What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?


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What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by redbugpest »

Just curious.

What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back to it again and again?
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Freakzilla »

It has depth that you can explore further each time you read, it is intelligent and forces you to use your imagination.

That's how I wrote the novel, wanting you to participate with the best of your own imagination. I did not aim for the lowest common denominator and 'write down" to anyone. You and I have a compact and my responsibility is to entertain you as richly as possible, always giving you as much extra as I can. I assume you are intelligent and will enlist your own imagination. You'll see that when you read the Dune excerpt and the other stories in this collection.
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Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by SandChigger »

Freakzilla wrote:Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
And we have a perfect example of the LCD right here in Pest. :)
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by redbugpest »

Freakzilla wrote:It has depth that you can explore further each time you read, it is intelligent and forces you to use your imagination.
Something we can agree on! :clap:
Last edited by redbugpest on 05 Aug 2009 19:37, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by SandRider »

I wonder why he wastes time starting silly fanboy threads like this instead
of starting a real discussion on an actual DUNE topic, or maybe, hell, answering
the questions already posed to him ?

No,I don't wonder at all ...

:think: :snooty:
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by SandChigger »

redbugpest wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
Something we can agree on! :clap:
Hey! This is PROGRESS! :laughing:
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Nekhrun »

redbugpest wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:It has depth that you can explore further each time you read, it is intelligent and forces you to use your imagination.

That's how I wrote the novel, wanting you to participate with the best of your own imagination. I did not aim for the lowest common denominator and 'write down" to anyone. You and I have a compact and my responsibility is to entertain you as richly as possible, always giving you as much extra as I can. I assume you are intelligent and will enlist your own imagination. You'll see that when you read the Dune excerpt and the other stories in this collection.
FH, Intro to Eye

Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
Something we can agree on! :clap:
You are agreeing that kja is as big an idiot as you are?
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Eyes High »

redbugpest wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:It has depth that you can explore further each time you read, it is intelligent and forces you to use your imagination.

That's how I wrote the novel, wanting you to participate with the best of your own imagination. I did not aim for the lowest common denominator and 'write down" to anyone. You and I have a compact and my responsibility is to entertain you as richly as possible, always giving you as much extra as I can. I assume you are intelligent and will enlist your own imagination. You'll see that when you read the Dune excerpt and the other stories in this collection.
FH, Intro to Eye

Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
Something we can agree on! :clap:
Exactly what are you agreeing on? Because that can be read that you agree KJA's work is not as....indepth as Frank's. Or are you agreeing that Frank was a writter who challenged his readers to think and imagine. To use there minds. To explore the posibilities?

Please expand on your statement if you would please.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Freakzilla »

I took it to mean he agrees that KJA has made a career of writting to the LCD.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Rakis »

SandChigger wrote:
redbugpest wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
Something we can agree on! :clap:
Hey! This is PROGRESS! :laughing:
Wow... :shock:

Indeed :)
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

SandChigger wrote:
redbugpest wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
Something we can agree on! :clap:
Hey! This is PROGRESS! :laughing:
That IS almost sig-worthy. :lol:

I'm going to assume he missed that last line and was agreeing with freak's opening statement.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Oh, and to add - it is the amazing depth of thought and planning that went into the novels that keeps me hooked.

This is why KJA and BH have angered me instead of just disappointing me. There is no deep thought or serious sociology or philosophy in the books that KJABH writes. There is no attempt to use “show” instead of “tell” techniques for characterization. There wasn’t even a real PLOT in Dune 7. Every single thing/plotline that happened in Dune 7 had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE OUTCOME. Every character could have made the EXACT OPPOSITE decisions for the entirety of both books, and the ending would have remained the same. Not one single thing any character other than Norma did had any real effect on the outcome, other than Erasmus, but what he did just made victory SLIGHTLY easier for Norma, she still could have easily won with nothing more than a though.

