I just finished Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep from 1992, an excellent hard sci-fi novel. It actually won the Hugo award in 1993.
It's a great read, with some very original ideas. Among them are the "zones of thought." The known universe, i.e., the galaxy, is divided into four zones, with different space-time properties. For example, in The Beyond, faster-than-light travel is possible, while at the galactic core, The Unthinking Depths, not even normal intelligence is possible. I think Vinge is trying to explain very alien ways of thinking. The beings in the Transcend, called Powers, are almost gods. Indeed, there a humorous references to Applied Theology -- the dealings with the Powers.
As a Norwegian, I got my share of laughs, and I feel privileged: The book is full of half-Norwegian (scandinavian?) names, places ... Like Nyjora ("New Earth"), the surnames Olsndot, and similar (a mix of "Olsen", "Olesdatter", or perhaps "Olsen dot ..."?) The majority of the human race is actually descended from Norwegians! The main worlds are Straumli and Sjandra Kei (that one is cryptical...) Except the people have purple eyes and dark brown skin. No kidding! Some norwegian words are also interspersed: "Hei!" ("Hey!") and "Nei!" ("No!"). Their language is called Samnorsk, which really must be a joke! It's not even a real language today, but a strange construct that was made sometime a 50-100 years ago, trying to unite the two official written languages in Norway; Nynorsk and Bokmål. (That's right -- two different written languages for the same spoken language. I think Vernor Vinge had a good laugh, discussing this with his Norwegian friends.) The chance for it to be the official language of the human race in the future -- well, that must be Vinge's comment on cultural imperialism today.
By the way -- the other very common language is called Triskweline. I thought I had heard that name or word before, but couldn't quite remember. Google solved it -- it's the programming font I use! I cannot find any other reference to that word, and the font is the newest of the two. Funny!
The Tines race is a race of distributed minds. That i haven't read about before, although Peter F. Hamilton's "Prime" race from the Commonwealth Saga is quite similar, but more extreme and alien. They are the inhabitants of a medieval world -- in desription very similar to the wild nature of northern and western Norway! Indeed, Vinge says in the preface that he really enjoyed his stay in Norway in 1998, when he among other things attended a seminar on distributed networks. So that's where the ideas came from!
This somewhat whimsical drawing of a universe (actually consistent with what we observe today) comes complete with a galactic internet. Remember this was written in 1993, and the galactic net is like a steampunk internet: The net we have now is much more advanced (except for superluminal transmission lines) than in The Beyond. You can feel the book was written 15 years ago! The net is mostly newsgroups like we knew them before they succumbed to discussion forums, wikipedia and BitTorrent downloads., only some of the participants are very alien.
Vinge also is quite satirical in the way he uses "net of a million lies", but I am not sure he could imagine the internet as it is today. Nevertheless, he captured the problems and benefits of freedom of speech perfectly.
The scale of the story is just huge. I am not going to spoil the book any more than I already have, but get prepared to think. It has really awesome moments, and the plot is well-written and full of charm, humor, suspense and intelligence.
A great read!
There is a great review out there, able to put words to these things better than I am. Beware of spoilers, though.
