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BlankSystemDaemon posted:
An old thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3806336&perpage=40&noseen=1&pagenumber=11
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 19:59 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 14:39 |
Torquemada posted:An old thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3806336&perpage=40&noseen=1&pagenumber=11 Also, since we're talking about intentions and such: Dune Genesis posted:Dune began with a concept whose mostly unfleshed images took shape
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:06 |
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:The appendix of Dune has section on terminology used in the book, and it makes it clear that there were conscious robots. I mean, we know thinking machines existed. The issue is that thinking machines could control and manipulate and strip freedom from you, the way all the smarter than human factions in dune do. Not that a scary robot would come punch you.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:10 |
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean, we know thinking machines existed.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:17 |
Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean, we know thinking machines existed.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:20 |
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davidspackage posted:Bob of Dune
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:22 |
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Gotta say the Dune fanbase seems really nice and welcoming compared to your average die hard sci fi/fantasy people. From what I've seen on here, Twitter, Reddit etc everyone just seems really excited that new people are learning about Dune via DUNC and there's no real gatekeeping going on. It's nice to see.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:26 |
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Dunelords can and do get pretty toxic around failson aficionados. Fortunately that is quite rare
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:37 |
No Mods No Masters posted:Dunelords can and do get pretty toxic around failson aficionados. Fortunately that is quite rare Nevertheless, I hope that mine comes off as tongue-in-cheek - but I'll try to keep in mind not to take it too overboard. For the most part, I'm just happy to have more people to talk to about Dune, because it's such a fascinating work. Also, I'm pretty sure I've said this before (possibly in the other thread), but there's at least one of KJAs books (one of his originals), that I quite like - case in point, Climbing Olympus. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 20:40 |
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Everything past God Emperor is just some superhero bullshit.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 22:00 |
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Obviously the frank books after geod suffer for lacking their conclusion, but yeah I feel like a lot of the basic premise really undermines god emperor's conclusion. To me geod still feels like the most natural and complete ending for the big frank themes
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 22:04 |
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Pedro De Heredia posted:Jessica, I know it's been 16 years or so, but... what's up with that? I mean, she upset a plan that spans centuries (millennia?). Seems like a fair ask to me. BlankSystemDaemon posted:That's what Frank himself wrote, in a 1980 issue of Omni Magazine. Ya, that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. Guess it's time to hit the books. No Mods No Masters posted:Dunelords
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 22:50 |
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No Mods No Masters posted:Obviously the frank books after geod suffer for lacking their conclusion, but yeah I feel like a lot of the basic premise really undermines god emperor's conclusion. To me geod still feels like the most natural and complete ending for the big frank themes Yes. I agree with whoever said it'd be great to get 3 Dunc movies covering the first book and Messiah, then some kind of HBO miniseries interpreting Children / God Emperor. That'd pretty much cover everything relevant about Dune.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 22:53 |
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Xealot posted:Yes. I agree with whoever said it'd be great to get 3 Dunc movies covering the first book and Messiah, then some kind of HBO miniseries interpreting Children / God Emperor. They're doing a Bene Gesserit series right? I can see if that does well they could do exactly this
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 23:04 |
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I must not have fun. Fun is the time-killer. Fun is for children, customers, and the help. I will forget fun. I will take a pass on it. And while it is going, I will turn a blind eye toward it. Where fun is gone there will be nothing.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 23:19 |
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm definitely going to read Hyperion Stop after you read The Fall of Hyperion.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 23:31 |
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The only series that turned out alright with a live author taking over from a late one, was what, Brandon Sanderson on the Wheel of Time? That series had a poo poo-ton of issues but at least the conclusion was plotted beforehand and the new author had the good sense not be Kevin J Anderson. I wonder if the Name of the Wind could be pawned onto someone else as the neckbeard who wrote it is still alive, but has a severe case of the lazies (Book 1- 2007, Book 2-2011, Book 3-2049) Inspector Gesicht fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Nov 5, 2021 |
# ? Nov 5, 2021 23:33 |
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean, we know thinking machines existed. Well if you say "I don't want my freedom stripped" the robot will have to punch you to ensure compliance, so there's that. But yeah, I don't think Herbert saw "sentient robots" as a big deal for his novel. Just that you can't write a robot-less novel set in like 30k in the future and not do at least some handwaving of why robots aren't around.
