Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Diego wrote:XCALIBUR, I am inclined to agree with you on that point! As for Serkanner, He is an idiot. I'll just leave him to his own devices.

The Orange Catholic Bible is a derivative from the "Dune" Series by Frank Herbert. It does NOT appear to be licensed in any way by the officialdom of the "Duniverse", [...]
Is it what I thought it would be when I ordered it for US$19.99? No. What I was really hoping for was a true reflection of what I had read about the Orange Catholic Bible in the index to the novel, "Dune" and the write-up in the Dune Encyclopedia, which, though not written by Frank Herbert, was approved by him, and did get a forward to it written by him. I wanted a book that looked like it could have been put together by the Commission of Ecumenical Translators some time after the Butlerian Jihad. Anyone who has ever read Dune and any of the other five written by Frank knows about which I speak. As for what his son Brian and Kevin wrote, no comment.

But to get anywhere close to what the Orange Catholic Bible SHOULD conceivably be, you would have to have 1800 pages that included the Scriptures of every conceivable Earth Religion blended into one solid book, such that they slide smoothly together. This would even include a few Religions that don't yet exist (fictional ones), although most of them do in fact exist in some form, albeit not in the advanced manners that they do in "Dune". For example, we have Zen Buddhism, and Sunni Islam, but we do NOT have the ZenSunni Tradition. According to the "Dune" Encyclopedia, the only significant Religion that has changed very little in 185,000 years is in fact Judaism, which, from what little appears to be known about it, seems to exist in small pockets throughout the known universe.

If the Orange Catholic Bible is 1800 pages of a compacted Old Testament, a compacted New Testament, most of the Qur'an, and several other Religions, then putting together such a manual would probably take about 7 years, just as it supposedly took the CET.

Nevertheless, the volume here represented is of considerable interest. The first reviewer stated this, but just in case, I shall restate: There is a listing of what the contents (in BRIEF) of the book are. they are as follows:

Upanishads p.4
Gods of the Brythons p. 47
Babylonian Deities p. 62
Ancient Myths Biblical and Many Others p. 152
Nonresistance "Kingdom of God is within you" p. 312
Theologico-Political and the Light of Reason p. 416
Osiris p. 463
Aquarian Gospel p. 511
Islam p. 594

As one can see, these works are fairly recognisable to the educated person. And if I am correct in the attributions to which I make regarding the texts, they are all in public domain.

Furthermore, it should be noted, that in "Dune" itself, there were TWO books put together by the CET. One was the Orange Catholic Bible. The other was the Commentaries. Here, the Commentaries are interspersed throughout the text. One is advised of this at the beginning, on page 2. So there IS a lot in here.

But here is where it gets interesting. Although the work is CERTAINLY not up to speed with an ACTUAL copy of the Orange Catholic Bible such as the one Paul Atreides receives as a gift in "Dune", it still has me reading things that I would not normally have considered reading. I have read the Bible, and the Qur'an, and the Book of Mormon and other Mormon Scriptures, and quite a few other Religious Scriptures, including pieces of the Indian Epics, the Baghavad-Gita, the Analects ofConfucius, and so-on, but it never occurred to me to read the Upanishads until I found them here. The same is true of some of the other options presented in this text.

I think in the sense that someone actually had the grapes to do this, to put this together, they are to be highly commended. Could it be better? Sure. Could it be a heck of a lot more awful? Yes. Was it ultimately worth the US$19.99 that I paid for it? Ultimately, yes, I think it was. It is a noble attempt. And after all, who can match Frank's own ability at writing? To truly write the Orange Catholic Bible to that unrivalled capacity without being Frank would be virtually impossible. Oh, and actual quotes from the OC Bible as they appear in Dune DO appear throughout the text.

So for those who love "Dune", Its worth getting your hands on. Enjoy, most definitely enjoy, and use your imagination, Peace out.

georgiedenbro wrote:It just doesn't make sense that you'd read a Dune spin-off or fanfic before...reading Dune. It's damn weird, man.

Diego wrote:
Actually, I am reading them at the same time.

Diego wrote:Your advice is well taken. I have read the Appendix II on several occasions, but it certainly bears reading again, of course.

Diego wrote:... I am 13% into the first novel, Dune. I am enjoying it immensely.

Diego wrote:Then again, you are also right. I started out on a bad foot myself. I can fairly be said to have acted rather like a bit of an ass. I apologise for that. As for the DE, you appear to be right. The more I read of it, and the more I come to read through the first Dune, I do realise that stuff does get a little divergent, albeit not a lot. I suspect that things are going to get REAL different in some ways by the end of book six.

Freakzilla wrote:

Diego wrote:Your advice is well taken. I have read the Appendix II on several occasions, but it certainly bears reading again, of course.

Diego wrote:... I am 13% into the first novel, Dune. I am enjoying it immensely.

