A Fire Upon the Deep nitpicks/questions
Hello. Just finished the book. Really liked some ideas, generally liked the book, thought the middle part was a bit slow.
Just wanted to share some of my nitpicks and questions with somebody, maybe get some clarifications. You probably shouldn't read this if you haven't read the book
>!1. I didn't understand how Ravna was calling the Tines "Tines", I thought Johanna coined that term, and they didn't have contact until the end of the book. Ravna was using it directly in dialogue, not indirectly by the author. What did I miss?!<
>!2. Did I understand correctly that the Unthinking Depths are in the galactic core, and the further you go out, you get more advanced? If yes, "Old" Earth is kind pretty far away from the core, and well in the Slowness. Does that mean Beyond is at the periphery and Transcendece in intergalactic space?!<
>!3. The Tines are spectacular, and Vernor does a good job of exploring the implications of their way of being.(Looking in all directions at once, living long through member replacement, option to self-reproduce, etc.) However, this book is advertised as one that does a good job at having truely alien aliens. For me it felt that beyond implementation details mentioned above, the Tines are just like humans. If you were to have Johanna and Jefri land in a human medieval earth, the story could go exactly the same(I guess minus the part where Amdi is a math genius). That's not alien at all. For me a truly alien example is Vanamonde from The City and the Stars. Also the fact they were living on a totally human compatible planet didn't help the alien feel. Did I get it wrong?!<
Thanks!