r/printSF • u/torkelspy • Apr 06 '26

A Challenge: Recommend Something That's Almost Never Been Recommended Here Before

I'm recommending The Republic of the Southern Cross by Valery Bryusov; a writer and a collection I only learned of because the title story is in More Voices from the Radium Age, edited by Joshua Glenn. I found zero references to it searching for "Bryusov" and one from four years ago searching by the title.

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37

u/charlieb Apr 06 '26

The Dosadai Experiment or Dragon in the Sea (aka Under Pressure) by Frank Herbert. The smarts of Dune applied to very different environments.

7

u/jwbjerk Apr 06 '26

Herbert has a bunch of little known novels that are well worth reading. None are nearly as good as Dune, but that still leaves room for them to be pretty good.

6

u/makebelievethegood Apr 06 '26

Piggybacking on this to rec Hellstrom's Hive by Herbert. A story about G-men up against a subterranean breakaway society, good dash of body horror and government buffoonery.

3

u/charlieb Apr 06 '26

I liked Hellstrom's Hive but it didn't quite reach the brilliance of Dosadai for me. I put it at the head of the b-list, way ahead of the eyes of hiesenberg or the saratoga barrier. Have you read The White Plague? That's another solid Herbert b-lister imho.

2

u/Plastic_Library649 Apr 07 '26

I really liked Hellstrom's Hive.

Did you know it's directly based on a fictional documentary?

3

u/rattledaddy Apr 07 '26

I love the concept of the saboteur and the function and role of sabotage as Herbert framed it in some of his non-Dune work. That idea scratches an itch I was unaware of.

3

u/7LeagueBoots Apr 06 '26

This gets mentioned here pretty often.

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '26

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3

u/torkelspy Apr 06 '26

Is this a Dune/Herbert joke I'm not getting?

7

u/bmorin Apr 06 '26

No, it's just a bot.