61–70 of 109 posts
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This Immortal is terrific. And Zelazany in general. Dune and Lord of Light ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light ) are a few of the only SF books I re-read on a regular basis.
Seconded - Lord of Light is really awesome (and just as politically nuanced as Dune, but with better characters, IMO)
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.
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.
OTOH, the David Lynch movie was both good and original. However the bits that were good where not original, and the bits that were original were not good.
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…
The movie invariably invokes a feeling of pure creativity in me. It puts me in a fury, like some sort of creative berserker. I like watching it to conjure that feeling.
At the core it's Jodo's intensity that I love. He approaches every part of making this movie like it's the most important thing in the world and gets everyone around him to rise to that challenge.
His ability to put together a team of world-class people was also inspiring. I have tremendous respect for everyone he picked but I also find the subtext of his quest fascinating. It's never overtly mentioned but each person he convinces to join has a desire that he exploits. Pink Floyd wants fame, Dali wants money, Orson Welles wants food, etc. There's something powerful about aligning a creative team while being conscious of each individual's desires.
There are many great quotes throughout the movie. Two stick out: "Have the greatest ambition possible" which is always worth reminding yourself of. The second occurs near the end, when he realizes the movie won't get made. I forget the exact words, but roughly: "We make the movie: GREAT. We don't make the movie: GREAT." We all suffer crushing defeats, when something we wanted doesn't happen. I love that Jodorowsky approaches this failure with equal creative intensity, and drives that creativity into new outlets (e.g. The Incal). It's a great philosophy for dealing with failure.
There's a lot more I love about the doc, but I'll end on a personal note. The movie also hits a soft spot because I grew up living in Paris and now live in Los Angeles. Two cities where most of the action takes place. I always enjoy multilingual/multicultural movies especially when they engage both my French and American sides.
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.
Obligatory XKCD link - https://xkcd.com/304/
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> 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.
I agree. A little like the Ender's Game series. The first two are great, and the rest seem a little like nothing more than a revenue source. Obligatory XKCD link - https://xkcd.com/304/
"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.
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> 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 strict…
My English is a bit better now, and I like to think I've become a bit more patient ;) So perhaps I could attempt it again and see if I appreciate it more.
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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.
Often a bug comes into being because our ability to translate our intents into language is limited by our perceptions.
In code, this works out that we think we told the machine to do one thing, but in practice our instructions have side effects or unforeseen meanings in corner cases.
In language, this could be seen in two way. On one hand, even the best of us can't grasp all the possible meanings of our language and stories, especially given the fact that they will be read in a future that might create a whole new context for those words.
And, on the other hand, sometimes we are strangers to ourselves and are, to over simplify, acting on subconscious impulses that we don't fully understand.
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.
The Butlerian Jihad was very intriguing to me, as well. As a youth I found it hard to imagine such extremes that would bring about such a rejection of technology and it's benefits. At 45yo, however, I find the drawbacks of modern systems have become too 'costly' to my person and am embarking upon my own cleansing of over-bearing, insinuating devices in my life. Cupertino, Redmond or Mt. View(any Corp, for that matter) will never be allowed to become my masters, my moocher bff nor my nanny beyond a static, transactional relationship. Despite what the marketeers would have me believe, they are doing me no favors entrenching further dependence to their systems. Long live the fighters!