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Perplexed comments on Specific Fiction Discusion (April 2011) - Less Wrong
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Comments (158)
Go ahead and put it down. It is a 'high concept' novel. The characters are absurd and unsympathetic, the plot is even more absurd and is resolved by a Deus ex galactica. As the Penguin recommends, read A Deepness in the Sky for a richer plot, better characters, and some really remarkable world-building. But then don't bother to come back to Fire. Unless you are a Doc Savage fan. IMHO.
I have the exact opposite view. I liked A Fire Upon the Deep and felt that Deepness had a woefully anthropomorphic and unimaginative alien world, cartoonish cast and a plot that drags on.
Aside from these two I've read Marooned in Realtime and True Names, and both were quite good. Overall I'd label Vinge a decent, albeit clearly second rate writer.
I suppose you are right that the alien world is unrealistically human-like - at least psychologically. The world-building that I particularly admired was the variety of human cultures that were briefly presented - the extra verisimilitude arising from the level of extraneous detail offered. (Did I just hear someone whisper: "Conjunction Fallacy"?)
One of the points in Deepness is that we almost exclusively experience the aliens as translated by the human "translators": due to their extreme skills, they are able to make the non-human easy for the humans to relate to.
In a brief glimpse near the end of the story, Vinge gives us a hint that perhaps the aliens aren't as human-like as the "translators" has made them seem.