Point of View

Vernor Vinge's A Fire upon the Deep is told in the third person past tense by an anonymous and omniscient narrator, almost certainly belonging to the homo sapiens species. Interspersed are frequent bits of dialog. The novel approves of equality among "sophonts" (intelligent beings) in the Beyond and firmly opposes an anti-human pogrom that breaks out. The individuals that accidentally release the Blight happen to be human, but this does not justify collective reprisal on the species. The narrator roots for the mysterious "Countermeasure" to fall into human hands rather than the Blight's and wants the latter contained or destroyed. Never described beyond the bewildering passages in the Prologue, the Blight is clearly not a good thing to anyone.

At times Vinge comes close to telling the story through individual character's eyes, but never formally turns over the narrative reins. Thus, the Tines' ambush of the...