Amph Sands of Arrakis: The Works of Frank Herbert

I hope that Robert Jordan's wife can pull off something like this with his Wheel of Time series. She was supposed to finish it if he died before completion.

 

I noticed that too, Jill. Frankly, though, I also thought that the handling of several characters, notably Scytale, was pretty implausible. The book lost momentum in the last, oh, 150 pages, and then it became more about "we're wrapping up everything neatly because we have to" than anything that actually made sense for the characters to do.

 

Sandworms of Dune was a pretty good, but the ending was a bit too clean and was kind of odd.

 

Thats a nice way of putting it...it really made absolutely no sense at all.

 

the irony of it all is we desparately want a satisfying ending and when we get it it leaves us unfulfilled.

 

Although, there were no non-human civilizations in the Dune series because Frank Herbert wanted to write about humanity's relationship with itself -- how we treat, handle, and manipulate each other -- and compare it to how we relate to our environment: where do we make accomodations, where do we surrender, where do we treat the other as a thing to use, and where do we respect the other?

Frank was certainly able to create unique and viable aliens, with distinctive and non-human motivations...consider the Gowachin and Pan-Spechi (spelling?) of his ConSentiency, not to mention the Calebans and Taprisiots.

But when Frank brought an alien into a plot, it was to create a distinctly non-human point of view. He didn't use aliens to sneak in a story about human relationships. In fact, Frank goes just the opposite in Dune -- when he wants humanity to deal with an alien point-of-view, he uses humans who have been so changed, that they don't think like humans anymore. I think this could explain why I find the characters in the first Dune novel rather unlikeable, but still engaging.

 

Ok, I'll say that I'm only 3/4 of the way through "Messiah", so I won't get into the broader discussions yet. I may just hit a couple of things I noticed, and if there's something that counters what I observed later in the series...well I guess I'll come across it! I came into "Dune" just a few weeks ago, so I'm off to a late start.

That being said, I agree that the "homophobic" aspects of Baron (a character I oddly enjoyed reading about) took me out of the book at first. I even had the same thoughts about the era the book was written in, initially. However, as I read on, it really seemed that the "gay" aspect of his personality may not have been a preference as we think of it, but rather an expression of his penchant for equal opportunity violation. This wasn't a guy that was off wining and dining other gentleman - he was getting off on raping slaves.

With those thoughts coupled with the fact that he produced offspring the old fashioned way, I think we're not looking into the mind of an angry homosexual, but a sadist who would use all the methods available to him to humiliate a victim - regardless of what sex they were.

Kinda like Jabba. I mean, I doubt there's a whole lot of hot Huttese 'females' out there that wear fetish bikini gear to pick up guys - he just liked seeing creatures utterly degraded, whether being licked in a bikini or hanging on a wall.

(You see what I did, there?)

 

Hello everyone...

I read the first three Dune books in one of those "I'm on antibiotics and codeine and I can't leave the apartment, let's see what my roommates have on their bookshelves" reading binges last fall.

Let me just say that it lent itself very well to that!

One thing I haven't seen mentioned much on this thread are the ways Herbert seemed - at least to me - to take a very weird mix of concepts with a great deal of bearing on real life, run them through a mental meat grinder, and spit them out in the oddest, oddest combinations. Eugenics, religious wars, non-renewable resources coming to an end, climate change (in the 60's mind you!) and some kind of theory that humans have a deep-seated need to be dominated... they're all in there somewhere. My codeine-impaired mind was blown. What were your favorite trippy real life connections to Dune?


As for Baron Harkonnen - I really didn't get the feeling that he was supposed to be "GAY!" as such. It seemed more like that was another demonstration of his boundless appetites for every pleasure, just like his power-mongering and his pounds and pounds of fat.

Of course Herbert did give him a pedophilic streak for shock value, but that's not really homosexuality.

 

As to characterisation:
I found the characters to be vivid and engaging, though definitely weird. But they were still 100% believable. I don't know what Herbert was intending to do, but I really liked them, even though they were a little unsettling--or maybe atypical is a better word. No, they didn't seem quite human, but at the same time, they played archetypal roles that capture the essence of humanness. They sought justice and love, liberty and compassion, as well as power, ambition and corruption.

 

This should be sorta interesting.

http://www.dunenovels.com/books/paul.html

[image=http://www.dunenovels.com/covers/Paul.jpg]

 

Interesting. I wonder when this comes out.

 

September 16th I think. It says it somewhere in that link.

 

Ah, yes. I see it now.

 

Nope.

 

No.

 

Yes.

What are we going to see next from The Hacks?
"Poodle of Dune" - a trilogy based on the dog from the David Lynch movie?
"Fenric of Dune"?
"Dunes of Dune" - told from the POV of the sand!

BH should have known better.
A disgrace.

 

I have to agree, Kevin Anderson leaves something to be desired, IMO.
But to each his own.

 

indeed..

 

is this the dune thread?
wasn't there another one, or is this one it?

whatever, so anyway, this summer i took dune back up.
i read the first dune a few years back and i stood behind my convictions that the 1984 david lynch movie was better than the book. okay, i know. but this summer i started reading dune messiah, then children, then God Emperor and finally i re-read Dune. wow. it was friggin' fantastic and i can't believe that i ever thought i liked the movie better. i still hold the movie in high esteem, but that book is fantastic. yesterday i started reading heretics and i plan to have finished the entire (non-kevin j. andersone) series before summer is over.

anyway, i have a good question:

ya hya chouda...

am i supposed to say that like YAH Hee-Ah Chow-who-DA or something else?

 

I think it goes like that, althoguh I've always pronounced it without 'w' in Chow; like Yah Hee-Ah Cho-who-da.

 

I liked this interview.
http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780765312945&m_type=4&m_contentid=7653#cmscontent

 

I've read most of the Dune books and I have a few in the reading pile. Does anyone have a list (or a link to one) that puts the books in chronological order story-wise? (In other words, in the order that the events take place, not the order in which they were written).

 

Try this one at the official Dune website.



BTW, I've been considering getting Hunters and Sandworms for some time, but my dislike of The Butlerian Jihad has been preventing me. The fact that the story (what I've heard of it, anyway) sounds like something Supershadow cooked up isn't helping, either.

Now, the prequel trilogy (a.k.a. Prelude to Dune) I liked. They were a bit fannish, but that didn't bother me. TBJ was also fannish, but they didn't appeal to the sort of fan I am, I guess.

So . . . should I get the two sequels or not?

- lazy

 

Thanks lazy!