For me its
Dune 9/10
Messiah 10/10
Children 8/10
God Emperor 6/10
the rest are not worth reading
Messiah is an intriguing little thriller.
God Emperor is one of the most boring books I have ever read. Couldn't bring myself to finish Heretics because of that.
It's not horrible, it's just shallow compared to Frank's novels. I enjoyed reading some of them. It's kinda like fanfiction.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Really, really fricking bad. I first read Dune when I was 13, two decades ago by now (I'm a 36 year old boomer), and iirc Brian's shit books were just being published around that time. Since I was really hyped about Dune and didn't know any better, I bought Dune: House Atreides, Dune: House Harkonnen, and Dune: House Corrino when they came out. I remember enjoying them but not getting that same feeling of neuron activation that I had when I read the real Dune books. Going back to them a few years later, I realized they were just terrible fanfiction that missed the forest for the trees, or more accurately, completely missed the forest and trees entirely and were cheap plastic fake plants you bought out of a warehouse.
4 months ago
Anonymous
It really sucks that Asimov's Foundation saga got books written by real SF writers after its creator dies while Dune gets those two hacks molesting it. A guy like Silverberg could have done a decent stab at it
4 months ago
Anonymous
I wonder who they'll get to finish the fat fricks work
4 months ago
Anonymous
The Asimov derivative books weren't great, lol, but they at least weren't pulp schlock. Helped that Asimov wasn't the greatest writer in the world either.
How do people get to the fourth book of Dune and say "it wasn't that great"? The entirety of Dune is very dryly written. It's more about the concepts than the characters/writing. If you can't figure that out by book 2 you are a moron and classic science fiction isn't for you. Go read The Expanse, twat.
i found the development of paul returning as the blind preacher to be really really cool and well done but otherwise I enjoyed the first and fourth novels more and the 2nd probably had better highs, whats so good about children?
Children of Dune is the best one? It's a fine book but that's moronic, only because the others of the first four are so good. My personal favorite is Dune Messiah
I can't understand putting it above Children. It pays off the first half of the story. Same reason I find it hard to believe that Villeneuve would really want to end there.
No, it's a literal epilogue. Dune and Dune Messiah were written as one book. The publisher split them into 2 so the first book could have an upbeat ending.
>Messiah was also originally published as a serial in a sci-fi magazine
Different anon, and a Dune superfan. I did not know this. That explains why Messiah feels so "pulpy" compared to Dune.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Like you, I am a superfan of Dune. That detail of Messiah I only remember because it was in a preface I read in the novel I had at the time. You're right tho. Messiah is pulpy and rushed in it's writing. It's all just a bridge to Children of Dune.
4 months ago
Anonymous
which in turn is just a bridge to god emperor
4 months ago
Anonymous
I agree. God Emperor is the climax of the Atreides dynasty half of Frank's Dune novels.
Completely inapt comparison as MouseWars is completely different people being vultures to something they "purchased the rights" to. Paul was meant to be incapable of handling the stress of what must be done to show how inhumanly difficult that is. And even in that he is no failure because his very son finishes what the father has started. A tale as old as humanity.
you're retroactively applying Children and God Emperor to Messiah
4 months ago
Anonymous
They were written by the same man. From how the books are, it gives me a distinct impression that he had at least the backbone of the main character stories planned out ahead.
4 months ago
Anonymous
It's pretty explicit that his son is going to take up his mantle at the end of Messiah, man.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Sure. But the whole concept of the Golden Path and that Paul was too cowardly to follow through with it is an idea that Children came up with.
4 months ago
Anonymous
His introspection goes on and on about the terrible purpose.
space travel gets strangulated and ppl get isolated on their planets til the millenias of pressure cause the invention of the no ships and the breeding of the Siona gene
It doesn't. It was a relatively gradual process, and everyone had been hoarding stockpiles of spice from the time they realized its value. Some put more importance on it, and some could afford to stockpile more (especially the guild on both accounts), but anyone who could did so, some stores built up over thousands of years. Every house had their own stores. Eventually the Bene Tleilax made an artificial spice that was fairly useful. I don't recall the books mentioning spice degredation, but I always assumed that was a consideration, and that a majority of the spice trade was houses trying to pawn off their older stuff.
All the best people do >Some nights I would find myself roaming the beaches, digging up baby crabs and eating handfuls of sand—this was in the middle of the night when the sky was so clear I could see the entire solar system and the sand, lit by it, seemed almost lunar in scale. I even dragged a beached jellyfish back to the house and microwaved it early one morning, predawn, while Evelyn slept, and what I didn’t eat of it I fed to the chow.
>WE HAD A GOOD THING GOING YOU SON OF A b***h, THE HARKONNENS WITH THEIR SPICE HARVESTERS, BUT YOU HAD TO GO AND BLOW IT ALL UP WITH YOUR BENE GESSERIT AND YOUR PSYCHIC TWINK POWERS
He doesn’t require food, but he does symbolically consume one carbohydrate based wafer every ten years. This isn’t a joke, it’s straight from the book.
I believe in one of the books i thinks its god emperor when he takes the girl cyona out into the desert he actually sweats when he is swimming in the sand desert and cyona drinks his sweat because it contains spice or something like that. Its been a while since i read the books.
why does all the art show him with a giant face
he's supposed to be a human encased in a slug, not some giant head with giant arms on the end of a worm body
Yeah. Although Jabba is also based on Sydney Greenstreet it wouldn't surprise me if Lucas also had Leto II in mind because he took a lot of influence from Dune into Star Wars.
Dune for me is a good idea that was poorly executed. I read the first book and watched the movie. The book itself is too boring. basically nothing happens until the end, and when something happens the book ends. the film manages to be more interesting because it has excellent aesthetics and a cool soundtrack. Anyway, I liked the futuristic theme, space travel and wars, but it seems to me that the story wasn't well tied together. and now you tell me that the protagonist turns into a giant worm. I don't know, it seems very clueless.
the second book is more boring overall imo cause it lacks the adventure part of the first, its a lot of characters plotting, behind closed door conniving, and a bit of Paul's perspective as leader of a vast space people, I had really bought into the mythos of Dune already by the middle of the first so I found Dune 2 a great addition but theres only one real action scene in the book and its at the end and if you read it right its one of the most badass moments in fiction
Not boring but unnecessary IMO. The original Dune is a perfect arc for Paul and the reader gets the negative implications without another book spelling it out.
dune has a sort of esoteric history and mysticism with a lot of secrets that are never delved into that makes it for a fun universe to immerse yourself in, you have to really understand the significance of the kwisatz haderach and the golden path and really get into the vision moments. If you appreciate the myth the books themselves become a biblical text for a possible future, basically i think its interesting regardless of action or adventure
Yeah, the story is set so far into the future that it's interesting to imagine something like this. I like that's it's rather low-tech in comparison to a lot of sci fi.
>good idea that was poorly executed
Anon is talking about one of the greatest sci-fi books of all time, a book praised so universally that it's adaptation onto film has been tried multiple times. Is this poster a contrarian homosexual or just plain moronic?
Creators of this calibre can have perfectly reasonable disagreements. He did not write that he considers the book to be bad, but specifically that he disliked it. This might very well be due to the themes involved.
For example, try to look at the big picture in both of the literary works.
Tolkien's world has incredibly well-defined good and evil. His works postulate that there is good in pretty much all men until they allow it to completely die within them, or at least until they are corrupted by a powerful supernatural being. In his stories the heroes always emerge victorious even if not without some terrible personal cost at times. Justice, virtue and other such traits normally associated with goodness inevitably prevail. Not in the least because there definitely is a benevolent creator in the setting. There is love, and songs, and a myriad other manifestations of beauty there.
Now contrast this with Herbert's world of subterfuge, politics, literal and figurative back-stabbing, and likely foremost everything concerning religion and faith in it. Even the first book has Bene Gesserit effectively craving to give birth to a god through manipulation and essentially husbandry. This alone has likely alienated Tolkien somewhat fierce. But even beside that, look at how Duke Leto reacts when he realizes that his first-born son is gifted. He dreams of Paul becoming one of the best at the rotten kind of games everyone plays, not raise above that.
Yes, of course Tolkien's world and thus beliefs are naive for anyone who is able to perceive our reality in a sober way. And Herbert's is much more plausible, obviously. But that does not reflect poorly on Tolkien that his world which almost anyone would have preferred to live in is so outlandish and instead on the sorry state our real world is in.
What redeems LotR for me is its fatalistic apocalypticism. That context permits a pure morality because the human ugliness can be implied and contained outside of the narrative. If it were truly a 'happily ever after story' it would be as sickly sweet as Dune is bitter.
>because the human ugliness can be implied and contained outside of the narrative.
Yes, it is pretty strongly hinted at with Sauron's human troops, with Umbar, and even shown a little with Saruman's henchmen.