WEAK WRITING. The only point to the new dune novels is the special effects (which aren’t even well thought out).
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Seraphan »

Frank's mastery use of fictional narrative to convey meaningfull ideas about the real world is what makes him my favourite writer of all time, along with Alan Moore.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Hunchback Jack »

The writing. The complexity of the interactions between the characters. The feeling that there's more going on than you realize, and you have to read slowly and carefully - and read the books more than once - to figure it out. The breaking away from the usual "hero kicks the bad guys ass" mold, challenging the whole idea of a leader as hero. A sense of real suspense and danger for characters you care about. Characters who care and act for all of humanity, portrayed by a skilled enough writer to make you believe in them.

Read the first chapter of DM, where Scytale, Mohaim and Edric are trying to convince Irulan to help them assassinate Paul. That one chapter is a joy to read.

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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by chanilover »

I'm reading it for the third time, and it's like reading it for the first time, the book is so dense I think you could re-read for the rest of your life and still get something new out of each reading.

One read of Anderson's brainfarts was enough, thanks, just like one whiff of a turd tells you that you don't need to go back for a second sniff.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by GamePlayer »

For the sex. Dune is an enabler, which allows me to interact on Dune message boards and encounter preqs with which to have sex. If having sex with bovines were socially acceptable, I'd do so. As it turns out, the closest option begrudging tolerated by society is sex with KJA fans :)

Now, I know you're always telling us how busy you are, but later I've got some free time. Maybe you could...fit me in? :romance-inlove: :romance-hearteyes: :romance-heartsthree:
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Nekhrun »

GamePlayer wrote:For the sex. Dune is an enabler, which allows me to interact on Dune message boards and encounter preqs with which to have sex. If having sex with bovines were socially acceptable, I'd do so. As it turns out, the closest option begrudging tolerated by society is sex with KJA fans :)

Now, I know you're always telling us how busy you are, but later I've got some free time. Maybe you could...fit me in? :romance-inlove: :romance-hearteyes: :romance-heartsthree:
I don't think fitting you in will be a problem. He's proven himself to be quite open.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Freakzilla »

chanilover wrote:I'm reading it for the third time, and it's like reading it for the first time, the book is so dense I think you could re-read for the rest of your life and still get something new out of each reading.

One read of Anderson's brainfarts was enough, thanks, just like one whiff of a turd tells you that you don't need to go back for a second sniff.
It was a serious struggle for me to make it through that one sniff.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by lotek »

funny you should ask that question

nb: I'm new but it seems that RBP is not all what he/she seems, I suspect infiltration here, even if the subtlety(or lack of more like it) of the disguise makes it hard to tell

here's my answer on the amazon:
all right I think I will add my little note to all this: my qualification? Well I started reading dune when I was 7 I think that's good enough

First hi to all my fellow cast out, so that no one will brandish that piece of news saying how biaised I am: so yeps I'm from sietch Jacurutu(how fitting for people struggling against the destroying of old ways and the betrayal of a legacy)

So I read FH's Dune and was thrilled, gobsmacked, and other terms meaning I met something that showed the immensity of the human mind and its capacity to hint at something so much bigger than itself, thus grasping concepts that no one could really understand.
Then I read them again, and what would you? Well the same thing happened again, but this time I had learned more of life and that knowledge helped me understand those things out of my reach(or sometimes I didn't even know were here)
And then(you won't believe it)I read them.. again... and again... and everytime something new! It was like magic, a paper made horn of plenty...

And then I stopped reading them so I would go back to it with a fresher mind. What a thing to experience just from a mere book!(that's the true spice for me, it expands consciousness and keeps the child in you alive, close enough to expanding your life)

Then years later I hear about those notes and the series about to start again and I was like a child again, my duniverse coming back to life, that magic with words and things unsaid speaking directly to your barely conscious mind.
What a disapointment, from the start it felt just like one of those old sci fi stories that supposed its readers not very bright and just never went beyond the surface in case of losing its audience to brain cramps.
I am not elitist I believe anyone can grasp concepts bigger than oneself provided a bit of training and mostly the assumption from the "teacher" that no one is really stupid and everything can be explained.
Regardless of dune canon, inconsistencies should not exist(one of my jobs is video game tester and that's what we do we chase inconsistencies and mistakes grammatical or what), I mean if it's one way it cannot be the other at the same time.

