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Dune, 50 years on

theguardian.com

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Re: Dune, 50 years on

#51

Post by Retric »

revscat wrote: post #7
camperman wrote: post #5

"If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism and the trauma of the second world war," Which it isn't, as Tolkien makes clear in the foreward.

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…

I think LoTR has much deeper connections to the First World War than the second. WWI is outside of our frame of reference, but for example LoTR was very much a ground war.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#52

Post by pyre »

rdtsc wrote: post #9
kepano wrote: post #3

Y'all have seen Jodorowsky's Dune, right? This documentary changed my life: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/reference

I saw that movie, I thought it was very good. Just curious, what did you like about it that it changed your life. Did you mean the how it was shot (i.e. impressed by director's work), Jodorowsky as a person, his story how he worked on Dune with other people (the complexity, dedication, the obsession), or Dune itself? I found interesting how Dune influenced all these other blockbusters that came after, most importantl…

> I found interesting how Dune influenced all these other blockbusters that came after, most importantly Star Wars.

Didn't it bring Geiger to the attention of Ridley Scott (Geiger's art sets the ascetic for Alien and its sequels)?

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#53

Post by proofofconcept »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #23
proofofconcept wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which (if any) of the Dune sequels are "good" is one of those Kirk vs. Pickard or Joel vs. Mike caliber sci-fi debates that gets unreasonably heated since people get very attached to their opinions on creative works that resonate with them on a personal level. (For the record, I don't really like the first two sequels but I really really love the 3rd-5th sequels; I realize it's a big ask of new readers to get that fa…

> For the record, I don't really like the first two sequels but I really really love the 3rd-5th sequels I'll admit to not having gotten that far; two bad sequels was enough for me to give up.

If you've already sloged through Dune Messiah and Children of Dune then you should consider giving God Emperor of Dune a chance because it's very different from the first two sequels. The setting has dramatically changed, so there is a lot of new worldbuilding; the overall narrative shifts to focus on a new central character; there is a return to the more philosophical content of the original as opposed to the strictly expository content of the first two sequels; and the writing itself is (in my opinion) much more lovingly crafted than the prose in the first two sequels which seemed to me as a reader as if it was rushed like he just wanted to spit it out and be done with that part of the narrative. I know I'm really just evangelizing on the basis of my personal reaction to the books but again, if you've alrady read the first two sequels, pop into a Barnes and Noble or something and give the first few chapters of God Emperor a chance.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#54

Post by tedunangst »

manigandham wrote: post #37
dogecoinbase wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An author fully understands their own work the way a programmer knows about every bug in code they've written. This is why we have QA and literary critics.

I don't get that analogy... wouldn't that be an author has basic writing mistakes and this is why we have book editors? How do bugs/mistakes change the intent and meaning of the actual work by the person creating it? When I create a software program, I don't expect people to come along and point out that I'm actually creating it for different reasons or a different purpose.

> When I create a software program, I don't expect people to come along and point out that I'm actually creating it for different reasons or a different purpose.

You must be new. :) It happens all the time.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#55

Post by rquantz »

pyre wrote: post #52
rdtsc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that movie, I thought it was very good. Just curious, what did you like about it that it changed your life. Did you mean the how it was shot (i.e. impressed by director's work), Jodorowsky as a person, his story how he worked on Dune with other people (the complexity, dedication, the obsession), or Dune itself? I found interesting how Dune influenced all these other blockbusters that came after, most importantl…

> I found interesting how Dune influenced all these other blockbusters that came after, most importantly Star Wars. Didn't it bring Geiger to the attention of Ridley Scott (Geiger's art sets the ascetic for Alien and its sequels)?

Heh, go google the difference between ascetic and aesthetic. I think you'll find it interesting.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#56

Post by jon-wood »

ableal wrote: post #42

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…

The shunning of computers is probably the aspect I found most interesting at first. Are the Butlerian Jihad books actually any good? I'd love to read more about it, but I don't want to ruin my love of the universe with some shoddy fan fiction, even if it is written by Herbert's son.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#57

Post by jon-wood »

ekianjo wrote: post #18
contingencies wrote: post #11

For the kids: though technically the RTS genre existed earlier in one or two games, it was essentially nearly singlehandedly popularized by Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty . The graphics and sound, probably inspired by the Amiga, were awesome in the era! So many elements of modern RTS were already present: multiple civilizations, each with specialist unit types. Level-oriented progression. Resource harvesting. Ter…

Erm. Let's not forget Dune the adventure game by Cryo as well, which was some kind of Adventure game mixed with real time strategy in the later parts of the game. Very well done.

That was the first non-platform game I really got into (before reading the books even), and I don't think anything since has managed to do strategy quite so well, with its blend of RTS and actual democracy in meeting others and negotiating with them.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#58

Post by brandonmenc »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #15

I thoroughly enjoyed Dune. It had an interesting story, set in an even more interesting world. However, it's also the kind of book that should never have had a sequel; other books in the series not only don't measure up, but actively undermine what made the original interesting. It's possible that other good stories could have been written in that universe, but they weren't. I highly recommend reading only the origin…

> it's also the kind of book that should never have had a sequel

The first two books are meant to be read as one. I recommend, at minimum, Dune and Dune Messiah.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#59

Post by brandonmenc »

veli_joza wrote: post #27

Another TV adaptation worth mentioning is SyFy's miniseries "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Frank Herbert's Children of Dune". They are much more faithful to books than Lynch's movie and better show the epic universe that Herbert imagined.

Absolutely disagree.

From the get, Paul is depicted as a petulant, unthoughtful child with no desire to move off-planet - which is the exact opposite of who he is in the books.

The fact that Paul is mature for his age is precisely why he takes the courses of action he does in the books.

David Lynch nailed that aspect.

Re: Dune, 50 years on

#60

Post by caseysoftware »

manigandham wrote: post #37
dogecoinbase wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An author fully understands their own work the way a programmer knows about every bug in code they've written. This is why we have QA and literary critics.

I don't get that analogy... wouldn't that be an author has basic writing mistakes and this is why we have book editors? How do bugs/mistakes change the intent and meaning of the actual work by the person creating it? When I create a software program, I don't expect people to come along and point out that I'm actually creating it for different reasons or a different purpose.

Have you ever heard of "talk to the duck"? It's the idea that you're so close to a problem and tied up in the details that you haven't stepped back to see the whole picture and truly understand what's going on. Or alternatively, have you ever been struggling with a concept and someone comes along and says "oh, you're building a [design pattern]" and suddenly it all makes sense?

While I'm not sure I agree with the Tolkien assessment above, I understand the sentiment of being too close to one's work.

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