Vassar, IIRC, Vinge did indeed comment somewhere that “A Fire Upon the Deep” was intended as deliberate chutzpah—the problem of keeping the Transcendents out of the Beyonders’ hair was unsolvable, so he simply imposed it as a complete magical plot device and went on from there.
And, everyone: I was trying to say something about the real universe, not about literature. Things are different here.
Vassar, IIRC, Vinge did indeed comment somewhere that “A Fire Upon the Deep” was intended as deliberate chutzpah—the problem of keeping the Transcendents out of the Beyonders’ hair was unsolvable, so he simply imposed it as a complete magical plot device and went on from there.
And, everyone: I was trying to say something about the real universe, not about literature. Things are different here.