Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

A Thing of Eternity wrote: I mean Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune. FH had all three of those in mind as one story when he was first writing Dune.

Freakzilla wrote: More accurately, I think he said he had written parts of DM and CoD while writting Dune.

Woa, that's a big deal for me to find out. Even that he was mentally making notes beyond the taking of Arrakeen (and the Imperium) sheds a whole new light on things!

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Yin my friend, yin. Drives me nuts when people say yingyang! Funny pet peeve!

Haha, everyone says yingyang. Funny that it's such a big misconception even now. (Actually when someone does say yinyang, I'm slightly disappointed I missed the chance to correct them. Usually I was already taking a smug breath to speak. )

Streaksy wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote: I mean Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune. FH had all three of those in mind as one story when he was first writing Dune.

Freakzilla wrote: More accurately, I think he said he had written parts of DM and CoD while writting Dune.

Woa, that's a big deal for me to find out. Even that he was mentally making notes beyond the taking of Arrakeen (and the Imperium) sheds a whole new light on things!

Oh yeah, big deal indeed. FH has said that one of the major ideas in Dune is never to blindly follow a single centralized ruler - but that's just what everyone does, and it works out perfectly for them - the ending of Dune basically is the exact opposite message that FH had intended.

Then you start into Dune Messiah and WHAM there's the message.

The Bene Gesserit's relatively narrow approach to playing genetic Illuminati is a brilliant device to pivot all that with. And one of the most gripping things is trying to mentally evaluate them. At first they're relative superbeings with all the answers. Then when absolutivity overtakes relativity all-at-once the BG seem to be exposed as something with much less scope. But then they did orchestrate everything and do pretty amazingly for mere mortals without prescience. The way Frank often talks about the compound memories and other profoundly important elements isn't for none-thinkers. He isn't totally cryptic, but he doesn't use prose to absolutely highlight everything we should take extra notice or how things come together. He lets us work it out in real-time and it's so refreshing. It's not hard either, if you have a slightly open mind. But I found myself mentally redefining the Bene Gesserit a few times as the "camera" kept "zooming further out" to reveal more big-picture.

Brian makes people have visions of dead people that tell them in great detail how to build a never-before-seen technological marvel while rooting around in air vents like John McClane. He's one of the worst writers I've come accross. Sad ending, but kinda inevitable. ;/

The common presumption around here is that KJA actually does the bulk of the writing. He's an extremely fast writer, he walks around dictating "finished prose" then has his assistant type it all up. He's had years where he's written (if I remember rightly) 14 books in one year.

:O You know tons about the authors. It doesn't even occur to me to look things up like that.

Oh we've been around the block, and most of us have communicated with the HLP (the people who own FH's work). Also, KJA is an egomaniac, he posts constantly about himself. His biggest pride is that he always delivers books on schedule (with no regard to quality).

He is also thoroughly dispised by the Star Wars community, apparently it took many books and several authors to try and undo the damage he did to the Star Wars universe. Pretty much everyone hates his guts actually. Google something like "I hate KJA" or Kevin J Anderson, pretty much anything will bring up loads and loads of people that just loath him.

This guy is handed one of the most important series in Science Fiction history, and he spews out books as fast as he can write them. Quantity is all he cares about.

Starting to think I should have heeded that warning to not ask questions. Wikipedia is the new history-books and as long as it talks about the contraversy and hatred, we should be good.

By the way, I should thank you personally for yesterday. It was your kind neutrality that made me stop and review. ;/

Ha, no problem, I thought I was a little on the harsh side actually! We just get a lot of people that come in here, mention a mental problem of some kind, and try to use it as a shield as they go on a rampage, which is what I thought was about to be coming from you! I'm an excessively mellow person though, and I'm usually pretty good at grasping why communication is failing between other people.

Unfortunately I think wiki largely doesn't include much about the hatred of KJA's work. I used to police wiki (Dune articles only really) a fair bit, and nothing like that could really be included because you have to use published sources, and there are really few of those on this issue. KJA doesn't seem to allow much about it into interviews other than to use his normal talifan defense, and most news groups simply don't care that he exists.

We do have some great example of him taking stabs at us (and by "us" I mean us right here on this website) in some of the more recent Dune novels though, so we've certainly gotten under his skin.

Gawd. Brian endorses it so he's to blame. If not for his inheritence he'd be bouncing around burger jobs. If he's lucky. Cashing-in on some gimmick is one thing but destroying your father's unique and loved legacy before the eyes of the world out of jealousy and greed is pretty damn low.

Seems surreal that people have used mental problems as a shield before in this forum. I certainly wasn't and don't intend to. Just using that term feels exploitative because it's too broad and comes with a lot of baggage that doesn't apply to me. My judgement of people's intent is wonky sometimes, and I can react a bit strongly. I often depend on my wife's assessment of things because I don't always trust my own. I'm not a saint but I'm not bad. At least I'm trying to be on the saint side of the scale. Know what I mean?

As a saint, yes, I know what you mean.

Streaksy wrote:I often depend on my wife's assessment of things because I don't always trust my own.

Those are some words of wisdom, right there.

HBJ