Vassar, IIRC, Vinge did indeed comment somewhere that "A Fire Upon the Deep" was intended as deliberate chutzpah - the problem of keeping the Transcendents out of the Beyonders' hair was unsolvable, so he simply imposed it as a complete magical plot device and went on from there.

And, everyone: I was trying to say something about the real universe, not about literature. Things are different here.