>If it were truly a 'happily ever after story' it would be as sickly sweet as Dune is bitter.
The dawn of the Age of Man is incredibly bittersweet because the ancient mystique, beauty and glory is leaving Middle-earth, usually literally, by boat.
Creators of this calibre can have perfectly reasonable disagreements. He did not write that he considers the book to be bad, but specifically that he disliked it. This might very well be due to the themes involved.
For example, try to look at the big picture in both of the literary works.
Tolkien's world has incredibly well-defined good and evil. His works postulate that there is good in pretty much all men until they allow it to completely die within them, or at least until they are corrupted by a powerful supernatural being. In his stories the heroes always emerge victorious even if not without some terrible personal cost at times. Justice, virtue and other such traits normally associated with goodness inevitably prevail. Not in the least because there definitely is a benevolent creator in the setting. There is love, and songs, and a myriad other manifestations of beauty there.
Now contrast this with Herbert's world of subterfuge, politics, literal and figurative back-stabbing, and likely foremost everything concerning religion and faith in it. Even the first book has Bene Gesserit effectively craving to give birth to a god through manipulation and essentially husbandry. This alone has likely alienated Tolkien somewhat fierce. But even beside that, look at how Duke Leto reacts when he realizes that his first-born son is gifted. He dreams of Paul becoming one of the best at the rotten kind of games everyone plays, not raise above that.
Yes, of course Tolkien's world and thus beliefs are naive for anyone who is able to perceive our reality in a sober way. And Herbert's is much more plausible, obviously. But that does not reflect poorly on Tolkien that his world which almost anyone would have preferred to live in is so outlandish and instead on the sorry state our real world is in.
>Intensely Catholic creator dislikes a book about atheist spirituality and making ourselves our own Gods in a godless universe
>People so it's good so you have to say it's good
I don't agree with that zoomer Anon but would you like to tell us all about what a musical genius Taylor Swift is?
You're right it's poorly executed. First book was the best. Everything afterwards went off the rails. The central theme of all this is ends justifies means. Consider the politics of the time period when this book was written and the background of the author.
It’s more about how the scale and weight of civilization and history are so massive that they stand beyond human comprehension and must be understood and altered through living Mythic action. Morality fades away only when man ascends into godhood upon becoming the center of civilization itself
>Morality fades away only when man ascends into godhood upon becoming the center of civilization itself
Didn't the example of Paul ultimately become the folly of the Nietzschean Uberman/will-to-power morality? Right or wrong, Paul as the Messiah gets to determine what is right or wrong for the rest of humanity.
How does Duncan in God Emperor remember all this shit about Muad'Dib on Dune if he only has the memories of the original Duncan? The first Duncan dies before Paul even started living with the Fremen.
Some of the duncans end up remembering and attacking leto fairly early into their tenure. the duncan in heretics gets fully awakened to all his genetic clones memories
There's a difference between a ghola and a clone, since they do talk about it briefly in Heretics of Dune, so it's not like a ghola is just another word for a clone.
IIRC a ghola has genetic memory of the original specimen, but they might need something to awaken those memories, whereas a clone doesn't have genetic memory.
Ghola is a clone that uses cells from the original corpse, clone just uses the DNA.
They both have genetic memory, kid miles teg is a clone (despite being called a ghola) and he gets his memory back.
i never read even past the 4th book but I did look up how his son finished the story and the i gotta admit that the super AI robots being the endgame threat and Duncan being the true ultra kwisatz haderach are both pretty cool ideas, the former more obvious than the ladder
as far as i understand, advanced technology is banned or whatever in this universe. so how the frick do they have access to space ships, energy shields and vibrator swords?
its just no thinking machines from the butlerian jihad. By God Emperor he has severely limited spice supplies and production and thus limits tech relying on it rendering populations largely stranded to their planets for millenia forcing their innovation into escaping Prescience
AI and computers are banned (still, obviously, some shady organizations supposedly use them in secret on their secret planets). Instead, humanity learned to genetically specialize people into becoming "human computers" who can perform fast calculations.
So if the Bene Gesserit have been spending centuries carefully breeding their messiah, how did they get so close yet Jessica fricked it up? What caused her to betray every ounce of her training, is Leto's dick just that spectacular?
Or was the plan always doomed to failure because if she had borne a daughter then the events of Dune wouldn't happen and there'd be no way to wed a Harkonnen heir in the first place?
If there's no son but a daughter, then when Harkonnen destroys Atreides on Arrakis it is either Jessica and daughter, or daughter alone left alive. Assuming they live. So no Haderach, and Atreides remains destroyed anyway. Seems like the Bene Gesserit plan was predicated on Harkonnen and Atreides not destroying one or the other of themselves, but Arrakis was inevitable because of the Landsraad and Shaddam needing to control it, the feud was already well started long before Paul was born.
But that assumes Arrakis doesn't go down, so what was their plan for keeping femPaul alive and able to marry into a House that she was at war with? Assuming Atreides even survived.
You can tell from the old movies that the good guys represent love and the bad guys are all about excess and squeezing all the juice out of things, but in the new movie everything is soulless and lifeless and you can't tell anything apart.
Who cares about the shitty old movie? One of the highlighted points in Dune (the book) is that Paul is unlike his father and more like his grandfather. It's not about Atreides are love and Harkonnen bad. Paul turns out to not be a moral person like his father and abuses his power for revenge, at the detriment to the universe. It's highlighted by Paul choosing to duel Feyd-Rautha.
>One of the highlighted points in Dune (the book) is that Paul is unlike his father and more like his grandfather
DUNC omitted this important fact in the 1st flick and I bet it's never brought up because Villehackery
Paul Atreides is the worst mass murderer in human history and his son is seen as a tyrannical despot who set humanity into a 4,000 year dark age that it will spend millennia recovering from (but it was all part of his epic plan to save us from extinction and ascend each and every human to godhood).
It makes sense that even 10,000 years after her death the Lady Jessica is seen as a big frickup who screwed over everyone else because of something as foolish as falling in love with the Duke Leto
>The Golden Path was the only way forward.
Where are people getting this idea? Do you guys not understand how to read?
The only reason people believe it's true is because Paul says it's true. It's not like we can trust Paul. He doesn't even know how to use his future sight. Dune messiah proves it. Why do you think he goes physically blind at the end? He was following a vision of an alternate future where he only had one child, but once both his two children were born, the future sight from that alternative universe proved non-relevant since too many differences manifested.
It's ironic that the whole reader base takes Paul's word as biblical fact.
4 months ago
Anonymous
It was only a matter of time until a tyrant with sufficiently good prescience ability would emerge and plunge humanity into a catastrophe or several. There were no winning moves. Only the least evil one. Paul started down that road but couldn't go all the way, tried to basically bargain with fate and that's where he ended up. Tragic, but relatable.
4 months ago
Anonymous
This. Paul was the lesser of many evils. Prescience allowed him to be more aware and thoughtful anybody else that might rule.
If the BG can control their fertility and produce a son or daughter when they please (Jessica chose to have a son, Emperor Shaddam only had daughters) then why not have a ton of children? An accident at any point in 10k years could easily frick up their entire program. Jessica having one son then a daughter 15 fricking years later is stupid, she should have a dozen kids. Feudal families always aimed to have lots of children because spare sons are an insurance policy and lots of daughters means more diplomatic power through marriage.
I think they mentioned that having too many kids made it hard to create reliable alliances compared to having one or two heirs because if your kids are married into a dozen houses then your loyalty in a conflict will be questioned. So everyone powerful basically had two kids at most and married them off very strategically.
Except Baron "I frick little boys" Harkonen who rarely had sex with women because he was the full red-pill mgtow champion of the universe.
This I don’t get it.
Since Jessica was Baron Harkonnen’s daughter, hadn’t the BG managed to join the Atreides and Harkonnen lines without needing a Fempaul to breed with Feyd?
It's not about just securing bloodlines, the BG calculated that they would specifically need Jessica's daughter to breed (incestuously) with Feyd-Rautha in order to produce the Kwisatz Haderach.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>Kwisatz Haderach
I still don't get how it works for Leto II
Dad is 99.9% Kwisatz Haderach
Mom is some random half Fremen
4 months ago
Anonymous
Paul was already having hazy visions of Chani when he was still living in the Atredies palace on Caladan, before they moved to Arrakis. Paul also goes on a lot about how his prescience is half him being able to mentat-calculate all possible scenarios but also him half-subconsciously "locking in" the future that he sees by the simple act of predicting it. So you could say it was his destiny to always have Chani be his wife and it was always his destiny to kill her in childbirth because he weighed all possible futures and chose the one where his wife by marriage Irulan poisoned her with a contraceptive until Chani in her desperation to bear her messiah an heir started OD'ing on spice until her body killed itself and gave their children consciousness and other memory in the womb B R A V O P A U L
4 months ago
Anonymous
I still don't understand how Leto ends up being more genetically pure than Paul, he's the equivalent of a champion bloodline purebred mating with a mutt.
