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mysterious frankie
Jan 11, 2009

This displeases Dev- ..van. Shut up.

Tertius Oculum posted:

Yo can I just get an Arnold Palmer?

It’s a Space Arnold Palmer though so it makes you a superhuman golfer that can perform amazing feats of Golf Math, the math one does with golf.

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Honest Thief
Jan 11, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 24 days!

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

i don't mean to get all political, but i think it's interesting dune appeals to people with wildly different political views, while i've understood herbert to be pretty conservative or at least libertarian minded in a very pacific northwestern kind of way. i would probably guess it's due to the intensity of his vision, which is probably the most we can ask of a writer (along with being, like, not a lunatic)

wasn't god emperor a big brother type of analogy?

Jewmanji
Dec 28, 2003
God Emperor is so weird. It blows my mind that it’s many people’s favorite entry. I admit the whole golden path thing went totally over my head at the end so that was a bit deflating, but Leto’s extemporizing gets so so so tiresome, especially when you know that it’s all sort of bland platitudes. It’s also real weird to have the book be almost entirely centered on the antagonist, and give short shrift to Siona. The balance was off.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

Jewmanji posted:

God Emperor is so weird. It blows my mind that it’s many people’s favorite entry. I admit the whole golden path thing went totally over my head at the end so that was a bit deflating, but Leto’s extemporizing gets so so so tiresome, especially when you know that it’s all sort of bland platitudes. It’s also real weird to have the book be almost entirely centered on the antagonist, and give short shrift to Siona. The balance was off.

By most literary measures God Emperor is not good, but it is weird, and genuine weirdness is about as uncommon in scifi as good writing.

Hodgepodge
Jan 29, 2006
Probation
Can't post for 273 days!

Honest Thief posted:

wasn't god emperor a big brother type of analogy?

he gives humanity the big daddy perfect god-king we always wanted for 10,000 years so we collectively get so sick of it that rejecting authoritarianism becomes etched into our genes

sadly, he would probably have voted trump had he lived. you see the signs of chud brain rot in the later books, like a major character being a rabbi because judaism is so awesome it hasn't changed in 20,000 years

his gender essentialism is mostly saved from being totally loathesome by the fact that he thinks women are better than men, but he's also only able to write exactly one female character and it shows when he tries to have multiple women as viewpoint characters

Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Feb 4, 2020

Mulva
Sep 13, 2011
It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.
Also the dude needed to stop trying to make Duncan Idaho happen.

I think by the last books his relevance was he was immune to the antagonists magic gently caress powers or some poo poo. Like why is this nobody that never accomplished anything in thousands and thousands of years of clones still showing up in the future?

WarMECH
Dec 23, 2004
If Herbert stayed alive long enough to finish the final book in the DUNE saga we would have learned that it was, after all, the story of one Duncan Idaho and the friends he made along the way.

sean10mm
Jun 29, 2005

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Hodgepodge posted:

he gives humanity the big daddy perfect god-king we always wanted for 10,000 years so we collectively get so sick of it that rejecting authoritarianism becomes etched into our genes

sadly, he would probably have voted trump had he lived. you see the signs of chud brain rot in the later books, like a major character being a rabbi because judaism is so awesome it hasn't changed in 20,000 years

his gender essentialism is mostly saved from being totally loathesome by the fact that he thinks women are better than men, but he's also only able to write exactly one female character and it shows when he tries to have multiple women as viewpoint characters

He also seemed to think that if male power fantasy characters existed, the result would be a complete horrorshow for both themselves and everybody else (Paul, Leto II.)

At least until you get to the later books where Miles Teg is awesome at everything and dies and is brought back to do more cool poo poo, I think.

sean10mm fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Feb 4, 2020

Zurui
Apr 20, 2005
Even now...



Miles Teg's only flaw is that he has no flaws.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Teg is never allowed to have any real power. He's always a tool of the Bene Gesserit. He's who they were hoping Paul and Leto II would be.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Mulva posted:

Also the dude needed to stop trying to make Duncan Idaho happen.

I think by the last books his relevance was he was immune to the antagonists magic gently caress powers or some poo poo. Like why is this nobody that never accomplished anything in thousands and thousands of years of clones still showing up in the future?

It's been years and years since I read em, but don't the later books imply that the Tleilaxu were mucking about with the thousands of years worth of clone cells they had from him? Or is that only in the KJA abominations?

I do like how mundane Idaho is. He's just a chill dude, and every godlike superhuman needs a chill dude to be chill with.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

Mulva posted:

Also the dude needed to stop trying to make Duncan Idaho happen.

