The Winds of Dune: When they blow, they also suck!

[GamePlayer]

Well, I don't know about gold. But since you insist, I'll take credit

[Tleszer]

Everything you do is golden, GP. [insert crude joke here]

I was thinking of going to one of the WoD signings and thought about creating a shirt to commemorate the occasion. One idea I had was having the shirt printed with: "I was a friend of SandChigger. SandChigger taught me that when you kill you pay for it."

I thought that that might be a little obnoxious so then I thought about something a little more subtle, like a black shirt with a gold hawk over the left breast and on the back Orthodox Herbertarian in green. I had also considered a red hawk, but I'm no Duke Leto.

[Ampoliros]

too bad you cant have your current avatar on a t-shirt

[Tleszer]

I think that would be frowned upon, Amp (though that would be awesome).

[trang]

Black T-Shirt with "NORMA CENVA IS GOD"
on it might do the trick.

[DuneFishUK]

"KEITH J. ANDERSON'S No1 FAN"

[Tleszer]

How could you even justify paying to print a shirt with that saying on it?

[GamePlayer]

Everything you do is golden, GP. [insert crude joke here]

Why Tleszer, you dirty flirt!
I could learn a lot from you

[inhuien]

How could you even justify paying to print a shirt with that saying on it?

Because by association that would make you Franks #2.

edit to add:

[Sev]

Now that this new abomination is nearly upon us, the publishers have posted the first chapter up on their website, and just the first sentence is enough to make you cringe:

The unscheduled ship loomed in orbit over Caladan, a former Guild Heighliner pressed into service as a Jihad transport.

WTF A former Guild Heighliner? So who pilots that then, if the Guild hold a monopoly on space travel? Another indication that the authors don't, and never will, get the Dune Universe.

[TheDukester]

Nor do they understand how English works. That's a poor sentence from any angle; it could be argued that they are saying that something called Caladan is a former Guild ship.

[Hunchback Jack]

I thought the same thing, Dukester. From the first sentence, the lack of care is apparent.

Can you "press" ships into service? I would have thought the term only applies to people. You would commandeer a ship, I would have thought.

Not that commandeering would be necessary, by the way. Given Paul holds a monopoly on spice, the Guild will pretty much take his Jihadists anywhere they want to go, without having to acquire ships (and their Navigators). Is there any indication in the original novels that Guild Heighliners were referred to as "Jihad transports"?

HBJ

[Ampoliros]

well KJA apparently wants to totally ignore (or cant grasp the concept) of the monopoly on space travel that the Guild has. Same goes for Paul's by-the-balls control over the Guild.

[Hunchback Jack]

My bad; you can press equipment for public use, not just people.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/press%5B3%5D" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

HBJ

[Freakzilla]

I thought the same thing, Dukester. From the first sentence, the lack of care is apparent.

Can you "press" ships into service? I would have thought the term only applies to people. You would commandeer a ship, I would have thought.

Not that commandeering would be necessary, by the way. Given Paul holds a monopoly on spice, the Guild will pretty much take his Jihadists anywhere they want to go, without having to acquire ships (and their Navigators). Is there any indication in the original novels that Guild Heighliners were referred to as "Jihad transports"?

HBJ

Of course not. But you are correct, in that Paul's spice monopoly gave him an iron grip on the Guild's short and currlies.

[Ampoliros]

spice monopoly wasn't the clincher, it was Paul's willingness to destroy spice production if he had to.

[Hunchback Jack]

So I was reading the Bronso interrogation from DM, and something occured to me about Dune as an in-universe text.

If I'm reading DM right, Bronso is in trouble because his analysis of Paul's history includes info about his place in the BG breeding program, his training by his mother, etc. In short, Paul is a man, not a god, whose powers are due to circumstance rather than intrinsically, inevitably, his. Bronso's in prison both because of this heresy, and because of his book's adoption by subversive elements.

But if Dune is an in-universe text, written by Irulan as propaganda, then it's hard to understand why Bronso's work is so inflammatory, given that the "official history" (I.e. Dune) essentially confirms Bronso's claims. It therefore makes no sense for Dune to have been written by Irulan, *and* for Bronso to be in prison.

HBJ

[Freakzilla]

spice monopoly wasn't the clincher, it was Paul's willingness to destroy spice production if he had to.

The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.

[TheDukester]

But if Dune is an in-universe text, written by Irulan as propaganda, then it's hard to understand why Bronso's work is so inflammatory, given that the "official history" (I.e. Dune) essentially confirms Bronso's claims. It therefore makes no sense for Dune to have been written by Irulan, *and* for Bronso to be in prison.

And the scariest part is that you've given this much more thought than either Hacky or Bobo. This is the sort of internal contradiction that is going to reach out and bite them over and over again if they insist on going down this "in-universe text" route.

