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I was cleaning up my Kindle and book database and I rediscovered a short article Frank wrote for Omni in 1980. Seemed worth posting: Dune Genesis by Frank Herbert Dune began with a concept whose mostly unfleshed images took shape across about six years of research and one and a half years of writing. The story was all in my head until it appeared on paper as I typed it out. How did it evolve? I conceived of a long novel, the whole trilogy as one book about the messianic convulsions that periodically overtake us. Demagogues, fanatics, con-game artists, the innocent and the not-so-innocent bystanders-all were to have a part in the drama. This grows from my theory that superheroes are disastrous for humankind. Even if we find a real hero (whatever-or whoever-that may be), eventually fallible mortals take over the power structure that always comes into being around such a leader. Personal observation has convinced me that in the power area of politics/economics and in their logical consequence, war, people tend to give over every decision-making capacity to any leader who can wrap himself in the myth fabric of the society. Hitler did it. Churchill did it. Franklin Roosevelt did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it. My favorite examples are John F. Kennedy and George Patton. Both fitted themselves into the flamboyant Camelot pattern, consciously assuming bigger-than-life appearance. But the most casual observation reveals that neither was bigger than life. Each had our common human ailment-clay feet. This, then, was one of my themes for Dune: Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced-in a word, insane. That was the beginning. Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster. It is the systems themselves that I see as dangerous Systematic is a deadly word. Systems originate with human creators, with people who employ them. Systems take over and grind on and on. They are like a flood tide that picks up everything in its path. How do they originate? All of this encapsulates the stuff of high drama, of entertainment-and I'm in the entertainment business first. It's all right to include a pot of message, but that's not the key ingredient of wide readership. Yes, there are analogs in Dune of today's events-corruption and bribery in the highest places, whole police forces lost to organized crime, regulatory agencies taken over by the people they are supposed to regulate. The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC. But that was only the beginning. While this concept was still fresh in my mind, I went to Florence, Oregon, to write a magazine article about a US Department of Agriculture project there. The USDA was seeking ways to control coastal (and other) sand dunes. I had already written several pieces about ecological matters, but my superhero concept filled me with a concern that ecology might be the next banner for demagogues and would-be-heroes, for the power seekers and others ready to find an adrenaline high in the launching of a new crusade. Our society, after all, operates on guilt, which often serves only to obscure its real workings and to prevent obvious solutions. An adrenaline high can be just as addictive as any other kind of high. Ecology encompasses a real concern, however, and the Florence project fed my interest in how we inflict ourselves upon our planet. I could begin to see the shape of a global problem, no part of it separated from any other-social ecology, political ecology, economic ecology. It's an open-ended list. Even after all of the research and writing, I find fresh nuances in religions, psychoanalytic theories, linguistics, economics, philosophy, plant research, soil chemistry, and the metalanguages of pheromones. A new field of study rises out of this like a spirit rising from a witch's cauldron: the psychology of planetary societies. Out of all this came a profound reevaluation of my original concepts. In the beginning I was just as ready as anyone to fall into step, to seek out the guilty and to punish the sinners, even to become a leader. Nothing, I felt, would give me more gratification than riding the steed of yellow journalism into crusade, doing the book that would right the old wrongs. Reevaluation raised haunting questions. I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability. Reevaluation taught me caution. I approached the problem with trepidation. Certainly, by the loosest of our standards there were plenty of visible targets, a plethora of blind fanaticism and guilty opportunism at which to aim painful barbs. But how did we get this way? What makes a Nixon? What part do the meek play in creating the powerful? If a leader cannot admit mistakes, these mistakes will be hidden. Who says our leaders must be perfect? Where do they learn this? Enter the fugue. In music, the fugue is usually based on a single theme that is played many different ways. Sometimes there are free voices that do fanciful dances around the interplay. There can be secondary themes and contrasts in harmony, rhythm, and melody. From the moment when a single voice introduces the primary theme, however, the whole is woven into a single fabric. What were my instruments in this ecological fugue? Images, conflicts, things that turn upon themselves and become something quite different, myth figures and strange creatures from the depths of our common heritage, products of our technological evolution, our human desires, and our human fears. You can imagine my surprise to learn that John Schoenherr, one of the world's most foremost wildlife artists and illustrators, had been living in my head with the same images. People find it difficult to believe that John and I had no consultations prior to his painting of the Dune illustrations. I assure you that the paintings were a wonderful surprise to me. The Sardaukar appear like the weathered stones of Dune. The Baron's paunch could absorb a world. The ornithopters are insects preying on the land. The sandworms are Earth shipworms grown monstrous. Stilgar glares out at us with the menace of a warlock. What especially pleases me is to see the interwoven themes, the fuguelike relationships of images that exactly replay the way Dune