for the record, like almost all big classic sci-fi, these books (dune) are remarkably bigoted and reductive. i still like space stories and political intrigue tho.
alt text: Trade Offer from Sand Worm Leto Atreides. You receive: 4000 years of planet bound subjugation. Spice, eventually. Famine. Sex ninjas from outer space. Golden Path… I recieve: Like 70 something Duncan Idahos. Gentle Hwi.
Leto II was trying to free humanity from the tyranny of prescience. It took a 4000 year selective breeding program to produce Siona who was invisible to the future. It was the undoing of the Golden Path of Paul Muad’dib.
This book was where the series completely left the rails for me. So fucking bizarre.
Absolutely but it still kinda fits with the story.
Mankind, all the eggs in one basket.
Some evil is coming… and mankind just tends to want to congregate
So… what they need is a truly horrible despot whose influence and power is so absolute that once they’re free of him they’ll disperse and never look back.
So… yeah… it makes a kind of odd sense… still bonkers though
Yes, “teach them a lesson they’ll feel in their bones.” Although I thought the focus of being a despot, along with the Scattering, was to teach a humanity a lesson about avoiding the “Pharaonic Disease”; to reject authoritarians.
That was one of the points, yes. The lives of almost all humans in the galaxy were reduced to the same conditions, and put under ever increasing authoritarianism, that they would all break at once and forever have a shared hatred for despots.
Yeah, later books seem like Frank Herbert was way too obsessed with sex. The idea of Honored Maitres as using sex to control humans seemed pretty misogynistic, even at the time (yes, eventually there was a guy, too). Still, I think the whole “put humanity in a pressure cooker so they explode outwards when the lid is gone” concept was pretty thought-provoking. Also the Siona project; if prescience is a real thing in that universe, it can be studied and understood, then weaponized. How do you defend against an enemy that knows where and when you’ll be?
It gets overlooked today, but Barron Harkonnen is a gay stereotype. Overlooked because gay men being hyperviolent is a stereotype that’s long died out, but it was a thing.
Dune starts in a weird place and it gets weirder as it goes.
I’m reading Chapterhouse right now and my God Frank has some real sexual issues doesn’t he? I thought the Idaho gholas in God-Emperor were weird enough.
Still, as a critique on power structures, Dune as a whole is phenomenal
Maybe we should drag Lynch back for creating the later movies in the series.
May I introduce you to John Norman and the wholesome little planet of Gor?
Jesus, i bought one of those from a little book store years ago because “cool cover!”
I remember that I was making small talk with the clerk/owner and said something like “this book looks rad!” And he gave me one of those slightly long “suuurree” replies.
I was maybe 30 pages in later and just put it down. “Really fucked up misogyny as a civilization” aint exactly a great genre.
Or is it the best genre?
Don’t look for a film adaptation any time soon.
eta: I went to look Gor up in wikipedia and Holy Shit! He’s still publishing them as ebooks! #38 is coming out this year.
Don’t forget trees tho, that was a pretty big deal
Foundation by isaac asimov is pretty solid for its time and mostly holds up today
I liked it but there’s two main issues IMO
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Leans really heavily into the “If you’re smart you should get to do whatever you want”
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A complete lack of women characters which is particularly telling combined with point 1
Even his male characters were paper thin. IA was more into how the sci-fi ideas affected everyone than individual characters.
It’s almost the definitive novel of classic Science Fiction, and I mean that in a lot of good and bad ways.
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