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DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 11:53
by Omphalos
FYI, this thread is now open.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 11:58
by Apjak
Duly noted. Thank you.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 15:35
by trang
::::Bows to mighty Omph::::

Thank yee sir...

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 16:02
by A Thing of Eternity
Still need to find a copy for myself. That's all I have to contribute right now.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 16:39
by Freakzilla
A Thing of Eternity wrote:Still need to find a copy for myself. That's all I have to contribute right now.
It's available in PDF. :wink:

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 17:20
by A Thing of Eternity
Freakzilla wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:Still need to find a copy for myself. That's all I have to contribute right now.
It's available in PDF. :wink:
Thanks but no thanks, I'd rather get a nice old copy for my collection.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 17:56
by Freakzilla
A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:Still need to find a copy for myself. That's all I have to contribute right now.
It's available in PDF. :wink:
Thanks but no thanks, I'd rather get a nice old copy for my collection.
Good luck!

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 18:02
by A Thing of Eternity
Freakzilla wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:Still need to find a copy for myself. That's all I have to contribute right now.
It's available in PDF. :wink:
Thanks but no thanks, I'd rather get a nice old copy for my collection.
Good luck!
I see them on ebay all the time, I just haven't felt like buying one recently. Plus, I should leave something for my girl to get me for xmas!

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 18:33
by Omphalos
Used to be you could never find one on eBay. Now there are quite a bit of them floating around out there.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 16 Jul 2009 19:51
by Freakzilla
A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:Still need to find a copy for myself. That's all I have to contribute right now.
It's available in PDF. :wink:
Thanks but no thanks, I'd rather get a nice old copy for my collection.
Good luck!
I see them on ebay all the time, I just haven't felt like buying one recently. Plus, I should leave something for my girl to get me for xmas!
I always ask for the same thing. :wink:

Re: DE is open

Posted: 26 Jul 2009 15:52
by chanilover
I got one from a second hand seller on Amazon. Oh, and the Illustrated Dune book I bought for a fiver arrived ages ago. It's a bit smelly from age, but all the pictures are great.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 04 Aug 2009 14:35
by Leto
Coming from the KJA's twitter :
Correction for a couple of fringe Dune fans: THE DUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA was never accepted as canon by Frank Herbert. Even Willis McNelly agreed.
http://twitter.com/TheKJA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well, Mr. Anderson, do not forget that your preaks were never accepted as canon by Frank Herbert, nor by fans... :character-jason:

I have a specific question regarding law : who is the owner of the DE's copyright? Does HLP have a word to say about it?
I mean : let's pretend (it's just an hypothesis) that a couple of fringe russian Dune fans (aka FRF) believe that DE is -not a canon- an important part of the Duniverse. Well, let's pretend that the couple of FRF want to translate the DE. So, they have to ask the permission of McNelly beneficiaries. But what about HLP? May it cause them some troubles? (I've heard that HLP refused some reeditions of the DE... so I wonder if it has some rights on DE?)
Do anyone know how it would work?

Re: DE is open

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 15:35
by Idahopotato
I was just perusing my copy of the DE the other day and I wondered why it is not canon. If anything, it is certainly more canon than the other stuff printed by those other guys. The DE was authorized by Frank Herbert right? Herbert contributed to it in the way of advice via phone calls right? And didn't those other guys rip off a ton of stuff from it as well? So why would it not be canon? Unless of course an in-universe document can't be considered canon, authorized or otherwise. I guess I am not up on my canonical rules.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 17:11
by inhuien
Frank Herbert wrote: I give this encyclopaedia my delighted approval, although I hold my own counsel on some of the issues still to be explored as the chronicles unfold.
Because, although Frank Herbert approved the publication, he reserved/enforced his right as the author to contradict it as he wished.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 18:25
by SandChigger
Basically, he didn't write it. Even if he input ideas, even if he contributed passages that got incorporated by the other contributors, he didn't write the whole thing, so it's not canon.

The content of things FH wrote, like notes and outlines and even chapter sketches, but didn't publish, or even things that got cut in the publication process (like those chapters in The Road to Dune)—none of that stuff is canon, either.

Only what FH wrote and published is canon. Anything else is just interesting materials. Anything written by anyone else is fan fiction.

It's actually quite simple. :)

Re: DE is open

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 18:41
by inhuien
I've got this fingered at last, you're a touch typer, right. :) :P

Re: DE is open

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 21:28
by TheDukester
SandChigger wrote:Only what FH wrote and published is canon. Anything else is just interesting materials. Anything written by anyone else is fan fiction.
:text-+1:

I've never understood why people get confused over canon; it is a simple concept. Well, I guess I do understand: it's mostly wishful thinking.

The mental defectives over at Byron Merritt's Land of Tumbleweeds are the worst offenders of all. Every "is McDune canon?" thread over there is an unfunny comedy filled with people who mostly want to validate the crap books they've chosen to waste their time with.

