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Auralnauts remain too good for us.
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Dec 14, 2023 03:46
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DarkSol posted:Wait... what? I thought Paul was just trying to avoid the galactic jihad that would have taken place after he assumed the throne? Only parts of it. He has to lead them down a specific path otherwise humanity will die from a far far far future threat. Robots destroying everyone is one of them, I believe. Dont read past this if you plan on reading the books past Dune: I don't know how far you've read but Paul is not the main character for long. Like I said, I only went 4 books deep, I don't know if they explain it further, or even if Herbert's son finished this or not. It got too weird for me to continue. Philthy fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 03:58
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I hate it so much
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Dec 14, 2023 04:21
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lmao
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Dec 14, 2023 04:51
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DarkSol posted:Wait... what? I thought Paul was just trying to avoid the galactic jihad that would have taken place after he assumed the throne? This is talking about books that were not even a twinkle in Herbert's eye when Dune was written.
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Dec 14, 2023 05:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxB2gbByd4k
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Dec 14, 2023 05:29
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Arglebargle III posted:This is talking about books that were not even a twinkle in Herbert's eye when Dune was written. Yeah. Dune and Messiah are one thing and then the other books are... a whole different thing. Herbert had changed his views on a lot of things, had a lot of less successful books, then came back and injected his new ideas (plus a bunch of influence from Jodorowsky's production) into his one successful property. I kind of prefer to disregard those later books and am glad Villeneuve is doing the same.
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Dec 14, 2023 06:52
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lol imagine rating god emperor as anything other than the best book of the series. couldn't be me.
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Dec 14, 2023 06:57
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Bugblatter posted:Herbert had changed his views on a lot of things, had a lot of less successful books, then came back and injected his new ideas (plus a bunch of influence from Jodorowsky's production) into his one successful property. Elaborate please.
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Dec 14, 2023 06:59
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I love those weird little later books. They're also responsible for 90 percent of the jokes in this and any other Dune thread
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Dec 14, 2023 10:45
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Shageletic posted:I love those weird little later books. They're also responsible for 90 percent of the jokes in this and any other Dune thread One thing they ain't is little
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Dec 14, 2023 10:51
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Bugblatter posted:Yeah. Dune and Messiah are one thing and then the other books are... a whole different thing. That's not really true. Children of Dune is about the legacy left by a messiah figure and the people who try to preserve and use that legacy. God Emperor of Dune is about the costs Paul was unwilling to pay (but Leto II is), both for himself and for humanity, to complete the Golden Path. Heretics and Chapterhouse are about how even if there was a true messiah who really did deliver us from our existential threats, we'll still kill each other, in part over different interpretations of what that messiah wants us to do with the salvation he's provided.
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Dec 14, 2023 18:39
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And the constant stream of fuckable Duncan Idahos. That’s important.
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Dec 14, 2023 18:41
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God Emperor is worthy of inclusion with the 'original' books, even if it's an entirely different experience and vibe and could have maybe benefited from some more editing. It's a great capstone. Everything after that felt like rote sci-fi space opera which while occasionally fun (Super Teg!) had none of all of the high-minded literary otherworldliness that permeated the first few books. They're safe to skip imo. I never bothered with the KJA books.
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Dec 14, 2023 19:05
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Is it pronounced like "Miles O'Brien" or "Miles Gloriosus?"
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Dec 14, 2023 19:09
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ephori posted:God Emperor is worthy of inclusion with the 'original' books, even if it's an entirely different experience and vibe and could have maybe benefited from some more editing. It's a great capstone. Frank, of course, died before finishing the second trilogy - which is a pity. No more books exist. 
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Dec 14, 2023 20:06
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I was happy I read CoD to put a cap on Paul's story, but it sucked so bad relative to the original novel that I tapped out on the series there with no regrets. Hope we get to see Bijaz in DUNC2 tho
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Dec 14, 2023 20:14
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Failed Imagineer posted:I was happy I read CoD to put a cap on Paul's story, but it sucked so bad relative to the original novel that I tapped out on the series there with no regrets. Sorry, Bijaz left.
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Dec 14, 2023 20:23
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The first three books were all written at the same time and were meant to be a War and Peace type of release but it got too big so they split it. Honestly, if I could go back in time, I'd have stopped after reading Dune. It works as a perfect self-contained book, everything after is just not on the same level IMO and kinda ruins the wonder.
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Dec 14, 2023 20:35
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Failed Imagineer posted:I was happy I read CoD to put a cap on Paul's story, but it sucked so bad relative to the original novel that I tapped out on the series there with no regrets.  pretty much.I think Emperor of Dune is worth reading as a capstone to the main narrative and as an underline to its thesis, but that's all in spite of it being being bad. The books past that don't even have that going for it.
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Dec 14, 2023 20:37
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No idea what you're talking about Chapterhouse is the last book in the series
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Dec 14, 2023 20:45
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Yeah, and it's a bad book.
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Dec 14, 2023 20:55
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:I have a hypothesis, at least part of which is based on authorial intent; I think the first three books were meant a trilogy (the foreword of one of them says as much, if memory serves), and that God-Emperor of Dune was meant to stand alone, to be followed by another trilogy. Philthy posted:The first three books were all written at the same time and were meant to be a War and Peace type of release but it got too big so they split it. You guys are confusing a few different things. When Herbert talked about an entire trilogy as one book, he was referring to the 3 books in Dune: "Book 1: Dune", "Book 2: Muad'Dib", and "Book 3: The Prophet". BlankSystemDaemon, you're correct that he intended Heretics and Chapterhouse to be parts 1 and 2 of a trilogy that he died before finishing. Many people take Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune as one trilogy because of the huge time jump between Children and God-Emperor. But you can also split the first four novels into two pairs, one about Paul and one about Leto II. Philthy, I think you're thinking about how The Lord of the Rings was intended as one epic that got split into 3 novels for sales purposes. The first three Dune novels were not written at the same time. Dune was written over the course of 7 or so years leading up to its publication in 1965. Dune Messiah was serialized and then published in 1969. Children of Dune wasn't published until 1976. Had they been written at the same time, they wouldn't have been released so far apart, and the middle installment wouldn't have been serialized. ephori posted:God Emperor is worthy of inclusion with the 'original' books, even if it's an entirely different experience and vibe and could have maybe benefited from some more editing. It's a great capstone. I think Heretics falls off pretty heavily after God Emperor, but Chapterhouse picks back up again pretty well. There's some interesting stuff going on in those last two that makes me not want to write them off completely like the KJA books (which as someone who read Hunters and Sandworms for science, I can assure you that you're doing the right thing by not bothering with them). Heretics and Chapterhouse show us the old imperial core millennia after Leto II's death and how those people are caught up in the same old bullshit that they've always been caught up in. Leto II gave humanity the entirety of existence to colonize. These are the people who decided to stay home. I'm going to repeat my dumb joke about them: they are the people who are so sedentary, they took dogs (who are for walking) and bred them into chairs (which are for sitting). They need to finally loving evolve, and they're given the opportunity to do so by the arrival of the Honored Matres and their assault on the old imperial core. The Bene Gesserit and their allies think they are keeping the faith with Leto II's wishes by maintaining the society he left behind and defending it against the invading Honored Matres who represent an existential threat to it. But they are in fact, faithless servants to Leto II's memory because they fail to understand what he did. By breeding the Siona gene, he removed existential threats to humanity. By creating the conditions that would lead to the Scattering, he ensured that there would never be a "core" to humanity again.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:10
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Xiahou Dun posted:And the constant stream of fuckable Duncan Idahos. The universal constants are: - Gravity. - Duncan Idaho Fucks.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:15
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PeterWeller posted:I think Heretics falls off pretty heavily after God Emperor, but Chapterhouse picks back up again pretty well. There's some interesting stuff going on in those last two that makes me not want to write them off I felt like Heretics in particular starts off really strong, like a return to form, which makes the fall off in quality hit even more. Then Chapterhouse was weird but fine. I still can't believe some of the prose in the KJA books is real. Like some of that got written, edited, and published on purpose.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:21
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i only ever read the first failson book and that was enough but i'm happy to take everyone's word about the quality of what comes after. 
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Dec 14, 2023 21:30
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PeterWeller posted:
I'm pretty sure the forwards in Messiah and Children said they were all written at the same time. I'm looking at the Wiki and it's showing the same somewhat. quote:Parts of Dune Messiah (and its sequel Children of Dune) were written prior to the completion of Dune itself. The novel appeared initially as a five part serial in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine published from June (cover dated July) to October (cover dated November) 1969 with illustrations by Jack Gaughan. Either way, I only really cared for Dune itself. I think it's a masterpiece. The rest were just... eh! I can see people liking everything ever published, but for me, Dune just felt special. It's one of those gems.
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Dec 14, 2023 22:42
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To my knowledge, the original Dune and Dune Messiah make no mention of the precog hunter-killer drones that are the existential threat that is being avoided by The Golden Path. The two books are mostly about Paul, and his "bad ending" in the first book is that he failed to walk the narrow path that avenged his father without setting off the Jihad. The books never start mentioning humanity hiding uselessly in shelters as a prescient enemy hunts them to extinction until Children and Leto II's fevered dreams. Everything having to do with Leto II is related to him avoiding that future, but I don't think that stuff was ever in the original Dune itself, which is just about the problems with following a "great man" instead of people thinking for themselves. EDIT: One of the things hosed up by the failson books, is that is makes everyone go back and think Herbert was warning against sentient machines killing humanity. The "thinking machines" enslaving humanity in his universe were not Terminators that took over the species, but essentially the natural conclusion to automation and AI making human input into our society and culture unnecessary and thus allowing power to be concentrated into the hands of those who controlled the machines while everyone else was left in the dust. The "enemy" Leto II foresaw weren't even thinking machines, but endlessly replicating prescient hunter-killer drones mindlessly wiping out all living things. Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 23:04
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Philthy posted:I'm pretty sure the forwards in Messiah and Children said they were all written at the same time. I'm looking at the Wiki and it's showing the same somewhat. So I did a little digging because I have original Putnam editions of both and Ace trade editions, and those don't have forwards. Interesting side note: the transcript of the interrogation that opens my Ace trade Messiah is not in my Putnam edition. It looks like the forward you're thinking of is the one Herbert wrote for the 1984 reprints: "When I was Writing Dune" that appears in different editions from time to time. The line you quote from Wikipedia is almost verbatim from that (tsk tsk wiki editors): Frank Herbert posted:Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story remained intact. I was a writer and I was writing. The success meant I could spend more time writing. So yeah, parts of them were written before he finished Dune, but it doesn't look like he wrote all three at once. Anonymous Zebra posted:To my knowledge, the original Dune and Dune Messiah make no mention of the precog hunter-killer drones that are the existential threat that is being avoided by The Golden Path. The two books are mostly about Paul, and his "bad ending" in the first book is that he failed to walk the narrow path that avenged his father without setting off the Jihad. The books never start mentioning humanity hiding uselessly in shelters as a prescient enemy hunts them to extinction until Children and Leto II's fevered dreams. Everything having to do with Leto II is related to him avoiding that future, but I don't think that stuff was ever in the original Dune itself, which is just about the problems with following a "great man" instead of people thinking for themselves. I'm not even sure if the hunter killer robots show up before Siona's vision in God Emperor. You're right that there's no mention of them in Dune or Messiah. They don't describe the end of the Golden Path aside from it being some kind of salvation for mankind for which there is a terrible cost that Paul is unwilling to pay. You do have to lay a little bit of the blame for the robot stuff on Frank himself. The Butlerian Jihad is fought against actual robots and thinking machines. And Siona's vision is explicitly about those drones. But reading that stuff as just a narrow a warning against AI is missing the forest for the trees. While the threat Siona sees is specifically those drones, the point is as long as she spreads her immunity to prescience, nothing will ever threaten humanity like those drones do in her vision.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:40
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Anonymous Zebra posted:EDIT: One of the things hosed up by the failson books, is that is makes everyone go back and think Herbert was warning against sentient machines killing humanity. The "thinking machines" enslaving humanity in his universe were not Terminators that took over the species, but essentially the natural conclusion to automation and AI making human input into our society and culture unnecessary and thus allowing power to be concentrated into the hands of those who controlled the machines while everyone else was left in the dust. The "enemy" Leto II foresaw weren't even thinking machines, but endlessly replicating prescient hunter-killer drones mindlessly wiping out all living things. Yup, I really hated this aspect of those books a lot. Herbert's take on a machine takeover is much more prescient (  ) even now thanks to algorithmically driven internet poo poo run by rich assholes.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:46
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When I first read the books, I had always envisioned the Butlerian Jihad as way more of a philosophical throwing-clogs-in-windmills moment that was more about humanity realizing the hidden cost of delegating more and more responsibility and basically opting out of the shared human experience; it was way more interesting in that lens imo than as a literal Skynet robot war rehashing the beaten-to-death morality of Frankenstein.
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Dec 15, 2023 00:01
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Dune does have mention of humans having robots/machines do the thinking for them, and that - along with a kind of "machine thinking" (which I always understood to be bureaucracy) - is what's described as leading up to the Butlerian Jihad, and subsequently to the development of mentats (and presumably the other schools, though I don't know if the original series lays out the order). If the Water of Life is the ultimate tool for the Bene Gesserit, which prevents them from using anything else, I wonder if that's true of Sapho.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:21
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Anonymous Zebra posted:To my knowledge, the original Dune and Dune Messiah make no mention of the precog hunter-killer drones that are the existential threat that is being avoided by The Golden Path. It's worth noting that even when that's brought up in God Emperor, it's just so Leto can immediately pull a Ray Smuckles and say "don't worry, I already took care of that." (And perhaps, that the fact that [Siona/then modern humanity] could even conceive of that as an existential problem to begin with means that it no longer was.)
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Dec 15, 2023 01:36
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ephori posted:When I first read the books, I had always envisioned the Butlerian Jihad as way more of a philosophical throwing-clogs-in-windmills moment that was more about humanity realizing the hidden cost of delegating more and more responsibility and basically opting out of the shared human experience; it was way more interesting in that lens imo than as a literal Skynet robot war rehashing the beaten-to-death morality of Frankenstein. that's cool and all, but having the hunter-killer robots from the failson books show up in ready player 2 and space jam 3 is great brand synergy for warner brothers
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Dec 15, 2023 02:29
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The evolved hunter-killer drones aren't the threat being avoided by the Golden Path, they're a threat being avoided by it. The true threat was that humanity would stagnate in one place until something eventually came along that could wipe it out. The hunter-killers were just one example in one possible future, one that was averted even before Leto II completed the actions needed to put humanity on the Golden Path.
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Dec 15, 2023 03:46
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Kinda the irony of the Butlerian Jihad is that given humanity is governed in a literal feudal system and people like Mentats, Navigators and Suk doctors are used as interchangeable devices made for a single purpose, it failed at what it set out to do, and ultimately just made people's quality of life even worse. Leto II may or may not outright say that at some point. If anything it seems to mostly be a plot device to justify why it's such a different sci-fi setting than stuff that came before, like Asimov's Foundation which Dune is pretty specifically a counterpoint to.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:24
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Yeah, I assumed it was to sideline questions about why you need psychic fishbulb junkies and their yummy drugs for space travel. I assume Herbert started with plot threads and scene ideas and came up with justifications for these. He wanted Yueh to be a traitor and wanted there to be a lot of intrigue around who the traitor was, and he had to figure out a way that no one would suspect him, resulting in Suk conditioning.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:04
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No reason it can't be both. Though does come to mind that Navigators and such play prominent parts going forward but Suk conditioning never comes up again. Of course, with such a famous betrayal it likely went out of fashion quickly once people realised it wasn't infallible.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:57
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I think the Butlerian Jihad is really just supposed to evoke the luddites. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. Where most SF is about how humans and technology will evolve together, Dune is about how humans would evolve in the absence of that tech, instead just relying on their meat bodies and finding ways to expand human capability that way (which feeds thematically into his interest in psychedelics). I don’t think he was being purposefully vague about the particulars of the Butlerian Jihad, I think he just had faith that people would be able to extract meaning from it based on their knowledge of the Luddites and that was all that was required.
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Dec 15, 2023 16:08
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Jewmanji posted:I think the Butlerian Jihad is really just supposed to evoke the luddites. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. Yeah, that was my read for sure.
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Dec 15, 2023 17:26
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