Book description
The prequel to
A Fire Upon The Deep
, this is the story of Pham Nuwen, a small cog in the interstellar
trading fleet of the Queng Ho. The Queng Ho and the Emergents are
orbiting the dormant planet Arachna, which is about to wake up to
technology, but the Emergents' plans are sinister. Vernor Vinge
(1944 - )
Vernor Steffen Vinge was born in Wisconsin in 1944. He is a retired San
Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, a computer scientist
and science fiction author. He is best known for his two epic space
operas A Fire Upon the Deep
(1992) and A Deepness in the Sky
(1999), both of which won the Hugo Award and were shortlisted for the
Nebula. He is the winner of 5 Hugos, 4 Prometheus Awards and the John W.
Campbell Memorial Award, among many others. In addition to his works of
science fiction, Vinge authored the influential 1993 essay 'The Coming
Technological Singularity', in which he argued that the creation of
superhuman artificial intelligence will mark the point at which 'the
human era will be ended', such that no current models of reality are
sufficient to predict beyond it.
