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Liquid Dinosaur posted:I always found it odd how whatever mentat school/s there are don't seem to be relevant political entities compared to the various other transhuman training facilities. They sort of are, at least in the short term. They're the elite intellectual class that perpetuates the status quo by advising and guiding the ruling class: They provide a base-level of competency to each House, and thus (by continuous competition) damp out wild swings in House power. Mentats are somewhat rare - presumably the schools don't produce many, to keep prices high. It's a successful tactic (mentats are expensive, prominent, and respected), but a poor long term strategy. Because they will all serve separate masters, mentats aren't taught to cooperate. Because they all have the same goal of increasing the power of their patron House, the vast majority of their collective intellect and analytical potential is cancelled out, one scheme / counter-scheme at a time. They can't plan more than a generation or two ahead, because they aren't the ultimate decision makers. They end up being (subtle, ingenious) crabs in a bucket. And so ultimately, not that important. Re: BG and the Guild being the only truly important institutions, I guess Mohaim is thinking in terms of deep time and the future of humanity. She knows BG is on a mission to produce a god. The Guild could be as well, given their prescience and mastery of fundamental mathematics/physics. Mentats simply elevate the machinations of the various Houses - they aren't doing anything truly constructive with their skill. Same with Ix, the Sardaukar, etc. They're domain experts, but they're deploying those skills for the limited goal of economic gain, taking the system as it exists for granted and competing for its spoils. BG are using the system for their own ends, reshaping it as they see fit. As it turns out (at least in the first novel), the Guild wasn't living up to its potential. Their limited prescience and focus on their monopoly led them to always choose the safest route, and they stagnated as an organization a long time ago. But they're so secretive that even BG doesn't know it. Prolonged Panorama fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 05:09
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basic hitler posted:the bg/hm fight is a commentary on first and second wave feminism, and furthermore 
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Sep 20, 2018 05:22
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Sep 20, 2018 05:30
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Prolonged Priapism posted:They sort of are, at least in the short term. They're the elite intellectual class that perpetuates the status quo by advising and guiding the ruling class: They provide a base-level of competency to each House, and thus (by continuous competition) damp out wild swings in House power. Coming from someone who's read all the books this is still a  post
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Sep 20, 2018 05:41
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comin' out of my sietch and I've been wieldin' crysknife gotta gotta jihad because I worship paul
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Sep 20, 2018 05:46
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itsameta4 posted:comin' out of my sietch and I've been wieldin' crysknife paul: It started out with a sietch How did it end up like this It was only a sietch, it was only a sietch
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Sep 20, 2018 05:55
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also it was two months and ten pages ago, but someone said Billy Bob Thornton for Kynes and hooooolyyyy
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Sep 20, 2018 06:36
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I'd love for the movie to still do the whispering voiceover for everyone's internal monologue like from the Lynch movie, only for Billy Bob Thornton he just speaks at normal-to-loud volume.
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Sep 20, 2018 10:16
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Murray Mantoinette posted:I'd love for the movie to still do the whispering voiceover for everyone's internal monologue like from the Lynch movie, only for Billy Bob Thornton he just speaks at normal-to-loud volume. With plenty of "Goddamnits" because I love the way he says that word.
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Sep 20, 2018 12:00
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"I hate to admit it but goddammit, I like this loving Duke"
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Sep 20, 2018 12:33
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"Some folks calls it Arrakis, I call it Dune. Mm-hm."
