Agreed that _Deepness in the Sky_ is better than _Fire Upon the Deep_.

However, in my opinion, _Fire Upon the Deep_ should be the better book and has, in many ways, deeper and more thought-provoking concepts at play.

The problem is, none of them get fully explained or resolved.

The book wraps up the character driven story arcs and the much deeper, conceptual story arcs involving non-human actors just peter out ...

Fire has the most breathtaking, hooking first chapter of any book I’ve read.

A Fire upon the Deep is more flawed and uneven, but correspondingly more ambitious and thought-provoking. To me both are easily among the top 5 sci-fi novels ever written. I wish Vinge would keep writing more about Pham Nuwen's adventures. And to the grandparent poster's point, there are far more dimensions to A Deepness in the Sky than the one about communicating with alien cultures (the Focused is just one example). Both books are brilliantly multi-faceted, though the Tines World is a slog.

In 2007, Vinge told me he was planning to write story of Pham & Anne's crusade against the Emergents ... a few years later, when that hadn't appeared, I asked him about it ... he said it was too depressing. (People found Deepness dark, now imagine portrayal of the Emergents' worlds, even though they obviously get defeated, given Fire.)