took shape. As in an Escher lithograph, I involved myself with recurrent themes that turn into paradox. The central paradox concerns the human vision of time. What about Paul's gift of prescience-the Presbyterian fixation? For the Delphic Oracle to perform, it must tangle itself in a web of predestination. Yet predestination negates surprises and, in fact, sets up a mathematically enclosed universe whose limits are always inconsistent, always encountering the unprovable. It's like a koan, a Zen mind breaker. It's like the Cretan Epimenides saying, "All Cretans are liars." Each limiting descriptive step you take drives your vision outward into a larger universe which is contained in still a larger universe ad infinitum, and in the smaller universes ad infinitum. No matter how finely you subdivide time and space, each tiny division contains infinity. But this could imply that you can cut across linear time, open it like a ripe fruit, and see consequential connections. You could be prescient, predict accurately. Predestination and paradox once more. The flaw must lie in our methods of description, in languages, in social networks of meaning, in moral structures, and in philosophies and religions- all of which convey implicit limits where no limits exist. Paul Muad'Dib, after all, says this time after time throughout Dune. Do you want an absolute prediction? Then you want only today, and you reject tomorrow. You are the ultimate conservative. You are trying to hold back movement in an infinitely changing universe. The verb to be does make idiots of us all. Of course there are other themes and fugal interplays in Dune and throughout the trilogy. Dune Messiah performs a classic inversion of the theme. Children of Dune expands the number of themes interplaying. I refuse, however, to provide further answers to this complex mixture. That fits the pattern of the fugue. You find your own solutions. Don't look to me as your leader. Caution is indeed indicated, but not the terror that prevents all movement. Hang loose. And when someone asks whether you're starting a new cult, do what I do: Run like hell.
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 02:25 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 10:55 |
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And then there's Brian.
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 03:08 |
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winnydpu posted:Even after all of the research and writing, I find fresh nuances in religions, same
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 03:27 |
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I expected Frank's line of "CHOAM is OPEC," but I did not expect the crucial element to be... water. I guess in Dune, water symbolises oil and spice symbolises spice-?
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 04:56 |
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I can't find the source right now but in some interview Frank said that water also just symbolizes water, which is itself an increasingly rare natural resource.
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 06:33 |
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Scarcity is what he's alluding to. The fiefdoms of space levy ridiculous taxes from their subjects and so you get "great" houses who have their own stockpiles of spice, which seems like the best currency in any market of the Imperium and meanwhile their underlings live in near-total poverty. Fremen water discipline is harsh enough that they make fun of "water-fat" offworlders.
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 08:17 |
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Water symbolizes oil, spice symbolizes and ultraspice symbolizes bitcoins. duh
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 10:36 |
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Space Vagina Magic represents the sex Frank had with his wife
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 13:34 |
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Pussy Magic represents the metalanguages of pheromones. Because the Fish Speakers can translate them. In the Hitchhiker universe this is done with Beaverfish
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# ? Apr 27, 2021 17:19 |
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It was a good essay.
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# ? Apr 28, 2021 07:43 |
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Really when you think about it the metaplot of Dune is a unsubtle metaphor for Frank Herbert's writing career
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# ? Apr 28, 2021 13:24 |
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Colonel Cancer posted:Really when you think about it the metaplot of Dune is a unsubtle metaphor for Frank Herbert's writing career Are you saying we should train a tiger to eat Brian and Kevin J?
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# ? Apr 28, 2021 13:26 |
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No, he should have stuffed some worms up his rear end and kept on writing instead of following failson Paul's ark and releasing the jihad upon the universe. It's like poetry,
Colonel Cancer fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Apr 28, 2021 |
# ? Apr 28, 2021 13:40 |
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The Honored Matres are us and we're fleeing a greater horror (the failson books) back to this thread (the old empire)
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# ? Apr 28, 2021 13:45 |
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The spicediver edit of the lynch film is very good. As a lynch fan and a dune fan I've always found the movie to be fine but this edit definitely elevates it. I've never seen the smithee version with the added exposition scenes so it's hard for me to disentangle that from this, but I had a good time. It's almost certainly the version I would go to for a rewatch
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# ? Apr 30, 2021 16:01 |
Ingmar terdman posted:The spicediver edit of the lynch film is very good. As a lynch fan and a dune fan I've always found the movie to be fine but this edit definitely elevates it.
