Dune

[Buster's Uncle]

Love it, hate it, nobody can deny that Dune is an all-time classic of SF.

Dune's not a member of this forum - let's talk about 'im... 

Other books in the series, the movie, the miniseries, the prequels/sequels - nothing's off limits except hateful talk about the authors of the nuDune.  (Criticism of the work and the understanding displayed therein of Frank Herbert's opus is not hateful.  Questioning whether the notes really exist might be okay if you don't get carried away.)

[Geo]

The WorShip Trilogy ain't bad either. And it's placed on a waterworld, so definitely a !

[Buster's Uncle]

I liked those all right; but boy, I didn't care much for Destination Void, from which they sprang.

..................

Funny thing - while discussing the Children of Dune miniseries with Valka, I realized another pretty dumb continuity error in the book. 

Alia is explicitly 15 in Dune Messiah.  At the end of the book, Ghanima and Leto are born.  In Children of Dune, when Jessica returns to Arrakis after many years' absence, she instantly sees the subtle signs that Alia has been committing the unpardonable Bene Gesserit sin of manipulating her metabolism and internal chemistry to not age.  ...

...

... The twins are explicitly nine.  That makes Alia 24.  I call bullcrap on that right there; at 24, she wouldn't bother, and I don't care how good Jessica's Reverend Mother observational powers are, it wouldn't show. 

Worse, towards the end of the book, Alia is starting to get fat from the Baron's eating.  Really, if she can prevent her own aging, she could much more easily lay in bed eating lard 20 hours a day and never gain an ounce.

[Geo]

I liked those all right; but boy, I didn't care much for Destination Void, from which they sprang.

It was never available to me, so can't tell.

Funny thing - while discussing the Children of Dune miniseries with Valka, I realized another pretty dumb continuity error in the book. 

Alia is explicitly 15 in Dune Messiah.  At the end of the book, Ghanima and Leto are born.  In Children of Dune, when Jessica returns to Arrakis after many years' absence, she instantly sees the subtle signs that Alia has been committing the unpardonable Bene Gesserit sin of manipulating her metabolism and internal chemistry to not age.  ...

...

... The twins are explicitly nine.  That makes Alia 24.  I call bullcrap on that right there; at 24, she wouldn't bother, and I don't care how good Jessica's Reverend Mother observational powers are, it wouldn't show. 

Worse, towards the end of the book, Alia is starting to get fat from the Baron's eating.  Really, if she can prevent her own aging, she could much more easily lay in bed eating lard 20 hours a day and never gain an ounce.

People living in arid circumstances are known to look older, sooner.
And are you a Reverend Brother to disdain a Bene's capabilities? 
Chances are Alia/Baron's didn't bother with their appearance anymore at that point in the novel?

[Buster's Uncle]

Destination Void is often referenced as a major work, so it was surprising to me that it was so hard to find - and more surprising that it sucked.


All you say about the issue I raise could be true, but really?  Noticing a healthy 24 year-old isn't aging?  Really?  Not unless she still looks 15, which everyone would have noticed, her being the Regent ruler of the known universe and all.

I don't think she'd so much been going outside and observing freman traditions for a long time at that point, the whole thing being supposed to have gone all wrong years before Paul wandered off, and all.  Everybody was already getting decadent and water-fat at the beginning of Messiah, and the bad trends had gotten badder in the Alia regime. 

I don't buy any of it.

In fact, I have a little trouble buying the possessing Baron being so sloppy, but we are talking about a much younger Baron than we knew in Dune, from as far back as however old Jessica was then, and his control was poor over Alia, who was strong and not inherently bad - lots of crazy in the mix, there.

[Sigma]

You're running up against the main problem of Children of Dune, which is that it is the worst of Herbert's Dune books. It's too long and lacks the core focus that the first two novels have, plus it's chock full of dumb stuff like Baron Harkonnen being all up in Alia's head and Leto II and Ghanima's quasi-incestuous relationship.

[Buster's Uncle]

Really?  I thought it had a lot more spirit than Messiah.  Most people hate God Emperor more.  Children was sloppy compared to the first and 4-6th book, but I admire the book's moxie.

[Valka]

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[Buster's Uncle]

You should see some of the stories in the Dune section of fanfiction.net... 

Speaking as an almost OG Trekker, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that we shouldn't...

[Sigma]

The twins in the miniseries were far too old, but I'm guessing the producers figured the audience would never accept 9-year-old kids being that mature, and would find the implied incest scenes unacceptable.

The same thing happened with both Dune movies though, where the main character is older than in the books, presumably because the perception was that audiences wouldn't believe a 15 year old as the protagonist.

What I would really dream of is HBO giving Dune the Game of Thrones treatment, since it's pretty clear that it doesn't work as a movie, and SyFy is incapable of producing decent programming anymore.  The only thing that the miniseries (both of them) did right was how they interpreted weirding.

[Valka]

Deleted

[Buster's Uncle]

Leto took good care of his people, and they loved him for it and it gained him a powerfully positive reputation - you know my views about all that.  Loyalty must flow in all directions.  When it does, it is unshakably powerful.

[Unorthodox]

. . . . . . . .

I still see the sound weapons as more interesting than space magic and daggers. 

/haven't read the books.
/haven't heard a convincing argument TO read the books. 
/not a huge scifi book person. 

[Buster's Uncle]

[argument]The books are really good.  The books are much better than the adaptions.[/argument]  It is that simple.




Valka, Dune was a major, MAJOR influence on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, so there are a lot of fans here...

[Unorthodox]

Yeah, yeah, Dune is the LOTR (which I don't like, btw, but did manage to get through) of space. 

If anything it's more unapproachable than LOTR, simply because it practically has it's own language from the outset.  (didn't say I haven't TRIED to read the thing)