, respectively and are now generally described as being part of the Zones of Thought series. They both won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in the year of their release. Now, nearly 20 years after the first book in the series, Vinge has published a sequel called The Children of the Sky set in the exact same setting as A Fire Upon The Deep, with several of the characters from the earlier books returning, albeit in a time which is 10 years past the events in the first book. Most fans are usually disappointed when a long-awaited sequel to a beloved book is finally produced. The reasons for this are unsurprising; in the intervening years both the audience and the author have both aged and changed and thus it is very difficult to recapture that spark which inflamed readers the first time. Happily, in the case of The Children of the Sky, Vinge is able to seemlessly drop us right back into the world he created with A Fire Upon the Deep decades before as if only a few moments had passed by. The basics of the story are that a horrible disaster has befallen civilization. In Vinge's Universe there are Zones of space in which different levels of technology are possible. There is the Slow Zone, where faster-than-light speed is not possible due to the limitations on computational complexity and speeds, the Beyond in which FTL travel and communication is possible and the Transcend where the beings are so advanced they are for all intents and purposes Gods. These Zones of Thought are not sharp delineations and there is some variation even among the Zones. For example it's possible (and devastating) for planets to slip from one zone to the other, causing functional technological levels to vary by thousands of years of development in just a few seconds. In A Fire Upon The Deep a long-dormant evil intelligence (known as The Blight) is awakened in the Beyond and begins to cause unimaginable havoc to the civilized species who inhabit the Zone, resulting in the deaths of billions. A space ship carrying a few hundred children in "sleepboxes" (suspended animation) crashes on a planet and that story revolved around how the brother and sister Jefri and Johanna Olsndot survive their first contact with the intelligent species which inhabit the planet, called Tines World. The Olsndot siblings' parents were part of the scientific team that discovered and accidentally released The Blight into the Beyond. The Tines are 4-legged furry animals resembling dogs who communicate telepathically and through subsonic signals and when spatially close in groups of four or more form a group intelligence equivalent to humans. The Tines have a basic medieval form of society when suddenly they are exposed to the existence of modern technology from The Beyond. Additionally, a space ship (called Out of Band) from the Beyond lands on Tines World in order to rescue the children and get information on where the Blight came from in order to protect and save the rest of civilization from its devastating effects. In The Children of the Sky, Tines World is now firmly in the Slow Zone and ten years have passed since the events of the A Fire Upon The Deep and most of the children who were in coldsleep have been awakened and are starting to form a society with the realization they may never get back to The Beyond and ever experience those familiar technologies again. One of the fascinating aspects of A Fire Upon The Deep (and A Deepness in the Sky) is the incredibly detailed and complex society that Vinge is able to produce, in a completely alien context. Here we have humans interacting with dog-like hive minds and the characters are drawn with such fully realized motivations and emotions that you are forced to empathise with them. Another feature of Vinge's writing is the ambiguity of his characters, especially his villains. In A Fire Upon The Deep it is not very easy to distinguish who the "good guys" are from the "bad guys" and it is a central tension of the book, which returns in the sequel Children of the Sky that just because we are getting a first-person perspective on events from a particular character does not necessarily mean that that character is a force for "good." In fact, central to Children of the Sky is who gets to decide what is "good" or the best course of action for a group of people? How are those decisions made? There are (at least) two main factions and they both feel they are doing the correct thing for the Children and Tines World as a whole. Eventually it becomes clear that one faction is willing to commit horrific crimes (of violence, kidnapping and murder) to achieve its ends and so the reader (or at least This Reader) made a choice as to which faction to support. Then the tension is will the good guys win or will the bad guys win? This is quite a suspenseful question which basically kept me up reading until 5am to finish the book, and by the end several questions (but notably not all of them) are answered, which leads most observers and reviewers to think that there will probably be a sequel (or sequels) forthcoming. Hopefully, it won't take another 20 years for Vernor Vinge to write it! Title: The Children of the Sky. Author: Vernor Vinge. Length: 448 pages. Publisher: TOR Books. Published: October 11, 2011. OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0). PLOT: A. IMAGERY: A-. IMPACT: A-. WRITING: A.