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Sep 20, 2018 13:04
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Prolonged Priapism posted:They sort of are, at least in the short term. They're the elite intellectual class that perpetuates the status quo by advising and guiding the ruling class: They provide a base-level of competency to each House, and thus (by continuous competition) damp out wild swings in House power. Mentats, as a whole, are ultimately neutral. The way they're portrayed is that somebody who even has the potential to become one is pretty rare. That's why it's an absurdly huge deal when it turns out that Paul can be a Mentat. Leto basically goes "think about it, my dude! A DUKE that's also a MENTAT! HOLY gently caress BALLS!!!!" It's never stated that it hasn't happened but if it had then it's not something that happens often. The training to be a Mentat is very long and needs to be started very young without the trainee even knowing. Then they have to decide for themselves that they want to do it while they're still teenagers. If you pick "no" then you never can go back. It's implied that it's ultimately training to make the brain develop in a very specific way that lets your brain hardware behave in ways that human brains normally don't. The details aren't ever specified but a lot of things have to come together just right for a person to even have the potential to be a Mentat in the first place. There also isn't really a central school that all the Mentats come from; any Mentat that finds a kid with the potential can train another Mentat. Thufir had been teaching Paul up to the events of the first book. While the Guild and the Bene Gesserit are orders with ranks and expectations placed on their members the Mentats are far less organized; each Mentat can basically choose his own path in life and do what they want. They don't as an organization have any overall goals like the other organizations in the universe do. They don't deliberately keep their numbers small they're just really, really rare. It's suggested that each House usually hires at least one Mentat because, gently caress, why wouldn't you? The suggestion is that one is ultimately enough and affording two might be cost-prohibitive. It's suggested that the capabilities are at least partially physical in that the Tleilaxu can grow them.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:23
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The details aren't ever specified lol of course there's one of these 
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Sep 20, 2018 14:29
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Anne Frank Funk posted:lol of course there's one of these *distant wailing*
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Sep 20, 2018 14:31
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@duneauthor strikes again
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Sep 20, 2018 14:43
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It''s suggested that each House usually hires at least one Mentat because, gently caress, why wouldn't you? The suggestion is that one is ultimately enough and affording two might be cost-prohibitive. I like the idea that if you have two they'll spend all their mental effort scheming against each other or having obscure arguments instead of being the human QuickBooks that you hired them as.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:51
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Mentats, as a whole, are ultimately neutral. The way they're portrayed is that somebody who even has the potential to become one is pretty rare. That's why it's an absurdly huge deal when it turns out that Paul can be a Mentat. Leto basically goes "think about it, my dude! A DUKE that's also a MENTAT! HOLY gently caress BALLS!!!!" It's never stated that it hasn't happened but if it had then it's not something that happens often. The training to be a Mentat is very long and needs to be started very young without the trainee even knowing. Then they have to decide for themselves that they want to do it while they're still teenagers. If you pick "no" then you never can go back. In one of the sequels by frank they mention a bg reverend mother who trained herself into mentat skills or something b/c she had nothing better to do
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Sep 20, 2018 15:15
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I'm a big Dune fan and somehow I only just found out about this thread. Nth-ing the viewpoint that the end of the third book is a good stopping point... that said I haven't read the fourth one, I just stopped after 3 and feel really satisfied with how things wrapped up there.
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Sep 20, 2018 15:30
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Malcolm XML posted:In one of the sequels by frank they mention a bg reverend mother who trained herself into mentat skills or something b/c she had nothing better to do I read this as "big reverend mother" for whatever reason and imagined a gigantic Leto II-sized nun in the desert and the Duneverse is such a strange world that for just a moment I tried to remember when that actually happened
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Sep 20, 2018 15:30
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WhatEvil posted:I'm a big Dune fan and somehow I only just found out about this thread. I don't get this attitude, drown yourself in the sands.
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Sep 20, 2018 16:36
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[me, a mentat, already visibly drunk] ima...ima just have some o' that there sappho juice real quick, think ya up a storm ya see...you'll see 
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Sep 20, 2018 16:38
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BONGHITZ posted:I don't get this attitude, drown yourself in the sands. Well I heard from multiple places "Don't bother past 3" and honestly the end of 3 felt like a good ending. I've continued watching TV shows and stuff before when people have said "stop at season [x] 'cause it's poo poo after that" and always regretted it.
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Sep 20, 2018 17:23
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WhatEvil posted:Well I heard from multiple places "Don't bother past 3" and honestly the end of 3 felt like a good ending. I've continued watching TV shows and stuff before when people have said "stop at season [x] 'cause it's poo poo after that" and always regretted it. Wait, didn't the third book have a cliffhanger ending?
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Sep 20, 2018 17:38
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WhatEvil posted:Well I heard from multiple places "Don't bother past 3" and honestly the end of 3 felt like a good ending. I've continued watching TV shows and stuff before when people have said "stop at season [x] 'cause it's poo poo after that" and always regretted it. You either stop on 2, because that's Paul's story told, stop on 4, because that's Leto II's story told, or stop on 6 because that's Frank Herbert's story told. Stopping on 3 is barbarism.