4 months ago
Anonymous
He has the memories, the genes are irrelevant
4 months ago
Anonymous
Genetics matter but not as much as other things like training and the individual himself
According to the BG breeding genetic plan the KH would have appeared a generation after Paul
Paul was the KH because of the combination of his genetics, his Mentat and BG training and the effects of the spice, along with his want for revenge and determination to undertake the spice agony test
4 months ago
Anonymous
>more genetically pure
Where are you getting this from? The Kwisatz Haderach doesn't emerge from genetic "purity" whatever that means.
4 months ago
Anonymous
There is an aspect many might not even consider here: arrogant humans trying to supplant god and failing spectacularly. For all their foresight and scheming, it took two chaotic events stemming from very human properties (love and desire of normal womanly happiness for Jessica; aversion to becoming a monster and inability to bear a colossal yet necessary burden for Paul) to turn their carefully cultivated plans into something they were completely unprepared for.
[...] >Intensely Catholic creator dislikes a book about atheist spirituality and making ourselves our own Gods in a godless universe
imagine my shock!
>>a book about atheist spirituality and making ourselves our own Gods in a godless universe
You've misunderstood it. It's not about nihilism or even Nietzschean thought. It is all about triumph of human spirit, expressed in intelligence, perseverance, creativity. With a very strong "nature finds a way" undertone. I suppose it is almost second narrative levels of strong.
4 months ago
Anonymous
No one ever reads the Appendix which explicates that the entire book was divine providence, lol.
4 months ago
Anonymous
No one seems to read in general these days, at least if the threads on this board are any indication. They probably listen to "audiobooks" while doing something else, which results in them mashing the little bits and pieces they even get to remember into an utterly unrecognizable mess. I've noticed similar posts in LotR threads.
4 months ago
Anonymous
t. larping christgay trying to project his own beliefs onto Dune
please cite the precise passage that supports your argument
4 months ago
Anonymous
> only Christians believe in divine providence
dipshit
4 months ago
Anonymous
I am an atheist. I just know how to read.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Frempussy is mad spicy.
Makes extra kwizzie kids.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>Mom is some random half Fremen
All Fremen are a little bit psychic due to the high doses of spice in their diet and thousands of years adapting to this and the death-is-around-every-sanddune nature of the planet
4 months ago
Anonymous
Leto II and his sister Ghanima were preborn, thanks to all the spice Chani was gulping down at the end.
4 months ago
Anonymous
So how come Alia went crazy and they didn't. P.S. the actress who played Alia in the CoD miniseries was such a babe!
4 months ago
Anonymous
you'd go crazy too if you had vlad in your head all day everyday since conception.
the twins had each other.
4 months ago
Anonymous
This. Also, Chani didn't drink the Water of Life like Jessica did while pregnant. That's a big part of what caused Alia's downfall.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Alia was betrayed by her Uncle, Baron Harkonnen, whose memories offered to serve as a buffer against the rest.
Leto II forged an alliance with ancient dynastic ruler, who kept the other memories in line.
Ghanima did something similar to Leto II, but I don't remember with whom.
4 months ago
Anonymous
So how come Alia went crazy and they didn't. P.S. the actress who played Alia in the CoD miniseries was such a babe!
Leto II compartmentalizes his disparate genetic memories and governs them as a council of advisers with himself as Supreme Ruler. The strength of will it took for Ghanima to hypnotize herself into believing that Leto II was dead, alongside with a focus on the love Chani had for her children, allows her to anchor herself as her own personality
Alia was abandoned by her mother and the Bene Gesserit, and had no idea how dangerous being an Abomination actually was
4 months ago
Anonymous
Alia was betrayed by her Uncle, Baron Harkonnen, whose memories offered to serve as a buffer against the rest.
Leto II forged an alliance with ancient dynastic ruler, who kept the other memories in line.
Ghanima did something similar to Leto II, but I don't remember with whom.
s/Uncle/Grandfather/
4 months ago
Anonymous
Alia had that bene gesserit “genetic memory” thing where all her ancestors were slammed into her brain at birth.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Good casting all around to be quite honest family. I think Princess Irulan is very underrated, she nailed the crazy eyes femcel look in Children Of Dune.
>is Leto's dick just that spectacular?
Interesting thought I've not had before, the Atreides manipulate their subjects by being protective of them and inspiring loyalty which they then exploit the frick out of(they mention in the book that Leto only cares about his people in as much as he can use it to use them) but to the public and the great houses they're seen as noble, loyal and kind.
I think that Jessica fell for it and never really realised that for the most part it was a façade that the family had been pulling for centuries.
Also if Paul had been a girl then the plan by the Sisterhood was to get her to marry Feyd and they'd make a baby and the Bene Gesserit were going to fake its death and take it away to indoctrinate it for his entire life into their cause and beliefs and then use him as a weapon against the galaxy. That was their plan.
>they mention in the book that Leto only cares about his people in as much as he can use it to use them) but to the public and the great houses they're seen as noble, loyal and kind.
Keep in mind when Leto gives Paul that whole speech about how great his propaganda corps is, Leto is VERY drunk and he feels the walls closing in on him so he's questioning his entire life and all of his choices. He knows he's probably going to die soon so he's moping
House Atreides absolutely is looking after its own interests, but someone who was totally self-interested wouldn't have put himself and his heir at great risk to save some random spice miners from the worm, he would have just let them die.
Remember that the plot against Paul in DM depends on Paul being unable to turn away his resurrected retainer and friend even though he knows full well Idaho is some kind of weapon against him. A total cynic wouldn't do that.
>they mention in the book that Leto only cares about his people in as much as he can use it to use them) but to the public and the great houses they're seen as noble, loyal and kind.
Keep in mind when Leto gives Paul that whole speech about how great his propaganda corps is, Leto is VERY drunk and he feels the walls closing in on him so he's questioning his entire life and all of his choices. He knows he's probably going to die soon so he's moping
House Atreides absolutely is looking after its own interests, but someone who was totally self-interested wouldn't have put himself and his heir at great risk to save some random spice miners from the worm, he would have just let them die.
Harkonnen and other great houses never had to swap around, they keep their own home world while administering Arrakis. My assumption is that the great houses all have their home worlds or whatever, and Arrakis is passed around to each one as something they administer, but not necessarily pick up and move everything to because of the frickhuge monster cost of shifting an entire great house and everything it has to a new planet.
The emporer has the power to assign the fiefdom of arrakis. During this time the emporer assigns an overseer to Caladan, but it's implied if a house is powerful enough it could maintain control of both as the Harkonens are able to control both Arrakis and Geidi Prime simultaneously
Any scifi or fantasy that does an unironic "chosen one" with zero subversions or surprises is never gonna be very interesting to anyone except muh worldbuilding gays. Even fricking Star Wars managed to give the trope a twist. I want to read a story, not a fricking bible.
For a chosen one, Muad'Dib is pretty ineffective. It's not long before he's admitting despite all his prescience, there's nothing he can do about the bloodshed to come.
I'll be honest I was sort of baiting for someone to give me answer like that because I don't know that much about the series besides what's occasionally posted here and the recent movie
I probably still won't read it because I disliked the movie and people said it was a good adaptation but thanks anyway
>Wolfe
I feel like for the most part, whenever I read a book or a short story from the protagonist's POV, I feel like they all have autism to some degree. Wizard Knight especially.
the chosen one shit was literally put into the people's religion centuries ago, in order to make it possible for someone like him to power grab the natives when the time was needed
The point is about how chosen one myths are seeded in order create political movements centuries into advance and the myths exist to be worn as a uniform by great men
bro, the point is that paul is not the chosen one, he came too soon and fricks it up and its impact is a disaster. then comes the chosen one and he is literal a bored incel and looks back and thinks that humanity truly fricked up breeding me. Im gonna frick them in the ass for a few millennia until they understand they can never make this mistake again
how is this not a subversion?
The only reason to make the early books is so you can get to God Emperor. You could fashion that into a pretty good ending for the whole saga if you wanted to stop there.
>dude, he's like so evil and tyrannic, he commited terrible atrocities such as... uhhhhm... like restricting people to leave planets (large celestial bodies ranging from 5000 to 15000km in diameter)
the book gives literally no reasons to hate him so much, but it implies that literally every citizen is constantly seething about him. hackbert should've stopped after the first book
You see him from the viewpoints of rebels, and the book explicitly says that they're relatively privileged disaffected nobles. That said there's definitely historian burning and the occasional pogram to enforce his empire.
you expect me to believe this Black person planend his own death. And played 4d chess for thousands of years. All the while living as a snail in pain and agony. Frick.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_Ibn_Sharif >Moulay Ismail had at least 500 concubines and even more children. A total of 868 children (525 sons and 343 daughters) is recorded in 1703, with his seven hundredth son being born shortly after his death in 1727, by which time he had well over a thousand children.
