{"id":1363,"date":"2020-01-29T23:28:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T05:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lfs.org\/blog\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2025-05-05T23:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T04:08:08","slug":"an-appreciation-for-vernor-vinges-a-deepness-in-the-sky-the-2000-prometheus-winner-for-best-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/an-appreciation-for-vernor-vinges-a-deepness-in-the-sky-the-2000-prometheus-winner-for-best-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Interstellar travel, mercantile networks, bureaucracy and decentralization: An Appreciation for Vernor Vinge\u2019s A Deepness in the Sky, the 2000 Prometheus Best Novel winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of our series of Appreciations of Prometheus Award-winners, here’s a review-essay about Vernor Vinge\u2019s A Deepness in the Sky:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>By William H. Stoddard<\/a> and Michael Grossberg<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/span>Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky <\/em>is\u00a0an exemplary example of the New Space Opera of the 1990s, and a fascinating and complex sequel to his Hugo-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Set in the inner Milky Way galaxy with fully realized characters, both alien and human, the story highlights the threats to civilization from centralized power while illuminating the civilizing dynamics of free-trade networks.<\/p>\n

Vinge’s epic novel imagines a complex future with many human-inhabited planets that have developed over several thousand years through slower-than-light interstellar travel, terraforming, life-extension techniques, and advanced computer networks.<\/p>\n

Yet many of these advanced societies repeatedly have collapsed into barbarism and decay through the failed dream of collectivism, statism, or subtle computational failures.
\n<\/p>\n

An interstellar trading fleet, the Qeng Ho, turns out to be the actual sustaining force for development and civilization. The Qeng Ho, based on the interurban mercantile networks of the overseas Chinese and other Asian communities, constitute a decentralized and free society devoted to trade and to maintaining reputation (often a civilizing and peace-enhancing force in actual British and American history). Their worst condemnation is to say that someone does not care about return business.<\/p>\n

Amid the first human contact with an alien civilization (sophisticated spider-like beings) at the threshold of high technology, the Qeng Ho clash with the Emergents, a planetary society with hierarchical politics.<\/p>\n

As the rival societies compete to establish relations with the alien Spiders, Vinge contrasts two business management styles \u2013 the Qeng Ho\u2019s decentralized trade networks and the Emergents\u2019 corporate\/bureaucratic hierarchy \u2013 and two ethical traditions, one for which free trade is inherently a virtue and the other in which trade is a vice, crime or sin.<\/p>\n

The Qeng Ho, flourishing in a multicultural future, embody libertarian ideals of a functional and diverse culture with the flexibility to carry on trade over time spans longer than the life spans of individual humans. The Qeng Ho, whose entire history is contained within Vinge\u2019s story, find it good business to enrich every other culture they deal with as, in the real world, market economies have been doing since the Stone Age.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Note: Vinge also won the 1987 Prometheus Award for Best Novel (for Marooned in Real Time,\u00a0<\/i>the 2007 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award (for his story \u201cTrue Names\u201d<\/i>) and a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2014.<\/p>\n

Here are excerpt from Vinge\u2019s Acceptance Speech, worth quoting because of his comments about freedom, the future,\u00a0anarcho-capitalism\u00a0and science fiction:
\n<\/b>In his 2000 acceptance speech at the 2000 Worldcon in Chicago, printed in Prometheus quarterly in the Fall 2000 (Vol. 18) issue, Vinge said: \u201cStories are something that can change people\u2019s minds, and they\u2019re something that\u2019s very powerful to change people\u2019s minds whether the environment is violent or peaceful. But in a peaceful environment, they\u2019re especially important for changing people\u2019s minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Vernor Vinge (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSo the notion of the Libertarian Futurist Society, in the first place, that people should just think about the idea of liberty, and in the second place, to get them to consider certain libertarian and anarcho-capitalist points of view \u2013 these are very, very important and science fiction in general can be set up to have an immense effect,\u201d Vinge said.
\n\u201cOne feature of my personal beliefs is that libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism have their best chance for success in a peaceful and highly successful economy. And this actually fits in with the notion in science fiction of the power of the word.\u201d
\n\u201cIf we could go back to the year 1000 and try to convince some Norman lord, a person of good will perhaps, about democracy, he might listen to you all the way through and when you are done he would tell you why it was absurd, that if they took a vote they\u2019ll simply have another guy sitting on the hill the next day, after they killed the Norman lord. And something happened in the thousand years between then and now. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to take a thousand years for the development of the sorts of things that most of us are interested in \u2013 and I hope that stories like this will make some contribution to those developments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

* See related introductory essay<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>about the LFS\u2019 40th<\/sup>anniversary retrospective series of Appreciations of past Prometheus Awards winners, with an overview of the awards\u2019 four-decade history.<\/p>\n

* Other Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For a full list of winners \u2013 for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the recently updated and enhanced Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>on the LFS website.<\/p>\n

* Join us<\/strong>! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, join<\/strong><\/a> the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit volunteer association of libertarian sf\/fantasy fans and freedom-lovers.
\nLibertarian futurists believe cultural change is as vital as political change (and often more fun!) in achieving universal individual rights and a better world (perhaps eventually, worlds) for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of our series of Appreciations of Prometheus Award-winners, here’s a review-essay about Vernor Vinge\u2019s A Deepness in the Sky: By William H. Stoddard and Michael Grossberg \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky is\u00a0an exemplary example of the New Space Opera of the 1990s, and a fascinating and complex sequel to his Hugo-winning … Continue reading Interstellar travel, mercantile networks, bureaucracy and decentralization: An Appreciation for Vernor Vinge\u2019s A Deepness in the Sky, the 2000 Prometheus Best Novel winner<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43,32,159,2605,2021],"tags":[306,308,316,315,314,309,311,190,312,313,310,307,69],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-author-updates","category-best-novels","category-sequels","category-vernor-vinge","tag-a-deepness-in-the-sky","tag-a-fire-upon-the-deep","tag-anarcho-capitalism","tag-bureaucracy","tag-decentralization","tag-interstellar-travel","tag-life-extension","tag-marooned-in-real-time","tag-mercantile-networks","tag-reputation","tag-terraforming","tag-true-names","tag-vernor-vinge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-lZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6059,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/6059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}