So for me those books have nothing but the name from dune, the rest is just filling space between start and end.
You can call us fundamentalists or talifans(which does show a bit of the way you see the world in general)and that only proves you do not know the meaning of the words, I would have been glad to see these stories picked up and changed and evolving, but this sounds to much like cashing in on the franchise than true love of mind blowing stories.

No new concepts, just an erzatz of old clichés, and by the Great Mother! too many books in one go to be good, no one can do that much and keep quality(even the best writers or the most productive fell against that barrier)
http://www.amazon.com/Counting-DOWN-the ... ssionsNRPB" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What about that LCD again?
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by redbugpest »

Eyes High wrote:
redbugpest wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:It has depth that you can explore further each time you read, it is intelligent and forces you to use your imagination.

That's how I wrote the novel, wanting you to participate with the best of your own imagination. I did not aim for the lowest common denominator and 'write down" to anyone. You and I have a compact and my responsibility is to entertain you as richly as possible, always giving you as much extra as I can. I assume you are intelligent and will enlist your own imagination. You'll see that when you read the Dune excerpt and the other stories in this collection.
FH, Intro to Eye

Writing to the lowest common denominator is KJA's career.
Something we can agree on! :clap:
Exactly what are you agreeing on? Because that can be read that you agree KJA's work is not as....indepth as Frank's. Or are you agreeing that Frank was a writter who challenged his readers to think and imagine. To use there minds. To explore the posibilities?
Please expand on your statement if you would please.
That Frank was a writer who challenged his readers to think and imagine.
I missed the snarky KJA comment at the bottom of his post as i was in a hurry move on other RL items.

I will take this opportunity to say that most of the folks here have met what my expectations were upon coming to this site. It's not the "Free and Open" site that some of the folks here would like to claim it to be, but rather the extremist orthodox collective that I expected to find. So far there has not been any room for any other explanation, and it is taken for granted that I must accept what is posted here as Gospel.
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by SandChigger »

redbugpest wrote:in a hurry [to] move on [to] other RL items
Yawn.
I will take this opportunity to say that most of the folks here have met what my expectations were upon coming to this site. It's not the "Free and Open" site that some of the folks here would like to claim it to be, but rather the extremist orthodox collective that I expected to find. So far there has not been any room for any other explanation, and it is taken for granted that I must accept what is posted here as Gospel.
Well, at least you didn't have to cyber-sign an oath to that effect when you registered, now did you? :P
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Hunchback Jack »

redbugpest wrote:I will take this opportunity to say that most of the folks here have met what my expectations were upon coming to this site. It's not the "Free and Open" site that some of the folks here would like to claim it to be, but rather the extremist orthodox collective that I expected to find.
Well, birds of a feather and all that. Clearly, it's a dislike of the new Dune books that brought us here (since we were ejected from the DN forum for *having* that view), but perhaps we're not as uniform in the intensity of dislike as you've indicated.

But an important difference is that here, while we may disagree with you, bully you to justify your views, and assume you're an idiot first until proven otherwise if you like the new books, we dont restrict membership, we dont delete your posts or ban you for what you say. For that reason alone, we are, indeed much more of a "free and open" site than the official forum or KJASF is.
SandChigger wrote:Well, at least you didn't have to cyber-sign an oath to that effect when you registered, now did you? :P
ZING!!!

(Oh, sorry, was that too much of an extremist OH reaction?)

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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Seraphan »

Hunchback Jack wrote:
"Dune - It's just not Dune anymore."
Has there ever been another other than that wich was written by Frank? :wink:
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by SandChigger »

Seraphan wrote:
Hunchback Jack wrote: "Dune - It's just not Dune anymore."
Has there ever been another other than that wich was written by Frank? :wink:
Well, there's some money-grubber officially approved fanfic we refer to McDune.... :P
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Re: What is it about Dune that keeps you coming back for more?

Post by Hunchback Jack »

Okay, okay, it was just an off-the-cuff response to RBP's stupid sig. Maybe it needs more work. Give me a break. :)

Perhaps:

"Dune™ - It's just not Dune anymore."

HBJ
Last edited by Hunchback Jack on 05 Aug 2009 22:07, edited 3 times in total.
"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
- Carl Sagan

I'm still very proud of The Quarry but … let's face it; in the end the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel.
- Iain Banks
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