Post: #1

Are there any fans of the fans of the Dunes series? I am on book 5 - Heretics of Dune. I think they are interesting. I think Frank Heerbert was a genius.

Post: #2

Big fan here. The spice must flow!!

Post: #3

(01-30-2016 11:50 AM)perdogg Wrote:  Are there any fans of the fans of the Dunes series? I am on book 5 - Heretics of Dune. I think they are interesting. I think Frank Heerbert was a genius.

Heard of it, heard there was a Dune video game as well but never played it - was one of the first RTS games if I recall.

Post: #4

(01-30-2016 11:56 AM)EDantes Wrote:  

(01-30-2016 11:50 AM)perdogg Wrote:  Are there any fans of the fans of the Dunes series? I am on book 5 - Heretics of Dune. I think they are interesting. I think Frank Heerbert was a genius.

Heard of it, heard there was a Dune video game as well but never played it - was one of the first RTS games if I recall.

Emperor: Battle for Dune. Certainly not "one of the first" RTS games, but one of the first fully 3D RTS games. Developed by Westwood for PC so of course it was awesome, but never really got the recognition it deserved. One of my favorite all time RTS.

The campaign was a large conquest-style metamap and you could play as one of 3 houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, and Ordos) vying to take over Arrakis and control the Spice Melange. Gameplay was almost idnetical to the Westwood's Command & Conquer series.

Post: #5

Fear is the mind killer.

Post: #6

Im reading Dune right now, so far its a masterpiece.

Post: #7

(01-30-2016 12:01 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  

(01-30-2016 11:56 AM)EDantes Wrote:  

(01-30-2016 11:50 AM)perdogg Wrote:  Are there any fans of the fans of the Dunes series? I am on book 5 - Heretics of Dune. I think they are interesting. I think Frank Heerbert was a genius.

Heard of it, heard there was a Dune video game as well but never played it - was one of the first RTS games if I recall.

Emperor: Battle for Dune. Certainly not "one of the first" RTS games, but one of the first fully 3D RTS games. Developed by Westwood for PC so of course it was awesome, but never really got the recognition it deserved. One of my favorite all time RTS.

The campaign was a large conquest-style metamap and you could play as one of 3 houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, and Ordos) vying to take over Arrakis and control the Spice Melange. Gameplay was almost idnetical to the Westwood's Command & Conquer series.

That's cool to know

Post: #8

Big fan from way back. Read all the books, used to have a Frank Herbert collection. Herbert was big into psychology and it shows through the series. Damn shame he died of cancer just as the final one was completed. Don't bother with the new series his son co-authored. I read the first one of those and it was all I could take. The son's biography of his dad is pretty good, however.
I used to have a DUNE coloring book I found at a book overstock place. There was all kinds of tie-in crap generated when the first movie came out. Of course it bombed and the merchandise was dumped.

Post: #9

All this discussion of a nefarious global elite lately has made me think of this book.

If things keep progressing as the George Soroses of the world want them to, within a 100 years we'll being living in a global neo-fuedal system ruled by transhuman pervert overlords like Baron Vladimir Harkonen.


But yeah back on topic- great book. His son also wrote a triliogy based on his father's notes about the human war against the Thinking Machines, set about 10,000 years before the events of Dune. Good reading.

Post: #10

Dune is a movie that they actually should remake...and by remake I mean make a miniseries of. There is way too much Dune for a 2 hour film.

Post: #11

If you are a fan of Dune, you must watch Jodorowsky's Dune. Hell, even if you hate Dune you should still watch it.

Hands down one of the greatest documentaries ever.

Post: #12

Frank Herbert was definitely a genius but a grade A pervert and had some serious psychosexual issues that only become apparent later in his books.

The best one was the first book and arguably a close second best to me is God Emperor of Dune.

He took a rather simple and seemingly superficial comic book-like concept of a man with near unlimited cosmic power and expanded it into this weird abstract thing.

Post: #13

When I was a little IRT and had no social life, I used to play the Dune PC game for hours on end. It's the first strategy game I ever played and I was fucking addicted to the story and how that game was executed. That's what caused me to be a fan of the series.

