Review Upon the Deep

Hey,

So I finished up Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge the other day. It was a pretty good read.

The central conceit is that the universe is divided into different "zones" where the laws of physics are different. We live in the "Slow" zone where FTL travel is impossible. Nearer the core, the Unthinking Depths can't support biological sentience while on the rim of the galaxy, the Beyond allows for all sorts of sci-fi gee-whizzery. Well outside the galaxy and beyond the Beyond is the Transcendent Zone where species and civilizations disappear and become god-like Powers beyond any mortal reckoning. Of course, that jump from comprehensible sophont to unkowable power is fraught with peril. It's all too easy to make a mistake and spectacularly self-destruct.

And sometimes you get pushed.

The universe is old, the archives of information stretch deep into the past and there are traps lurking within them that can spell trouble. Straumli Realm, close to the edge of Transcendence found an archive and unleashed a Blight on the galaxy. Although it corrupted most of the humans in the Realm, a family escaped with the algorithms needed to destroy the Blight. The ship suffers a mis-jump and crash-lands on a world close to the Slow Zone. The local inhabitants, wolf-like creatures who exist only as pack-minds ambush the humans and the two children are the only survivors.

Meanwhile, as the sinister nature of the Blight becomes apparent, Ravna, a human archivist for a major net node gets swept up in an attempt to understand the Blight and locate a cure. Pham, a reconstructed human from deep in the slow zone is sent with her on a rescue mission to find the survivors of Straumli Realm and fight off the Blight.

There's a lot of well-crafted stuff in this book. There are excerpts of data feed from the Net which is essentially USENET on a galactic level and all the signal-to-noise that implies. The various physical properties of the different zones mean that there's a lot of tension between the FTL chases over vast regions of the space and the day-to-day struggles at the destination planet. The book also highlights the most likely sorts of interaction between humans and transcendent beingss -- i.e. at best they don't give a fig about humanity. As always, Mr. Vinge does a great job of imparting truly alien viewpoints.

So yeah, this was a pretty good book and certainly worth reading.

later
Tom

Review Upon the Deep

Hey,

So I finished up Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge the other day. It was a pretty good read.

The central conceit is that the universe is divided into different "zones" where the laws of physics are different. We live in the "Slow" zone where FTL travel is impossible. Nearer the core, the Unthinking Depths can't support biological sentience while on the rim of the galaxy, the Beyond allows for all sorts of sci-fi gee-whizzery. Well outside the galaxy and beyond the Beyond is the Transcendent Zone where species and civilizations disappear and become god-like Powers beyond any mortal reckoning. Of course, that jump from comprehensible sophont to unkowable power is fraught with peril. It's all too easy to make a mistake and spectacularly self-destruct.

And sometimes you get pushed.

The universe is old, the archives of information stretch deep into the past and there are traps lurking within them that can spell trouble. Straumli Realm, close to the edge of Transcendence found an archive and unleashed a Blight on the galaxy. Although it corrupted most of the humans in the Realm, a family escaped with the algorithms needed to destroy the Blight. The ship suffers a mis-jump and crash-lands on a world close to the Slow Zone. The local inhabitants, wolf-like creatures who exist only as pack-minds ambush the humans and the two children are the only survivors.

Meanwhile, as the sinister nature of the Blight becomes apparent, Ravna, a human archivist for a major net node gets swept up in an attempt to understand the Blight and locate a cure. Pham, a reconstructed human from deep in the slow zone is sent with her on a rescue mission to find the survivors of Straumli Realm and fight off the Blight.

There's a lot of well-crafted stuff in this book. There are excerpts of data feed from the Net which is essentially USENET on a galactic level and all the signal-to-noise that implies. The various physical properties of the different zones mean that there's a lot of tension between the FTL chases over vast regions of the space and the day-to-day struggles at the destination planet. The book also highlights the most likely sorts of interaction between humans and transcendent beingss -- i.e. at best they don't give a fig about humanity. As always, Mr. Vinge does a great job of imparting truly alien viewpoints.

So yeah, this was a pretty good book and certainly worth reading.

later
Tom

Inception

Hey,

So I saw Inception last night.

It was probably one of the better sci-fi movies I think I've ever seen. It draws on many of the best parts of The Matrix and Blade Runner and still manages to be its own thing.

The basic plot is that there are devices that let you (and your friends) enter the dreams of another person. As you might guess, this technology is quickly turned to nefarious ends. Leonardo DiCaprio (sporting a very unfortunate whisp of goatee), plays Cobb, the leader of a gang of thieves who invade people's dreams and steal their secrets. This isn't as easy as it looks because while the device can create a dreamscape for the dreamer, the dreamer's subconscious populates it with people -- and those sub-conscious projections eventually detect the intruders and kick them out. So the intruders have to work fast and quiet.

Cobb gets hired to plant an idea into the head of a target, a task considered nearly impossible. He assembles a crack team and sets out to stage an elaborate con game to trick the target's subconscious into accepting the new idea. Part of this involves a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. At each level down, the mind speeds up, so what takes five minutes at level one is 5 days in level two and so on. This allows for some neat multi-dream-level story-telling that's very well handled and lets you track multiple storylines pretty easily.

The movie is chock-full of little touches where they don't try and explain every last detail of how the dream tech works (in particular it's never clear how much control any intruder has over the dreamscape), but they sprinkle in all these little, throw-away details that really convey how the whole thing fits together.

I encourage folks to get out and see this one, it's a really well-done piece of cinema.

later
Tom

Inception

Hey,

So I saw Inception last night.

It was probably one of the better sci-fi movies I think I've ever seen. It draws on many of the best parts of The Matrix and Blade Runner and still manages to be its own thing.

The basic plot is that there are devices that let you (and your friends) enter the dreams of another person. As you might guess, this technology is quickly turned to nefarious ends. Leonardo DiCaprio (sporting a very unfortunate whisp of goatee), plays Cobb, the leader of a gang of thieves who invade people's dreams and steal their secrets. This isn't as easy as it looks because while the device can create a dreamscape for the dreamer, the dreamer's subconscious populates it with people -- and those sub-conscious projections eventually detect the intruders and kick them out. So the intruders have to work fast and quiet.

Cobb gets hired to plant an idea into the head of a target, a task considered nearly impossible. He assembles a crack team and sets out to stage an elaborate con game to trick the target's subconscious into accepting the new idea. Part of this involves a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. At each level down, the mind speeds up, so what takes five minutes at level one is 5 days in level two and so on. This allows for some neat multi-dream-level story-telling that's very well handled and lets you track multiple storylines pretty easily.

The movie is chock-full of little touches where they don't try and explain every last detail of how the dream tech works (in particular it's never clear how much control any intruder has over the dreamscape), but they sprinkle in all these little, throw-away details that really convey how the whole thing fits together.

I encourage folks to get out and see this one, it's a really well-done piece of cinema.

later
Tom