I think by the last books his relevance was he was immune to the antagonists magic gently caress powers or some poo poo. Like why is this nobody that never accomplished anything in thousands and thousands of years of clones still showing up in the future?

Aside from being a measuring stick for how much things have changed between books, the joke with the character is that he's supposedly a one-of-a-kind bad rear end knife fighter and that fact is never relevant. In Dune he's gets to be cool for a hot second before being shot. In Messiah, he's only useful to anyone because Paul liked the guy when he was alive the first time. In Children, he provokes a fight, which would be the thing he's good at, only to purposefully get himself killed to provoke a political situation. In the later books, he's useful primarily because he's been cloned enough that he's become a well understood template human.

He's supposedly this exemplar of human skill but he is always someone else's tool.

Edit: I probably should have spoilered this.

Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Feb 4, 2020

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

I liked the part of the book where Teg goes super saiyan then spends like eight hours at an all you can eat buffet because calories exist and he burned a million of them

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

RBA Starblade posted:

I liked the part of the book where Teg goes super saiyan then spends like eight hours at an all you can eat buffet because calories exist and he burned a million of them

Was that the part where like while he's there some dude's babbling to him for hours about his new plant house and how it's taking too long to grow and then it ends with him just getting sick of everyone and massacring everyone?

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Neo Rasa posted:

Was that the part where like while he's there some dude's babbling to him for hours about his new plant house and how it's taking too long to grow and then it ends with him just getting sick of everyone and massacring everyone?

I don't remember that but I wouldn't be surprised

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

While the books certainly convey the impression that Frank Herbert's mind was disintegrating from heavy drug use, and that assumption would be reasonable for a new age sci-fi author who gained acclaim in the late 60s and then coasted on it through the 70s and 80s, I can't find any evidence for that supposition. In fact Frank Herbert didn't start making real money off of Dune until the '70s. He wrote something like 20 novels over his career and some of them were apparently pretty bad.

Oh well!

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

Arglebargle III posted:

While the books certainly convey the impression that Frank Herbert's mind was disintegrating from heavy drug use, and that assumption would be reasonable for a new age sci-fi author who gained acclaim in the late 60s and then coasted on it through the 70s and 80s, I can't find any evidence for that supposition. In fact Frank Herbert didn't start making real money off of Dune until the '70s. He wrote something like 20 novels over his career and some of them were apparently pretty bad.

Oh well!

The Godmakers is a fascinating early work of his because its basically "what if Dune, except written in the style of Asimov's kid books."

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Hodgepodge posted:

he gives humanity the big daddy perfect god-king we always wanted for 10,000 years so we collectively get so sick of it that rejecting authoritarianism becomes etched into our genes

sadly, he would probably have voted trump had he lived. you see the signs of chud brain rot in the later books, like a major character being a rabbi because judaism is so awesome it hasn't changed in 20,000 years

his gender essentialism is mostly saved from being totally loathesome by the fact that he thinks women are better than men, but he's also only able to write exactly one female character and it shows when he tries to have multiple women as viewpoint characters
He had two Bene Gesserit people in an alien planet two hundred centuries on take a moment to bitch about the liberals. That's what took me out of that one.

David D. Davidson
Nov 17, 2012

Orca lady?

Strom Cuzewon posted:

It's been years and years since I read em, but don't the later books imply that the Tleilaxu were mucking about with the thousands of years worth of clone cells they had from him? Or is that only in the KJA abominations?

I do like how mundane Idaho is. He's just a chill dude, and every godlike superhuman needs a chill dude to be chill with.

Yeah the Duncan in Heretics and Chapterhouse is supposed to be ghola made of the cells of all the other Duncans.

Spun Dog
Sep 21, 2004


Smellrose
I never could get into anything after the first book.

sean10mm
Jun 29, 2005

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Spun Dog posted:

I never could get into anything after the first book.

My vague recollection is that the style of the books changed a lot after the first one, but it's been forever since I've read any of them but the first one.

I think my reaction to the sequels was that they were OK time wasters but not on par with the first one.

e: Apparently the stuff with his kid's name on it is all garbage for morons but I never read any of it.

Jewmanji
Dec 28, 2003
I think I would recommend Messiah to anyone who really enjoyed Dune. If only because the Tleilaxu are so neat. It’s also by far the shortest in the series and the most direct sequel. And if you really enjoyed Messiah I’d recommend Children, but after that you’re on your own.

Jewmanji
Dec 28, 2003
Sorry, double post

C-Euro
Mar 20, 2010

:science:
Soiled Meat
Messiah is good if you liked Paul's metaphysical train of thought in the original Dune, because there's like twice as much of it and in a shorter book.

Zurui
Apr 20, 2005
Even now...