Somehow I find the people in Warhammer 40k more human than anything in Dune. in dune all the characters act like aliens and do weird fricked up shit for stupid reasons.
They do fricked up shit in warhammer 40k as well, but there's always a very human reasoning for why they act the way they do.
>people 8000 years in the future feel alien, bro >people who are ardent adherents of an ecumenized version of major modern religions are not easy to understand, bro >people who have re-evolved with a wildly different technology after Earth was lost to them for thousands of years work in strange ways, bro
Each waking day I involuntarily wish to not wake up next time a little more.
I hope the entire Duncan clone thing is retconned out of the movies. It's dumb and needs to be fixed. Duncan should just be in a hypersleep coma until rebels wake him up.
>MONEO! >Yes, M'lord? >Call those Teliaxu freaks and tell them I need a new Duncan! >Right away, my lord. >And send a clean-up detail into the crypt... Duncan unexpectedly exploded down there. >...Yes, m'lord...
its more of a, we getting dumb.
Dune encyclopedia (which may or may not have been written by frank) gives a different version of why it happened tho https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Jehanne_Butler
Frank Herbert basically foresaw our dependence on machines leading us to intellectual and spiritual stagnation (see: young kids can't read or communicate anymore because they've had tablets and been watching youtube/Tiktok since they were 18 months old) so someone issued a fatwa against computers and lead a jihad to destroy them all and the people who refused to give up on them. Leto II tells Siona out in the desert that machines themselves are not the problem, only that we use them as a substitute for genuine human thoughts and experiences which will destroy us. A core component of Leto II's plan to save us from extinction and stagnation is to re-introduce navigational computers into the universe in order to break our dependence on the Spice.
Brian/KJA are the ones who introduced the idea of God Machines enslaving humanity into their non-canon prequel and spinoff books, because they are stupid men whose mind is governed entirely by cliches and they have no interest in exploring any larger ideas besides milking the Dune IP to enrichen themselves
what's his explanation for how they got to dune in the first place? if you need spice for interstellar travel, dune must have been relatively close to human civilization, which must have been pretty close to earth
>Herbert: Paul needs to start the jihad, he has no choice but to trigger a massive war that will leaves billions dead >why? >Herbert: because he needs to become emperor of the universe and this is the only way >why? >Herbert: because his son Leto II needs to become a human-snake hybrid >why? >Herbert: because human-snake hybrids have longer life spans and this way he can breeds humans that are not seen in prescience >why? >Herbert: because one day humanity will fight an enemy that uses prescience and could exterminate humanity >interesting, can you expand on that? >Herbert: I just died lol, enjoy the cliffhanger butthole (or go read the books by my moron son)
Paul's prescience was limited and incomplete. The first few novels explain this. His kid's prescience was keener, but still not complete because of lifespan limitations in learning from other memories. So Leto II takes drastic steps to prolong his life, so he can see farther.
The text of the book is that Paul did not actually start the Jihad because he has 'no choice', he did it because he wanted a good life for himself and his family. The thing is using his abilities locks him into certain paths just because he's become the Emperor of the Known Universe and billions scheme against him. He can't escape that.
I love God Emperor, I got 350 pages into Heretics and just couldn't continue. God Emperor was esoteric but it was very thematically focused and kept the scope of its present-tense narrative small with a core cast of characters. Heretics introduces like half a dozen interchangeable Bene Gesserit characters, Duncan has become an unironic messianic mary sue (when previous books showed how being a ghola and a man out of time fricking sucks) and all the coombrained Honored Matre stuff is off-putting.
That said, some people really do swear by Heretics and Chapterhouse so maybe I'm just dumb
The 5th book is not bad but indeed somewhat difficult to get into if you're fresh off the God Emperor. It starts exploring some topics the previous books have not gone into sufficient depth on and it looks interesting unless you started it while expecting more of the same, largely. But it also feels fairly rough, like a good draft that needed at least one more pass.
All I remember of the last book, which is a compilation of his actual drafts and notes, is that it barely felt like his book and went nowhere. Perhaps I should give it another chance and my opinion will improve.
I wonder what they would do if they got to ChapterHouse Dune in the films.
Just call it the ending and have the characters fly off into space?
Use the son's other books? Marty and Daniel being robots (or whatever...I never read it) seems silly
I'm almost finished with the third book
It's the best one, enjoy.
I think I intend to read the 4th one and then stop after that. The 2nd one was the most boring but at least it was short
The stuff with Miles Teg is great.
>frank's cancer novels
gtfo
If you make it to 4 you might as well just do the full Frank run. The far and away best character Darwi shows up in the final 2
6 is a mess and 5 felt off somehow, overall. I guess 5 should have been a starting point of a new series within the same world.
Messiah is an intriguing little thriller.
God Emperor is one of the most boring books I have ever read. Couldn't bring myself to finish Heretics because of that.
It gets worse
I prefer my Keven J. Anderson slop unfiltered and pure.
Why are there 3 authors? Does this mean Brian was actually the talented one?
I think that's a comic book of the series. The books are pure Kevin Anderson.
Just how bad is Brian's work?
It's not horrible, it's just shallow compared to Frank's novels. I enjoyed reading some of them. It's kinda like fanfiction.
Really, really fricking bad. I first read Dune when I was 13, two decades ago by now (I'm a 36 year old boomer), and iirc Brian's shit books were just being published around that time. Since I was really hyped about Dune and didn't know any better, I bought Dune: House Atreides, Dune: House Harkonnen, and Dune: House Corrino when they came out. I remember enjoying them but not getting that same feeling of neuron activation that I had when I read the real Dune books. Going back to them a few years later, I realized they were just terrible fanfiction that missed the forest for the trees, or more accurately, completely missed the forest and trees entirely and were cheap plastic fake plants you bought out of a warehouse.
It really sucks that Asimov's Foundation saga got books written by real SF writers after its creator dies while Dune gets those two hacks molesting it. A guy like Silverberg could have done a decent stab at it
I wonder who they'll get to finish the fat fricks work
The Asimov derivative books weren't great, lol, but they at least weren't pulp schlock. Helped that Asimov wasn't the greatest writer in the world either.
How do people get to the fourth book of Dune and say "it wasn't that great"? The entirety of Dune is very dryly written. It's more about the concepts than the characters/writing. If you can't figure that out by book 2 you are a moron and classic science fiction isn't for you. Go read The Expanse, twat.
If you didn't enjoy God Emperor, then you have nothing to look forward to in the Dune novels.
i found the development of paul returning as the blind preacher to be really really cool and well done but otherwise I enjoyed the first and fourth novels more and the 2nd probably had better highs, whats so good about children?
Children of Dune is the best one? It's a fine book but that's moronic, only because the others of the first four are so good. My personal favorite is Dune Messiah
God Emperor is by far the best in the original Frank Herbert omnibus.
It's by far the worst but it sets up GEoD so it gets a pass
For me its
Dune 9/10
Messiah 10/10
Children 8/10
God Emperor 6/10
the rest are not worth reading
>Messiah 10/10
Are you for real? That book is a glorified epilogue
I can't understand putting it above Children. It pays off the first half of the story. Same reason I find it hard to believe that Villeneuve would really want to end there.
If he doesn't make Kyle MacLachlan the Preacher why even bother
No, it's a literal epilogue. Dune and Dune Messiah were written as one book. The publisher split them into 2 so the first book could have an upbeat ending.
Messiah was also originally published as a serial in a sci-fi magazine. Messiah wasn't bad, but it was very short.
>Messiah was also originally published as a serial in a sci-fi magazine
Different anon, and a Dune superfan. I did not know this. That explains why Messiah feels so "pulpy" compared to Dune.
Like you, I am a superfan of Dune. That detail of Messiah I only remember because it was in a preface I read in the novel I had at the time. You're right tho. Messiah is pulpy and rushed in it's writing. It's all just a bridge to Children of Dune.
which in turn is just a bridge to god emperor
I agree. God Emperor is the climax of the Atreides dynasty half of Frank's Dune novels.
>Messiah 10/10
Kek, LITERALLY nothing happens in that piece of shit and it character assassinates Paul.
OFFICIAL power ranking:
Dune 9/10
Messiah 2/10
Children 8/10
God Emperor 6/10
Nah, messiah goes trough how Pauls theocratic empire becomes corrupt. Its not that bad.
Dune Messiah literally did the Last Jedi 50 years before the Last Jedi lmao
>noooo why is my epic self insert character tortured and flawed he should be EPIC like me this is character assassination!!!
