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Deepness has the same "split brain". Half the story is set in the future, but the other chapters are told as a picaresque fantasy in what appears to be a kind o
by atombender 3y ago
Deepness has the same "split brain". Half the story is set in the future, but the other chapters are told as a picaresque fantasy in what appears to be a kind of fictional alternative reality circa World War I, that is eventually revealed to be a "humanized" version of the alien civilization's history (similar to how the aliens are described in The Three-Body Problem).
I didn't love A Fire Upon the Deep because, while the sci-fi parts were amazing, the medieval fantasy telepathic dog society was much less interesting, basically a political fable with some children thrown in; it seemed like a different novel altogether, and in fact the plots don't really ever intersect except when the adults finally land. It felt like two very different books cobbled together from two different authors. The dog half reminded me of Terry Pratchett for some reason, another author whose schtick involves making the story go faster and increasingly more breathless towards the end, like some Hollywood action movie, often involving a bunch of running or flying.
I liked Deepness even less, because once again you have fantasy politics, and while I understood the conceit, the storytelling just didn't work for me. Like before, the science-fiction stuff was fantastic and full of great ideas, but the other half was the exact opposite.
- le-mark 3y agoJust a note that the dogs/Tines aren’t telepathic but communicated via high frequency sound. The idea was exploring an entity that existed as a society of minds and how that would look from a practical perspective. There’s a story in the compilation discussed here that feature the Tines in another setting one may find interesting.
- atombender 3y agoAh, it's been a while. It doesn't change anything, though. They might as well have been telepathic, since it appeared they formed a sort of hive mind when close to each other.
- duskwuff 3y ago> It doesn't change anything, though. Quite the opposite. The rot13(ybat enatr enqvb pybnxf) are an important plot point.
- atombender 3y agoBut that could have been "psychic signal jammers" for all we cared. It doesn't change the mechanics of the plot at all.
- duskwuff 3y ago> But that could have been "psychic signal jammers" That isn't what I was referring to. You may have missed something important in your reading.
- natechols 3y agoI had to read the book a couple of times before I completely understood this, but I'm pretty sure there's an implicit metaphor that ties the two plots together, and it's about the feedback between technological progress and intelligence, and how physical constraints (or accidents of evolution) limit progress. The society of the Tines is constrained by their peculiar path to sentience - they can't split up pack members and they can't co-mingle packs without losing coherence. From their perspective, early 20th century electronics are the equivalent of neural prosthetics, and might as well be gifts from the Transcend.