D U N C: suks to be yueh

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zoux: Apr 28, 2006

My opinion is that the thinking machine ban is all about how outsourcing human effort to computers makes us soft and weak. One of the major themes of the series is that hard places make hard men. The Sardaukar are such badasses because they are refined in the crucible of Salusa Secundus; the fremen are even more badass because Arrakis is even worse. So while we here in the modern era have been conditioned to view the threat of AIs as giant thinking brains named after Greek mythological figures stomping around in giant laser mechs and yeeting infants off of roofs, I'm not sure that was as ingrained in the sci fi reading consciousness in the 60s. The idea of a soft and weak Wall-E style civilization, one that is willing to abdicate all the work and striving and self-improvement that humans value to AI or to men who control that AI fits more neatly into Herbert's themes. IMO.

# ? Apr 18, 2024 21:23

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 14:37

Strategic Tea: Sep 1, 2012

Couldn't be us!

# ? Apr 18, 2024 21:28

Schwarzwald: Jul 27, 2004; Don't Blink

galagazombie posted:

There�s countless quotes in the real Dune books that all but state the jihad was an ideological war of man against man rather than the plot of Terminator. Sure the pro machine side undoubtedly used killbots, but it wasn�t a side led by killbots.

The killbots are still around, even. One of them almost got Paul.

# ? Apr 18, 2024 21:31

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Schwarzwald posted:

The killbots are still around, even. One of them almost got Paul.

And they're gonna gain ESP and come back and wipe out all of humanity, unless this talking giant worm's plan works out

# ? Apr 18, 2024 21:34

Blood Boils: Dec 27, 2006; Its not an S, on my planet it means QUIPS

hobbesmaster posted:

Chapterhouse implied an alarming amount (more than 0) was Frank�s actual intention.

Eg every character from every book is grown in a no-ship for a HUGE party

Yeah and Brian's claim that his dad would approve of him taking his notes/ideas and adding his own and continuing the story isn't very far-fetched, depending on their relationship.

# ? Apr 18, 2024 21:41

Cognac McCarthy: Oct 5, 2008; It's a man's game, but boys will play

hobbesmaster posted:

Chapterhouse implied an alarming amount (more than 0) was Frank’s actual intention.

Eg every character from every book is grown in a no-ship for a HUGE party

Maybe, or maybe that was where Frank wanted to go with the universe later on, but it might not have been his original idea. He was a weird old crank by the end of his life so you don't have to care what he says if you don't want to.

# ? Apr 18, 2024 22:54

hobbesmaster: Jan 28, 2008

Cognac McCarthy posted:

Maybe, or maybe that was where Frank wanted to go with the universe later on, but it might not have been his original idea. He was a weird old crank by the end of his life so you don't have to care what he says if you don't want to.

It�s concerning that there are not that many less stupid options for scytale�s genetic chekov�s gun.

If you have read Frank�s books and not anything about hunters or sandworms read the Wikipedia summaries, they�re hilarious. eg:

quote:

On the no-ship, rebel Bene Gesserit attempt to murder the Leto II ghola, but are foiled when he transforms into a sandworm.

A good bit for a short story on ao3, but come on

# ? Apr 19, 2024 00:13

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

A lot of sci-fi authors manage to be surprisingly prescient when they write about technology not in terms of what technology can do, or even what forms it takes, but about people's relationship with technology and how they use it and treat it. Even the thing of exaggerating existing trends to sci-fi extremes has a basis in that, as how often people absolutely do take things as far as the technology they have will allow it.

I'm not surprised that the crusade against thinking machines was less about the machines themselves and more the power they lend to those who they're programmed to obey. Heck, a fully sentient machine is something that can be reasoned with, agreements can be made with, which is a rather big theme in the series where moral ambiguity and the commonalities one can have with even their sworn enemies are major things. If anything, the mentions of prescient hunter-seeker drones are all too relevant nowadays in the age of automatic drone warfare used for genocidal brutality.

