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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3971 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 19, 2023

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Wow, I just finished that today! It was a much better book when it was named A Deepness in the Sky.

Mildly interesting that both it and We Are Legion (We Are Bob), another book about humans shuttling about in spaceships and describing aliens in a dry, uninteresting manner were published the same year. Something in the air I guess.

The "cooperating is good, war is always bad" theme was slathered on, but not quite as heavily as Perihelion Summer, Greg Egan's global warming book, which I also read recently, and had prose as leaden and mechanical as a row of bricks. I could easily imagine Greg pounding out the entire novel in a month to pay for his mortgage.

I agree with @basalisk_respecter that Vinge's Zones of Thought books are better, but I did really like Children of Time.

If you want to see uplift done better, though, try David Brin.

Deepness is dramatically better in every respect. Read A Fire Upon the Deep first, though. (Which takes place later in-canon but several minor plot points only make sense if you have read that book)

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