Post: #14

I read the first three in the series as a teen. Then in my thirties, I read all six, along with The Jesus Incident and its sequels, and The Dosadi Experiment.
I came to the opinion he was overly wrapped up about the idea of layers of meaning and communication in every word and gesture. In his worlds, human society evolved in complexity until nearly all actions had these layers.
I'd read a scene where one a person would twitch a finger, then there'd be a couple of paragraphs explaining the meaning she intended. Then a couple of paragraphs where the other person perceived all this nuance, then unloaded paragraphs of meaning in a one word response.
I thought this was a little over the top. However, I'm coming to see there's more of this in life thsn I undestood at the time. I need to reread these and see how much more I see in it now.

Post: #15

I need to re-read the original 6 Dune books because of this thread. Reflecting on them, there's a lot of wisdom tucked away in them amongst all the sci-fi stuff.

I must not fear. Fear is the game-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings chronic masturbation.

e: another good one unaltered that people forget because it's from Chapterhouse - "Seek freedom and become captive to your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."

Post: #16

(01-30-2016 05:44 PM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  Dune is a movie that they actually should remake...and by remake I mean make a miniseries of. There is way too much Dune for a 2 hour film.

Exactly. They (HBO etc) should go one better and make a slickly produced tv series, ala Game of Thrones. I know there was a mini series done in 2000, but from what I remember of it, it also could have been better.

Post: #17

I really believe Dune is still unfilmable after the 1st book. It's just too abstract and cerebral. It gets really bizarre later on and when you try and portray it in standard visual or plotline form it loses a lot of its impact.

That's why guys like Jodorowsky and Lynch were drawn to it to begin with. It's right up their alley but obviously too much for at least one of them (Lynch) to handle.

The existing tv series and films always try to portray it in typical plot format when it's way deeper than that.

In several parts Frank Herbert managed to write the psychedelic experience into literary form. It's pretty hard to recreate that.

Post: #18

The original is deservedly considered a classic. I read the second book once, and it came across like an addendum or appendix - not bad, mind, just didn't seem like a full-fledged novel. Never read the rest, and after reading the synopses on Wikipedia I have no intention to. Sounds like they just go off into increasingly bizarre territory. I forget it now, but there is an old joke about how Herbert misunderstood what really made "Dune" popular, and instead wrote sequels with increasing focus on the weird religious/spiritual elements and byzantine court politics that fans didn't really care about.

His son's books in the Dune universe are not all that bad (I've read a few, but not all), but they are jarringly different in style in that they read like generic science fiction, lacking the sense of depth that Frank gave his works. They could be decent books in their own right if they didn't suffer by unavoidable comparison to the originals.

If you like the pithy aphorisms and observations in the series, you might try Idries Shah. Don't know if Herbert was influenced by him or not, but there is a certain similarity in the observations and tone (Shah perhaps being a little more wry than the very serious characters of the Dune universe).

Post: #19

(01-31-2016 04:19 AM)Alsos Wrote:  The original is deservedly considered a classic. I read the second book once, and it came across like an addendum or appendix - not bad, mind, just didn't seem like a full-fledged novel. Never read the rest, and after reading the synopses on Wikipedia I have no intention to. Sounds like they just go off into increasingly bizarre territory. I forget it now, but there is an old joke about how Herbert misunderstood what really made "Dune" popular, and instead wrote sequels with increasing focus on the weird religious/spiritual elements and byzantine court politics that fans didn't really care about.

His son's books in the Dune universe are not all that bad (I've read a few, but not all), but they are jarringly different in style in that they read like generic science fiction, lacking the sense of depth that Frank gave his works. They could be decent books in their own right if they didn't suffer by unavoidable comparison to the originals.

If you like the pithy aphorisms and observations in the series, you might try Idries Shah. Don't know if Herbert was influenced by him or not, but there is a certain similarity in the observations and tone (Shah perhaps being a little more wry than the very serious characters of the Dune universe).

I will check out Idries Shah. Never heard of that writer before, sounds interesting.

Post: #20

Don't be taken in by the ersatz "deep philosophy" of Dune -it's good popcorn sci-fi, no more, with some striking images and ideas. I enjoyed books 2-5 more than the original, and some of the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books too. Just take it for what it is.

Post: #21

The first three books are required Sci-fi reading in my eyes.

Excellent storytelling and beautiful world building.