# ? Apr 19, 2024 10:49

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

No Mods No Masters posted:

People seem to often criticize shields as a worldbuilding component, but demonstrably in the eyes of denis it's more integral than say the spacing guild. I guess ultimately who's a better judge of dune, posters or denis

I believe the Westwood FMV directors!

# ? Apr 19, 2024 12:05

Tei: Feb 19, 2011

Shields are part of the settings. Becuse shields force mele combat. And that allow a individual to be good trough training. So you can have elites and a noble caste.

This tool has killed more nobles than the guillotine, because the flecchetes can perforate the nobles armor and shields and is easy to use by peasants with no training.

# ? Apr 19, 2024 12:51

Kopmala: Mar 28, 2024

hobbesmaster posted:

Chapterhouse implied an alarming amount (more than 0) was Frank’s actual intention.

Eg every character from every book is grown in a no-ship for a HUGE party

quote:

Willis Mcnelly was a close friend of Frank (he gave the eulogy at the funeral) who wrote the Dune Encyclopedia after his many conversations with Frank about the world of Dune.

Notably, it included a full description of the Butlerian Jihad that was written according to what Frank said of it. Frank wrote a foreward to the Encyclopedia where he approved it, although reserved the right to contradict it if he changed his mind later. (To account for that, the Encyclopedia was written as a document composed in universe by a scholar and written thousands of years after the death of Leto II).

However, in terms of the Butlerian Jihad account, Willis was actively collaborating with Frank at the time of his death on turning that account into a prequel novel - which would have been released after Dune 7. He had been writing the outline and started on the first few chapters when Frank died.

When Brian decided to capitalise on his father's legacy he decided to start with the Butlerian Jihad books. However, if he has used what the actual idea for the Jihad was then he would have had to pay royalties to Mcnelly. So instead, he partnered with Kevin J Anderson and turned the Butlerian Jihad into a Terminator ripoff where everyone has the same surname as people from the original Dune books even though this is 10,000 years before them.

But since he didn't want people to know there was another version of the story that Frank was directly involved in, Brian also tried to obliterate the Encyclopedia from existence - stopping it printing, issuing cease and desists to any websites carrying information from it, literally trying to erase it from existence. Mcnelly was devastated that the work he'd done with Frank was being erased like that, but there was nothing he could do.

The fact that the Encyclopedia account of the Jihad exists also absolutely proves there were no Dune 7 notes left by Frank that were used to make Hunters/Sandworms of Dune. Those books rely on characters and concepts introduced in the BH/KJA Butlerian Jihad trilogy that were categorically NOT concepts that Frank had in mind.

In particular, there was no machine threat in terms of bad robots they were fighting against. The Mcnelly /Frank version of the Jihad the two sides were the Jihadis led by Jehanne Butler who wanted to free humanity from their reliance on machines and the humans who wanted to keep the convenience of computers and automation. The threat wasn't that there were armies of robots killing people, the threat was that reliance on computers and automation was turning humanity into the humans from the end of Wall-E. That humans were losing their capacity to make decisions for themselves because they were letting computers make all the decisions.

The inciting incident was that Jehanne Butler was pregnant with an early attempt to produce a Kwizatz Haderach and went into an automated hospital. After being sedated, she woke up to find that she was no longer pregnant and the mainframe told her that she had miscarried. However, because she was a BG, she knew through her body awareness that this was untrue. She investigated and discovered that the hospital mainframe has decided that AIs such as itself should be working too manage the human population and it had been routinely aborting pregnancies that displayed genetic traits that might make the baby grow to be a disruptive influence on society. Further investigation indicated that the computer mainframes that humans had put in charge of all the boring jobs in society were making decisions like this all the time. Jehanne, realising that within a few generations humans would be no better than farm animals, started the Jihad to stop this. Their first target was their home planet where they destroyed all computers, mainframes, calculators etc - any machine in the likeness of a human mind - and burned them as described in GEoD. The machines themselves didn't fight back - they were literally just stationary computers, not robots. Instead, the opponents they fought were other humans who wanted to keep their modern conveniences. They discover as part of this that some computer coders had begun to worship their AI Systems as gods.

