DUNE: c/d

so glad you're digging it! lol re: "thopter"

they have tried to kill my son!

i mentioned this one the dune movie thread, but i avoided reading it for so long bc of the same 'draggy vibe' assumptions, and was pleasantly surprised to discover its a legit page-turner

Yeah though the first one is best, as I said upthread. Although I did stay hooked through most of the rest.

You guys this book is WILD

Finished “Chapter 1” and I am kinda reeling from all the reveals and uber-intrigue - this is much more of a rollercoaster than i expected

Lady Jessica def my fave (I expect disappointment but don’t tell me either way)

second least-fave word after ‘thopter: lasgun

lol

i have also realized why it is so hard to turn the book into a movie- so much of the drama (that i’ve read so far) lays within a character’s internal thoughts & suspicions, which seems like it would be a tall order to convert into visual

have you seen the (first) movie? because you are otm -- there are a lot of awkward voiceovers

i havent seen any adaptation ever
oh but i will when i am done mark my words

Veg that was always my take too. won't say the particular theme i remember thinking "it'd be hard to get this in a movie, and it's one of the coolest things in this book" about. but yeah 100%. and yet... i'm optimistic about the new one! some elements of the trailer made me think they were aware of this hurdle and that they want to go out of their way to make the thing i'm thinking of workable.

sidebar: i will never forgive Frank Herbert for deciding that a tent needs a “sphincter”

you should blog your reading of this book imo

or if you just keep telling us here that's cool

xp oh dear wait til you get to the detailed stilsuit description

t/s lynch's dune vs cronenberg's dune

Series 2 of the TV show Togetherness has a funny subplot of two friends resurrecting their teenage dream of putting on an avant garde puppet show adaption of Dune.

GHOST RIDE THE WORM 🐛

how far in are you now?

Like all old things, "Dune" is now somewhat controversial but I still love it. It held up strongly on a re-read a couple of years ago.

thopter is a good word (not bad) bcz it sounds like the sound a thopter wd make

Out here still waiting for the new Dune Allman

i am now halfway through the final “chapter” so not much left to go- still no idea how it’s going to end!

harkonnen just got spoilered & the padishah emperor just showed up .. he seems kinda disappointing after all the buildup? idk

oh and princess irulan finally showed up though i was so bored by all her stupid book excepts that i didnt even care when she finally appeared

the only interesting thing princess irulan ever did was provide the name for my tumblr

lol

Can't thopt won't thopt keep keepin on sandworms!

aaaaand done

it kinda just ...ends, huh?

enjoyed v much, 10/10 would knife-fight again
though i have to say the sheer level of detail did become overwhelming at times, v hard to store all the knowledge Herbert’s downloading on you at any one time —and a couple of times he assumes knowledge where there is none which i dont mind but it’s like, OH CMON THROW ME A BONE JFC
so i did scurry to the interwebs for a little clarity a few times

but i didnt feel any hokey datedness at all & am still blown away by the depth of the worldbuilding, and even how much really quite modern psychology he drew on for the mental readiness exercises etc

🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛

Yeah Dune is a hangout book really, whatever the narrative offers is very secondary to getting to live in that mental world for a few hours. I must have read it ten times, and every reread it’s like all the background and extra detail are even more familiar, so I find myself nodding my head and saying yeah, absolutely on the money.

it kinda just ...ends, huh?

you got five books to go!!

SO many NAMES of THINGS

I remember owning a 700pp battered copy of the The Dune Encyclopedia (1984). A searchable PDF is much more convenient.

my kindle version had a terminology section but its definitions were more annoying than helpful lol

veg your responses are making me want to reread this thing. think i've only ever done it twice, once for a high school class and once maybe around college or a little after. so probably at least 15 years, and some things are still very vivid, but they're mostly locales/vibes and all the Liet-Kynes ecosystem stuff... not a ton of specific scenes, and certainly no dialogue. "hangout book" feels right for that.

he becomes a better writer as the series goes along, imo, which is your reward as things become increasingly insane

as i mentioned, my friend & i did this as a bookclub together

in all honestly, nerd feelings aside, *should* we read Dune Messiah?

is it good y/n and if so why
& will i need more dune dictionaries y/n

i am still mad pissed that Hetbert killed off Kynes. like, WHY?? he was one of the best characters.
after he got swallowed into the pre-spice bubble or whatever i had a fleeting theory that he was going to become a worm 😂

dune messiah is my least favorite of the bunch but i think others rate it more highly. and it cannot be accused of being predictable sequel fare

My recent re-read of Dune Messiah made me not want to continue the series. Perhaps I should give Children a chance.

