[dekhn]

IMHO Marooned in Realtime is the best Vinge book. Besides being a dual mystery novel, it really explores the implications of bobble technology and how just a few hours of technology development near the singularity can be extreme.

[PaulHoule]

Yep. I like it better than Fire Upon the Deep but I do like both of them. I didn’t like A Deepness in the Sky as it was feeling kinda grindy like Dune. (I wish we could just erase Dune so people could enjoy all of Frank Herbert’s other novels of which I love even the bad ones)

[jerf]

The first time I read A Deepness In The Sky, I was a bit annoyed, because I was excited for the A plot to progress, and it felt like we were spending an awful lot of time on B & C.

On a second read, when I knew where the story was going and didn't need the frisson of resolution, I enjoyed it much more. It's good B & C plot, and it all does tie in. But arguably the pacing is off.

[dekhn]

Can you recommend a non-Dune Herbert book? I recall seeing Dosadi when I was a kid in the sci fi section of the library and just never picked it up. I generally like hard sci-fi and my main issue with Dune was that it went off into the weeds too many times.

[PaulHoule]

I like the Dosadi books, Whipping Star, the short stories in Eye, Eyes of Heisenberg, Destination: Void, The Santaroga Barrier (which my wife hates), Under Pressure and Hellstrom's Hive. If I had to pick just one it might be Whipping Star but maybe Under Pressure is the hardest sci-fi.

[Afton]

Whipping Star has some amazing alien vs human discourse (at least, that's my memory from ~20 years ago!). It was the first time I found alien dialog that didn't sound like repackaged English.

[PlunderBunny]

I loved 'The Jesus Incident' [0], which he co-authored with Bill Ransom - when I read it as a teenager in the 80s, it felt so 'adult' compared to a lot of the other science fiction I had read to that point.

I later read the prequel and did not like it. I never read the third book in the trilogy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jesus_Incident

[webmaven]

A quirky (but nonetheless good) novel is "The Green Brain". It has some of Dune's ecological sensibility, but is otherwise completely different.

[gecko6]

I _hated_ The Green Brain, but that was mostly because he had all the characters say everything in Portuguese, then repeat themselves in English. It was as if there was an echo in the room.