The second quote was from July 19. You've only read 13% of Dune but you've read the appendix several times?

xcalibur wrote:if I understand this correctly, all this "OC Bible" did was take public domain scripture, compile it together, then put a Dune name on top. and for 20 bucks? Even if this compilation reflects how the OC Bible would've been composed (which I doubt), it's still blatant hucksterism.

as for the DE, it's hit or miss. Some of it is decent, some of it is ridiculous. I once thought of it as "semi-canon", but after a pointed discussion on here, I had to concede that it is not canon in any way. still, to my knowledge the DE is the only spinoff material worth reading. btw, you would probably not be surprised to know that Brian & Kevin "borrowed" from the DE.

Diego wrote: Nowhere in the text does the thing say that it is connected to Dune or Frank Herbert. It does use quotes from the Orange Catholic Bible as they are found in the Frank Herbert canon.
[snip]
Why does it not refer to Dune directly? Well, my guess is, they didn't want to get their asses sued. The designation "Orange Catholic Bible" is probably free to use.

georgiedenbro wrote:

Diego wrote: Nowhere in the text does the thing say that it is connected to Dune or Frank Herbert. It does use quotes from the Orange Catholic Bible as they are found in the Frank Herbert canon.
[snip]
Why does it not refer to Dune directly? Well, my guess is, they didn't want to get their asses sued. The designation "Orange Catholic Bible" is probably free to use.

Directly quoting text from someone else's book as content in your own certainly isn't protected under fair use. If the OC Bible was a non-fiction work about religion in literature then it would certainly be protected as an academic work. But as a spin-off fanfic it's just plagiarism. I don't see a problem with fanfic as such, but I very much doubt they paid for the licensing in a print-on-demand book. Let's just say this is one religious work that will have to remain underground.

Diego wrote:

xcalibur wrote:if I understand this correctly, all this "OC Bible" did was take public domain scripture, compile it together, then put a Dune name on top. and for 20 bucks? Even if this compilation reflects how the OC Bible would've been composed (which I doubt), it's still blatant hucksterism.

As for this, I find the book interesting again, not because it truly reflects what the OCB would truly look like. Hello Marylou, to accomplish that, you would have to have a team of translators from a cross-section of the world's religions take seven years to create such a document, would you not? And they would have to create a separate volume of Commentaries, correct?

It is interesting simply because it reflects an attempt to "ecumenicalise" (if I may coin a word) religion. I know a lot of people DESPISE the very concept of such things. My own Church (the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, one of the more conservative Confessional Churches) would be horrified by the very thought of the thing. It would probably keep the President of the Synod up at night. I mean, we have a hard enough time finding even other Lutherans we can mix with, let alone non-Christians!

XCALIBUR, to be honest, they did NOT put a Dune name on top of anything. They called it the Orange Catholic Bible. There is a picture of sand on the cover. In fact, unless you know what you are about, you might not know that it is related to Dune at all. It is simply entitled, "The Orange Catholic Bible" Then it says beneath that, "In the Future the OCB will Unfold Reality". Then it lists as the author(s) something called "International Council on Interplanetary Religion".

Nowhere in the text does the thing say that it is connected to Dune or Frank Herbert. It does use quotes from the Orange Catholic Bible as they are found in the Frank Herbert canon. But if you had never read Frank Herbert, or never heard of him, you would assume the book had been published with the intent of being a model for what a Scripture could conceivably look like in the future.

Why does it not refer to Dune directly? Well, my guess is, they didn't want to get their asses sued. The designation "Orange Catholic Bible" is probably free to use. After all, if questioned about it, the situation in Northern Ireland makes the reference clear enough. Even the quotes from the Orange Catholic Bible in Dune itself could probably be excused simply because Dune was written a fair time ago. I myself got all six Dune novels, and the first two of what you call the Atrocities, off the Internet Archive for free. There must be SOME legal situation that allows that to occur. But I suspect that if the author(s) had actually USED the name Dune, they could have been sued by Brian and Friends.

Why does that NOT surprise me? They sound like men with very little imagination. Although I shall read the two books that they wrote that I do have (House Atreides and House Harkonnen) AFTER I am done with Frank's work, I suspect you are probably right.

ALL that having been said, I bought the OCB partly out of fond memory of childhood. Remember what I said about going to the Library and forcing the poor Librarian to search throughout the entire County Library System for a book (the OCB) that did not then exist! And this back before computers, when you had to use the Card Catalogue and the Microfiche! Bloody nightmare I put her through. But, like I said, I have AS. I did then, and still do, weird shit, albeit not anywhere near as weird now as back then. Poor patient Librarian. I put that woman through more Hell every time I went to the Library, being such a voracious reader. I mean, what DO you do with a nine year old who reads Shakespeare for fun?

So, call the OCB that is out now what you will. And maybe to the rest of you it would be a waste of money. And so be it. But to me it was worth it, partly just for Old Time's Sake. I think I can be allowed that, at least, without criticism.

Freakzilla wrote:They started in 1999 so about one per year.

georgiedenbro wrote:To be fair FH wrote other books during that period along with the Dune series. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he had also managed to write one book every year or year and a half in his prime.