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Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

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Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#21

Post by throwawayjava »

eccbits wrote: post #19

“This article is not meant to be a literary nor an exhaustive topical critique of the novels, which I am cannot fully do, because simply, I did not read the original novels. ” Why is this highly rated on HN then?!

Because the article is interesting and insightful.

The full paragraph you quote starts with:

"In this article, I try to explain in detail where Frank Herbert got his names, concepts, and words from."

I'm not sure that "but you didn't read the whole book/series!" qualifies as a reasonable critique of someone who's just giving some (AFAICT straight-forward) etymological background on a few names and concepts...

Also, HN is not some high arbiter of taste. It's just a voting-based algorithm, and the population of voters isn't that large. A re-statement of your question might be: "so why did 60 random internet people click on this at around the same time?", and the answer might be "because there were 60 people who like dune, happened to be on hn around the time this was posted, and don't know much about islam/arabic" :)

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#22

Post by madhadron »

> It is amazing that Frank Herbert would be exposed to this term, and make use of it.

This sort of summarizes the article. The author is apparently unaware that Frank Herbert had wide and varied interests and did an enormous amount of research for the books.

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#23

Post by throwawayjava »

madhadron wrote: post #22

> It is amazing that Frank Herbert would be exposed to this term, and make use of it. This sort of summarizes the article. The author is apparently unaware that Frank Herbert had wide and varied interests and did an enormous amount of research for the books.

I think this is true of non-writers in general. Writing good fiction is enormously difficult work and reading it is leisure. Creates some tension.

Maybe the same reason we know have people poo-pooing the modern computer age -- moore's law for decades, the modern software stack, the internet, etc. -- as not amazing innovation. And down playing the role all of that has played in everything else humans now do from satellite systems to sequencing the genome. They think that because their interactions with computers are mostly mindless that modern computing must have been no great feat to build.

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#24

Post by MarcScott »

I read all of these novels as a teenager, and was oblivious to the Islamic references and influences. Even terms like "jihad" were alien to me at the time.

I'm now married into a Muslim family, and am much more culturally aware. I reread the books recently and was stunned by how many Islamic and Arabic terminology was prevalent in the text.

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#25

Post by glangdale »

s_Hogg wrote: post #18
_iyig wrote: post #3

I'm surprised they don't mention the Dune prequel titled "The Butlerian Jihad," written by Frank Herbert's son according to the former's notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

I'm not. Kevin J Anderson is basically the sci-fi equivalent of a grave robber, in my view.

Penny Arcade went a little further: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/15

(with justification, imo - the crudity and stupidity of the "Extended" Dune universe books warrants this level of snark)

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#26

Post by princeb »

i wonder if there was a general feeling in the 80s or so that the shrinking of the world - through the internet or whatever else technology people of the 80s may foresee - would cause the world views of different communities around the world to become more syncretized, in the same way you have various diaspora e.g. Chinese-American, Italian-American, Chinese-Indonesian cultures having plenty of cultural and religious adaptations, in addition to vestigial features, compared to the ancestral nation they left.

It certainly didn't feel like the world turned out that way by the '10s. Now more than ever I think it is unlikely that two different cultures are likely to blend, never mind two massively different ones like Buddhism and Islam (the zensunni) or Buddhism and Christianity (OC) as imagined in the Dune universe. You see gradual extinction/diminishing of a lot of cultures around the world - the disappearing toisanese communities of american chinatowns, arabization of south-east asian muslims, or the fading of austro/polynesian cultures as a dominant culture takes root. nothing truly merges unless there is a strong top down effort to ensure the survival of a marginal culture, and by corollary, religion.

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#27

Post by Anothernhym »

sn41 wrote: post #17

Not only are there Islamic themes, there are also Jewish themes. The name "Kwisatz Haderach" is based on Hebrew. (This is mentioned in the list.)

In the later books, perhaps the ones by Brian Herbert, they discover a planet of Jews, mostly unchanged for 15,000 years, except they have created some self-fashioned bene gesseret-like women.

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#28

Post by Anothernhym »

flukus wrote: post #11
egdod wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people (myself included) try to forget the Brian Herbert books ever existed.

The prelude books are OK and the sequels at least gave us some closure. The butlerian jihad trilogy was awful though, it was there to give some necessary background information for the end of the series but when you've got characters with ancestral memories and characters that can see through time that probably could have been done in a much better way.

Your post was downvoted based on peoples' silly biases against the idea of anybody but the original author contributing to a sci-fi universe.

Re: Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

#29

Post by Anothernhym »

Interesting words left out of his analysis that I caught in a recent re-read.

* Zurna: A Turkish clay Clarinet of sorts, somewhat of a grandchild of a similar Egyptian instrument. * Tabla: Egyptian word for drum (also Hindi, I'm not sure which one came first). Called Derbakki by Kurds/Druze/Syrians, Dumbek and Darbuka in Turkish, and Tarabukka by the Slavs.

Spice orgy. Not an Arabic term, but rather it seems to be a reference to an early Sufism ritual where Hashish would be taken before and during a week-long Sema (think non-stop whirling dervishes). Theoretically they were not sexual, but rather considered to be an "orgy of spirituality" brought on by long-term extortion of the senses (try spinning for 30 seconds .. imagine doing it for 24 hours).

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