ALMOST a 5. I have seen some fairly critical reviews of The Children of the Sky, but it seems that in general they do not criticize the book for what it is but rather because it is not what they wanted it to be. Vinge fans have been waiting for this book eagerly, because the other two books in the series were so good. My impression, though, is that there seem to be (at least) 3 kinds of readers involved, and we were anticipating 3 different books. First, there are the people interested in the aliens & their interactions with the human Children; then there are those who are fascinated by Vinge's universe with its Slow Zones, Deep, the Beyond, and the Blight; and finally those who enjoy action. I am of the first persuasion, and, fortunately for me, this aspect is where the book shines. Even more than A Fire Upon the Deep, Children of the Sky makes the reader aware of the implications of being a Tine, with their special kind of pack mind. What would it be like if I were composed of a half dozen different sentient beings and could acquire a new member if I lost one or wanted to augment my personality in some way? What would courtship involve? How affected would I be if one of me died? The book also explores the relationship between the Tines and the Children, both at the societal level and the personal level, especially the special connection of Best Friends between an individual human and a particular Tine pack. It also continues the story of a group of humans trying to establish a permanent society on a new planet despite having lost access to much of their normal technology & all of their contact with the rest of their race. A reader who is looking for this kind of SF will be enthralled immediately and find a great beginning and a satisfying conclusion. Vinge's characters, both human and Tine, are very appealing. I enjoy getting to know them, rejoice at their good fortunes, and gasp when something bad occurs to them. I am FURIOUS when he kills one of them off! Readers who like a lot of action will think the book starts slow but has a great middle, as competing factions of Tines and competing factions of humans all fight each other & no one is quite sure who is on which side. Readers who want to know more about the Blight are just going to have to wait for the next book, which obviously is in the cards and which I certainly hope will follow The Children of the Sky much more quickly than The Children of the Sky followed A Deepness in the Sky! So caveat lector! This is an excellent SF read, and I believe most SF readers will enjoy it, IF you do not approach it with the wrong preconceived notion. It's a sure Hugo/Nebula contender.

The first 30% of this book has absolutely nothing that catches you and drives you to want to finish the book. Vinge writes his book the way an engineer develops something: create a foundation and then build a plot on top of it. I feel like the initial plot problem that happens at 30% should have happened at page 1 and then a flash back for 30% of the book would have been a better way to write this book, for nothing else that there is actually a reason to read through that first part of the book! Imagine reading to page 60 and it's just a general description about how everything is great. Great. But that's not exciting. Once we get passed that, another disappointment to get over is the lack of any kind of interesting technology. This is not a space opera. Finally: it doesn't end. I suppose we'll have to wait another 30 years for the next installment. But I rated it 5 stars. Because if you are ok with the above, it is a very interesting book, with great ideas and a wonderful read. I loved every page, after the first 30%.

This book was a moderate disappointment to me but worth reading since i'm a big fan of Vinge's Zones of Thought Universe and it reprises some wonderful and memorable characters. This is clearly a setup for a multi-book series so I am excited and hopeful the follow-on books will improve over this. There are many exciting possibilities based on how this book ends. However, as others have noted, Vinge seems to have had a lot of problems with this book (perhaps rushed?) in terms of character development and plotting. Some of the issues have to do with expectations from the previous novel and the setting. This is not a mad romp across the universe with incredible things happening on every page like in "Fire". "Children" is set entirely on one primitive world involving lots of troubles with (surpise!) human children/young adults (and some tines) and takes some chapters to even get rolling. The level of tension doesn't really ramp up until very late in the book and then the climax is dilute and frustrating. Various characters do things that just aren't consistent with the first book and he didn't handle the antagonists properly. In Summary, for those who loved the characters of Fire Upon the Deep, read this but just be aware that it is no Fire Upon the Deep. Enjoy it for what it is and be hopeful that the follow-on books kick it up a notch. I trust (a bit shakily) that when the blight remnants show up, things will get really exciting and we'll have more of the feel of the masterful original!

