101–109 of 109 posts
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Heh, go google the difference between ascetic and aesthetic. I think you'll find it interesting.
Or he already knows it and was auto-corrected on a phone or tablet.
The writer missed one of the most interesting points of the Dune future history: it is one that rejected machine intelligence, and relies only on human abilities (however augmented by training, drugs and mystical handwaving). The original Dune books mentioned, as part of the past, a war against AIs called the Butlerian Jihad, which humans somehow won. Frank Herbert's son later wrote it up in three prequel books. This…
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The sequels don't undermine the original story, they expand on it. A lot of people think Dune is a straightforward hero story, with Paul Atreides the "good" hero, but actually (edit: I should say, according to Herbert and taking into account the later novels) it is the story of the terrible damage a "hero" can cause to a culture and society. "No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall in…
Agreed. My interpretation is that Paul actually failed completely as a hero.
But my enduring memory was of a flawed young man becoming overly enamoured with his new messianic role, and making some choices that were questionable.
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Agreed. My interpretation is that Paul actually failed completely as a hero.
I read the books 15 years ago (IIRC, the first 4 or 5), and need to revisit. But my enduring memory was of a flawed young man becoming overly enamoured with his new messianic role, and making some choices that were questionable.
Dune is a fine work and stands on its own pretty well, but Kunzru gets fixated on the first one and misses out on the depth of the latter books. The first 3 (including Dune) explore the Muad'Dib's rise to power and his new imperial system, book 4 is his son's very long reign and books 5-6 explore the dissolution of that system over the centuries. The story arc spans thousands of years. The central theme as I'd see it…
That is exactly what Herbert set out to write. In his own words:
> I conceived of a long novel, the whole trilogy as one book about the messianic convulsions that periodically overtake us. Demagogues, fanatics, con-game artists, the innocent and the not-so-innocent bystanders-all were to have a part in the drama. This grows from my theory that superheroes are disastrous for humankind. Even if we find a real hero (whatever-or whoever-that may be), eventually fallible mortals take over the power structure that always comes into being around such a leader.
> Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.
From Dune Genesis by Frank Herbert:
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Yes, it's the highlight of Cryo's output. Everything from this game is great from the music by Stephane Picq to the mixture of adventure game, trading and strategy. Lost Eden follows a similar concept but it's nowhere as good. Dune 2 by Westwood which came out around the same time was also very innovative for the time and is really the father of all RTS.
Yeah, Picq even made a music CD based on his music from Dune, and it's really good.
Dune is one of my favourite books and I actually enjoyed David Lynch's film. I would love to see a modern cinema adaptation, but with the current political climate it might be impossible to make a movie about a messiah leading religious fanatics on a jihad against an empire for control of the commodity on which all civilization is dependent.
Most classic sci-fi is deeply anti-liberal. Liberal utopian stuff like Star Trek is the exception. Dune is loaded with implicit acceptance of aristocracy and religion.
I thought it odd that the article did not mention the SciFi mini-series Dune and Children of Dune that came out a while back [1][2]. These were actually quite good, much better than the David Lynch version. [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/ [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287839/?ref_=tt_rec_tt
I haven't seen the second, but the first was...unfortunate in its casting, I suppose; it got everything else pretty much right, but the performances were so leaden that I've only been able to watch it the once.
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I'm not sure I agree with Tolkien on this front. Yes, I know: I'm disagreeing with an author's assessment of his own work. But authors are necessarily a part of their environment. It is -- literally -- inescapable. The good Professor was directly involved in the first World War, and the second was at his doorstep. His aversion to modernity could have led to him simply denying a a conscious connection between those re…
What Tolkien was largely dismissing is the notion that his world was a direct allegory. He readily acknowledges that the comraderie and sacrifice he experienced in the trenches of WWI manifests itself in Frodo and his companions, as well as the doomed but defiant determination of the people of England/Gondor in the face of assured destruction, etc. So there are themes that bind the two worlds but he was adamantntly d…
The power of the ring is primarily to delay the inevitable and it corrupts all who cannot accept that.