A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge! What more need be said?

 A Fire Upon the Deep is Vinge's first space opera, it takes place in a future so distant that all knowledge of Earth is long forgotten.   Humans have crawled out of the "Slow Zone", that is the region where FTL travel is impossible, over the passage of eons.

  Now humankind, along with countless alien races live in "The Beyond", where is FTL travel is possible, and an interstellar communication system(somewhat like the internet) , allows communication between distant planets.

  The plot revolves around a human ship on the run with sensitive information, it lands on a remote planet where a race of dog like creatures known as Tines live.  Soon it is known that these humans discovered something of great importance, and a race/war is on between various alien civilizations to be the first to this planet, and retrieve the information the humans found.

 Vinge bounces around many ideas, something he is known for.  Aside from the various zones of space concept, he constructs very unique aliens.  The Tines are only intelligent when enough dogs form a collective consciousness, each entity is actual a composition of numerous dogs.

 This is a terrific book, one of the best "space opera" that I'm aware of.

9.5/10