Re: Questions About "Deepness in the Sky"
- From: Alan Jenkins <alan-jenkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 10:29:41 -0800 (PST)
jnjmitch wrote:
I'm about 200 pages into the book. I apologize for these fairly basic
questions, but there are a few things I'm just not getting. Maybe
it's that I'm new to hard sci-fi, maybe it's Vinge's writing style, or
maybe its my reading perception. Anyway, without giving any spoilers
away, can anyone answer these for me?
I was puzzled by the same questions even though I'm familiar with the
genre... I may have been reading it too quickly though.
-Where exactly are the Emergents and Qeng Ho located while they wait
for the Spiders to develop technology? On an asteroid in orbit around
the Spider planet? In free-floating ships and temps that orbit the
planet?
-What are the rockpiles and why do they require stabilization from
jets/thrusters?
I'm hazy on this. The rockpile is the diamond that they found in
place of the usual asteroids they expected. I seem to remember it was
a single diamond when they arrived, although I don't remember anything
how they blasting it apart. I guess it requires stabilisation because
they smashed it into workable pieces and now it's settling and being
pertubed by the other bodies in the system, i.e. the planet and the
sun.
-Are they floating in zero-g in the temps and on the ships? Won't
this have major impact on their muscles when they step foot on the
spider planet?
I though this was mentioned when they first made planetfall, before
the fighting. (Checks Baen's preview)... Actually no, it was just a
particular manoeuvre which was mentioned as being awkward "in a one
gee field".
The default assumption would be that this is zero-g (since this is
hard s.f. and we don't have magic gravity machines). I think we'd
have noticed if parts of the ships had been spun up for "centrifugal
gravity". Later on there's an explicit zero-gee scene inside one of
the ships.
-What is coldsleep? Is it similar to the deep space travel seen in
Aliens and Planet of the Apes?
Yah. Some sort of suspended animation / hibernation. It's been used
often enough and it's plausible enough that, within the genre, it no
longer requires much explanation.
-I understand the concept of time dilation and subjective time (I
think), but people still seem to live tremendously long lives. Is
this the result of advanced medical technology combined with the
ability of coldsleep to stop again?
Yah.
-How are people infected with mindrot, and at what point in the book
did this happen to the Qeng Ho? Ezr Vinh makes vague mention of
feeling symptoms immediately prior to the ambush, but there seems to
be little about the actual disease in the narrative until Focus is
explained. Was the disease integral to the ambush?
Yup. Everyone gets ill at the same time, ill enough that they really
need rescuing and healing.
-What exactly did Jimmy Diem and his conspirators see, and how were
they killed (what caused the explosion)? Were there really dead
bodies or was this some hoax that the Emergents used to manipulate
Nau? I'm thinking that maybe this will be explained later in the
book, but so far it seems to have been dropped.
I think they were genuine bodies. The Emergents weren't as good at
handling mind-rot in the Qeng Ho as they thought they would be.
We know that the Emergents cracked the conspiracy, so the explosion
would have been a trap they set up. Perhaps the bodies were bait and
the area was mined - which triggered the explosives the conspirators
were carrying.
.
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- Questions About "Deepness in the Sky"
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