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# ? Nov 5, 2021 23:36 |
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No Mods No Masters posted:Obviously the frank books after geod suffer for lacking their conclusion, but yeah I feel like a lot of the basic premise really undermines god emperor's conclusion. To me geod still feels like the most natural and complete ending for the big frank themes I reconcile them with God Emperor's conclusion by reading them as a story of what happens to the core of the empire that refuses to embrace the freedom granted by the Golden Path. The Honored Matres and whatever they're fleeing from aren't an existential threat to humanity. They're just an existential threat to the BG's stagnant order, and the overall narrative is about the BG finally realizing that they need to grow and adapt.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 00:15 |
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ruddiger posted:Can’t stop thinking about that shot of baron harkonen floating up and elongating out of focus while Duke Leto was laid out like a Caravaggio painting. Villeneuve loves that trick, calling visual attention to something that's purposely out of focus (especially when it comes to lights, e.g. status indicator light)
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 00:26 |
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gohmak posted:Stop after you read The Fall of Hyperion.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 02:06 |
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They were also published as Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel in the 1990s. gohmak posted:Stop after you read The Fall of Hyperion. I think the Endymion books are worth reading; they get kinda sex weird along the way (par for the course for 1980s sci fi) but the discussions around the Ousters and what constitutes a human are kind of interesting, the conflict between the stagnation of humanity and the risk taking needed to go further. Martman posted:Like, stop reading Dan Simmons entirely after that. Absolutely take this advice though.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 02:43 |
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Dan Simmons has written a ton of novels and I feel like there's a reason no one talks about any except Hyperion and its sequels.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 03:08 |
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PeterWeller posted:Yeah, there are robots involved, but it definitely comes off as a much broader luddite movement than just some Terminator or Matrix style war against the machines. Leto II said that the Butlerian Jihad wasn't about machines, but about machine thinking. That technology reduced the amount of things people could do without thinking. Frank Herbert's failson made it into Terminator fanfic because he's too stupid to think of anything else.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 05:09 |
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That's the tragedy of boofing the Butlerian jihad so badly. It's not that they didn't have calculators, calculators can be done entirely mechanically. Even in a handheld size you can make a mechanical calculator that will do basic arithmetic. But you can't have an iPhone. From the books, the quote goes "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind" So you have calculators, but no Siri. You have databases, but no Google. Wolfram alpha would be a tremendous heresy. There are sophisticated Fortran supercomputer models, but there are no advertising algorithms. That's why I mentats exist. It's not so much that they can do incredible calculations in their head incredibly rapidly, that's just a useful side effect, but it's that they can correlate and interpret information. There are electronic systems that rival or surpass what we have available today, the space, flight and aeronautical technologies available simply couldn't be done without some sort of computerized control systems. But none of those systems interpret data. None of those systems are capable of drawing conclusions and making judgments based on information presented to them. All they do is take an input and provide an output. State machines, nothing more. No Google, no search engines, that's what a mentat is for. Or why they have vast libraries of books in their estates. Those are all present because the information may be available, but it is heresy to allow a computer to search and interpret and provide conclusions or results based on a query made to it. Basically a mentat is a human search engine. Or at least at the start they were I think, after that they probably grew into much more as their capabilities became more refined.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 05:21 |
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Arglebargle III posted:Dan Simmons has written a ton of novels and I feel like there's a reason no one talks about any except Hyperion and its sequels. Wasn't the Terror supposed to be good? Never read it but heard the show was alright.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 06:25 |
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Defiance Industries posted:Leto II said that the Butlerian Jihad wasn't about machines, but about machine thinking. That technology reduced the amount of things people could do without thinking. On the other hand, the Dune Encyclopedia, which Herbert approved of, said that the Butlerian Jihad began because a hospital director who was also a computer was aborting babies unjustifiably / doing eugenics. The guy who wrote the Encyclopedia said he and Herbert were in the early stages of expanding that story into an actual prequel. So even Herbert Sr. was not opposed to seeing it as something more than a philosophical argument about human potential. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Nov 6, 2021 |
# ? Nov 6, 2021 09:48 |
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It's 'men used those thinking machines to control other men'. So philosophically it's all about not doing things that limit human potential, but the implication is that there was also a coercive authority structure so bad that the explicitly feudal society that replaced it thought it was unacceptable.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 10:00 |
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What it is varies depending on the book/source. Which is fine.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 11:52 |
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Martman posted:Like, stop reading Dan Simmons entirely after that. Not just that series. Yeah I tried to read some books called Ilium or something and wow they were pretty bad.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 14:29 |
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El Spamo posted:There are sophisticated Fortran supercomputer models, but there are no advertising algorithms. While I wouldn’t be surprised if Fortran still existed and was still running numerical computation code in the far far future, I have to disagree with you that supercomputers would still exist if “thinking machines” were outright banned under threat of being executed for heresy. A computer that can run Fortran code to simulate tomorrow’s weather forecast could also run the new SpaceMetaFacebook FuckZuck AI. I also literally cannot imagine how it is comprehensively possible for a human to have the processing power and data/memory recall that could rival the most advanced programs ever built.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 14:40 |
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Pedro De Heredia posted:Well if you say "I don't want my freedom stripped" the robot will have to punch you to ensure compliance, so there's that. Eh, that isn’t very dune. In dune books if someone is powerful they talk quietly to convince you to do what they want or they breed your family over generations or they do secret conditioning or something.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 14:43 |
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Boris Galerkin posted:While I wouldn’t be surprised if Fortran still existed and was still running numerical computation code in the far far future, I have to disagree with you that supercomputers would still exist if “thinking machines” were outright banned under threat of being executed for heresy. Ok, maybe not supercomputers, that's probably something a gang of mentats in a library do. Human supercomputers. Point being that there's still complex electronics.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 15:11 |
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Boris Galerkin posted:
You don't have to. It's because of the spice; you know, the McGuffin that also allows a bunch of other scifi stuff like folding space and precognition.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 15:22 |
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In the books, Mentats also consume a substance known as “The Juice of Sapho,” which contributes to their abilities. The movie (probably rightfully) streamlined that a bit.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 15:25 |
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Yep, the juice is made from spice.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 15:35 |
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We have a spice that is responsible for our civilization functioning at the most basic level, so that's pretty important. Unfortunately, in the year 10,000 we also still have capitalism, so we don't handle this resource as responsibly as you might hope.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 15:43 |
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thotsky posted:Yep, the juice is made from spice. Nope, Elacca, the other magic drug source in early books that got eventually streamlined out as redundant. (Unless some later book merged it so elacca trees grew from spice somehow)
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 16:28 |
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Arglebargle III posted:Dan Simmons has written a ton of novels and I feel like there's a reason no one talks about any except Hyperion and its sequels. Well the only really good ones are the Hyperion books and Carrion Comfort. After that he kind of went crazy
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 16:39 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 14:39 |
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Nope, Elacca, the other magic drug source in early books that got eventually streamlined out as redundant. I figured all the super-power factions used various spice-derived products for their powers, but yeah, wiki says I remember incorrectly.
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# ? Nov 6, 2021 16:46 |