The most disgusting part, of course, is that they've chosen that strategy for one reason only: it allows them to make error after error without fear of contradiction from people who actually understand Dune.

[Ampoliros]

From Kirkus Reviews

With all the main events of Frank Herbert's Dune universe now in the bag, all that remains is for his team of successors (Paul of Dune, 2008, etc.) to fill out the corners. Chronologically, this one picks up immediately following Dune Messiah. The Mentat Emperor and omniscient Kwisatz Haderach Paul Atreides, blinded by an atomic weapon and no longer commanding his oracular vision, has walked off into the sands and is presumed dead. Paul's Bene Gesserit mother Jessica and warrior-troubadour Gurney Halleck return from Caladan to assist 16-year-old regent Alia. Duncan Idaho, the swordmaster ghola, clearly has regained all his former memories and will wed Alia in due course. Alia releases the Corrino princess Irulan, Paul's wife, from a dungeon and orders her to help counteract the propaganda spread by elusive gadfly Bronso of Ix. What Jessica knows, and Alia doesn't, is that Bronso was once Paul's boyhood friend (their story is told in flashback) and that Paul charged Bronso with the very task that Alia now condemns him for. The Dune juggernaut rolls on; pity it didn't occur to Brian and Kevin that the reason Frank didn't write Dune Messiah through Children of Dune as a continuous saga was that little of significance or interest occurs in the interim. Slim pickings, even for Dune fanatics.

Looks like someone noticed the book was crap.
this part caught my eye:

What Jessica knows, and Alia doesn't, is that Bronso was once Paul's boyhood friend (their story is told in flashback)

So...I guess OM gets messed up by the Dune Tarot as well...or maybe the 'authors' just don't give a fuck why Alia is so messed up.

[Tleszer]

Clearly TheKeith and BoBoHo (good one, Chig!) don't care about the inconsistencies they create with each new novel released. It comes as no surprise to me that Alia doesn't know something she should from her OM of Jessica considering the debacle of these two authors in having Alia somehow being in ghola Baron's head.

If they were going the "Irulan as historian" route, it would've made more sense for them to create a "false" history rather than relegating FH's Dune to being mere story and myth.

[SandChigger]

Um, loathe as I am to point this out, I'm afraid that reviewer misstated things a bit. It is never specifically stated in the book (at least that I remember) that Alia does not know about Paul's boyhood friendship with Bronso. In fact, IIRC Alia specifically refers to his "Jongleur circus" adventure. (I may have mentioned that in this thread, in fact.) What Alia doesn't know is that it was Paul that released Bronso from his death cell when he was captured the first time, that Paul was complicit in Bronso's efforts to discredit him as a "god", and that Jessica (and Gurney, and in the end, Irulan and even Duncan) was working with Bronso against her.

I'll be working back through the book this week, making my synopsis in preparation for having a review ready for Amazon. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for details connected with this.

[Lundse]

I just realized that the whole running-away-from-home-to-go-juggling scenario is not made up by Sandchigger. They actually managed to upstage themselves in sheer idiocy!
I would be hard-pressed to imagine something which was more out of line with the Dune universe. This is like a prequel to Beowulf saying he already slew a dragon, and knew everyone in the kings hall already. Or Frodo being a friend of Smeagol before he become Gollum, due to some weird time-travel spell cast by Gandalf, who later forgot he knew either. Or...

I am sure there will come a time when I will be angry with the two corpse-fuckers, and their idiotic preteen fanboys, again. But for now I think I will simply be laughing

Come on. It is funny!
Think about it, if someone had posted these ideas on alt.fan.dune back in the day, before these abominations of literature were even planned, maybe as some kind of fanfiction synopsis - we would have laughed. People would have continued the joke and maybe, just maybe, eventually came up with something as ridiculous as what we are now seeing published.

[SandChigger]

Hey, people, except for the places where I have later admitted to pulling your legs a little (like Bronso singing What I Did For Love in Priscilla drag on his way to the deathstill), EVERYTHING I have posted in this thread is faithful to the ARC I read. I can't guarantee that some passages and details have not been changed for the final publication version since I haven't seen the actual book yet.

If you have any doubts or questions about anything here, let me know. I can post scans of selected passages and put them on the list of things to check first.

[Lundse]

(like Bronso singing What I Did For Love in Priscilla drag on his way to the deathstill)

How am I supposed to differentiate this from Paul going off to join the circus and have wonderous, wonderous adventures with his soon-to-be-cyborg best buddy Bronso?
Irony is dead. The only thing that can save it is the HLP come out and announce that the 'casting' of KJA was ironic and all their communications in the past years an elaborate joke. Sort of like Denise what's-her-face in Starship Troopers...
Or maybe KJA is really a huge FH fan who is merely pulling our leg?

Water-worms producing ultra-spice! He can't be serious