Then they took the Jihad to the stars, first targeting Richese, which produced the AIs that Jehanne's planet had been using, thinking that maybe they had been using them deliberately as a subtle attack - but finding the people on Richese were even further gone. They destroyed the machines there, recruited who would join them, executed those who resisted and exiled any computer engineer to their home planet which had been purged of technology and was therefore seen as a place they could do no harm (the descendants of those exiles, generations later, eventually became the dominant population of the planet and started tinkering with technology again and the planet later became known by its position in the solar system and referred to as Ix).

From there the Jihad spread throughout the known universe - humans fighting humans over the philosophical debate over whether AI should be allowed to exist.

There were no Harkonnens, no Atreides, no Omnius, no Erasmus, no self aware robots, no spider robots with human brains. It was a civil war between humans. Which means that it would make absolutely NO sense for the great enemy that returned in Dune 7 to be robots or for the resolution of the whole story to be that Duncan Idaho becomes a cyborg. That version only makes sense if it's based on a story written 20 years after Frank's death specifically to avoid paying royalties to Frank's friend.

I wish I could tell you the source for that quote, but I saw it and sent it to myself as a text message (I routinely do this with topics I'm interested in). It was so drat long ago that I seriously can't remember where it came from.

# ? Apr 19, 2024 23:54

a patagonian cavy: Jan 12, 2009; UUA CVG 230000 KZID /RM TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE BENGALS DYNASTY

gently caress Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson all my homeys hate Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson

# ? Apr 20, 2024 00:01

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Kopmala posted:

I wish I could tell you the source for that quote, but I saw it and sent it to myself as a text message (I routinely do this with topics I'm interested in). It was so drat long ago that I seriously can't remember where it came from.

That sounds cooler than the skynet we got.

# ? Apr 20, 2024 00:37

Eason the Fifth: Apr 9, 2020

Kopmala posted:

I wish I could tell you the source for that quote, but I saw it and sent it to myself as a text message (I routinely do this with topics I'm interested in). It was so drat long ago that I seriously can't remember where it came from.

Well drat

# ? Apr 20, 2024 01:12

hobbesmaster: Jan 28, 2008

Kopmala posted:

I wish I could tell you the source for that quote, but I saw it and sent it to myself as a text message (I routinely do this with topics I'm interested in). It was so drat long ago that I seriously can't remember where it came from.

It feels right, but there are a few things I�d point out:
Cyborgs are in Chapterhouse
Daniel and Marty are in Chapterhouse
The Atreides are established in Children of Dune to truly be direct descendants of Atreus via Agamemnon which I believe makes the name about 25000 years old as of the first novel. (That�s a hell of a genetic curse)

# ? Apr 20, 2024 01:18

Schwarzwald: Jul 27, 2004; Don't Blink

Daniel and Marty are fairly explicit in being face dancers.

That being said, going back to Dune being a response to Asimov's Foundation, It wouldn't surprise me if Daniel was meant to be a reference to Asimov's character R. Daneel, who also shows up somewhat mysteriously in the last chapter of the Foundation series to hint at further mysteries.

Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Apr 20, 2024

# ? Apr 20, 2024 01:36

Blood Boils: Dec 27, 2006; Its not an S, on my planet it means QUIPS

http://www.sinanvural.com/seksek/inien/tvd/tvd2.htm

Here's a neat interview McNelly did of Frank & Beverly Herbert about Dune

# ? Apr 20, 2024 03:14

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 14:37

kalel: Jun 19, 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppU2GSrhHk8

# ? Apr 20, 2024 03:24

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > D U N C: suks to be yueh

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