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yaffle
Sep 15, 2002

Flapdoodle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npT_E8yFTh0

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Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Kinda weird that Dune style shields tend to make it into video games and low-budget sci-fi as excuses for not wearing spacesuits/armour all the time.

!Klams
Dec 25, 2005

Squid Squad

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Kinda weird that Dune style shields tend to make it into video games and low-budget sci-fi as excuses for not wearing spacesuits/armour all the time.

I learnt from this very thread that they were a common trope in early sci-fi as an excuse for people having swords, I think it's always been a kind of get out of jail free card for sci-fi stylists since day one.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Just finished God Emperor of Dune

What the gently caress did I just read

I get the general idea, everything has been carefully orchestrated by Leto to ensure the Golden Path comes to fruition, which will avoid the destruction of humanity, which also involves teaching them a valuable lesson about the 'safety' of tyranny and predictability (??? is this some libertarian bullshit?), and which also results in Siona becoming invisible to prescience (????), which means humanity is safe forevermore (?????????????)

You know what, considering the number of question marks there, maybe I didn't quite understand everything, but I think I got the intended chain of cause and effect. What I find harder to grasp is Siona's attitude at the end. Leto has shown her the Golden Path, she presumably understands what he's doing, yet she still seems to hate him just as much instead of only reluctantly embracing her role as an assassin. Or is that just an act for Duncan Idaho? And is that why she is so cavalier about the death of Hwi Noree, is it because she knows Duncan Idaho is now tied to her?

Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Jun 1, 2020

Anne Frank Funk
Nov 4, 2008

Siona is the embodiment of gently caress you DAD because she rebels to the point of killing her symbolic dad.
Leto II is the ultimate dad because, in his helicopter parenting dadness, he planned even for Siona killing him - in fact that was his desired outcome.

That's it, that's the book.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



She also kills her actual dad, Moneo dies along with Leto. She doesn't seem to care or even mention it.

I don't know how to feel about this book. The set-up and the scale of events is impressive, again reminding me of Foundation, but to me the most relatable and likeable character is the inhuman, tyrannical blob-monster. That is a problem, even if it is required for the plot to work and make sense. Siona and Duncan Idaho are just perpetually angry babbies who never seem to learn or grow or evolve in any way, even when they supposedly do learn things. I really disliked them and several times found myself hoping Leto would yeet them off a cliff or something. Again, I understand that this was necessary in order for the plot to work, but it's just unpleasant to read.

Inverted Icon
Apr 8, 2020

by Athanatos
Siona is young, dumb, and full o' cum. That's why she's a rebel: she's too young and angry to be wise. She doesn't care about Hwi Noree. She would kill a million Hwi's to get Leto. She did kill millions, and more, when she killed Leto. It led right to the famine times.

But...that's why Leto created her (and she is Leto's creation). He made himself the ultimate villain, one who held the mandate of heaven so strongly, that only the ones with 'the best stuff' would suicide/rebel out of a sense of right and wrong, or at least repressed fervor. From these suicides, he let only the best live. Until finaly, finally: the evolution of genetic defense against prescience. As striking a genetic feat as the original kwizatz haderach.

And just as he worked on human genes, he had 2000 years to shape the collective psyche. If you know this cycle, you can see the shape of the next one. Fte6r the famine times, the scattering. Human life spread so far, Leto could look ten million years into the future, and still see duncab idaho.

Inverted Icon
Apr 8, 2020

by Athanatos
Herbert read a lot of Tolstoy. Without a strong government, with hero's within it being worshipped, you can't make a war that will kill everyone. I believe that is the root of Herbert's sense of distaste for the authoritarianism of all governments. In the latter books, among the bene gesserit yhe most fraught word they speak is politics

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Sure. I don't have a problem with the book in a structural sense. Once you get past the endless metaphysical verbal diarrhea, the internal consistency and logic hold up fairly well. I just felt like the human element was missing from this one, or at least that it was very one-dimensional (except ironically in the case of the Blob), and that that's progressively been the case throughout the Dune series. The first one's still my favorite so far, even though it also suffers from this to an extent - in my opinion, and fully acknowledging that much of this was intentional on the part of the author.

It's not just Siona, Duncan Idaho had me rolling my eyes most of the time as well. I guess his appearance as a mentat in books two and three received a lukewarm reader response, because now he's a dumbasstat instead. Incapable of any sort of analysis, introspection, or growth, and the type that would gladly start a fight if you accidentally bumped into him at the bar. He also outs himself as a homophobe for no plot-related reason that I can discern. "Lesbian orgies? Not on my watch!!!" Shut the gently caress up, Idaho.