Completely inapt comparison as MouseWars is completely different people being vultures to something they "purchased the rights" to. Paul was meant to be incapable of handling the stress of what must be done to show how inhumanly difficult that is. And even in that he is no failure because his very son finishes what the father has started. A tale as old as humanity.
you're retroactively applying Children and God Emperor to Messiah
They were written by the same man. From how the books are, it gives me a distinct impression that he had at least the backbone of the main character stories planned out ahead.
It's pretty explicit that his son is going to take up his mantle at the end of Messiah, man.
Sure. But the whole concept of the Golden Path and that Paul was too cowardly to follow through with it is an idea that Children came up with.
His introspection goes on and on about the terrible purpose.
iirc this is the one where he describes the chick getting cummed inside
something something hot wet slap
What about the one where the bene gesserit cums simply from watching Duncan free solo a cliff.
That was a Fish Speaker, not a BG iirc
I did not enjoy God Emperor of Dune. I should have stopped at Dune Messiah
You should just drop it now. Sunk cost
Trust me Duncan, the payoff is huge
How many books until you realized Duncan was the MC?
When he shows up yet again in Heretics of Dune
hes clearly a self insert gary stu.
where does he shit
Same place where he takes his bath
in your mouth
>sand goes in
>sweet sweet melange comes out his wormussy
>you lick it up like a little bawd
the heat of the sand cooks the poo
seems unbecoming of the emperor to shit in the sand
did they design a worm toilet for him?
Spice production is a b***h
How does the spice get made after Arrakis becomes a paradise though? Or do they just not bother with it any more and go back to using AI?
space travel gets strangulated and ppl get isolated on their planets til the millenias of pressure cause the invention of the no ships and the breeding of the Siona gene
It doesn't. It was a relatively gradual process, and everyone had been hoarding stockpiles of spice from the time they realized its value. Some put more importance on it, and some could afford to stockpile more (especially the guild on both accounts), but anyone who could did so, some stores built up over thousands of years. Every house had their own stores. Eventually the Bene Tleilax made an artificial spice that was fairly useful. I don't recall the books mentioning spice degredation, but I always assumed that was a consideration, and that a majority of the spice trade was houses trying to pawn off their older stuff.
Leto II (as the only surviving sandworm )becomes the sole source of spice during his reign
Thigh and knee pads
He doesn't eat
mathematically impossible
He eats sand
All the best people do
>Some nights I would find myself roaming the beaches, digging up baby crabs and eating handfuls of sand—this was in the middle of the night when the sky was so clear I could see the entire solar system and the sand, lit by it, seemed almost lunar in scale. I even dragged a beached jellyfish back to the house and microwaved it early one morning, predawn, while Evelyn slept, and what I didn’t eat of it I fed to the chow.
>waltuh...of life
heh
>the spice waltuh
>WE HAD A GOOD THING GOING YOU SON OF A b***h, THE HARKONNENS WITH THEIR SPICE HARVESTERS, BUT YOU HAD TO GO AND BLOW IT ALL UP WITH YOUR BENE GESSERIT AND YOUR PSYCHIC TWINK POWERS
> waltuh.. About that pipe..
What this homie eat?
ixian pusy
what does he eat
sand?
Spice
He doesn’t require food, but he does symbolically consume one carbohydrate based wafer every ten years. This isn’t a joke, it’s straight from the book.
>He doesn’t require food,
so he doesn't have a metabolism?
is he clinically "alive"?
I believe in one of the books i thinks its god emperor when he takes the girl cyona out into the desert he actually sweats when he is swimming in the sand desert and cyona drinks his sweat because it contains spice or something like that. Its been a while since i read the books.
He has an internal reactor that works via photosynthesis and air intake.
sandworms eat sandtrout eat sandplankton eat spice made by sandworms
Thank you, Dr. Kynes.
How are they going to film this?
With CGI? Like everything else
why would they film this? the movie arw going to end in the first book.
I mean if it does really well I could see them doing messiah, and then going further
Messiah was confirmed as part 3
they're not, only the first 3 books are planned to be adapted
That's Leto II in his early years as worm god.
why does all the art show him with a giant face
he's supposed to be a human encased in a slug, not some giant head with giant arms on the end of a worm body
No, that legit is how he looks. The face is exaggerated a bit but he's a little face and a pair of arms.
Yeah. Although Jabba is also based on Sydney Greenstreet it wouldn't surprise me if Lucas also had Leto II in mind because he took a lot of influence from Dune into Star Wars.
Dune for me is a good idea that was poorly executed. I read the first book and watched the movie. The book itself is too boring. basically nothing happens until the end, and when something happens the book ends. the film manages to be more interesting because it has excellent aesthetics and a cool soundtrack. Anyway, I liked the futuristic theme, space travel and wars, but it seems to me that the story wasn't well tied together. and now you tell me that the protagonist turns into a giant worm. I don't know, it seems very clueless.
Dune and Dune Messiah were basically one book that was split into two.
Dune was literally 3 books combined into 1
Is the second book more or less boring than the first one
the second book is more boring overall imo cause it lacks the adventure part of the first, its a lot of characters plotting, behind closed door conniving, and a bit of Paul's perspective as leader of a vast space people, I had really bought into the mythos of Dune already by the middle of the first so I found Dune 2 a great addition but theres only one real action scene in the book and its at the end and if you read it right its one of the most badass moments in fiction
Sounds a lot like the Foundation series which felt like a history book of exposition (although still enjoyed it).
Not boring but unnecessary IMO. The original Dune is a perfect arc for Paul and the reader gets the negative implications without another book spelling it out.
dune has a sort of esoteric history and mysticism with a lot of secrets that are never delved into that makes it for a fun universe to immerse yourself in, you have to really understand the significance of the kwisatz haderach and the golden path and really get into the vision moments. If you appreciate the myth the books themselves become a biblical text for a possible future, basically i think its interesting regardless of action or adventure
Yeah, the story is set so far into the future that it's interesting to imagine something like this. I like that's it's rather low-tech in comparison to a lot of sci fi.
>good idea that was poorly executed
Anon is talking about one of the greatest sci-fi books of all time, a book praised so universally that it's adaptation onto film has been tried multiple times. Is this poster a contrarian homosexual or just plain moronic?
>dislike Dune with some intensity
>some hack that left the best scenes of the extended edition out of the novelization dislikes dune
Color me not surprised.
What are you babbling about moron
Creators of this calibre can have perfectly reasonable disagreements. He did not write that he considers the book to be bad, but specifically that he disliked it. This might very well be due to the themes involved.
For example, try to look at the big picture in both of the literary works.
Tolkien's world has incredibly well-defined good and evil. His works postulate that there is good in pretty much all men until they allow it to completely die within them, or at least until they are corrupted by a powerful supernatural being. In his stories the heroes always emerge victorious even if not without some terrible personal cost at times. Justice, virtue and other such traits normally associated with goodness inevitably prevail. Not in the least because there definitely is a benevolent creator in the setting. There is love, and songs, and a myriad other manifestations of beauty there.
Now contrast this with Herbert's world of subterfuge, politics, literal and figurative back-stabbing, and likely foremost everything concerning religion and faith in it. Even the first book has Bene Gesserit effectively craving to give birth to a god through manipulation and essentially husbandry. This alone has likely alienated Tolkien somewhat fierce. But even beside that, look at how Duke Leto reacts when he realizes that his first-born son is gifted. He dreams of Paul becoming one of the best at the rotten kind of games everyone plays, not raise above that.
Yes, of course Tolkien's world and thus beliefs are naive for anyone who is able to perceive our reality in a sober way. And Herbert's is much more plausible, obviously. But that does not reflect poorly on Tolkien that his world which almost anyone would have preferred to live in is so outlandish and instead on the sorry state our real world is in.
What redeems LotR for me is its fatalistic apocalypticism. That context permits a pure morality because the human ugliness can be implied and contained outside of the narrative. If it were truly a 'happily ever after story' it would be as sickly sweet as Dune is bitter.
>because the human ugliness can be implied and contained outside of the narrative.
Yes, it is pretty strongly hinted at with Sauron's human troops, with Umbar, and even shown a little with Saruman's henchmen.
>If it were truly a 'happily ever after story' it would be as sickly sweet as Dune is bitter.
The dawn of the Age of Man is incredibly bittersweet because the ancient mystique, beauty and glory is leaving Middle-earth, usually literally, by boat.
>Intensely Catholic creator dislikes a book about atheist spirituality and making ourselves our own Gods in a godless universe
imagine my shock!
>imagine being this much of a bullshitter or this illiterate.
>People so it's good so you have to say it's good
I don't agree with that zoomer Anon but would you like to tell us all about what a musical genius Taylor Swift is?
You're right it's poorly executed. First book was the best. Everything afterwards went off the rails. The central theme of all this is ends justifies means. Consider the politics of the time period when this book was written and the background of the author.