I don't like it much either, it's the comedown of politics and consequences after the rush of the first one. But mookieproof otm, and its unpredictability does a good job of setting up bigger and more interesting things down the track. At least it's short!

hmm

well we will decide in a week or two - it’s either this or LOTR (which we have both read but not in a VERY long time)

I remember liking Dune Messiah and have it on my re-read pile but it was a long long long time since I read it.

i like DM too -- it's deliberately very small-scale tho, macchiavellian court politics

also it had my favourite space-opera style cover:

https://www.sffworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/dunemessiah.jpg

It has the weird quality of being this local neighborhood intrigue, while presumably there's this vague but massive cosmic genocide happening offstage. It all felt incongruous, like the focus didn't make sense.

rejected JBR screen names

Maybe check this, if more curious than worried about possible spoilers (on Rolling Speculative, I saw teen Paul as struggling w identity and fate like his 60-born peer and soul mate Peter Parker Spiderman):

Just finished Dune, read it for the first time. Honestly....I really enjoyed reading this, but the ending seemed kind of dud. Everything seemed to wrap up really quickly without too terribly much struggle. And Paul strikes me as kind of a dick. Will reading Children of Dune make me happier?

― Dominique, Thursday, September 22, 2016 12:25 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dune Messiah is the second, Children is third, incl. in quality, though it has its strong sections/pages. But If you don't already sympathize with Paul's struggles vs. his fucked-with nature and destiny, go no further (if you do, God Emperor mostly smells like ass, Heretics of Dune is yer Return To Form, but not enough to send me in a timely fashion to Chapterhouse: Dune, the last Dune by series creator Frank Herbert. But I'll get there someday, and could see how the follow-ups written and co-written by his son might work okay as space opera, minus any overload of philosophical etc. elements.

― dow, Thursday, September 22, 2016 1:37 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

thanks -- yeah, most of the time I rooted for him, but some of the time it was clear he was just as capable of being corrupted by power as anyone else. He struggled with it, but also took advantage of his power at times (and also seemed to have an inability to actually deal with the bad stuff that happened to him, other than just shutting it out completely). I guess that's the point? I've also read that in further books, characters that were once "villains" can become more sympathetic.

― Dominique, Thursday, September 22, 2016 3:23 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, they can---they're all crazy, fucked-with and fucking with, in the cultural midst of cultural imperatives---even the God Emperor means to gradually implode the Order of Things by advancing it, teaching "Don't Follow Leaders, Watch The Parking Meters", but sure does take him a long time, and even though as a comic premise it's funny that he likes torture his followers with huge clouds of philosophical bullshit---like he's Mr. Natural, and everbody else, incl. loyal readers, is Flakey Foont, or Dudley Moore in "Bedazzled"---this isn't as good. But as one of the fucked-with Children of Dune he's more sympathetic. And I'd like to know just how the Bene Gesserit got that way, but anyway they do indeed try to save the day in Heretics--maybe trying too hard in Chapterhouse, judging by sneak peaks, but that tends to the Dune way (incl. that of its creator) after all.

― dow, Thursday, September 22, 2016 4:21 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

in the culturalmidst, I meant

― dow, Thursday, September 22, 2016

Strikethrough of that extra "cultural" didn't make it into paste. Local library also has early The Ecology of Dune, come to think of it.

yeah i am not as big on Douchelord Paul now that he is really leaning into it all

he kinda went back and forth through the book and I appreciated the few moments when Jessica was able to check him

Welll---he earns his very own (better not say more, but he does)

i reread dune messiah for the first tme in probably 30 years if not more

there's more of it that i don't follow than i remember lol (the complex motivations that wd be delivered in whispered voice-overs if david lunch was filming it)

i still like its sense of small-scale intimate corrupt court biz and its semi-pointless gaudiness (the conspirators somehow remind me of an aladdin pantomime)

Just started reading/listening to 'Dune' on Audible. Wow. Why did I put this off so long??

It's great that they have atmospheric music and a cast of voices to play the different parts. I'm also reading the book so I know how the hell you spell things like "Kwisatz Haderach"