A Deepness in the Sky

Set in the same region of space, but 30,000 years earlier than Vinge's Hugo Award-winning A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, this novel explores culture clash on a galactic scale. Two separate human fleets approach a remote planet with very different purposes--one looking to trade, the other to enslave. When conflict leaves both fleets crippled, they are forced to drift in space for years until the aliens that inhabit the planet develop technology capable of rescuing them. The aliens, though, have an agenda of their own.