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Temaukel posted:are filmbooks made out of filmbase? those sound like e-readers. I don't think they have e-reader screen things just based on the micro copy of the Orange Catholic Bible Paul had in the first book that was made of ultra-ultra thin pages and you couldn't touch the pages directly because they were too thin but used electrostatic presses to make them turn.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:39
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Hell, put that way, Dune is MORE science fiction than most things we've come to call 'science fiction'. Might be also summed up a lot by being a take on John Carter of Mars and Lensman if they obeyed real physical laws, were populated by grown-ups, and influenced by non-Western societies.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:40
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people including me posted:
Ghost Leviathan posted:Hell, put that way, Dune is MORE science fiction than most things we've come to call 'science fiction'. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Feb 6, 2019 |
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Feb 6, 2019 16:44
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about filmbook and filmbase
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I've always assumed filmbase/filmbooks are referring to some sort of microfilm/microfiche-like technology. That's tech that already existed when Herbert was writing, can store large amounts of human-readable information compactly, and would certainly fit within the restrictions of the Butlerian Jihad. Hell, in the 1984 film we even see Thufir using something which could feasibly be a specialized microfilm device; it flashes sort of like you were scrolling through a microfilm reel very quickly: 
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Feb 6, 2019 18:19
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D. Ebdrup posted:This is off-topic and I know Lensman is pulpy as hell, but I have a huge soft spot for that series. It's the great-granddaddy of space opera that everything from Star Wars to Green Lantern has ripped off in every possible way, I don't blame ya. Pham Nuwen posted:I've always assumed filmbase/filmbooks are referring to some sort of microfilm/microfiche-like technology. That's tech that already existed when Herbert was writing, can store large amounts of human-readable information compactly, and would certainly fit within the restrictions of the Butlerian Jihad. There's a point where extrapolations of long-obsolete technology in sci-fi settings become downright charming, and Dune is a setting where it even makes sense. Picturing a lot of baroque-style technology that has to be operated by hand. Quite possibly as a result a lot of Dune tech is impressively efficient, like stillsuits being powered by pumps in the feet that use the wearer's own movement.
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Feb 6, 2019 18:26
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Ghost Leviathan posted:There's a point where extrapolations of long-obsolete technology in sci-fi settings become downright charming, and Dune is a setting where it even makes sense. Picturing a lot of baroque-style technology that has to be operated by hand. Quite possibly as a result a lot of Dune tech is impressively efficient, like stillsuits being powered by pumps in the feet that use the wearer's own movement.
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Feb 6, 2019 18:48
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D. Ebdrup posted:I don't for a second buy the argument that Dune is fantasy. I don't see why not. What are now two categories were once conjoined, and writers like Bester, Herbert, and Sturgeon all wrote stories that straddled the line or even eschewed many of the conventions of the time before the categories started form hard borders and deviate from Pulp Fantasy of the post-war period.
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Feb 6, 2019 21:39
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Trying to argue which genre box Dune fits is precisely as dumb as trying to figure out which ideological box it fits.
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Feb 6, 2019 21:42
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Dune is famous and good enough to have taken the heighliner right out of the genres into literature
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Feb 6, 2019 21:45
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Arrhythmia posted:Trying to argue which genre box Dune fits is precisely as dumb as trying to figure out which ideological box it fits. I mean, I agree.
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Feb 6, 2019 21:48
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:I mean, I agree. Just a coincidence that my post followed yours, don't read too much into it.
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Feb 6, 2019 21:50
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The Bloop posted:Dune is famous and good enough to have taken the heighliner right out of the genres into literature Yeah this.
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Feb 6, 2019 22:16
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actually according to some shitburd on quora with 400k answers viewed it's pulp fiction
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Feb 6, 2019 23:46
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whydirt posted:I want a mashup of Dune and Arrested Development. It could work with either the Atreides or the Harkonnens as the Bluth family stand-ins. I may have committed some light Kanly.
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Feb 7, 2019 00:11
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Murray Mantoinette posted:I may have committed some light Kanly. "Dad's going to be crushed." "You don't have to tell him!" No. No he didn't.
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Feb 7, 2019 01:14
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Paul: Gotta figure out who this "Abuelo" is
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Feb 7, 2019 01:15
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A ruse, Feyd. A trick is something a whore does for money.
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Feb 7, 2019 03:43
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Communist Walrus posted:A ruse, Feyd. A trick is something a whore does for money. 
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Feb 7, 2019 03:47
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Communist Walrus posted:A ruse, Feyd. A trick is something a whore does for money.
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Feb 7, 2019 04:16
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Communist Walrus posted:A ruse, Feyd. A trick is something a whore does for money. 
