A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.

Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.

弗諾・文奇，作為塞伯朋剋流派中活躍至今的作傢，弗諾・文奇擁有極高的聲譽，在硬科幻小說寫作方麵很有一手。他的小說邏輯嚴密，情節緊湊，展示齣科技的奇妙之處，尤以細節的締造和令人驚嘆的預見力著稱。大量細緻又經得起推敲的描述讓虛構齣的“異世界”及生活其中的科族幾可亂真。 和他本身的科學素養大有關係，弗諾・文奇本身就是數學傢和計算機專傢。閱讀文奇的科幻小說，絕對是一種享受。 文奇並不多産，但他的每一部小說都可稱得上經典。1987年的《真名實姓》使他聲名大噪，1992年的《深淵上的火》獲得雨果奬，2000年又以該書前傳《天淵》擊敗《哈裏波特與阿茲卡班的囚徒》，再獲雨果奬。