Yeah, Messiah is barely even a novel - more of a connecting story between Dune and Children. It's a good quick read but doesn't function well on its own. Children is a great third act but you can see the wheels coming off the wagon (especially in Alia's bits).

TheOmegaWalrus
Feb 3, 2007

by Hand Knit
I see the first two books as pretty much equal in quality, with a slow drop-off afterwards that leads to a nose-dive when the Sons of Herbert take over.

The first book, along with many other plots, is about Paul's ascension into godhood through spice, religion and prescience. What is god, and can man understand or even become him?

The second book is a mirror of the first, but in the complete opposite direction. How does one go about killing an omnipotent god?

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Messiah is where we get most of the cool stuff on prescience, religious fanatacism, and Paul losing control of the forces he unleashes. Which is what Herbert and his fans tend to describe as "the point" of Dune.

Except its not in Dune. Its in Messiah. If you hear about this things and only read Dune you're gonna be dissapointed. It's like telling a joke without the punchline.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

The "prescient trap" is a pretty clever way of locking Paul down.

Jewmanji
Dec 28, 2003

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Messiah is where we get most of the cool stuff on prescience, religious fanatacism, and Paul losing control of the forces he unleashes. Which is what Herbert and his fans tend to describe as "the point" of Dune.

Except its not in Dune. Its in Messiah. If you hear about this things and only read Dune you're gonna be dissapointed. It's like telling a joke without the punchline.

That’s not true. There’s probably a half dozen times in Dune where the jihad is invoked and Paul realizes he’s powerless to stop it. Messiah definitely addresses it more head on, but it’s mentioned as early as Paul’s first meeting with Stilgar in Sietch Tabr

Bubbacub
Apr 17, 2001

Zurui posted:

Yeah, Messiah is barely even a novel - more of a connecting story between Dune and Children. It's a good quick read but doesn't function well on its own. Children is a great third act but you can see the wheels coming off the wagon (especially in Alia's bits).

Yup. I basically consider Dune to be a trilogy, the rest of the books are sorta separate. Messiah is such a great followup to Dune, Herbert dealt with the sci-fi problem of what you do with an omnipotent hero in a fun way that I haven't seen matched in any other series.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Jewmanji posted:

That’s not true. There’s probably a half dozen times in Dune where the jihad is invoked and Paul realizes he’s powerless to stop it. Messiah definitely addresses it more head on, but it’s mentioned as early as Paul’s first meeting with Stilgar in Sietch Tabr

I wasn't counting that, cos it's entirely prediction/prescience. None of the jihad going awry really had any emotional impact on me until Messiah.

Schwarzwald posted:

Aside from being a measuring stick for how much things have changed between books, the joke with the character is that he's supposedly a one-of-a-kind bad rear end knife fighter and that fact is never relevant. In Dune he's gets to be cool for a hot second before being shot. In Messiah, he's only useful to anyone because Paul liked the guy when he was alive the first time. In Children, he provokes a fight, which would be the thing he's good at, only to purposefully get himself killed to provoke a political situation. In the later books, he's useful primarily because he's been cloned enough that he's become a well understood template human.

He's supposedly this exemplar of human skill but he is always someone else's tool.

Edit: I probably should have spoilered this.

I just remembered that Idaho tries to take down Moneo, and this 60 year old bureaucrat completely clowns on him without breaking a sweat.

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
Didn't Herbert basically write Dune and Messiah together?

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

I wasn't counting that, cos it's entirely prediction/prescience. None of the jihad going awry really had any emotional impact on me until Messiah.

Yeah, but the prescience is part of the point. Paul foresees that the jihad will be a calamity and even thinks he should try to stop it from happening, but he doesn't because he's as caught up in the legend he's building as the Fremen are.

Messiah confirms that Paul was right and is decent enough to be wracked with guilt over it. The jihad doesn't go awry. It goes as planned.

TheOmegaWalrus
Feb 3, 2007

by Hand Knit
I'm skeptical that even the second half of this movie will get made, given Blade Runner's performance. The first half will likely be a epic and beautiful bomb, leaving people to wonder what could have been. It'll be Jorodowsky's Dune all over again.

That said, I'm probably more interested in seeing Dune:Messiah adapted to the big screen than the first novel. Face dancers, stone burners, the Tleilax, and omnipotent intrigue all backdropped by an unstoppable holy war.

It takes the themes of the original, turns it on it's head and somehow amplifies the crazy all the way to 11.

e: Gholas.

