
A Fire Upon the Deep
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Narrated by:
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Peter Larkin
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By:
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Vernor Vinge
About this listen
A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought", but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.
Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.
A Fire upon the Deep, which began the Zones of Thought series, is the winner of the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
©1992 Vernor Vinge (P)2010 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
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Story
Twenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down. The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene - it permeated into the collective consciousness, culture, science, and technology.Today, there is only one science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing the way into the information age and Internet society.
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Story? Classic. Narrator? Ugh.
- By Sage on 11-11-14
By: William Gibson
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Incandescence
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Hugo Award-winning author Egan returns to the field with Incandescence, a novel of hard SF. The Amalgam spans nearly the entire galaxy, and is composed of innumerable beings from a wild variety of races, some human or near it, some entirely other. The one place that they cannot go is the bulge, the bright, hot center of the galaxy. There dwell the Aloof, who for millions of years have deflected any and all attempts to communicate with or visit them.
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Incandescence – Science / fiction
- By Don Gilbert on 02-06-14
By: Greg Egan
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The City and the Stars
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Geoffrey T. Williams
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Diaspar is Earth's last city - surrounded by deserts, on a world where the oceans have long since dried up. It is a domed, isolated, technological marvel, run by the Central Computer. Diaspar has conquered death. People are called forth; they live for a thousand years and then are recalled, to be born thousands of years later, over and over again. No child has been born for at least 10 million years. Until Alvin....
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A Classic
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 12-10-11
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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Roadside Picnic
- By: Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Olena Bormashenko - translator
- Narrated by: Robert Forster
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty", something goes wrong.
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Gritty, resonant sci-fi classic
- By Ryan on 02-14-13
By: Arkady Strugatsky, and others
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Sea of Rust
- A Novel
- By: C. Robert Cargill
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It's been 30 years since the apocalypse and 15 years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI - One World Intelligence, the shared consciousness of millions of robots uploaded into one huge mainframe brain.
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This Book has Magic
- By Kurt Schwoppe on 06-15-18
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The Quantum Thief
- By: Hannu Rajaniemi
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he’s confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him.
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Starts Confusing, Gets Exciting, Ends Awesome
- By Matthew on 10-21-11
By: Hannu Rajaniemi
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Children of Time
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Mel Hudson
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
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A very pleasant surprise
- By Simon on 06-17-17
What listeners say about A Fire Upon the Deep
Highly rated for:
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Overall
- Tamara
- 09-06-10
Loved the universe and the aliens
Highly recommended. Overall, I liked "A Deepness in the Sky" better, but this book was great too. The first part of "Fire" was excellent, exploring a fascinating universe and a unique alien race. I *really* liked the way the race was introduced --- realization of its differences only slowly coming into focus. And the idea of the universe having slow and fast zones was really great. Unfortunately, once the universe was introduced, the second half was much weaker --- just a slow march to a predictable conclusion. (Ironically, "Deepness" was the opposite. It was so slow in the beginning, but ended on a high note.) Despite this minor weakness, Vernor Vinge is definitely on my list of favorite authors. I read this book before "Deepness" and recommend that order (even though this occurs later in time).
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8 people found this helpful
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- Eric
- 09-04-14
Wierd but not in a good way...
Is there anything you would change about this book?
The story is very unique. So if you are looking for something different then this is it. The alien creatures are very very alien, but not like your normal genre humanoid-looking aliens but talking trees and dogs. This seemed to me more like a adulterated children's book then a fresh sci-fi tale.
SPOILER ALERT: I hate when a book ends with a super powerful unexplained phenomenon.
Has A Fire Upon the Deep turned you off from other books in this genre?
Nope. Still love my scifi and fantasy.
What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
The descriptions were detailed in some areas but others it was hard to follow what the setting looked like. The creatures were so odd it was very hard to hold an image in your mind of what was going on. I found myself daydreaming through sections while driving and when I rewound, found that I hadn't missed anything.
Any additional comments?
I have to say I was entertained but I would not continue with this series.
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4 people found this helpful
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- stufff
- 05-03-18
One of the best science fiction works I've read
I'd put this book up there with Dune. Lots of unique hard SciFi ideas, plot that keeps me interested in every thread, characters I get attached to, tongue in cheek parody of 90s era Usenet. It's just so fucking good.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 12-02-12
Hollywood writers could never come up with this
Would you consider the audio edition of A Fire Upon the Deep to be better than the print version?
Don't know
What did you like best about this story?
Amazing creativity, introduction to cool scientific ideas and compelled me to review Einstein, really fleshed out world that makes BSG or Hollywood Sci fi seem puerile by comparison.
What does Peter Larkin bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Great vocal range and giving consistent voices to the different characters.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes but for lack of time....
Any additional comments?
My new favorite Sci Fi story.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sean
- 05-18-18
What imagination!
I'm a pretty big fan of sci-fi authors and I finally picked up this much recommended book. Overall, the prose and actual mechanics of the story are pretty unremarkable. However, the Tines are probably one of the most interesting sci-fi conceptions I have ever read. They make this book not quite spectacular, but invariably interesting. I did prefer "A Deepness in the Sky" over this book but neither are disappointing.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joe
- 08-17-19
Absolutely Amazing!
A wild cosmic adventure! It takes a while to warm up but once you're in you can't put it down! ( or whatever the audible equivalent ) Sci-fi at it's best!
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- KD
- 08-18-14
Favorite Sci-Fi book of all time
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Fantastic book filled with many new sci-fi ideas that add flavor and discovery to every page. Vinge's obvious interest and personal depth in science and math clearly come out in the book - and yet it is his character's complex and often endearing personas that make the book so engaging. The story must have been something crafted in Vinge's mind long before he ever wrote it - the way he pulled all the pieces together to a final climactic ending that was overwhelming, elating, and yet bittersweet.
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- Joao Santos
- 09-25-22
excellent sci fi
great story. awesome narration imo, since i saw some ppl didnt like it. subjective i suppose. but particularly for this novel its in the spirit. sounds like peregrin narreted;).
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-06-17
All sci-fi, No boredom
I adored Larkin’s fantastical voices. He was not afraid to step out of the realm of normal with his performance, and I loved it! The writing didn’t have much literary nuance to it, but the plot is interesting. Vinge’s magical sci-fi world embodies all of the possibility I’ve been waiting to see in this genre. Overall an entertaining listen.
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- Alex
- 12-30-15
Good Narrating, better story!
Narrator might have had a cold at some point, but his voice matched the story well enough for my taste, and his voices good enough to keep me interested. Blight concept may seem confusing at first, but great story.
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