Wrong, otherwise the Harkonan are justified
It’s more about how the scale and weight of civilization and history are so massive that they stand beyond human comprehension and must be understood and altered through living Mythic action. Morality fades away only when man ascends into godhood upon becoming the center of civilization itself
>Morality fades away only when man ascends into godhood upon becoming the center of civilization itself
Didn't the example of Paul ultimately become the folly of the Nietzschean Uberman/will-to-power morality? Right or wrong, Paul as the Messiah gets to determine what is right or wrong for the rest of humanity.
>theme is ends justify the means
The point is that this is HIGHLY open for debate
Are Dune fans this fricking moronic?
If you read the rest of the thread you might discover that those who read Herbert's works come in more than one kind of brain shape and size.
criminally zoomer take
Zoomers are completely hopeless
It's a very smart man having fun. We are just along for the ride.
>and now you tell me that the protagonist turns into a giant worm.
Nah Paul lives a pretty normal life then dies, his son becomes a slug.
I chuckled.
How does Duncan in God Emperor remember all this shit about Muad'Dib on Dune if he only has the memories of the original Duncan? The first Duncan dies before Paul even started living with the Fremen.
I don't believe he does remember it. He just gets a detailed history lesson every time Leto gets a new Duncan
Some of the duncans end up remembering and attacking leto fairly early into their tenure. the duncan in heretics gets fully awakened to all his genetic clones memories
There's a difference between a ghola and a clone, since they do talk about it briefly in Heretics of Dune, so it's not like a ghola is just another word for a clone.
IIRC a ghola has genetic memory of the original specimen, but they might need something to awaken those memories, whereas a clone doesn't have genetic memory.
Ghola is a clone that uses cells from the original corpse, clone just uses the DNA.
They both have genetic memory, kid miles teg is a clone (despite being called a ghola) and he gets his memory back.
i never read even past the 4th book but I did look up how his son finished the story and the i gotta admit that the super AI robots being the endgame threat and Duncan being the true ultra kwisatz haderach are both pretty cool ideas, the former more obvious than the ladder
Dune is shit
>turn into a work
>start missing your dick
>rolls over and crushes Duncan to death
>MONEO CALL THE STORE AGAIN
Reddit
as far as i understand, advanced technology is banned or whatever in this universe. so how the frick do they have access to space ships, energy shields and vibrator swords?
only artificial intelligence is banned, so they get around navigation using spice and using prescient aliens as spaceship navigators
its just no thinking machines from the butlerian jihad. By God Emperor he has severely limited spice supplies and production and thus limits tech relying on it rendering populations largely stranded to their planets for millenia forcing their innovation into escaping Prescience
AI and computers are banned (still, obviously, some shady organizations supposedly use them in secret on their secret planets). Instead, humanity learned to genetically specialize people into becoming "human computers" who can perform fast calculations.
>fast calculations.
speedreader
More like weaponized autism
They invented the chinese?
>an artist was commissioned for this
>a whole lot of people agreed to publish and distribute it
So if the Bene Gesserit have been spending centuries carefully breeding their messiah, how did they get so close yet Jessica fricked it up? What caused her to betray every ounce of her training, is Leto's dick just that spectacular?
Or was the plan always doomed to failure because if she had borne a daughter then the events of Dune wouldn't happen and there'd be no way to wed a Harkonnen heir in the first place?
It was love.
No, but it probably would've been bad for humanity in the long run.
If there's no son but a daughter, then when Harkonnen destroys Atreides on Arrakis it is either Jessica and daughter, or daughter alone left alive. Assuming they live. So no Haderach, and Atreides remains destroyed anyway. Seems like the Bene Gesserit plan was predicated on Harkonnen and Atreides not destroying one or the other of themselves, but Arrakis was inevitable because of the Landsraad and Shaddam needing to control it, the feud was already well started long before Paul was born.
The bene gesserit plan was to unite Harkonnen and Atreides through Feyd-Ratha and femPaul
But that assumes Arrakis doesn't go down, so what was their plan for keeping femPaul alive and able to marry into a House that she was at war with? Assuming Atreides even survived.
>keeping fempaul alive
Pretty easy? They just don't kill her. Paul married Irulan. He didn't just outright kill her. It would be the same thing
They would have had 15 or more years to wheel and deal for the paulpussy, even the English could get a deal done in that time
Harkonnen fully planned on murdering Paul and Jessica both, femPaul would be no different.
Fempaul would be different because she could be married off.
Fempaul would be trained by the bene gesserit, she'd manipulate House Harkonnen through Feyd-Rautha
You can tell from the old movies that the good guys represent love and the bad guys are all about excess and squeezing all the juice out of things, but in the new movie everything is soulless and lifeless and you can't tell anything apart.
Who cares about the shitty old movie? One of the highlighted points in Dune (the book) is that Paul is unlike his father and more like his grandfather. It's not about Atreides are love and Harkonnen bad. Paul turns out to not be a moral person like his father and abuses his power for revenge, at the detriment to the universe. It's highlighted by Paul choosing to duel Feyd-Rautha.
>One of the highlighted points in Dune (the book) is that Paul is unlike his father and more like his grandfather
DUNC omitted this important fact in the 1st flick and I bet it's never brought up because Villehackery
How did jessica fail? She bred a male with access to both female and male genetic memories. If anything the Bene Gesserit were wrong
a) they wanted to control him
b) paul came too soon and fricks it up because he acts to take revenge of his father death.
Paul Atreides is the worst mass murderer in human history and his son is seen as a tyrannical despot who set humanity into a 4,000 year dark age that it will spend millennia recovering from (but it was all part of his epic plan to save us from extinction and ascend each and every human to godhood).
It makes sense that even 10,000 years after her death the Lady Jessica is seen as a big frickup who screwed over everyone else because of something as foolish as falling in love with the Duke Leto
Well if extinction really was the alternative..
This. The Golden Path was the only way forward. You can't make a universal omelet without breaking a few eggs.
>The Golden Path was the only way forward.
Where are people getting this idea? Do you guys not understand how to read?
The only reason people believe it's true is because Paul says it's true. It's not like we can trust Paul. He doesn't even know how to use his future sight. Dune messiah proves it. Why do you think he goes physically blind at the end? He was following a vision of an alternate future where he only had one child, but once both his two children were born, the future sight from that alternative universe proved non-relevant since too many differences manifested.
It's ironic that the whole reader base takes Paul's word as biblical fact.
It was only a matter of time until a tyrant with sufficiently good prescience ability would emerge and plunge humanity into a catastrophe or several. There were no winning moves. Only the least evil one. Paul started down that road but couldn't go all the way, tried to basically bargain with fate and that's where he ended up. Tragic, but relatable.
This. Paul was the lesser of many evils. Prescience allowed him to be more aware and thoughtful anybody else that might rule.
>put all worlds on indefinite lockdown because humanity is NEET anyway
>get shit on when history is rewritten after the fact
what did he mean by this?
She did it a generation before the planned one and she did it off the books.
If the BG can control their fertility and produce a son or daughter when they please (Jessica chose to have a son, Emperor Shaddam only had daughters) then why not have a ton of children? An accident at any point in 10k years could easily frick up their entire program. Jessica having one son then a daughter 15 fricking years later is stupid, she should have a dozen kids. Feudal families always aimed to have lots of children because spare sons are an insurance policy and lots of daughters means more diplomatic power through marriage.
She went against the BG by giving Leto a son
I think they mentioned that having too many kids made it hard to create reliable alliances compared to having one or two heirs because if your kids are married into a dozen houses then your loyalty in a conflict will be questioned. So everyone powerful basically had two kids at most and married them off very strategically.
Except Baron "I frick little boys" Harkonen who rarely had sex with women because he was the full red-pill mgtow champion of the universe.
What do you mean? The Baron had two sons, and then Jessica
The Baron has two nephews.
Yeah you're right. I misremembered
Nephews
This I don’t get it.
Since Jessica was Baron Harkonnen’s daughter, hadn’t the BG managed to join the Atreides and Harkonnen lines without needing a Fempaul to breed with Feyd?
It's not about just securing bloodlines, the BG calculated that they would specifically need Jessica's daughter to breed (incestuously) with Feyd-Rautha in order to produce the Kwisatz Haderach.
>Kwisatz Haderach
I still don't get how it works for Leto II
Dad is 99.9% Kwisatz Haderach
Mom is some random half Fremen
Paul was already having hazy visions of Chani when he was still living in the Atredies palace on Caladan, before they moved to Arrakis. Paul also goes on a lot about how his prescience is half him being able to mentat-calculate all possible scenarios but also him half-subconsciously "locking in" the future that he sees by the simple act of predicting it. So you could say it was his destiny to always have Chani be his wife and it was always his destiny to kill her in childbirth because he weighed all possible futures and chose the one where his wife by marriage Irulan poisoned her with a contraceptive until Chani in her desperation to bear her messiah an heir started OD'ing on spice until her body killed itself and gave their children consciousness and other memory in the womb B R A V O P A U L
I still don't understand how Leto ends up being more genetically pure than Paul, he's the equivalent of a champion bloodline purebred mating with a mutt.
