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Comment by marktangotango | Hacker News Reader

I concur on the Vinge picks. The Vinge story that really blew my mind was "Marooned in Realtime", which I contend is best read in the context of the other works in "Across Realtime":

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime

For mind games, I submit "Kiln People" by David Brin. What if you could fork your consciousness into another body and rejoin periodically? "Kiln People" explores this idea in some remarkable ways.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96478.Kiln_People

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I found Deepness in The Sky an incredibly frustrating read. I _really_ didn’t enjoy the switching between perspective of human and alien. (Especially the personification)

I was able to get about a third of the way through the book because my friends kept saying it gets better... but it’s a thick book and I just didn’t get it as I kept chugging

If I’m reading fiction it’s OK to put a book down. I ask you, dear internet stranger, what do you enjoy about these books?

I can't think of any way of commenting on what you said that isn't a spoiler - perhaps worth noting that the personification you object to turns out to be a pretty important thing in its own right.

Also, focus has got to be one of the most terrifying concepts anyone has put into a SF book.

It's building up to a tricky denouement, but if you're not also enjoying the journey, I'd say it's not for you. Some of what I like about Vinge:

- Imaginatively exploring grand futures.

- Evocative hints you have to fill in yourself.

- Intelligent characters.

- Computer security as an often central concern.

- Tightness. There's a reason he barely manages a novel a decade.

- The prose style just breathes sense-of-wonder to me.

I loved A Fire Upon the Deep, but I thought Deepness was a little disappointing because the aliens aren't alien enough. They seem like regular people who happen to look like bugs and who sometimes need to hibernate because of how their sun works. Ironically, it seems like the all-human Emergency is Vinge's vehicle to explore an alien way of thinking.

A Fire Upon the Deep has a much bigger scope and includes a menagerie of truly weird aliens.

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