Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

I had the misfortune of finding this drivel today:

Frank Herbert's Dune Sucks, An Analysis Part 1


http://deafsparrowtheblog.blogspot.com/ ... lysis.html

The concepts were often high but poorly articulated, boring, and stuck on grand ideas without throwing in a bit of action.

Sounds like someone's ripe for giant cyborgs fighting canister brains.

Wow, I stopped reading after a while because the guy clearly didn't comprehend what he was reading.

He did get one thing right, though:

I'm not even going to touch his kid's follow-ups, because by all accounts they're like reading Nancy Drew if your 30 sans penis touching from a female.

Well he did say beforehand he'd be talking crap.

By the way...
This blog is started with the purpose of manifesting everything that cannot be rightfully manifested in Deaf Sparrow Zine. Rants, opinions, downloads, chronicles, old news, new news, unworthy news, press releases, bad prose, grotesque images and all sorts of bullshit will find their way through these virtual pages.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion. This guy is more articulate about it than most, even though I disagree with most of his criticisms.

4. Constricted through its own inventions. This is the bad one, but I put it here because I was thinking of it now. One big problem that Dune has, which becomes painfully evident as the series goes further, is that Herbert has put soooo much detail into it that there is very little leeway into other avenues. It's been constricted as far as it can go. The ecology of the sandworms and the focus on Arrakis, for example, are so important to every character, event, city, everything, that he can't get away from it. Each piece is woven into a fine tapestry, but any more weaving and it's too damn big to even sleep under. Everything's been so tightly interwoven that he ran out of rope when he finished it, and after this one he just tied extra pieces on and made a damn fucking mess of things. You'll see as we get to the others in my future articles.

Spot on, and Frank Herbert certainly came to the same conclusion four novels in. Kralizec and the Scattering were a way for him to reshuffle an increasingly cramped fictional universe. All throughout Heretics and Chapterhouse he keeps reminding the reader that, really, anything is possible in out there in the great unknown, and that no one can ever know it all. He even blows up Arrakis to drive the point home that the story isn't about Dune anymore.

How can he claim that Herbert isn't a good writer?

Let's look at the first line in the novel (excluding the epigraph):
"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."

In a single sentence, he is able to grab the reader's attention by mentioning the name of an unknown place. He conveys the urgency of their departure and he draws attention to the main character: Paul. After all, the crone and mother are not named, but the boy is named.

I don't understand how you can create a new universe with its own laws in a short piece of writing. Would he criticise Tolkien for being "too fucking long"?

Does he have the memory of an ant? Looking at just Dune, to grossly simplify, good vs bad. Atreides and allies vs Harkonnen and allies. Seriously? That is hard to remember?

In terms of originality, most stories have a hero. Wow! Mind blown! Herbert talked about Lord Raglan. Do some research if you're going to write an article. At least Herbert didn't set his story on Mars like every other writer at that time. Why not criticise Robert Jordan's Aes Sedai while you're at it?

In terms of being constricted by its own inventions, I once again disagree. Herbert spoke about having a "layered effect" through his novels. i.e. he didn't want a single big idea. So you have religion, politics, ecology and so forth layered throughout the novels. If I were to criticise Herbert, I would note that it is really difficult to develop fully ALL of the ideas in the novels.

He completely misses the point about Herbert's novels. I can't believe that he wants to talk about plots. After all, there are seven basic plots in fiction.

I could go on, but you get my point. It isn't an analysis but a rant by someone who hated the novel.

Loved his plot holes, hmmm, plots with holes, interesting.

Plot holes within plot holes.

Freakzilla wrote:Plot holes within plot holes.

Now we're talking.