the Deep Only one concrete connection links A Deepness in the Sky with A Fire Upon the Deep: the character of Pham Nuwen, the "Programmer-at-Arms", who appears in both books. Hints occur about the "Zones of Thought" mentioned in Fire. That novel posits that space around the Milky Way is divided into concentric layers called "Zones", each being constrained by different laws of physics and each allowing for different degrees of biological and technological advancement. The innermost, the "Unthinking Depths", surrounds the galactic core and is incapable of supporting advanced life forms at all. The next layer, the "Slow Zone", is roughly equivalent to the real world in behavior and potential. Further out, the zone named the "Beyond" can support futuristic technologies such as AI and FTL travel. The outermost zone, the "Transcend", contains most of the galactic halo and is populated by incomprehensibly vast and powerful posthuman entities. A Deepness in the Sky takes place in the Slow Zone, though Vinge does not explain the connections, and the characters in the story remain unaware of the zones' existence. The sun's inexplicably strange behavior, the unusual planetary system (with only a solitary planet and several asteroid-sized diamonds), and the discovery of "cavorite" on the planet may indicate the system originated in the Transcend, though it is currently moving outward from the Unthinking Depths. Vinge's characters speculate that the Spiders descend from an ancient star-faring civilization, and that the anti-gravity material and other strange artifacts have connections with that civilization. Unfortunately, they guess the structure of the Zones (though not the actual properties) backwards, coming to the conclusion that the bright center of the galaxy is the most likely location for advanced civilization. This leads Pham on his path inwards to the Unthinking Depths, and his eventual resurrection. Relation to The Outcasts of Heaven Belt Joan D. Vinge has indicated that her novel The Outcasts of Heaven Belt is also set in the Slow Zone of the Zones of Thought setting. Both novels show their spacefaring civilizations using seconds, kiloseconds, megaseconds, and gigaseconds as their primary units of time. Reception Deepness won the 2000 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 2000 John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the 2000 Prometheus Award and the 2004 Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Best Foreign Fiction; as well, it was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2000 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2000 Locus Award