Title:
A Deepness in the Sky
Author:
Vernor Vinge
Publisher:
Tor Books, 1999
ISBN
0-312-85683-0

One of the great problems of ethics is the question of evil. We think that we know what an evil act looks like. We tell stories of evil people, and we pretend we understand them to the extent that we imagine that the motivation for evil acts stems entirely from the wish to do evil.

Yet it is never as simple as that. While we understand evil acts because of their consequences, the people who commit evil acts are much more enigmatic. When we get a chance to interview them, maybe after years of their depredations, we can never be sure if their answers aren't just another act of deception.

One way of considering people who do evil is to suppose that there is an entirely different way of setting priorities, so that acts which to most people are unthinkable become worth consideration, and even justifiable. These are ultimately the scariest of all evil people, because they can entice entire nations to follow their call.

Meet Thomas Nau and Ritser Brughel, two of the most evil exemplars I've ever run across in fiction. Vinge makes them the head villains in this amazing story of humanity's future. Standing to oppose them are mostly ordinary humans, though Vinge's main characters are anything but ordinary: Pham Nuwen, a relic from a distant past, and Ezr Vinh, his descendant. This quartet of characters acts their intimate dance of intrigue and betrayal on a galactic stage.

For thousands of years humanity has been spreading into space. Some worlds, after centuries of colonization, crumble into a dark age, to emerge centuries later and repeat the cycle. Traveling between these worlds and trading knowledge and technology are the Qeng Ho, a loosely allied culture of traders and merchants.

On a trip to the enigmatic OnOff Star, one such Qeng Ho expedition is ambushed by a fleet of re-emergent people who have a terrifying secret weapon: a virus that can enslave you and make you like it. Nau and Brughel, the leaders of the Emergent expedition, privately have nothing but contempt for what they see as the weaknesses of the Qeng Ho, but publicly they play on their conquered victims fears and wishes, always staying a step ahead of the most carefully planned attempts to overthrow them.

Meanwhile, the OnOff Star re-ignites, and on the planet orbiting the OnOff Star, the final hope for all their freedom awakens.

Although it has a somewhat slow start, Deepness is an incredibly gripping story, which left me with shaking hands and in cold sweat on occasion. When I got to the final few chapters, I found it was 3 in the morning, and I thought I ought to get some sleep. Fat chance! After more than three hours of sleepless tossing and turning, my mind occupied by the heros of the story and their final predicaments, I had to get up again and finish the book.