NAMBLA And Sandworms....

I have found, despite Frank Herberts vast skills that "Dune" is trivial whereas I find such works as "Destination: Void" to be outstanding.

I had heard that was a good book.

has anyone read the new Dune books written by his sone and Kevin J. Anderson? While they aren't as good a writters as Frank was the books are still good.

Hunters of Dune is the brand new book and is the 7th in the series.

Apparently, the next one to be issued (almost complete now) will go back in time to the period before the first book. The narrative concentrates on the Harkonnens. Working title, "Republicans of Dune".

Reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker Blatham -



Cycloptichorn

The original Dune was brilliant.

The ones after, not so much.

Much of Herbert's other writing I find to be unreadable.

That's hilarious! Never saw that before.

I was as a kid.


Gone right off SF.


However, I hear there is a fabulous new Philip K Dick based film out....
"Through a Scanner Darkly"....anyone seen it?

That came out a few months ago didn't it? I think Neo was in it.

I read all of the Dune series which were available up until about 20 years ago. As is the case with many writers, i didn't consider it deathless prose, and found that as the series progressed, it became less and less well-written. But as is also the case with such series, i was compelled to keep reading because it was a good story. However, in the case of the Dune series, it was my experience that the quality of the story deteriorated, as well. I had thought that there already were seven Dune novels by the late 1980s, and that i had read them all--but that's been a long time ago, so maybe i had only read six.

One standard technique of both science fiction writers and of fantasy writers is to lean heavily on both the work of others, and on the weaving together of disparate ideas. The description of the "Houses" in Dune closely parallels the clans of the Daimyo of Japan in the period of the warring states in the 16th century which preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the early 17th century. The story of Dune itself, and its people and their "spice" monopoly can be seen as prophetic--at least to the extent that many critics see it as having predicted the consequences of the Arab oil embargo of 1973, which took place eight years after Herbert's novel was published. Of course, neither those critics have said, nor am i saying, that Herbert was exactly correct--after all, the Arabs did not become masters of the world because of the value of the petroleum they controlled.

The Bene Gesserit eugenic society which Herbert described was a novel invention, but the name comes from a Latin formula of the middle ages, when judges were appointed quamdiu se bene gesserit, "[for] so long as he is well-behaved," and which differed from judges or officials appointed at the pleasure of the local aristocrat or king (it meant that the judge could only be removed if it were shown that he had behaved illegally or unethically, and not simply because the nobleman or king was displeased with him). That concept of a society devoted to eugenic perfection of people intended to occupy leadership positions in society with a program designed to last over centuries was the most original idea which Herbert came up with in his series of novels, and probably accounts for the significance which that literary device attains to in the later novels.

I greatly enjoyed the novels in the beginning--in the end, i mostly kept reading them on the principle of wanting to finish the entire series. It was much like the decision i took in the late 1970s to read all of Dickens' novels, which proved to be, literarily, a much more rewarding experience.

Re: NAMBLA And Sandworms....


Oh, hooray for Beetlejuice quotes! Now I'm going to have to see that again soon.