Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

I'm reading The Jesus Incident and I was much surprised to find mention of plaz, plasteel, lasguns, and.. axolotl tanks, spelled the same as it was pre GEoD. They were using the tanks to grow custom-engineered clones.

If is possible that Herbert was writing (very) pre-jihad Tleilaxu?!?

I'm only just starting with the non-Dune Herbert material, but it blew me away that he'd include Dune elements elsewhere. Like these proto-Tleilax!

I think his 'other books' were proving grounds for ideas to use in the Dune series.

Dest:Void was first released in '65, so maybe. Pre-dates DM's release.

I had thought that Dune, DM, and CoD were all written more or less concurrently? Could be he re-used ideas just because he liked them.

I still think it would be plenty cool if I could call the Pandoran settlers proto-Tlielax. I've never read these non-D books save for the one time as a teenager getting 3/4 through The Green Brain so this a new experience.

Written or published?

Freakzilla wrote:Written or published?

As for the timeline of when typeface hit manuscript, who the f knows? He was published loooong before Dune!

Yep, Frank sure worked on his ideas for the Dune books while writing other books. Especially Santaroga Barrier and Eyes of Heisenberg.
I typically recommend Whipping Star as a first read outside Dune, since it's my favorite and completely original without any connections to Dune as far as I know.

Many of those ideas also appear in his short stories, some f which were published in the 50's. But I doubt he was writing in one universe. I think only he was describing his own world view in a shorthand he had already worked out.

It seems very odd to me that any writer would re-use terms specific to what is supposed to be a different universe. It would seem to me that when one writes in different universes, a certain separation between them is warranted. Maybe that's just me. The terms could've been used purely out of expediency, and Frank wrote one set not caring whether the reader had been to another of his universes.

Plaz, plasteel, lasguns, and axolotl tanks, though... coupled with the dependence on an artificial consciousness that thinks it's god. The last part sounds like a good reason for jihad.

There is also a Butler mentioned in Destination:Void.

I can't say for sure what his intent was, but it's definitely a tease.

ULFsurfer wrote:Yep, Frank sure worked on his ideas for the Dune books while writing other books. Especially Santaroga Barrier and Eyes of Heisenberg.
I typically recommend Whipping Star as a first read outside Dune, since it's my favorite and completely original without any connections to Dune as far as I know.

I think the Caliban, the S'Eye doors, and the Taprisiot in Whipping Star, and the Guild, CHOAM, and the smugglers in the Dune series may have been useful for presenting some of the same problems of communication, indirect rule, dependency, secrecy, efficiency, and other things that probably just haven't occurred to me.

Kralizec wrote:

ULFsurfer wrote:Yep, Frank sure worked on his ideas for the Dune books while writing other books. Especially Santaroga Barrier and Eyes of Heisenberg.
I typically recommend Whipping Star as a first read outside Dune, since it's my favorite and completely original without any connections to Dune as far as I know.

I think the Caliban, the S'Eye doors, and the Taprisiot in Whipping Star, and the Guild, CHOAM, and the smugglers in the Dune series may have been useful for presenting some of the same problems of communication, indirect rule, dependency, secrecy, efficiency, and other things that probably just haven't occurred to me.

Ok, you may have some point although I think Calebans and the Guild still are two pretty different things. But of course the common denominator for those is that they provide instant travel and that the civilization is dependent on it. The Guild is dependent on civilization through its need of spice, while Calebans aren't. Fanni Mae is legally bound to a human, but I wouldn't call it a mutual dependency.

Frank typically do include complex situations with layered agendas and such in his stories, so naturally I can agree that some distinct issues reflect in multiple works, such as Whipping Star.