A Deepness in the Sky

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel
Winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award
Winner of the Prometheus Award

After thousands of years of searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups—the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds—are dramatically opposed in their anticipation of this first contact, for the group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches. But initially, both groups must wait at the aliens' very doorstep for their strange star to relight and for their planet to reawaken, as it does every 250 years.

Then, following terrible treachery, the Qeng Ho must fight for their freedom and for the lives of the unsuspecting innocents on the planet below, while the aliens themselves play a role unsuspected by the Qeng Ho and Emergents alike.

A Deepness in the Sky is not only a great sci-fi novel—it is a universal drama of courage, love, and self-discovery.

Praise

"Huge, intricate, and ingenious, with superbly realized aliens: a chilling, spellbinding dramatization of the horrors of slavery and mind control."—Kirkus Reviews

"A feast of imagination. As always, Vinge satisfies with richly imagined worlds and a full-flavored story."—Greg Bear

"Wonderfully engaging."—Cleveland Plain Dealer

"This prequel to A Fire upon the Deep demonstrates Vinge's capacity for meticulously detailed culture-building and grand-scale drama."—Library Journal

"This long, action-packed novel should fully engage any SF reader's sense of wonder."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author(s)

Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge's previous novel, A Fire Upon the Deep, received the Hugo Award, for which each of his three previous books was a finalist. His short novel True Names is widely acknowledged as a seminal cybernovel by readers and scientists alike. Vinge is also a professor of computer science at San Diego State University.

photo: Gloria Price

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Excerpt

ONE
 
 
The Qeng Ho fleet was first to arrive at the OnOff star. That might not matter. For the last fifty years of their voyage, they had watched the torch-plumes of the Emergent fleet as it decelerated toward the same destination.

They were strangers, meeting far from either side’s home territory. That was nothing new to the traders of the Qeng Ho—though normally the meetings were not so unwelcome, and there was the possibility of trade.

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