Here's you answer, bucketheads: not canon.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 10 Oct 2009 22:03
by Redstar
SandChigger wrote:The content of things FH wrote, like notes and outlines and even chapter sketches, but didn't publish, or even things that got cut in the publication process (like those chapters in The Road to Dune)—none of that stuff is canon, either.

Only what FH wrote and published is canon. Anything else is just interesting materials. Anything written by anyone else is fan fiction.
So if things FH fully intended to have taken place in or be true about the Dune universe were removed by some editor, they're not canon? The editor doesn't necessarily write the canon, the author does.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 00:18
by SandChigger
Redstar wrote:So if things FH fully intended to have taken place in or be true about the Dune universe were removed by some editor, they're not canon? The editor doesn't necessarily write the canon, the author does.
Do you have an actual example of that happening, or just dealing in hypotheticals?

The only situations where I can see that being problematic would be if an author dies between editions and has no opportunity to have the removed material reinserted, or if it's not clear (to everyone else, later) whether it was the editor or the author who removed them.

Take the excluded Dune and Messiah chapters collected in The Road to Dune. FH had 20 years to have them reinserted into the text. But he didn't. Not canon.


I think the situation is muddied for a lot of people by the original usage of "canon" in connection with the Bible. There you have a lot of different books & documents written by many people, but all are called "canon". But even then it boils down to a question of authorship. The difference is that the works in that "canon" were not, for the most part, written in the same period or as part of a series, intended to extend and continue a single story. (Not really.) They were collected together after the fact and declared to be authentic, to be part of a single "canon". That's not the case with Dune.

The "Western canon" usage also doesn't apply, for pretty much the same reason.

The concept simply is not that difficult. ;)


(That ErasOmnius moron over on FED2K has introduced some bogus concept of "genetic trust"—which he claims exists between "two generations" of the Herbert family, between Frank and Brian—in what I guess is an attempt to claim that Brian has a right to continue and extend his father's series. Maybe he's trying to say that Brian is equivalent to Frank in some sense? Who knows.)
inhuien wrote:I've got this fingered at last, you're a touch typer, right. :) :P
Huh, what, why? Yes, I am. Did I flub something somewhere and not catch it? :P

Re: DE is open

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 00:19
by TheDukester
Redstar wrote:So if things FH fully intended to have taken place in or be true about the Dune universe were removed by some editor, they're not canon? The editor doesn't necessarily write the canon, the author does.
That's not a road worth going down, for a number of reasons. Among the most obvious: no fan, no matter how devoted, will ever know the details of the back-and-forth adjustments made to the text by both FH and his editor(s). And guessing what materials might have been left out is pure speculation (not to mention that any given passage that ended up being cut might have been chopped for very good reason —perhaps even chopped by FH himself).

Dune canon could not be simpler. There were six books written by FH: if it's between the covers of one of those books, it's canon. Everything else — movie, miniseries, comics, games, notes, Dune Encyclopedia, Road to Dune, and all of the fan fiction written by Anderjacket and The Zombie — is not. As Chiggie said earlier, it might all be very interesting stuff, but it sure ain't official.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 00:25
by Redstar
To both:

I wasn't talking Dune specifically, but canon in general. Obviously FH could have put anything in his books after he was proven worth the pages, but Heinlein didn't get all the removed pages and original means added to his books until after he died... He bitched and complained about it in Grumbles from the Grave, though, and used the removed parts in his later works when he could get away with it, so we know he still considered the removed stuff canon.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 01:28
by SandChigger
I'm not familiar with the Heinlein situation but it sounds like he made it known what he wanted reinserted and what he considered canon (especially by basing later works on it). If the deletions have been restored in the new editions, per his wishes, then those are the canon works.

Again, not really all that difficult, is it? :)

Re: DE is open

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 01:42
by Redstar
Well, yes. But Heinlein was famous. I'm sure there's any number of writers that have the potential to be famous with their work, but don't so their cut canon is never inserted. I would like to think an author's intent is just as important as the work itself.

Re: DE is open

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 02:00
by SandChigger
Then the author has a responsibility to make that intent known in some way.

If an author had something cut and wanted it restored but was not able to see it through to republication for some reason, I would still consider the cut material canon IFF the author made it known that he/she considered it such and wanted it restored. That statement of intent would have to be in the author's own words and attested to by more than one party. (The word of a fuzzy-headed no-talent offspring standing to gain financially from the situation would count only as hearsay. ;) )

Again, simple. :)

Re: DE is open

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 15:28
by ionah
who is empowered to state what is canon or not ?
the autor ? the editor ? the fellowship ? time ? the most influencial group among the worshippers ? the Pope ?
who fucked up the bible first ? and last ?
will it be the same with the LOTR or Dune ?

to be continued ... during the next centuries :dance: