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.

弗诺・文奇，作为塞伯朋克流派中活跃至今的作家，弗诺・文奇拥有极高的声誉，在硬科幻小说写作方面很有一手。他的小说逻辑严密，情节紧凑，展示出科技的奇妙之处，尤以细节的缔造和令人惊叹的预见力著称。大量细致又经得起推敲的描述让虚构出的“异世界”及生活其中的科族几可乱真。 和他本身的科学素养大有关系，弗诺・文奇本身就是数学家和计算机专家。阅读文奇的科幻小说，绝对是一种享受。 文奇并不多产，但他的每一部小说都可称得上经典。1987年的《真名实姓》使他声名大噪，1992年的《深渊上的火》获得雨果奖，2000年又以该书前传《天渊》击败《哈里波特与阿兹卡班的囚徒》，再获雨果奖。