[Taqwus]

S'more sci-fi:

Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", and perhaps somewhat less well-done, "A Deepness in the Sky".

On _Dune_ -- first book is pretty good, but I know of people who've referred to one of the later ones as "Crackhouse: Dune", and I'm inclined to agree. Serious weirdness occurs later.

Niven and Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye" (or is it "The Mote in the Eye of God"?), which deals with contact with an... interesting alien race.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night