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Sep 20, 2018 17:44
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WhatEvil posted:I'm a big Dune fan and somehow I only just found out about this thread. god-emperor is the best one though
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Sep 20, 2018 17:46
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WhatEvil posted:Well I heard from multiple places "Don't bother past 3" and honestly the end of 3 felt like a good ending. I've continued watching TV shows and stuff before when people have said "stop at season [x] 'cause it's poo poo after that" and always regretted it. At least with those, you now know your own opinion and aren't just parroting the internet's conventional wisdom. And with Dune, opinions are split enough that you stand a good chance of liking it further on.
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Sep 20, 2018 18:35
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3 is a good stopping place if you've had your fill by then. If one day you decide you'd like to see whatever went on in that Dune place afterwards, you can always pick up 4 then. It's a good book, but it was written much later and in some ways that shows. Just don't go in to it thinking it's anything but science fiction. The people who end up going "yuck" are usually trying to pin down Mr. Herbert's political leanings (which as we discussed earlier in the thread, is hard to do).
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Sep 20, 2018 20:19
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Also, gently caress @duneauthor. He probably thinks of mentats as jedi cyborgs.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:21
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I'd say God Emperor is truly worth reading, 100%. It's a unique little book, and I think the story is quite good. I would say the merit of Heretics and Chapterhouse is entirely suspect but I would urge anyone on the fence about reading past Children Of Dune, to go ahead and start God Emperor.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:21
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Yeah, GEOD is good but it starts a new storyline is what I'd say. Everything wrapped up in 3 more or less while leaving the soil fertile if he wanted to revisit the place, which he ended up doing. Labor of love, maybe. The next two didn't feel quite that way. Still, my favorite thing about them is how weird they are.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:24
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Mycroft Holmes is the original Mentat
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Sep 20, 2018 20:49
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WhatEvil posted:I'm a big Dune fan and somehow I only just found out about this thread. I would never recommend stopping at 3. 2 is a better stopping point in every way, and if you're going to suffer through the mediocrity that is Children of Dune you might as well treat yourself with God Emperor which is actually an interesting fantasy novel. Arrhythmia posted:You either stop on 2, because that's Paul's story told, stop on 4, because that's Leto II's story told, or stop on 6 because that's Frank Herbert's story told. Stopping on 3 is barbarism. This forever. imho the trilogy framework was completely shoehorned onto the Dune story and is not a valid structure for those books.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:54
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Prav posted:i kept waiting for some double or triple trickery there but apparently the tleilaxu are just disappointingly easy to dupe Computer nerds are still gullible in the future
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Sep 20, 2018 21:37
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The prescient trap in Messiah is one of the most interesting ways of dealing with the idea of foresight I've heard of. All in all I think it's my favorite in the series.
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Sep 20, 2018 22:30
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I like it when Leto II is bored so he just stares at the ground from the top of his tower and keeps visualizing the possible futures where he jumps off to his death, and seeing the infinite future of humanity wink out and in, since any timeline where he doesn’t die in or above a body of water means humanity is doomed to be snuffed out in a few millennia Oh also, how they mention his main audience chamber in his palace has transparent floor tiles, and under it running water and master-carved gemstone fish. He says it’s to keep him on his toes because his worm body detects the water and is squirming in terror, but also ensures that if someone assassinated him there, all would not be lost.
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Sep 20, 2018 23:04
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Stopping at 3 seems crazy, it leads directly into 4 and 4 is a lot of fun and pretty unique, it's certainly much better than 3.
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Sep 21, 2018 06:16
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ChairMaster posted:Stopping at 3 seems crazy, it leads directly into 4 and 4 is a lot of fun and pretty unique, it's certainly much better than 3. 4 of the 6 books are better than 3.
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Sep 21, 2018 06:18
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Yeah, it's already been said, but I'll chip in as well. 3 is an odd stopping point. It's really not a series of six books so much as it is three novels with sequels. 1 & 2 Paul's story 3 & 4 Leto's Story 5 & 6 Insane ramblings of an old man
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Sep 21, 2018 06:47
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3 isn't super weird as a stopping point, if you view it as the culmination of Paul's arc (the destruction of his own legend) and the final throes of the world that Paul upturned in the first book. Admittedly, I tend to stop at the third book when I do a reread, if only because I don't have the second three books with the sweet Bruce Pennington covers. Also, I'd argue that the books are really about Duncan Idaho as an Everyman escaping from the yoke of his loyalty to the Atriedes. Something something Foucault something Camus.
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Sep 21, 2018 08:42
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Four is hands down the best one aside from 1. If you're stopping anywhere you should stop by Brian Herbert's house and murder his stupid body
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Sep 21, 2018 10:55
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