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Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

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Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#91

Post by balamatom »

zabzonk wrote: post #82
keepamovin wrote: post #67

I'm convinced Herbert had some deep knowledge of psi phenomena. His descriptions of truthsayers reading people, timelines, race consciousness, and prescience are very similar to real experiences. His emphasis that it emerges through a combination of genetics and training of subtle awareness, plus the suggestion compounds could provide access to a state that could be sustained without them - also ring very true. The e…

i just got downvoted for saying elsewhere that this "needs an /s" - but this either does, or you need some help.

I was walking by the sea the other day and saw a man drowning.

"You need help," I said helpfully. Mercifully, even!

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#92

Post by cs02rm0 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #3
alabastervlog wrote: post #2

When I finally got around to reading Seven Pillars , I wasn't too far in before I was convinced Herbert had the book on his desk the whole time he was writing Dune . So many minor similarities, little scenes that don't quite match up but if you squint they do. Even the arc toward eventually committing war crimes, while seeking some great end for the people he's leading, feels like a connection. But also little stuff…

What's ironic is how people often point to plot points in many franchises (Star Wars, GoT, etc) as being derivative of Dune... Yet Dune itself is fairly derivative of other works

On Star Wars and derivations... Bertram Thomas' Arabia Felix, about his crossing of the Empty Quarter, listed some names of stars, transliterated from the arabic.

The north star, was written as Al Jedi... the Jedi. It goes a step further, in that it's arabic which translates as the kid (as in a goat, but the same way Hans refers to Luke).

I'm not sure how much is coincidence, but reading about Thomas preparing to travel by starlight, it struck me as being remarkably reminiscent. I guess there are no original stories.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#93

Post by balamatom »

zabzonk wrote: post #27
greenheadedduck wrote: post #16

[flagged]

Compared with what, for god's sake? Explosions, mad Arabs, trekking across the horrible desert, dim British superiors doing the dim British thing, dubious Turkish sexual practices, etc. This is boring??? Though I must admit O'Toole does camp it up a bit too much.

Well I can certainly imagine the kind of person who sees writing about such things as boring, and do wish that kind of view had more sway over people.

Warfare, spycraft, and statecraft are, on some level, immensely stupid affairs; that's exactly why one of them even gets termed intelligence.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#94

Post by simiones »

npodbielski wrote: post #87
tsimionescu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has relatively little relevance to Dune, which is basically the story of how the worse dictator in history rose to power (only to be surpassed by his son's 1200 year reign of tyranny).

Very interesting point of view, considering how Baron Harkonnen was depicted in Dune. I mean, was the life in Empire better or worse after he took power? Did life of common citizen changed much? My view was that he basically just replaced Emperor by himself and most of things was still the same. He even married the princess just for pretence. My view was that Herbert was trying to show how we could try to direct huma…

The fremen jihad killed 61 billion people across the empire, including the sterilization of 90 whole planets, per details in Dune Messiah (quoting from a wiki, I don't have this kind of memory). It may be that life in the empire after this was over returned more or less to the same as what was there before, for those that survived - though I don't think the books go into any significant detail. Life on Dune was definitely better than it had been under the Harkonnens, but this is not necessarily true across the empire.

> Was not this the real moral of the story? Resist stagnant empire and explore the universe?

I think this is somewhat the general idea, but more specific. His main message is that charismatic leaders, even the ones with the best of intentions as Paul certainly was (and Leto II, though in a more complex way), are extremely dangerous and should not be trusted or followed. The empire overall would have been an unquestionably better place if Paul had been killed in the desert (except that perhaps the Bene Gesserit would have led people in an even worse direction if their plans had succeeded at the time). Arrakis itself would have been in a better shape if the fremen had risen up and overthrown their oppressors, but had otherwise stopped at that.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#95

Post by [deleted] »

tsimionescu wrote: post #57
ViktorRay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Fac... A tale as old as time

This has relatively little relevance to Dune, which is basically the story of how the worse dictator in history rose to power (only to be surpassed by his son's 1200 year reign of tyranny).

[deleted]

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#96

Post by [deleted] »

llm_trw wrote: post #81
throwup238 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even more stark the further back you go. When the printing press was invented, it didn’t usher in a new era of creativity but instead the first few centuries resembled modern Hollywood: shameless sequels and reboots. By far the most popular books were translations of Greek classics and rote derivatives of the Arthurian legends. It wasn’t until the first iterations of copyright and a few other cultural shifts tha…

That's the third major use of the printing press. The first was for catholic indulgences. The second was for religious propaganda during the European wars of religion.

[deleted]

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#97

Post by Angostura »

defrost wrote: post #40
jhbadger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the references in Star Wars to spice (spice mines of Kessel in the original, a reference to striking spice miners in Attack of the Clones) is pretty much only from Dune. Unless they were mining oregano or something.

The Dutch East Indies was literally "mining" spice ( cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric ) from SE Asia for European consumption and packing ship with gold bullion in exchange. There were many actual "spice wars" fought in the region to wipe out competing crops, to build alliances, and later betray those local allies, etc.

Harvesting, perhaps. I’ve never heard it referred to as mining

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#98

Post by zabzonk »

balamatom wrote: post #91
zabzonk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i just got downvoted for saying elsewhere that this "needs an /s" - but this either does, or you need some help.

I was walking by the sea the other day and saw a man drowning. "You need help," I said helpfully. Mercifully, even!

perhaps he was just waving

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#99

Post by syockit »

xxs wrote: post #61
pepa65 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that wasn't mining at all, except in a remotely metaphorical sense.

nowadays (past few decades) 'mine' (and farm) are often used in place of gather, esp. when it comes to game communities, e.g. 'mine' wood in 'warcraft III'. Farm any sort of materials, equipment, reputation, etc. So I suppose it's not that far fetched.

But definitely not in the parlance of late 70s when Star Wars premiered.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#100

Post by balamatom »

zabzonk wrote: post #98
balamatom wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was walking by the sea the other day and saw a man drowning. "You need help," I said helpfully. Mercifully, even!

perhaps he was just waving

Might be. That'd certainly explain the ambulance I saw there on my way back, the dripping wet shape on the stretcher, covered with some sort of tarp (which I thought I recognized as torn from a nearby beach bar that'd been closed for the winter, emergency services over here being underfunded as they are.) But idk, they might've been picking up a beached dolphin or something. (With an ambulance?!)
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