A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)
Highly, highly recommend Vinge&#x27;s <i>A Deepness In The Sky</i> [0], which won the Hugo in 2000.<p>It&#x27;s a hard-sci-fi story about how various societies, human and alien, attempt to assert control &amp; hegemony over centuries of time (in many ways thinking of this as a distributed systems and code documentation problem!), and how critical and impactful the role of language translation is in helping people to understand foreign ways of thinking.<p>At the novel&#x27;s core is a question very akin to that of philosophical antipositivism [1]: is it possible (or optimal for your society&#x27;s stability) to appreciate and emphasize with people wholly different from yourselves, without interpreting their thoughts and cultures in language and description that&#x27;s familiar to yourselves... even if in so doing this becomes more art than science? Is creative translation ethical if it establishes power dynamics that would not be there otherwise? There&#x27;s a mind-blowing meta-narrative to this as well when you think about how the <i>reader</i> should interpret the book with that question in mind, though to say anything more would delve into spoilers. And lest you think it&#x27;s just philosophical deepness, it&#x27;s also an action-packed page-turner with memorable characters despite its huge temporal scope.<p>While technically it&#x27;s a prequel to A Fire Upon The Deep, it works entirely standalone, and I would argue that Deepness is best read first without knowing character details from its publication-time predecessor Fire. Content warnings for mind control and assault (though they&#x27;re handled thoughtfully IMO). With Asimov&#x27;s Foundation being adapted for TV (also recommend, if for the visuals alone), if you want even more sci-fi that speaks to societal rise and decline, and the lengths to which people will manipulate others in the name of control and survival, this is a must-read.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0812536355" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0812536...</a>
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Antipositivism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Antipositivism</a>