History Literature / ZonesOfThought

* AlternativeCalendar: In ''A Deepness in the Sky'', interstellar traders have done away with not just years and months, but also with days, hours and minutes. All timespans are measured in (appropriate powers-of-thousands of) seconds, with dates simply being the number of seconds since the UsefulNotes/{{UNIX}} epoch (with some unspecified [[ShownTheirWork but explicitly mentioned]] relativistic frame corrections) -- though in-universe [[FutureImperfect it is most commonly thought that the zero-second was at the first moon landing]]. Settled planets all have their own calendars. One way the traders know they have stayed too long is when they start using the locals' calendar.

* AncientEvil: The BigBad of ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' is the Blight, an EldritchAbomination implied to be a kind of sentient computer virus that is capable of running on both mechanical and organic platforms--i.e., any sentient creature. Humans inadvertently boot up an ancient database that has hosted the dormant Blight for ''at least'' a few billion of years, and it immediately begins to spread out over the galaxy-wide computer network, infecting both computers and sentient creatures.

* AncientEvil: The BigBad of ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' is the Blight, an EldritchAbomination implied to be a kind of sentient computer virus that is capable of running on both mechanical and organic platforms--i.e., any sentient creature. Humans inadvertently boot up an ancient database that has hosted the dormant Blight for ''at least'' a few tens of billions of years, and it immediately begins to spread out over the galaxy-wide computer network, infecting both computers and sentient creatures.

%%* KillEmAll: Entire star systems at a time.

* DarkSkinnedRedhead: In ''A Fire Upon the Deep'', Pham Nuwen has red hair and "smoky" skin. (''A Deepness in the Sky'' establishes that he wasn't born a redhead, implying that his change of hair is a consequence of a medical intervention between the two stories.)

* AffectionateParody: Of Website/{{Usenet}}, in the otherwise serious ''A Fire Upon the Deep''.

* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: In ''A Fire Upon the Deep'', there's a galaxy-spanning Website/{{Usenet}}-like network where various aliens discuss the crisis, from a number of different perspectives. One particular alien, "Twirlip of the Mists", is talking through several layers of auto-translation software on an extremely low-bandwidth connection, so most of what it says sounds rather bizarre. It's pretty much all exactly right, though, including such apparent nonsense as "hexapodia is the key insight" [[spoiler:since the Skroderiders have six ''wheels'' and are in fact the sleeper agents of the Blight that Twirlip was speculating about.]]

** In ''A Deepness in the Sky'', the Emergents take over the Qeng Ho space fleet by force. LaResistance quickly forms, but one of the rebels discovers too late that the Emergents are watching ''everything'' they do, by using the Focus plague to create SlaveMooks who do nothing but monitor electronic surveillance. Later they take it UpToEleven by using thousands of dust-sized cameras to watch over the Qeng Ho. [[spoiler:Fortunately they don't know the man who originally developed the cameras is in their midst and has a backdoor to the program.]]

The Zones of Thought is a science-fiction setting created by Creator/VernorVinge. It currently consists of three books and one short story:

** [[spoiler:Ritser Brughel's]] final fate in ''A Deepness in the Sky''. [[spoiler:At the end he's only human at disposal of the Spiders, so they're going to keep him alive as long as possible to run tests on him. ''And he's arachnophobic''.]]

* DragonInChief: Steel represents shades of just about every variant of this. [[{{Backstory}} Before the events of]] ''A Fire Upon the Deep'', he was a DragonWithAnAgenda bordering on TheStarscream to nominal BigBad Flenser, but by the time the story starts, he is a DragonAscendant who took over after Flenser left to invade a neighboring territory. [[spoiler: In an amusing reversal, Flenser returns [[FirstEpisodeSpoiler early in the book]], weakened, and fulfills the ''exact same roles'' to Steel while he schemes to regain his power.]]

* {{Troll}}: [[spoiler: Flenser-Tyrathect]] apparently channels his residual sadistic impulses by getting a rise out of people. He picks underlings with similar inclinations too.

* ZeroGSpot: The problem of obtaining leverage during zero-g sex is mentioned in ''A Deepness In The Sky''; also, one of the protagonists in ''A Fire Upon The Deep'' thinks that zero-g sex isn't what it's cracked up to be (again largely due to the difficulties of obtaining leverage safely).

* AlternativeCalendar: In ''A Deepness in the Sky'', interstellar traders have done away with not just years and months, but also with days, hours and minutes. All timespans are measured in (appropriate powers-of-thousands of) seconds, with dates simply being the number of seconds since the UsefulNotes/{{UNIX}} epoch (with some unspecified [[ShownTheirWork but explicitly mentioned]] relativistic frame corrections) — though in-universe [[FutureImperfect it is most commonly thought that the zero-second was at the first moon landing]]. Settled planets all have their own calendars. One way the traders know they have stayed too long is when they start using the locals' calendar.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Tomas Nau and particularly Flenser. In fact, master villains can be distinguished by ability to be charming and polite up to the moment the ColdBloodedTorture starts, and maybe even after, while inferior underlings and pretenders have trouble hiding their true nature.

%%* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' and to a lesser extent its prequel.

%%* EnforcedTechnologyLevels: Within the lower Zones.

* AncientConspiracy: ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' contains an extremely dormant trap setup by [[SealedEvilInACan the Blight]] the last time it was active, ''billions'' of years ago.

* BigBrotherIsWatching: In ''A Deepness in the Sky'', the Emergents take over the Qeng Ho space fleet by force. LaResistance quickly forms, but one of the rebels discovers too late that the Emergents are watching ''everything'' they do, by using the Focus plague to create SlaveMooks who do nothing but monitor electronic surveillance. Later they take it UpToEleven by using thousands of dust-sized cameras to watch over the Qeng Ho. [[spoiler:Fortunately they don't know the man who originally developed the cameras is in their midst and has a backdoor to the program.]]

* InternetBackdraft: InUniverse in ''A Fire Upon the Deep''. On the interstellar equivalent of the Internet, humanity itself becomes a topic that causes backdraft after they get blamed for waking the Straumli Perversion.

* BackupBluff: Pilgrim Wickwrackscar pulls quite a bold one one on [[spoiler: Vendacious]], successfully convincing the latter that his treachery is fully unveiled, and that Pilgrim is here to negotiate with him instead of Woodcarver and her soldiers, in order to prevent [[spoiler: Vendacious]] from killing his hostage before anyone gets close enough to talk. Except that is all bullshit: No one else suspects anything yet, and Pilgrim's actions are all entirely based on a hunch.

In the Zones of Thought verse, the basic gimmick is that TheSingularity is spread out over space instead of time. In the Unthinking Depths near the core of the galaxy, no intelligence is possible; in the Slow Zone, where Earth is, MundaneDogmatic rules apply; the Beyond allows soft SF tropes such as FasterThanLightTravel or {{Antigravity}}; and in the Transcend, everyone is SufficientlyAdvanced. Thus, as you head out of the galaxy, you see the same progression of advancing technologies as you'd expect to see over time if our technology went through a Singularity. In the Slow Zone, Vinge posits that human technological advance reached an apex with the "Age of Failed Dreams", during which it was discovered that faster than light travel, immortality, strong AI, and a few other things are impossible.

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%%* BadassGrandpa: Pham Nuwen