He has the memories, the genes are irrelevant
Genetics matter but not as much as other things like training and the individual himself
According to the BG breeding genetic plan the KH would have appeared a generation after Paul
Paul was the KH because of the combination of his genetics, his Mentat and BG training and the effects of the spice, along with his want for revenge and determination to undertake the spice agony test
>more genetically pure
Where are you getting this from? The Kwisatz Haderach doesn't emerge from genetic "purity" whatever that means.
There is an aspect many might not even consider here: arrogant humans trying to supplant god and failing spectacularly. For all their foresight and scheming, it took two chaotic events stemming from very human properties (love and desire of normal womanly happiness for Jessica; aversion to becoming a monster and inability to bear a colossal yet necessary burden for Paul) to turn their carefully cultivated plans into something they were completely unprepared for.
>>a book about atheist spirituality and making ourselves our own Gods in a godless universe
You've misunderstood it. It's not about nihilism or even Nietzschean thought. It is all about triumph of human spirit, expressed in intelligence, perseverance, creativity. With a very strong "nature finds a way" undertone. I suppose it is almost second narrative levels of strong.
No one ever reads the Appendix which explicates that the entire book was divine providence, lol.
No one seems to read in general these days, at least if the threads on this board are any indication. They probably listen to "audiobooks" while doing something else, which results in them mashing the little bits and pieces they even get to remember into an utterly unrecognizable mess. I've noticed similar posts in LotR threads.
t. larping christgay trying to project his own beliefs onto Dune
please cite the precise passage that supports your argument
> only Christians believe in divine providence
dipshit
I am an atheist. I just know how to read.
Frempussy is mad spicy.
Makes extra kwizzie kids.
>Mom is some random half Fremen
All Fremen are a little bit psychic due to the high doses of spice in their diet and thousands of years adapting to this and the death-is-around-every-sanddune nature of the planet
Leto II and his sister Ghanima were preborn, thanks to all the spice Chani was gulping down at the end.
So how come Alia went crazy and they didn't. P.S. the actress who played Alia in the CoD miniseries was such a babe!
you'd go crazy too if you had vlad in your head all day everyday since conception.
the twins had each other.
This. Also, Chani didn't drink the Water of Life like Jessica did while pregnant. That's a big part of what caused Alia's downfall.
Alia was betrayed by her Uncle, Baron Harkonnen, whose memories offered to serve as a buffer against the rest.
Leto II forged an alliance with ancient dynastic ruler, who kept the other memories in line.
Ghanima did something similar to Leto II, but I don't remember with whom.
Leto II compartmentalizes his disparate genetic memories and governs them as a council of advisers with himself as Supreme Ruler. The strength of will it took for Ghanima to hypnotize herself into believing that Leto II was dead, alongside with a focus on the love Chani had for her children, allows her to anchor herself as her own personality
Alia was abandoned by her mother and the Bene Gesserit, and had no idea how dangerous being an Abomination actually was
s/Uncle/Grandfather/
Alia had that bene gesserit “genetic memory” thing where all her ancestors were slammed into her brain at birth.
Good casting all around to be quite honest family. I think Princess Irulan is very underrated, she nailed the crazy eyes femcel look in Children Of Dune.
hnnngh
They can see into the future, so having a son was a good thing.
Jessica didn't frick it up moron, she succeeded where they failed.
Paul and his spawn were just too much for them to control.
That's the problem with seeking to create a monstrously powerful being. If you succeed you won't be able to control them, by definition.
>is Leto's dick just that spectacular?
Interesting thought I've not had before, the Atreides manipulate their subjects by being protective of them and inspiring loyalty which they then exploit the frick out of(they mention in the book that Leto only cares about his people in as much as he can use it to use them) but to the public and the great houses they're seen as noble, loyal and kind.
I think that Jessica fell for it and never really realised that for the most part it was a façade that the family had been pulling for centuries.
Also if Paul had been a girl then the plan by the Sisterhood was to get her to marry Feyd and they'd make a baby and the Bene Gesserit were going to fake its death and take it away to indoctrinate it for his entire life into their cause and beliefs and then use him as a weapon against the galaxy. That was their plan.
The funny thing about facades is that they have a habit of becoming real if you keep it up long enough.
Remember that the plot against Paul in DM depends on Paul being unable to turn away his resurrected retainer and friend even though he knows full well Idaho is some kind of weapon against him. A total cynic wouldn't do that.
>they mention in the book that Leto only cares about his people in as much as he can use it to use them) but to the public and the great houses they're seen as noble, loyal and kind.
Keep in mind when Leto gives Paul that whole speech about how great his propaganda corps is, Leto is VERY drunk and he feels the walls closing in on him so he's questioning his entire life and all of his choices. He knows he's probably going to die soon so he's moping
House Atreides absolutely is looking after its own interests, but someone who was totally self-interested wouldn't have put himself and his heir at great risk to save some random spice miners from the worm, he would have just let them die.
Why did Atreides have to go personally to Arrakis? Can they not administer it from Caladan?
Because the emperor told them to swap planets basically. They can't refuse
Harkonnen and other great houses never had to swap around, they keep their own home world while administering Arrakis. My assumption is that the great houses all have their home worlds or whatever, and Arrakis is passed around to each one as something they administer, but not necessarily pick up and move everything to because of the frickhuge monster cost of shifting an entire great house and everything it has to a new planet.
Atreides still had Caladan, they just had a temporary governor in place while they were on Arrakis, no?
No, they gave it up completely. They obviously got it back shortly after paul btfoed them
The emporer has the power to assign the fiefdom of arrakis. During this time the emporer assigns an overseer to Caladan, but it's implied if a house is powerful enough it could maintain control of both as the Harkonens are able to control both Arrakis and Geidi Prime simultaneously
Any scifi or fantasy that does an unironic "chosen one" with zero subversions or surprises is never gonna be very interesting to anyone except muh worldbuilding gays. Even fricking Star Wars managed to give the trope a twist. I want to read a story, not a fricking bible.
For a chosen one, Muad'Dib is pretty ineffective. It's not long before he's admitting despite all his prescience, there's nothing he can do about the bloodshed to come.
>chu'dib, what do your spice eyes see?
>the CHOAM has fallen, billions must die
Bravo Heinlein!
Is it just me, or in an Imperium of innumerable worlds is billions dead just not really that bad? Could be worse.
Dune is literally only about chosen one -trope being subverted. "Look mom, the chosen one is le bad!"
Also the chosen one isn't really a chosen one since the Bene Geserit just made up the myth and seeded it to the brown plebs
I'll be honest I was sort of baiting for someone to give me answer like that because I don't know that much about the series besides what's occasionally posted here and the recent movie
I probably still won't read it because I disliked the movie and people said it was a good adaptation but thanks anyway
That's fine. Dune isn't particularly good writing anyway. Read Book of the New Sun, or anything by Wolfe really.
>Book of the New Sun
What's funny is I started to read this and then stopped to read Dune. I'll come back to it later
What % will be black?
Jolenta isn't nearly voluptuous enough
>Wolfe
I feel like for the most part, whenever I read a book or a short story from the protagonist's POV, I feel like they all have autism to some degree. Wizard Knight especially.
the chosen one shit was literally put into the people's religion centuries ago, in order to make it possible for someone like him to power grab the natives when the time was needed
The point is about how chosen one myths are seeded in order create political movements centuries into advance and the myths exist to be worn as a uniform by great men
bro, the point is that paul is not the chosen one, he came too soon and fricks it up and its impact is a disaster. then comes the chosen one and he is literal a bored incel and looks back and thinks that humanity truly fricked up breeding me. Im gonna frick them in the ass for a few millennia until they understand they can never make this mistake again
how is this not a subversion?
>series about “hero worship cult of personality bad”
>we keep bringing back duncan because he’s the coolest dude in the universe
Frank Herbert has said from the beginning that Dune was always meant to be enjoyed as half a dozen podcasts and five thousand wiki pages
a true visionary of the future
I actually wonder how they are gonna do Alia in the movie
Born from momcest with Paul
She was preggers when Leto died
Not watching new movies because they look bland.
>blue sky
Dennis wouldn't like that.
>too kino for villeneuve
Who needs him anyway?
ya mudda
The book series has no ending so there is no reason to continue after Dune Messiah
The only reason to make the early books is so you can get to God Emperor. You could fashion that into a pretty good ending for the whole saga if you wanted to stop there.
