How long does it take to read A Deepness in the Sky?
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge takes about 14 hours 31 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Part of Zones of Thought
Previous: A Fire Upon the Deep Next: The Children of the Sky
About 14 hours 31 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1999. 792 pages, about 217,800 words.
30 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 24 hours 12 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 14 hours 31 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 9 hours 5 minutes |
The page count is the median across 10 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
From inside cover Tor First Edition March 1999: Thirty thousand years before the events of A Fire upon the Deep, Pham Nuwen is living in anonymity among the Qeng Ho interstellar trading fleet. In high orbit above the planet Arachna, they wait for the awakening of its dormant population, the Spiders, who have burrowed deep into the planet, awaiting the relighting of the On/Off star their planet orbits. For when light returns, Arachna will at long last explode into a Golden Age of technology and commerce. But the slumbering Spiders' vulnerability has attracted another lurking presence -- the Emergents, a band of traders whose plans for Arachna are more sinister than anything the Qeng Ho could envision. Reluctant to share their spoils with the Qeng Ho, the Emergents unleash an attack unlike any seen in the Qeng Ho's millennia-long history of exploration, reducing their fleet to serfdom... and then to something worse. Reaching into memories so old and painful he can barely recall them, Pham gathers the other "survivors" about him and makes a final attempt to be worthy of a reputation as ancient and storied as the history of the Qeng Ho itself. But time is running out, for soon the Emergents' assault will strip Arachna bare. As Pham's underground resistance cell struggles against its torturers in space, a wondrously gifted clan of Spiders on the planet below fights another battle - to advance their technology quickly enough to defeat their terrestrial foes, and to somehow overcome the invisible enemy lurking above.
Subjects: American Science fiction, Life on other planets, Fiction, Science fiction, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Hugo Award Winner