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# ? Apr 30, 2021 17:59 |
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e: a day late here in Australia
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# ? May 3, 2021 01:44 |
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Tace Vim posted:
I can't wait to have to spend paragraphs explaining this to the chat group, bereft of both Dune and Starwars fans, that I just inadvisably pasted this to
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# ? May 3, 2021 03:51 |
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There's no thread for it, but dean stockwell has a wild resume
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# ? May 3, 2021 04:07 |
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I know his lower front teeth better than my own^
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# ? May 3, 2021 06:35 |
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Erg 'Spergs The Cool Wahads The Lil' Makers Suk my Rimwall Spiceblown thumpers The Shaddamned
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# ? May 4, 2021 15:23 |
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!Klams posted:The Cool Wahads loving lol
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# ? May 4, 2021 15:33 |
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While researching for my thread I found this link from goon Neo Rasa, an extended fan edit of Lynch's Dune. It's good! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJykw3H4PDw
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# ? May 5, 2021 04:05 |
Spinz posted:While researching for my thread I found this link from goon Neo Rasa, an extended fan edit of Lynch's Dune.
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# ? May 5, 2021 12:38 |
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G U N C
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# ? May 5, 2021 14:50 |
The butlerian jihad is a viable solution to 2021 tbqh
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# ? May 16, 2021 04:35 |
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I'm always down for a jihad, or three.
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# ? May 16, 2021 04:45 |
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Hell yeah get those butlers, snobby servile fucks
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# ? May 16, 2021 05:08 |
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Acquiring multiple mentats to "mine" spicecoin
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# ? May 16, 2021 05:25 |
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Riot Bimbo posted:The butlerian jihad is a viable solution to 2021 tbqh I keep saying in the tech nightmare thread that I'm really starting to see how it happened
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# ? May 16, 2021 05:33 |
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So, are we going to skip WW3, the Bell riots, and all that, and head directly to JIHAD?
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# ? May 16, 2021 05:39 |
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Colonel Cancer posted:Acquiring multiple mentats to "mine" spicecoin Good luck competing with the Tleilaxu ghola farms. If you don’t have at least 10 kiloduncans, it’s not even worth teaching them the mining thought patterns.
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# ? May 16, 2021 19:22 |
Johnny Aztec posted:So, are we going to skip WW3, the Bell riots, and all that, and head directly to JIHAD? nah, it's just way more concurrent than previously thought.
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# ? May 17, 2021 07:09 |
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Riot Bimbo posted:nah, it's just way more concurrent than previously thought. All the dates and counts of years were subject to a translation error; the events of Dune in fact take place over August-November 2023.
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# ? May 17, 2021 07:22 |
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Sorry for poo poo posting, I know the film has a...contentious cult film reputation that doesn't follow the source material too well but I just watched it on a whim.. What's up with the turret carousel in the 1984 film? The one with bunch of high ranking guys in a starship using controls and screens to fire below in the final battle of the film? Is it a complete rear end pull with no basis in source material? I couldn't find a single mention on Google about it either. Help me, the turret carousel is haunting my dreams
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# ? May 17, 2021 08:12 |
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Dessel posted:Sorry for poo poo posting, I know the film has a...contentious cult film reputation that doesn't follow the source material too well but I just watched it on a whim.. It's not in original books at all. My guess out of my rear end is it's that retro aesthetic with the added strangeness of submarine but on land No meaning whatsoever
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# ? May 17, 2021 08:23 |
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Dessel posted:Sorry for poo poo posting, I know the film has a...contentious cult film reputation that doesn't follow the source material too well but I just watched it on a whim.. heh I was thinking about that scene recently. probably another of David Lynch's neat and weird inventions he added to the film like heart-plugs, weirding modules, cat-milking machines, squoods and pugs.
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# ? May 17, 2021 08:29 |
David Lynch's movie, which at one point he didn't want associated with his name because he and the executive director had a disagreement until it turned out that it was actually making money, is a film loosely based on a cursory glance at Frank Herbert's book - nothing more.
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# ? May 17, 2021 12:36 |
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Death of the author binch, the movie owns
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# ? May 17, 2021 12:41 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 10:55 |
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Colonel Cancer posted:Death of the author binch, the movie owns
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# ? May 17, 2021 12:46 |