>tfw there will be a series of Brian Herbert films
It's one of the better sci fi movies to come out recently. I wish there were more like it, bladerunner, etc
A fricked up part of me wants to see that. A spiritual sequel to Battlefield Earth
>dude, he's like so evil and tyrannic, he commited terrible atrocities such as... uhhhhm... like restricting people to leave planets (large celestial bodies ranging from 5000 to 15000km in diameter)
the book gives literally no reasons to hate him so much, but it implies that literally every citizen is constantly seething about him. hackbert should've stopped after the first book
You see him from the viewpoints of rebels, and the book explicitly says that they're relatively privileged disaffected nobles. That said there's definitely historian burning and the occasional pogram to enforce his empire.
What's his name again?
Doug Iowa?
Duncaccino Piedaho, 10th level Ginaz Frymaster
Darth Insanius
DUNCin
Robert Indiana
friendly reminder that DUNCan Montana is apparently so sexy he can make women cum just from looking at him
Why the hell did Villanova even make him shave the beard?
you expect me to believe this Black person planend his own death. And played 4d chess for thousands of years. All the while living as a snail in pain and agony. Frick.
The Fremen cares not for himself, only for the survival of the tribe.
>Duncan, have sex
>NNNNOOOO YOU CAN'T MAKE ME BREED WITH ALL YOUR HOT AMAZON WARRIORS LETO I AM NOT YOUR STUD
Wasn't one of the Duncans a moron who tried to kill Leto but fumbled the bomb and blew himself up?
We call him Duncan the Relatable around here
I can just picture him with his "please be patient I have autism" hat.
>Some of you guys are alright. Don't go to Onn tomorrow.
>18 years
>1000 children
All the fish speakers are women, anon, and they were ordered to constantly bone DUNCan. He just decided to push it as far as he could
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_Ibn_Sharif
>Moulay Ismail had at least 500 concubines and even more children. A total of 868 children (525 sons and 343 daughters) is recorded in 1703, with his seven hundredth son being born shortly after his death in 1727, by which time he had well over a thousand children.
>Dune Messiah bad
lot of damp hands itt
>le JIHAD happens...LE OFFSCREEN
bravo herbert
Herbert was working on more important things like the ecology of a fictional planet and how many muscles there are in a human vegana
super smart beings plotting against a super smart Emperor, who can see the fricking future on top of that, is better than muh jihad you brainlet
Duncan was the Kwisatz Haderach
Will we get Daniel and Marty in the dune movies ?
>I TURNED MYSELF INTO A THINKING MACHINE, MARTY
Somehow I find the people in Warhammer 40k more human than anything in Dune. in dune all the characters act like aliens and do weird fricked up shit for stupid reasons.
They do fricked up shit in warhammer 40k as well, but there's always a very human reasoning for why they act the way they do.
in 40k there are 15 flavors of nonhuman.
in dune there's just the humans.
40k is just pulp, Dune has pulpy elements but never loses sight of its humanity (as long as Frank is the one writing)
>people 8000 years in the future feel alien, bro
>people who are ardent adherents of an ecumenized version of major modern religions are not easy to understand, bro
>people who have re-evolved with a wildly different technology after Earth was lost to them for thousands of years work in strange ways, bro
Each waking day I involuntarily wish to not wake up next time a little more.
how does it work though? thats what I want to know
I hope the entire Duncan clone thing is retconned out of the movies. It's dumb and needs to be fixed. Duncan should just be in a hypersleep coma until rebels wake him up.
>Duncan scales a cliff so hard a woman watching him cums
Brava Herberto!
Leto II should be played by Tony Hopkins
live action is gonna be so fricking kino
>MONEO!
>Yes, M'lord?
>Call those Teliaxu freaks and tell them I need a new Duncan!
>Right away, my lord.
>And send a clean-up detail into the crypt... Duncan unexpectedly exploded down there.
>...Yes, m'lord...
i swear to god if the TV series makes one mention of the Thinking Machines as skynet robots enslaving humanity I'm turning it off immediately
IS that not what happened?
No it was more akin to our dependency on smartphones becoming a problem for them.
"The boomer chipout"
its more of a, we getting dumb.
Dune encyclopedia (which may or may not have been written by frank) gives a different version of why it happened tho https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Jehanne_Butler
>revolt against the machines starts because AI orders abortions
Dune truly is the patrician choice for chuds
Frank Herbert basically foresaw our dependence on machines leading us to intellectual and spiritual stagnation (see: young kids can't read or communicate anymore because they've had tablets and been watching youtube/Tiktok since they were 18 months old) so someone issued a fatwa against computers and lead a jihad to destroy them all and the people who refused to give up on them. Leto II tells Siona out in the desert that machines themselves are not the problem, only that we use them as a substitute for genuine human thoughts and experiences which will destroy us. A core component of Leto II's plan to save us from extinction and stagnation is to re-introduce navigational computers into the universe in order to break our dependence on the Spice.
Brian/KJA are the ones who introduced the idea of God Machines enslaving humanity into their non-canon prequel and spinoff books, because they are stupid men whose mind is governed entirely by cliches and they have no interest in exploring any larger ideas besides milking the Dune IP to enrichen themselves
what's his explanation for how they got to dune in the first place? if you need spice for interstellar travel, dune must have been relatively close to human civilization, which must have been pretty close to earth
FTL is possible without spice, just extraordinarily risky. Also it's not explicitly stated in the books but they used computers before.
Correct. The navigators don't fold space, the Holtzman Drives do that. The Navigators just crunch predictive algorithms to plot the safest course.
space travel was dependent of computers. Spice only became a thing after they banned them
Frankly I blame the BG, nothing good ever came from a meddling coven of wannabe witches
Isn't this the entirety of the books?
>Herbert: Paul needs to start the jihad, he has no choice but to trigger a massive war that will leaves billions dead
>why?
>Herbert: because he needs to become emperor of the universe and this is the only way
>why?
>Herbert: because his son Leto II needs to become a human-snake hybrid
>why?
>Herbert: because human-snake hybrids have longer life spans and this way he can breeds humans that are not seen in prescience
>why?
>Herbert: because one day humanity will fight an enemy that uses prescience and could exterminate humanity
>interesting, can you expand on that?
>Herbert: I just died lol, enjoy the cliffhanger butthole (or go read the books by my moron son)
It's a gross oversimplification and some parts are plain wrong.
Paul's prescience was limited and incomplete. The first few novels explain this. His kid's prescience was keener, but still not complete because of lifespan limitations in learning from other memories. So Leto II takes drastic steps to prolong his life, so he can see farther.
The text of the book is that Paul did not actually start the Jihad because he has 'no choice', he did it because he wanted a good life for himself and his family. The thing is using his abilities locks him into certain paths just because he's become the Emperor of the Known Universe and billions scheme against him. He can't escape that.
He's not a god. Never was. Just a powerful man.
>you will never be sexually dominated by an Honored Matre
Reminder that they control their moronic cat-men pets with sex.
Are post God-Emperor books good?
I love God Emperor, I got 350 pages into Heretics and just couldn't continue. God Emperor was esoteric but it was very thematically focused and kept the scope of its present-tense narrative small with a core cast of characters. Heretics introduces like half a dozen interchangeable Bene Gesserit characters, Duncan has become an unironic messianic mary sue (when previous books showed how being a ghola and a man out of time fricking sucks) and all the coombrained Honored Matre stuff is off-putting.
That said, some people really do swear by Heretics and Chapterhouse so maybe I'm just dumb
>Honored Matre
>Their enemies are furries called FUTARS
>Their enemies are furries called FUTARS
No, they frick the futars. We never find out what the HM are fleeing from.
sounds like a mess
The 5th book is not bad but indeed somewhat difficult to get into if you're fresh off the God Emperor. It starts exploring some topics the previous books have not gone into sufficient depth on and it looks interesting unless you started it while expecting more of the same, largely. But it also feels fairly rough, like a good draft that needed at least one more pass.
All I remember of the last book, which is a compilation of his actual drafts and notes, is that it barely felt like his book and went nowhere. Perhaps I should give it another chance and my opinion will improve.
Not essential reading tbh, Some homie basically becoming The Flash, space israelites - its bullshit
So that moronic movie title font DUNC
is just for the inevitable duncan idaho movies yes?
>10,000 years into the future
>jews still exist
come on Frank
Why not, anon? The Bene Tleilax are the last of the Sharia.
its 26,000 years in the future
you mean shia, and the Tleilax have altered those beliefs radically unlike the space israelites
I wonder what they would do if they got to ChapterHouse Dune in the films.
Just call it the ending and have the characters fly off into space?
Use the son's other books? Marty and Daniel being robots (or whatever...I never read it) seems silly
Marty and Daniel being the robots from Brian and KJAs books is a retcon to try to tie back their OC into Frank's narrative, which is complete bullshit
Damn you all for sucking me into a reread.