I can only imagine what kind of angry, petulant child would result from a union of Siona and Duncan Idaho. Are you sure you've thought this through, Leto?

Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jun 1, 2020

revwinnebago
Oct 4, 2017

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Kinda weird that Dune style shields tend to make it into video games and low-budget sci-fi as excuses for not wearing spacesuits/armour all the time.

Eh. The concept itself is universal gets used in all sorts of ways.

I think it was Legend of the Galactic Heroes where there's a mobile EMP that kills the usual laser guns so people in spacesuits fight with axes. But then again that's Japan. It's always swords.

Phlegmish posted:

Sure. I don't have a problem with the book in a structural sense. Once you get past the endless metaphysical verbal diarrhea

That's a problem with basically all the sequels. I mean it was a problem in the original book too, but it compounds once you get past the "this new universe is cool" factor of the first.

When you say you like the book in a structural sense, you're ignoring tons of the structure in order to try and construct your preferred narrative. Leto gets screwed over by gaps in his prescience and nearly loses it all more than once. So this whole "he saw the whole thing" just baaaarely limps to its conclusion.

Like Leto had to see that he'd be blinded by love and thus miss his assassin, who was in fact supposed to kill him anyway, so he had to see that he wouldn't see the end that he definitely saw that he didn't see coming?

What do worms eat anyway.

Doc Hawkins
Jun 15, 2010

Dashing? But I'm not even moving!


in logh it's a cheap flammable gas that would be ignited by lasers

Infinite Karma
Oct 23, 2004
Good as dead





Siona and Duncan and everybody besides Leto were all awful and uselessly impulsive and self-righteous. It was extremely unsatisfying watching them act like idiots the entire novel, which is maybe the point, since they're the antagonists?

BUT Siona and Duncan had to be forces of pure chaos and impulse, that's the only way prescience wouldn't be able to see what they'd do next. I doubt ol' Frank was writing them this way on purpose, subtle characterization was never his thing, but it's kind of internally consistent at least.

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

I think Duncan being a dumbass was a purposeful choice, as a running piece of Herbert's anti-hero message.

Which is kinda undermined by God Emperor's near perfect justification for a hero/dictator.

It's not quite the level of Orson Card making Endor's Game a perfect in-story justification and white washing of genocide, but it is hard to argue that Leto II brutalizing humanity for thousands of years didn't help humanity in the end, when the story explicitly says it does, by making humanity impervious to dictactorship and control after he's dead.

So we have the story of a dictactor, whose plan for dictatorship works perfectly after his martyr's death, who dictated for everyone's benefit. And that view point is never contested or challenged effectively in the book.

Though it is written by a libertarian environmentalist which does give it all a weird, interesting, off-putting sense, like he's throwing up his hands and saying I DONT WANT THIS TO HAPPEN BUT IT DOES

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

I have met a former Libertarian guy who decided that authoritarian rule is the only way to stop climate change, it's not completely crazy.

Infinite Karma
Oct 23, 2004
Good as dead





Grevling posted:

I have met a former Libertarian guy who decided that authoritarian rule is the only way to stop climate change, it's not completely crazy.
Libertarians love authoritarian rule, they think it's the answer to everything

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Libertarianism perhaps isn't the most morally reprehensible ideology, but it is certainly the dumbest (dumber than communism), mostly because they ignore everything about the way human societies work and it would immediately dissolve itself the moment it reached its stated goals.

Doesn't mean they can't write decent books, of course. Was Herbert a libertarian?

phasmid
Jan 16, 2015

Booty Shaker
SILENT MAJORITY
His ideas about society certainly got stranger as he got older but I really doubt he would be on the right wing. He distrusts power too much and one of the points of the Golden Path is to render people incapable of making the kind of WMDs that could wipe out humanity. He only mentions it shortly Leto's death, but somehow or other he put the Ixians on a different track, where they would still build useful things but their science would not develop towards anything that would lead to extinction. The point of the path was to spread people out so far and harden them up so much that 1) the new humans would be formidable and more resilient than their forebears and 2) they would never be endangered again by any single threat.

In my view, it's not Herbert's politics re: contemporary America that informs his work. It is his belief in science, Darwinism (not the fashy kind, the real kind) and the quandary of belief systems.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Speculating on a dead man's politics circa 1960 so I can decide if I liked Dune or not.

phasmid
Jan 16, 2015

Booty Shaker
SILENT MAJORITY

Pham Nuwen posted:

Speculating on a dead man's politics circa 1960 so I can decide if I liked Dune or not.