TheOmegaWalrus fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Feb 6, 2020

Jewmanji
Dec 28, 2003

TheOmegaWalrus posted:

I'm skeptical that even the second half of this movie will get made, given Blade Runner's performance. The first half will likely be a epic and beautiful bomb, leaving people to wonder what could have been. It'll be Jorodowsky's Dune all over again.

That said, I'm probably more interested in seeing Dune:Messiah adapted to the big screen than the first novel. Face dancers, stone burners, the Tleilax, and omnipotent intrigue all backdropped by an unstoppable holy war.

It takes the themes of the original, turns it on it's head and somehow amplifies the crazy all the way to 11.

e: Gholas.

I'm not that much more sanguine than you, but I do think it stands a better chance than Blade Runner because of the ensemble cast, and the fact that seeing the film Dune won't require any familiarity with the story. BR2049 is a sequel to a cult film that preceded it by 35 years. Dune also presents as an epic, optimistic fantasy tale, which is more palatable than a dreary, cynical detective film.

I agree with you about Messiah though. As long as Dune is going to be split into 2 films, Messiah would make a great third act.

Failson
Sep 2, 2018
Fun Shoe
Emperor: Battle for Dune is clearly the best adaptation of the material.

I don't even know if I'm kidding.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Failson posted:

Emperor: Battle for Dune is clearly the best adaptation of the material.

I don't even know if I'm kidding.

It really is legit good, the design of the Ordos folks is great too!

Rando
Mar 11, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
I was just browsing a Dune wiki and stumbled on what I guess is an unmedicated schizophrenic who wants to invoke Templar law and take over the franchise so he can save it.

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Templars:_Predecessors_to_the_Zensunni

quote:


Templars: Predecessors to the Zensunni

I, Robin Harrison Hart, the first to found the Templars legitimately, and without murders to impugn the Templars indefinitely therefore; took over the Dune franchise in an honorable and legalized manner and tone. Templar Law copyrighted it before I woke up from my long stupor in Eugene, OR. We, are honored to inherit this legacy. There is no other way about it; we have the future of it already! Several of my edits to the Earth historical and fictional page, deleted before written, what I just wrote above! So I'll see what this means, right now then. I am already richly famous, and an example of it is on a mainstream item here or there. Poems and illustrations about my legacy, only a year into it. So if you do that to us, you're so stupid. YOU. Are stupid. Especially when you refuse to talk about it at all. That is never, legal in any way. When the future of this famous and important franchise is on the line; you don't do that, when you care about it. So I'm assuming trolls did that somehow. We'll classify it as, 'Expanded Dune,' lore for now. I have all my original materials backed up doubly. So no worries if you want to delete it. I'll just post it here. And if you ban me from it; I'll ban you! Your site will end. By popular demand, by the will of the people using it all the time. Yes I am an rear end and an ordinary prankster at times. Now I will test if edits to this, article can be made in real time. (FYI The Sardaukar would even disdain you for it. We are saying for now, playfully only mind you; that we are to be the predecessors of the Padishah, not Atreides. Of course they are inter-related.)!


Yeah. Get real. Only slaves do that poo poo. (CONFIRMED THAT FRANK AND BRIAN HERBERT ARE OK. Frank is just 'a ghost,' however... like I was? So silly to say it that way. It's ok for now to.)!


on another page

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Earth/DE

quote:

<Literally; I, Robin Harrison Hart, took over the DUNE franchise, honorably with intentions to make it better. It is copyrighted to Templar laws, so it can't be touched by their copyright issues. We will be polite, and we won't promise more than that.>

Rando fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Feb 6, 2020

Xealot
Nov 25, 2002

Showdown in the Galaxy Era.

Jewmanji posted:

Dune also presents as an epic, optimistic fantasy tale, which is more palatable than a dreary, cynical detective film.

I think it stands a better chance than BR2049, but Villeneuve is a very restrained and considered director regardless of the content. I'm very sure it'll be good, but can 100% see a mass audience rejecting it as too slow or pretentious or not fun enough or whatever.

Dune has a ton of marketable qualities based on the story alone. There's all the used future and space magic poo poo Star Wars copied, and there are Houses like in Game of Thrones, and superhuman martial arts stuff like The Matrix, and Poe Dameron and Khal Drogo and Thanos and Drax and Zendaya are all there...like, there's a garbage version of this story created by JJ Abrams that'd probably do pretty well. But we're getting the Villeneuve version, so it'll be beautiful and well-made and take the themes and characters seriously and actually be cinematic, and also maybe nobody will care and it'll be a $200M flop.

...I'm realizing how thoroughly the post-2016 political situation has crushed my dreams and made me cynical. I want to believe but reality keeps disappointing me.

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MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
Is there a good Dune or Dune-like Tabletop RPG?

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