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Feb 7, 2019 05:29
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Communist Walrus posted:A ruse, Feyd. A trick is something a whore does for money. The trick, Mr Piter, is not minding that it scares. 
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Feb 7, 2019 06:07
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Communist Walrus posted:A ruse, Feyd. A trick is something a whore does for money. Or spice.
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Feb 7, 2019 11:55
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MikeJF posted:I don't think they have e-reader screen things just based on the micro copy of the Orange Catholic Bible Paul had in the first book that was made of ultra-ultra thin pages and you couldn't touch the pages directly because they were too thin but used electrostatic presses to make them turn. If I recall correctly, the OC bible that Paul gets from Yueh is an antique. Also: Freeman: Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die. Hawat: There's just so many poorly chosen words in that sentence.
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Feb 7, 2019 13:34
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Afriscipio posted:If I recall correctly, the OC bible that Paul gets from Yueh is an antique. Also: I went and looked it up, and yeah, it predates filmbooks. Filmbooks are actually in the glossary. Shigawire is a metallic extrusion of a plant which is used as both a high tensile wire and a recording medium; information can be imprinted on a very fine reel of it (down to a single micron width) and read back. It's what they use to store solidos, filmbooks, images... seems like their generic hard drive equivalent, although it's probably analogue, given the Jihad. Filmbooks are books imprinted on shigawire which contain a mnemonic pulse that imprints the information into the reader. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 7, 2019 13:50
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MikeJF posted:I went and looked it up, and yeah, it predates filmbooks. Filmbooks are actually in the glossary. Shigawire is a metallic extrusion of a plant which is used as both a high tensile wire and a recording medium; information can be imprinted on a very fine reel of it (down to a single micron width) and read back. Filmbooks are books imprinted on shigawire. Biotech is a fairly cheap and very awesome way to have fancy sci-fi technology without the attendant infrastructure it would normally imply. Reminded of One Piece with its telepathic snails that function as phones, radios, fax machines and televisions, and not even getting into the superpowered shellfish from the sky.
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Feb 7, 2019 13:52
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The butlerian jihad didn't mean an end to electronics and specialized computers, just no artificial intelligence/supercomputers, and an over-reliance on tech that made humanity weak. I think storage technology was replaced with human hard drives
Temaukel fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 7, 2019 15:06
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Rabban glides in on a Buoyancy-Segway. “I’ve made a huge mistake!”
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Feb 7, 2019 15:15
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And iirc being a religious proscription rather than a specifically defined law means there's a lot of grey areas, the Tlexai or whatever who make the bionic eyes and clones are mentioned as running up against if not outright breaking the rules, but people put up with it because they're too drat useful. Though should be considered given the writer's time period, specialised computers aren't necessarily a known thing, while artificial intelligence are a well-established science fiction trope. A fair few sci-fi stories had some interesting conflicts given the writers considered 'computer' and 'robot' entirely seperate things.
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Feb 7, 2019 15:55
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These are my awards, mother. From Sardaukar. The thorse is for swordsmanship and the chairdog is for sandworm racing.
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Feb 7, 2019 17:53
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Communist Walrus posted:These are my awards, mother. From Sardaukar. The thorse is for swordsmanship and the chairdog is for sandworm racing. You fucker. You absolute savage. That joke was better than what I had. 
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Feb 7, 2019 18:21
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Temaukel posted:The butlerian jihad didn't mean an end to electronics and specialized computers, just no artificial intelligence/supercomputers, and an over-reliance on tech that made humanity weak. I think storage technology was replaced with human hard drives The Butlerian Jihad was also fantastic for not just being an interesting element of the setting that also gives plenty to think about, but I love how it also gave Herbert a way to avoid having the setting get all dated by taking technology on a completely different path. I wonder why more SF doesn’t have some kind of technological diversion point like that.
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Feb 7, 2019 19:54
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The overt meaning of “butler” is “a highly-skilled servant”. The kabbalistic meaning of “butler” is “one who destroys intelligent machines”. This reading we derive from Samuel Butler, a Victorian author who in 1863 published Darwin Among The Machines. He wrote that, just as Darwin had recently found humans to be evolving by natural selection, so machines might be “evolving” by artificial selection, becoming more and more powerful until eventually they would replace humans as the dominant life-form. He ended by suggesting that “war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race.” And we derive it also from Frank Butler, a friend of Frank Herbert’s, who protested a freeway meant to help industrialize Seattle. Herbert was so impressed by Butler’s anti-technology activism that he included in his Dune series an anti-robot crusade called the Butlerian Jihad, in which mankind rises up against robots and destroys them all. A jihad is a struggle waged in accordance with the will of God, and the Butlerian Jihad certainly qualifies. For God says (Joshua 8:1) “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack AI.” Thus the Butlerian Jihad. This, then, is the kabbalistic meaning of Butler: “one who destroys intelligent machines”. The obvious derivation is English – stories about “robot butlers” and the like. But if I’d been a little less shocked by the explosion, I might have moved past that and posited a Hebrew origin coming from bat Teller.