Yeah, sorry to even go into that. It's better to let authors stand on their own.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



What? No, of course that's something that can be discussed and that can inform your interpretation of his work. No one is even saying that it affects their enjoyment of the books.

Anne Frank Funk
Nov 4, 2008

NOFRANK folks

phasmid
Jan 16, 2015

Booty Shaker
SILENT MAJORITY

Phlegmish posted:

What? No, of course that's something that can be discussed and that can inform your interpretation of his work. No one is even saying that it affects their enjoyment of the books.

It comes up in the thread from time to time. I just personally don't know much about the guy outside of his work and several interviews. Never read his autobiography (which was written with the help of his son, Odious Brian). Either way, I don't think he can be pigeonholed, really.

Inverted Icon
Apr 8, 2020

by Athanatos
I've always thought of Herbert's politics as very Robert Anton Wilson / Immortal Technique-y. Literally thinking 'serfs' and 'markets' as interchangeable words when you get high enough up

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

I think its pretty clear that Herbert is an environmentalist or conservationist. He also had a healthy skepticism of the benefits of government, and wasn't interested in exploring the issues of contemporary governance and repression important to people in the left to such a degree that more left leaning contemporaries (Michael Moorcock, etc) considered him of the right wing persuasion.

My personal take, as it always been, is that he is a specific type of conservative conservationist that could only exist in America btw 1900-1910 and 1950-1970.

Horsebanger
Jun 25, 2009

Steering wheel! Hey! Steering wheel! Someone tell him to give it to me!
A little late for cover chat but I liked this 50th ed I saw in a bookshop last year.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Horsebanger posted:

A little late for cover chat but I liked this 50th ed I saw in a bookshop last year.



It's never too late for cover chat

Jokerpilled Drudge
Jan 27, 2010

by Pragmatica
I really don't think Duncan was acting all that dumb, he was in a very very precarious situation where he could be popped like a balloon beneath Leto's mass at any moment. He clearly wanted to kill the guy for being a hosed up worm-god-king but also knew he had to really ham-up the Atreides loyalty thing just so he could get access to him

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

revwinnebago posted:

Eh. The concept itself is universal gets used in all sorts of ways.

I think it was Legend of the Galactic Heroes where there's a mobile EMP that kills the usual laser guns so people in spacesuits fight with axes. But then again that's Japan. It's always swords.

They do almost exactly this in a Star Trek episode. There's even a later episode where the Federation developed a gunpowder rifle for such situations, though in the end they just invented better phasers instead.

Horsebanger posted:

A little late for cover chat but I liked this 50th ed I saw in a bookshop last year.



That's the one I've got! It's real neat looking.

And keep in mind with Paul and Leto II is that a key point of prescience in Dune is that it's accurate, anything you can predict will happen. This is probably why seers are blind spots to each other. They consider this existentially terrifying, since if they look too far ahead and see humanity's extinction, they know that's exactly what will happen, while people they can't predict are people who can potentially do things better.

phasmid posted:

His ideas about society certainly got stranger as he got older but I really doubt he would be on the right wing. He distrusts power too much and one of the points of the Golden Path is to render people incapable of making the kind of WMDs that could wipe out humanity. He only mentions it shortly Leto's death, but somehow or other he put the Ixians on a different track, where they would still build useful things but their science would not develop towards anything that would lead to extinction. The point of the path was to spread people out so far and harden them up so much that 1) the new humans would be formidable and more resilient than their forebears and 2) they would never be endangered again by any single threat.

In my view, it's not Herbert's politics re: contemporary America that informs his work. It is his belief in science, Darwinism (not the fashy kind, the real kind) and the quandary of belief systems.

Yeah, it's the opposite of the usual idea of creating a 'perfect' humanity by exterminating the undesirables; but making humanity spread out as widely and become as diverse as possible so they'd be able to deal with anything that comes their way, and in the case of galactic cataclysm there'd be at least some humans out of its reach.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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



Shageletic posted:

I think its pretty clear that Herbert is an environmentalist or conservationist. He also had a healthy skepticism of the benefits of government, and wasn't interested in exploring the issues of contemporary governance and repression important to people in the left to such a degree that more left leaning contemporaries (Michael Moorcock, etc) considered him of the right wing persuasion.

My personal take, as it always been, is that he is a specific type of conservative conservationist that could only exist in America btw 1900-1910 and 1950-1970.
I think there are still a lot of "granola conservatives" around, they just only really live in some parts of the West Coast (where their numbers may be considerable) and are probably getting gradually subsumed by the mass-marketing of conservative ideology.

Murray Mantoinette
Jun 11, 2005

THE  POSTS  MUST  FLOW
Clapping Larry
Duncan is so inconsolably angry because a) an atreides (one that knew his own friend Paul first hand even, thousands of years ago) leveraged loyalty to his beloved atreides to create an oppressive dictatorship bolstered by mindless religious fanatics b) Leto keeps murdering him over and over again across the millennia.

Duncan's anger against Leto is both perfectly understandable and perfectly consistent with his former station as one of the old Atreides inner circle.

e: Siona is a hundred percent gently caress You Dad tho

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Yeah, his trust and loyalty has been abused and betrayed to an absolutely inconsolable degree, and Leto II knows this and takes advantage of it- an enemy you know that well is as useful and predictable as an ally.

'gently caress You Dad' is absolutely the result he's going for, creating and enforcing brutal stagnation and repression that people will break away from as soon as they can and overturn the old rules that he's become synonymous with.

Vlex
Aug 4, 2006
I'd rather be a climbing ape than a big titty angel.



Ghost Leviathan posted:

Yeah, his trust and loyalty has been abused and betrayed to an absolutely inconsolable degree, and Leto II knows this and takes advantage of it- an enemy you know that well is as useful and predictable as an ally.

'gently caress You Dad' is absolutely the result he's going for, creating and enforcing brutal stagnation and repression that people will break away from as soon as they can and overturn the old rules that he's become synonymous with.

This makes Moneo all the more tragic as a character.

Anne Frank Funk
Nov 4, 2008

Moaneo

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Seems like kind of the point is that Leto II is well aware of the empire cycle of decline and rot, and is deliberately exacerbating it and making sure it'll be as dramatic a fall as possible.

Ignite Memories
Feb 27, 2005

slowest. accelerationist. ever.

BlankSystemDaemon
Mar 13, 2009



Leto II describes himself, in so many words, as The Ultimate Predator, honing mankind to become resistant to all the wiles he can throw at it, such that it never again will face the kind of tyranny he imposes.

Whether the the end justifies the means are an entirely different question, and one I've given considerable thought to, without coming up with definite answers, other than it doesn't seem like the ends ever justify the means in real-life.
It makes for good stories, though.

Jokerpilled Drudge
Jan 27, 2010

by Pragmatica

D. Ebdrup posted:

Leto II describes himself, in so many words, as The Ultimate Predator, honing mankind to become resistant to all the wiles he can throw at it, such that it never again will face the kind of tyranny he imposes.

Whether the the end justifies the means are an entirely different question, and one I've given considerable thought to, without coming up with definite answers, other than it doesn't seem like the ends ever justify the means in real-life.
It makes for good stories, though.

Somehow reducing the galactic empire to an agrarian society for several millennia was just what was needed to stop a robotic t-rex that likes to cosplay as a Grant WoodNorman Rockwell painting

Jokerpilled Drudge fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jun 2, 2020

BlankSystemDaemon
Mar 13, 2009



Jokerpilled Drudge posted:

Somehow reducing the galactic empire to an agrarian society for several millennia was just what was needed to stop a robotic t-rex that likes to cosplay as a Norman Rockwell painting
MODS? MODS!!!!

Inverted Icon
Apr 8, 2020

by Athanatos

Ghost Leviathan posted:


And keep in mind with Paul and Leto II is that a key point of prescience in Dune is that it's accurate, anything you can predict will happen. This is probably why seers are blind spots to each other. They consider this existentially terrifying, since if they look too far ahead and see humanity's extinction, they know that's exactly what will happen, while people they can't predict are people who can potentially do things better.


Wellll... from the atreides manifesto, we get the idea that rather than predicting the future, the prescient actually creates that future. That's why they say muad'dib locked us into the genocide, and the tyrant brought us out of it. Leto was the stronger psychic. That's why odrade refuses to look at 'the hunter with the axe' lest she lock the BG into destruction.

That's also why Taraza's plan involved glassing arrakis, with all the remaining worms. Alas, by that time the tlelax solution was being moved off the table, and they had to perserve one of the devils

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Joe Chill
Mar 21, 2013

"What's this dance called?"

"'Radioactive Flesh.' It's the latest - and the last!"
Herbert wasn't a libertarian in the modern definition. He talked about grass roots democracy in a number of interviews he did, talking about how all citizens should be involved in poltical decisions.

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