Vernor Vinge's writing seems to have a strange effect on me. A few months ago I re-read A Fire Upon the Deep, the Hugo award winner, for the first time in about 15 years. And I couldn't remember one thing about it - it rang no bells at all. I would have sworn I'd never read it, except that it obviously had been read, and was sitting in the "read" part of my bookcase.

Anyway, for the record, I wasn't that impressed by Fire; some good ideas, but a messy and irritating book. I didn't read Deepness again because I remembered it, with a bit of effort (and life's too short to slog through a 750-page novel again unless it's absolutely brilliant), but from what I recall it is much better, and I can't make out why I junked it before - I was probably going through a phase of being thoroughly tired of doorstop novels which I was never going to take the time to re-read. Oh well, I'll keep it this time, just in case...

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Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk