6 ms·

Dune Genesis (1980)

51 points by omnibrain 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kaycebasques 3y ago
I love the first book; have read it ~5 times. I never picked up on this "heroes are disasters" theme until last week, when a review of the movie said the same thing. Still love the book, not sure if it was that effective at getting that message across. Maybe my opinion will change when I re-read it again with knowledge of that underlying motivation.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  Herbert himself regretted the fact that not many people picked up on that theme, which is why they tried to make it more obvious in the movie. Did you read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune?
  - kaycebasques 3y ago
    Makes sense, thanks for the color. That makes me give Part Two a little more slack. But only a little. Loved Part One but Part Two was a disappointment for me. Yes, read each of those books once. I think I got up to God Emperor. Next time I have the itch to read the first, maybe I'll just force myself all the way through to Chapterhouse...
- setr 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s even possible to read that theme out of book 1; the only real suggestion of it is the jihad prophecy, but by the end of the book our hero has only really done good things for good people and has dramatically escalated in power over his enemies with essentially zero negative consequences… and even as you read through it, it seems like Paul is going to eventually avoid that future (because he’s so constantly aware of heading towards it), so even thats not useful. It only really shows up in the next books, and then with hindsight
- enasterosophes 3y ago
  It wasn't obvious to me until I read God-Emperor. God-Emperor is the key to understanding exactly what Dune is about. These days when I re-read all six books (as I do maybe every five years or so), the original trilogy just ends up feeling like prequels.
camdenlock 3y ago
> but my superhero concept filled me with a concern that ecology might be the next banner for demagogues and would-be-heroes, for the power seekers and others ready to find an adrenaline high in the launching of a new crusade. Damn, he was spot on about this.
- kaycebasques 3y ago
  That was a big surprise for me. I always took the book as an earnest ecological message. Totally missed the "heroes are disasters" central theme and therefore the underlying warning about greenwashing.
sxp 3y ago
> The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC. I didn't realize that was the official line. I always thought spice was supposed to be a metaphor for oil rather than water. Especially since spice was only found on a single desert planet but the heroes came from a world covered with water. If water was supposed to represent oil and the heroes had any sense of basic economics, they would have just shipped tonnes of water from their homeworld. Or have gotten water from stellar ice or hydrogen. One of the positive pro-technologies messages from the Dune series is that the spice monopoly is broken once synthetic spice is created. I viewed this as an optimistic future where synthetic carbon-negative hydrocarbons (or solar, wind, fusion, etc) would replace our dependency on oil pulled from the ground.
- euroderf 3y ago
  Yeah, always wondered what's the upper limit on a Heighliner - load one up with water. There seems to be plenty of energy available for transfer to/from LEO.
readthenotes1 3y ago
"power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced-in a word, insane." Years ago I read someone who was paraphrasing this and use it to describe how governments go bad. I did not realize that Herbert originated it (afaik)
- stoneman24 3y ago
  Can’t remember where I heard it but “people who desire public office should be utterly barred from it”. Very few are able to escape their own prejudices, viewpoints and succeed in the office. Extremely difficult to make a positive difference for everyone. So many recent examples.
  - euroderf 3y ago
    SO, a system like jury selection.
    - dankotanko1599 3y ago
      Imagine a political system that was filled with randomly selected people rather than those motivated by power. It could work. Since anyone can do the job of a politician imo... it's not like medicine or engineering that requires hard skills. :laugh:
      - euroderf 3y ago
        You'd still need a filter. An attention span and an appetite for institutional processes.
        dankotanko1599 3y ago
        Sounds like a job for a machiavellian mentat with aspergers and delusions of grandeur.
stavros 3y ago
I've read the first book twice over the years, and really liked it. I've read the second book too, but I don't remember much about that one. How many of the books would you recommend reading to get the whole story? I've heard they go off the rails later on (or was that the Ender saga?).
- smogcutter 3y ago
  Read through book 4, God Emperor of Dune. At that point, “rails” are a distant memory. It’s wild, it’s wooly, it’s a 3 thousand year old worm king writing in his diary. Book 2 is grim and deflating, 3 picks up the pace again but is really just setup for 4. After 4, Herbert’s wife passes away and he takes up with his much younger editor. From then on, the books get significantly hornier. YMMV.
  - enasterosophes 3y ago
    Agree that 4 is the fulcrum. If anyone stops at 2 or 3 they are doing themselves a disservice. I never realized that the change in tone in 5 and 6 were due to a new editor. Interesting, but it makes sense. I think 5 and 6 were ... fine. But I have trouble pinpointing what they were really about. There is a lot of movement but no direction.
    - smogcutter 3y ago
      Oh yeah, 5 and 6 are… different. To be clear, by “takes up with” his editor I mean they had an affair. I hesitate to use the word because afaik Herbert was a widower at the time, but can’t think of a better one that hits the right tone.
      - mayd 3y ago
        Affair is the wrong word: Affair: a sexual relationship between two people, one or both of whom are married to or in a long-term relationship with someone else. "his wife is having an affair". (Google)
ttctciyf 3y ago
Tim O'Reilly, of the famous publishers, interviewed and later befriended Herbert while writing his 1981 book on the author, Frank Herbert. It covers a lot of the themes of the linked essay in an effort to explore the origin and meaning of the Dune trilogy, as it was then. The book is freely available on oreilly.com[1] and likely worth a look for anyone interested in TFA. For example, O'Reilly claims "in writing about the mystique of the superhero, Herbert himself was prey to it" quoting Analog editor John Campbell's rejection letter for Dune Messiah: "science-fictioneers [...] want heroes—not anti-heroes. They want stories of strong men who exert themselves, inspire others, and make a monkey's uncle out of malign fates! As Paul did in Dune —not as he fails completely to do in The Messiah" Campbell misses the point, O'Reilly says, " that Herbert deliberately looked for this reaction from his readers. To Herbert, the hero mystique is symptomatic of a deadly pathology in contemporary society, a compulsive yearning for easy answers. As long as men are looking for simple solutions to their problems, they will give over their ability to think for themselves to the first person who comes along and promises a solution. The Dune trilogy is an attempt to unveil that pattern and, in some small part, to change it."[2] 1: https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/index.csp https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/index.csp 2: https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch09.html https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch09.html
cherrycherry98 3y ago
"I now believe that evolution, or de-evolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability." I feel like we've been seeing exactly this in contemporary political movements. Identify some perceived injustice with society, create a power structure to address it, more injustice is created in the process, festering resentment at the power structure develops and produces blowback.

Dune Genesis (1980)

51 points by omnibrain 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

I love the first book; have read it ~5 times. I never picked up on this "heroes are disasters" theme until last week, when a review of the movie said the same thing. Still love the book, not sure if it was that effective at getting that message across. Maybe my opinion will change when I re-read it again with knowledge of that underlying motivation.

Trasmatta 3y ago
Herbert himself regretted the fact that not many people picked up on that theme, which is why they tried to make it more obvious in the movie. Did you read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune?
- kaycebasques 3y ago
  Makes sense, thanks for the color. That makes me give Part Two a little more slack. But only a little. Loved Part One but Part Two was a disappointment for me. Yes, read each of those books once. I think I got up to God Emperor. Next time I have the itch to read the first, maybe I'll just force myself all the way through to Chapterhouse...
setr 3y ago
I don’t think it’s even possible to read that theme out of book 1; the only real suggestion of it is the jihad prophecy, but by the end of the book our hero has only really done good things for good people and has dramatically escalated in power over his enemies with essentially zero negative consequences… and even as you read through it, it seems like Paul is going to eventually avoid that future (because he’s so constantly aware of heading towards it), so even thats not useful. It only really shows up in the next books, and then with hindsight
enasterosophes 3y ago
It wasn't obvious to me until I read God-Emperor. God-Emperor is the key to understanding exactly what Dune is about. These days when I re-read all six books (as I do maybe every five years or so), the original trilogy just ends up feeling like prequels.

camdenlock 3y ago

> but my superhero concept filled me with a concern that ecology might be the next banner for demagogues and would-be-heroes, for the power seekers and others ready to find an adrenaline high in the launching of a new crusade. Damn, he was spot on about this.

kaycebasques 3y ago
That was a big surprise for me. I always took the book as an earnest ecological message. Totally missed the "heroes are disasters" central theme and therefore the underlying warning about greenwashing.

sxp 3y ago

> The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC. I didn't realize that was the official line. I always thought spice was supposed to be a metaphor for oil rather than water. Especially since spice was only found on a single desert planet but the heroes came from a world covered with water. If water was supposed to represent oil and the heroes had any sense of basic economics, they would have just shipped tonnes of water from their homeworld. Or have gotten water from stellar ice or hydrogen. One of the positive pro-technologies messages from the Dune series is that the spice monopoly is broken once synthetic spice is created. I viewed this as an optimistic future where synthetic carbon-negative hydrocarbons (or solar, wind, fusion, etc) would replace our dependency on oil pulled from the ground.

euroderf 3y ago
Yeah, always wondered what's the upper limit on a Heighliner - load one up with water. There seems to be plenty of energy available for transfer to/from LEO.

readthenotes1 3y ago

"power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced-in a word, insane." Years ago I read someone who was paraphrasing this and use it to describe how governments go bad. I did not realize that Herbert originated it (afaik)

stoneman24 3y ago
Can’t remember where I heard it but “people who desire public office should be utterly barred from it”. Very few are able to escape their own prejudices, viewpoints and succeed in the office. Extremely difficult to make a positive difference for everyone. So many recent examples.
- euroderf 3y ago
  SO, a system like jury selection.
  - dankotanko1599 3y ago
    Imagine a political system that was filled with randomly selected people rather than those motivated by power. It could work. Since anyone can do the job of a politician imo... it's not like medicine or engineering that requires hard skills. :laugh:
    - euroderf 3y ago
      You'd still need a filter. An attention span and an appetite for institutional processes.
      - dankotanko1599 3y ago
        Sounds like a job for a machiavellian mentat with aspergers and delusions of grandeur.

stavros 3y ago

I've read the first book twice over the years, and really liked it. I've read the second book too, but I don't remember much about that one. How many of the books would you recommend reading to get the whole story? I've heard they go off the rails later on (or was that the Ender saga?).

smogcutter 3y ago
Read through book 4, God Emperor of Dune. At that point, “rails” are a distant memory. It’s wild, it’s wooly, it’s a 3 thousand year old worm king writing in his diary. Book 2 is grim and deflating, 3 picks up the pace again but is really just setup for 4. After 4, Herbert’s wife passes away and he takes up with his much younger editor. From then on, the books get significantly hornier. YMMV.
- enasterosophes 3y ago
  Agree that 4 is the fulcrum. If anyone stops at 2 or 3 they are doing themselves a disservice. I never realized that the change in tone in 5 and 6 were due to a new editor. Interesting, but it makes sense. I think 5 and 6 were ... fine. But I have trouble pinpointing what they were really about. There is a lot of movement but no direction.
  - smogcutter 3y ago
    Oh yeah, 5 and 6 are… different. To be clear, by “takes up with” his editor I mean they had an affair. I hesitate to use the word because afaik Herbert was a widower at the time, but can’t think of a better one that hits the right tone.
    - mayd 3y ago
      Affair is the wrong word: Affair: a sexual relationship between two people, one or both of whom are married to or in a long-term relationship with someone else. "his wife is having an affair". (Google)

ttctciyf 3y ago

Tim O'Reilly, of the famous publishers, interviewed and later befriended Herbert while writing his 1981 book on the author, Frank Herbert. It covers a lot of the themes of the linked essay in an effort to explore the origin and meaning of the Dune trilogy, as it was then. The book is freely available on oreilly.com[1] and likely worth a look for anyone interested in TFA. For example, O'Reilly claims "in writing about the mystique of the superhero, Herbert himself was prey to it" quoting Analog editor John Campbell's rejection letter for Dune Messiah: "science-fictioneers [...] want heroes—not anti-heroes. They want stories of strong men who exert themselves, inspire others, and make a monkey's uncle out of malign fates! As Paul did in Dune —not as he fails completely to do in The Messiah" Campbell misses the point, O'Reilly says, " that Herbert deliberately looked for this reaction from his readers. To Herbert, the hero mystique is symptomatic of a deadly pathology in contemporary society, a compulsive yearning for easy answers. As long as men are looking for simple solutions to their problems, they will give over their ability to think for themselves to the first person who comes along and promises a solution. The Dune trilogy is an attempt to unveil that pattern and, in some small part, to change it."[2] 1: https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/index.csp https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/index.csp 2: https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch09.html https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch09.html

cherrycherry98 3y ago

"I now believe that evolution, or de-evolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability." I feel like we've been seeing exactly this in contemporary political movements. Identify some perceived injustice with society, create a power structure to address it, more injustice is created in the process, festering resentment at the power structure develops and produces blowback.