[

I wonder where Vinge’s inspiration for “Focus” comes from. Ritalin/Adderall/etc. taken to extremes? Do “zipheads” (pejorative used by normal characters in the book for “Focused persons”) need to sleep? Vinge being a college professor (at UC San Diego), did he observe students popping ADD pills or experience the effects of said pills and decide to explore that theme (the observed characteristics while on medication) taken to the extreme? In the book, privileged members of a certain planetary culture essentially enslave part of their population by having their subordinates’ brain chemistry rewired such that they have the opposite of ADD, what perhaps we could call ASD (Attention Surplus Disorder?), but taken to the logical extreme: the absolute necessity of having a singular task, however complex, to fixate (hyperfocus) on, to the banishment of all unrelated thought. The book’s zipheads won’t even attend to their own personal hygiene, because that would be an unnecessary distraction from working in the domains of their respective fixations. Consequently they need “handlers”, but the result is that they effortlessly achieve feats — scientific, linguistic, artistic, and on — which are far out of reach for normal folks like us. The catch is that they can’t appreciate the “big picture” of their accomplishments, that is, that while what they are focusing on is fully and deeply satisfying to them, they can’t see the //significance// of that satisfaction. (I’m reminded now, somehow, of the talking cow in one of the //Hitchhiker’s Guide// books (I believe it was //The Restaurant at the End of the Universe//) which (or “who”?) //wanted// to be eaten, and the moral dilemma that then ensued among the diners to whom the cow was happily offering its parts.) Per the book (//Deepness//), Focused persons by-choice lose many of the aspects which made them //human// and become, essentially, very smart computers. Entirely capable of feeling emotion, but //unwilling// (by choice) to even so much as have a conversation with anyone if it doesn’t relate to the subject of fixation, as such a conversation would be irrelevant.

The story’s backdrop is a complex space opera, but the ideas introduced effortlessly through the plot stick long after the story is over.