I keep writing this guy's name as Vernon. I guess he would be pissed if he ever knew. But he won't, so there's that. He is a stuffy computer science professor who (somehow) became a writer, and a pretty good one. Of course, as a stuffy computer geek, his sexual experience is minimal, so all the sex and love scenes (including the dialogue) in the book, are veritably cringeable. At least these science geek writers can follow the example of Dr. Isaac Asimov and remove any sex or love scenes or plots from their science fiction books. Just concentrate on what you know best. You are not Murakami.
The best part of the book is the Tine's World society of ratdogs which have a pack-mind, several steps below a hive-mind, but a big leap above a singleton mind. I don't get it why the cover artists keep drawing the Tines as German Sheppard dogs, when it is clear in the books that they should be half way between rats and dogs with a neck like a snake's. That's not exactly dogs, or at least as we know them, but the characters in the books use mostly dog-like terms to interact with them, probably because we don't have too many terms for interaction with rats or snakes in the English language.
The worst part of the book is the Net, the communication network linking millions of inhabited and technologically developed worlds in the Milky Way (which in itself is a ridiculous notion if we take the pessimistic interpretation of the Drake equation). This Net reminds of Usenet of the '80s or a BBS ran over a dial-up modem, which was the current technology when Virge wrote the book in 1992, however to assume that such primitive and nerdy/clunky technology would survive for any length of time is simply myopic. As we see with the current YouTube and Instagram influencers, technology gets adopted and maximized by the coolest segments of society, not some nerdy geeks typing away in a text based browser like Lynx or text email client like Pine. The stuffy CompSci professors of yore should have understood that such primitive and uncool modes of communication would never last beyond stuffy academic circles.
Further he names the interstellar UseNet groups on the Net with similar stuffy nomenclature that was used on the Usenet in the '80s (I am old enough to have used them and still remember them) like "Interest Groups", which even to a 12 year old me back then sounded so hilariously prudish, stuffy and nerdy. As if any "normal" people would use that abomination once the tech became unibquitious. That's why nobody (but stuffy academic types) uses UseNet today, even Google Groups died, and Yahoo Groups were reset back to nothingness. That's why IRC died as well and TikTok rules the world nowadays. Coolness evolves. Stuffiness perishes.
I gotta give it to Virge that he is very vague about the FTL technology that is used in his ships, talking about "automation" and "ultradrive spines" while never really describing them. That is smart, since no human today could imagine the tech of tomorrow in any realistic terms, and we have to be embarrassed reading Asimov's "Atomics" from the 1950s in otherwise pretty good novels he left behind. Although, if we exclude both the Net and the Ultradrive from Virge's universe (as mostly Bull), I don't really see what is left from "Hard" science fiction? It becomes more about the functioning of the Tine society, which is more akin to Ursula Le Guin's "Soft" science fiction.
Another thing that is really ridiculous is how the entire Galaxy is full of high tech civilizations which have existed for millions of years and eventually reach Singularity and become "Powers." Firstly, "Singularity" is not a thing. There is no way any species will reach singularity because simply it is not possible to achieve sentient AI and even less possible such impossible AI to merge with organic sentient beings. Sentience is a non-material phenomenon. Maybe Orson Scott Card got the closest to describe it as is, an independent spiritual existence that incarnates in this physical universe. Bull like sentience arises when enough complexity is achieved is just wet dreams of CompSci types. Otherwise my Threadripper 2990WX would have achieved sentience already.
Secondly, the amount of civilizations that achieve space flight in Virge's universe is simply bonkers. Drakes equation tells us that at any given point in time, only two (2) civilizations in the entire galaxy would achieve technology level to perform interplanetary flights, mostly in their own solar system. These two would be so far apart in the Milky Way that they would never ever meet. That's why aliens have never visited Earth. Because they don't exist. They either destroyed themselves after 50-60k of existence (which is a blip on Galactic time scale) or simply died out from depopulation, disease and madness. Galactic life like in Star Wars or Star Trek does not exist. The Galaxy is probably more like in Arrival, Interstellar or Annihilation.
The Zones of Thought are just a silly crutch for Virge to justify his completely unrealistic views on life, sentience and the universe. If he didn't set the Zones of Thought then the "Powers" would consume the entire Milky Way in no time. Luckily for us (here on Old Earth in the "Slow Zone") there are no Powers, there is no Beyond, there is no Transcend. It is all one huge, empty, boring universe. Except Black Holes. Black Holes are cool.
So why did I spend so much time reading this really large and really verbose book? For the Tines! It is an amazing society and individuals (packs), imagined in a great way, including their psychology, motivations, emotions, etc. The rest of the book dealing with Virge's wet dreams of his own immortality are just a boring filler to drudge through, just to get to the good parts about the Tines!