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Feb 7, 2019 21:08
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The Butlerian Jihad was also fantastic for not just being an interesting element of the setting that also gives plenty to think about, but I love how it also gave Herbert a way to avoid having the setting get all dated by taking technology on a completely different path. I wonder why more SF doesn’t have some kind of technological diversion point like that. The Stars My Destination has some amazing stuff that reminds me of this. Because teleportation is basically a daily reality that must be contended with the feudal space powers in the book construct their architecture like labyrinths because that's the only way to prevent someone from blinking in based on easy spatial memory. God drat that book rules. Basically, this kind of invention via subtraction is characteristic of 50s-60s pulp fantasy.
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Feb 7, 2019 22:07
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You make some of the most interesting posts, my dude. My head didn't go back farther in fiction than R.U.R/ and history than Ned Ludd (who I guess was probably also fiction). I've heard before that Kabbalists had conceived of intelligent machines a while ago. Do you know offhand how long they've held this concept? It's not the modernity that surprises me here, just that the idea should have been so much more widely discussed before this century, it's something. Also, how'd you hear about Herbert's friend Butler? I haven't read much of the dude's life outside of what he says in interviews and I'm sure not going to take it from his moron son.
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Feb 7, 2019 23:44
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Lol, honestly I poached that off of Unsong (def worth reading, Neil Armstrong falls through a crack in the sky, reaches Ein Sof, and the radio channel NASA used has to be abandoned because he won't stop eternal-choiring about how great God is). Plus you can read it online for free. The idea of machines that can think is probably older than the idea of machines, but I have no proof of this. I think goes back to the idea that "humans were created from clay or whatever... Also we make stuff from clay all the time...  " and then the next question would be is it morally acceptable for humans to make people, assuming it's possible?There's the original Golem story but I think this idea that you can create something that is like a living thing but not "alive" is significantly older than even that. Iirc there's similar proto ideas in Greek and depending on what kind of definition you're willing to go with Gilgamesh may count. Pretty sure there's a talking weapon even from back then but if I'm remembering right it is created by a god and not people. After the Golem you get the era where rich kings would want to buy automatons and there was some concern this was going to far. This is irl and not just a story. Then after that you get the story of Frankenstein -- sort of related to this, the substrate is obviously the dead and not clay or machines or whatever. Sorcerer's apprentice of course is in this genre. Not sure when that came out. Back tracking to earlier there's the Aztec (I think) story about how in the last world (we're on #5 or something) was destroyed because all the tools of the people got fed up and warred against humans and the whole thing gets hosed up so the gods gotta start over again. I think there are similar stories widespread thought non-European cultures and some will be very old, but nothing else comes to mind offhand. I don't know where exactly the line is crossed between "oh poo poo the pots and pans came alive" to the more refined idea of Butlerian Jihad. Basically I think the idea that it might be possible to take an inanimate thing and give it agency, and this might be dangerous as gently caress but maybe good, is probably as old as the idea that some things count as alive and some things do not. Even now there are some cultures where everything still counts as alive already.
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Feb 8, 2019 00:29
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Bottom line imo: the idea of a "what if we made a thinking machine" is probably roughly as old as "this is a machine, not just a tool" "What if these non-living things became alive?" Is probably as old as "these things are alive, these things are not" And then finally there's a spectrum between the two ideas where the one side is "everything is in some sense alive or has a souls" and the other side of the spectrum is skynet, and then maybe Feeling Machines that have emotions So it's weird eventually you get back where you started, in a way
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Feb 8, 2019 00:35
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I see. Thank you for the background. Unsong looks promising. I'll probably read some of it later this evening. Thanks!
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Feb 8, 2019 00:47
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SniperWoreConverse posted:There's the original Golem story but I think this idea that you can create something that is like a living thing but not "alive" is significantly older than even that. Iirc there's similar proto ideas in Greek and depending on what kind of definition you're willing to go with Gilgamesh may count. Pretty sure there's a talking weapon even from back then but if I'm remembering right it is created by a god and not people. The Greeks had things like Hephaestus' automatons, the bronze giant Talos, the Galatea story, and so on.
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Feb 8, 2019 01:37
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SniperWoreConverse posted:For God says (Joshua 8:1) “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack AI.”  he's not wrong
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Feb 8, 2019 02:39
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:The trick, Mr Piter, is not minding that it scares. Lawrence of Arabia is totally the best D U N E movie that currently exists.
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Feb 8, 2019 12:25
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