This novel is a sequel to Vinge's Hugo Award Winning 1993 novel: "A Fire Upon the Deep" and you can't even really understand the "Children of the Sky" unless you've read that previous book. There's not even a summary and the action picks up pretty much where the old book left off 20 years ago, with the human survivors marooned on the "Tines World" -- inhabited by a race of intelligent dog-like creatures with group minds. It's not terrible. Somewhat interesting in it's own right, but to understand how completely disappointing this novel is, you have to understand how ground breaking "A Fire Upon the Deep" was. All of science from Carl Sagan to modern science fiction that posits a galaxy containing thousands or millions of intelligent races must answer the question: "then given the billions of years in which intelligent races could have evolved in the galaxy, why aren't they here? Why is there no evidence of intelligent aliens ever visiting earth?" The answers to these questions underlie much of the current scientific search for extra-terrestrial life and most modern science fiction. Vinge's unique idea is that the galaxy is divided into "zones of thought" from the slow-zone where earth is and super-human machine intelligence and faster than light travel are impossible, to the "Transcend" where civilized races evolve godlike intelligence and powers. The question in "Fire Upon the Deep" is "what happens when one godlike intelligence decides to take over the entire galaxy?" Humans browsing in a lost library archive in the Transcend accidentally re-awaken an ancient evil super-intelligence that ruled the galaxy billions or years before and which then proceeds to start to take over once again. The other half of the story is a rather interesting but trivial story of primitive but intelligent "good-doggie" versus "bad-doggie" aliens who befriend or menace the human survivors who have crash landed on their world. After 20 years one might have thought that Vinge would have something interesting to say about his grand themes of galactic conflict and the question "can human level intelligence or independence survive in a galaxy with godlike races?" But, he's apparently only interested in the struggles between certain idiot spoiled survivor children and the Tines. His main character from Fire Upon the Deep, Ravna seems to have had a lobotomy and spends 1/2 the book making one incomprehensibly stupid decision after another. The only interesting additional characters are the Tines "Tycoon" who is founding an industrial empire. Sadly we don't spend that much time with him. We learn NOTHING whatever about the fate of the galaxy after the end of the last novel. Is the Blight (the super-intelligent evil power) really dead? What happens to the blight fleet? If the counter-measure enemy of the blight really dead or only dormant? What's going to happen? I expected that at least we'd get to see the Tines enact some form of space-faring civilization, but the novel mostly deals with the "Perils of Ravna" who is kidnapped and menaced by evil and spends much of the book attempting to fight her way back to civilization. What? She didn't think to carry a hand-gun when facing danger? She controls the ship computer but never thinks to use her power to block ship's access to the evil children for about 400 pages? If Vinge wanted to write an interesting novel about Tines World, he could at least have had them develop space travel. It would have been fun to see the Tines making their way in the galaxy and interacting with the "slow-zone" aliens there as in Vinge's other previous novel "A Deepness In The Sky". But, no. . . . Unless Vinge decides to write a concluding novel to this saga the story will forever be wrapped in enigma, ending not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Con il passare dei libri l autore esagera in modo crescente in inutili descrizioni del nulla mentre quello che conta rimane sul retroscena e non si muove.

I won't give away any details of the story at all. I WILL say this though... the first time I read this book I thought 'Oh no! What's V.V. done??' The story didn't go at all in any direction that I could have anticipated, and I was so busy waiting for what I thought SHOULD happen that I almost completely missed what DOES happen. There were a couple of sections which caught my attention however, and I immediately went back and re-read the book. It's great! Once you realise that the entire tale will be set on Tines world, and that 10 years have passed and the Children are not all kids anymore, the story moves along at a fair clip, and the characters and situations are fabulous. Read it at least twice. I guarantee, your eyes will be opened :) 10/10, Mr. Vinge! EDIT: I'm now in the process of listening to the audiobook edition. I've never listened to an audiobook before, but I'm finding this story even more enjoyable through this medium. Amazed! 2nd EDIT: I can't stop listening to this audiobook. Some really important plot points are created simply by specific Tines characters using specific voices at specific times... something that might be slightly lost in translation when reading the written dialogue as opposed to its importance being highlighted when listening to the narrator's interpretation. I'm amazed to say that the audiobook presentation is far superior to the written version. The narrator (Oliver Wyman) does a wonderful job with a great-fun story. ***** 5 STARS ALL ROUND! I want MORE! :)

L'histoire avance lentement, s'enlise dans des petites disputes, finit dans ce qui pourrait être le début. Pas de space-opéra ici ni batisseur d'empires, mais pseudo roman d'aventure un peu politique.

Wer die Tines in Vernor Vinges "A Fire Upon the Deep" mochte, wird dieses Buch lieben. So viel Detailreichtum. Ich liebe es einfach. Zwar fällt hier umso stärker ins Gewicht, dass in Vernor Vinges Zukunftsutopie Übergewicht nicht existiert. Hinzu kommt, dass wieder alle Bösewichte übergewichtig sind. Dadurch bedient sich "The Children of the Sky" noch expliziter an fat tropes als beim Vorgänger bereits der Fall war. Das finde ich insbesondere deshalb sehr bedauernswert, da es dem Autor gelungen ist, weibliche Charaktere als absolut gleichberechtigte Mitglieder der Gesellschaft (sowohl unter Tines als auch in den hochzivilisierten Tech-Zivilisationen) zu beschreiben.

Not a typical vinge novel, there is less emphasis on the large issues that are explored in his other books. However if you were interested in knowing what happened to the Tines and the Children, then this book satisfies.