Has KJA really read Frank Herbert?

[dune stroller]

This has probably been said but I'm still new and I find it inconceivable that someone who cannot get through Le Guin, Mieville and Banks can get through the six Dune novels, let alone be Franks biggest fan!

[lotek]

the way it goes reading just probably means counting pages for Keith...

[Freakzilla]

There is a difference between reading and looking at the words just like the difference between hearing and listening.

[SandChigger]

just like the difference between hearing and listening.

Just like the difference between... talking to yourself and writing.

[dune stroller]

just like the difference between hearing and listening.

Just like the difference between... talking to yourself and writing.

Don't think he's a good listener then.

[Freakzilla]

He probably reads as well as he writes.

[MrFlibble]

I think it'd be a good "test" for him to just recount Dune in his own words. Like a summary task they do at school. His "version"/interpretation would be pretty much like what is in the new books. Heck, maybe he doesn't even notice the difference, because his own creations are consistent with how he understands Dune.

[TheDukester]

My guess is that he's read Dune like 14 times, starting with an initial plunge as a pimple-ravaged, socially retarded, inhaler-using high school sophomore. Of course, he understands only the few pew!-pew!-pew! battle scenes, but that's another subject.

After that, I'd guess he's read Messiah three times, Children twice, and everything after that exactly once. And only because he sort of felt like "he had to." I'll bet it felt like homework to him.

This is a guy who publicly admits he's not smart enough to handle Ursula LeGuin. It's impossible to picture him understanding even a tenth of GEoD.

[lotek]

I think we can pretty much make what he got of the books by the usual spin he serves to all those brown nose interviewers; always the same shit in almost the same exact words...
not what you'd expect from the "mostest biggest Dune fan in the whole whole world ever"...

...

prick!

[dune stroller]

This is a guy who publicly admits he's not smart enough to handle Ursula LeGuin. It's impossible to picture him understanding even a tenth of GEoD.

This has probably been said but I'm still new and I find it inconceivable that someone who cannot get through Le Guin, Mieville and Banks can get through the six Dune novels, let alone be Franks biggest fan!

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at, like a lot of things (except HLP's bank balance), it doesn't add up.

[Hunchback Jack]

After that, I'd guess he's read Messiah three times, Children twice, and everything after that exactly once. And only because he sort of felt like "he had to." I'll bet it felt like homework to him.

Yeah, I think you're right, Dukester.

Oh, I'm sure he's *referred* to the later books many many times while writing Dune 7 to refresh his memory about the elements he wanted to include. But read it right through? Yeah, once at most.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I must say I've probably read the whole series only about 4 or 5 times, with long stretches in-between.)

HBJ

[Freakzilla]

I doubt he's read Dune "carefully" once.

[D Pope]

AGREED!

He's proven himself to be a braggart & an egotist, prerequisites for being a casual liar. I've little doubt that his definition of reading differs from ours.

[TheDukester]

Also, just to keep this riff going, I suspect the following two things are true:

1. Bobo really did create a concordance of all six originals. It's riddled with errors and misunderstandings, of course, but it actually exists.

2. Keith relies on this item for any and all references he needs, post-Messiah (or maybe post-Children). There's no way he's re-reading any of that "complicated stuff" beginning with GEoD. He just calls up his PDF of Bobo's masterpiece and does a search for whatever he needs.

[D Pope]

There's truth in that, he almost says as much in the chat with google.

[Ampoliros]

I wonder how much of "looking up things in the concordance" means reviewing the many Dune DVD's...

[lotek]

or just scratching his fat arse and making stuff up...
"Fuck it I own Bobo I can write whatever I feel like!"

[SandChigger]

his fat arse

The new term/codeword for that is "back porch":

TheKJA: Such a gorgeous day, I think I'll sit on the back porch with the laptop while my characters explore unknown continents.
about 12 hours ago via web

[lotek]

his fat arse

The new term/codeword for that is "back porch":

TheKJA: Such a gorgeous day, I think I'll sit on the back porch with the laptop while my characters explore unknown continents.
about 12 hours ago via web

I shudder at the thought of what "explore unknown continents" is a code word for...

[MrFlibble]

his fat arse

The new term/codeword for that is "back porch":

TheKJA: Such a gorgeous day, I think I'll sit on the back porch with the laptop while my characters explore unknown continents.
about 12 hours ago via web

[Mr. Teg]

If you want to know how much of Dune KJA understands then read his book Blindfold.
If you want to know how much of Dune HLP understands then read his book Blindfold.

Ole'Dune Pussy himself said they picked KJA based on Blindfold.

Blindfold is based on Dune.
Parts of Blindfold were recycled in the Legends of Dune.
(So, no surprise Pinky and the Brian and retreating back into that era of the Duniverse.)

Btw, the basic background of Hellhole is the same as...wait for it...Blindfold.

(Please support your local used bookstore )

[lotek]

Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile societyheld together by the Truthsayers. Parentless, trained from birth as thesole users of Veritas, a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty, Truthsayers are Justice, Infallible, and Beyond appeal.Falsely accused of murder, Troy Boren trusts the young Truthsayer Kalliana ... until, impossibly, she convicts him. Still shaken from aprevious reading, Kalliana doesn't realize her power is fading. Butsoon the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. The Truthsayers' Veritas has been diluted and someone in the colony is selling smuggledtelepathy. Justice isn't blind--it's been blinded. From an immortal's orbital prison to the buried secrets of a regal fortress, Kalliana and Troy seek the conspiracy that threatens to destroy their world from within. For without truth justice, Atlas will certainly fall....

Truthsayers? Plagiarism or homage? My mind is made up on this one...

And what's it about Veritas? A telepathic virus? How do you dilute a virus???


And for my smart comment:
I think KJA read Dune with a blinfold

[SandRider]

that sounds like the plot from the Judge Dredd movie ...

[Kensai]

There is a difference between reading and looking at the words just like the difference between hearing and listening.

Well put man. I have always been pretty cynical about Kevin's admiration of Frank (then again I'm cynical of anything that Kevin says) because Kevin is such a drastically diffrent author. Frank is a true literary author, a sort of Shakespear of SF. Kevin, well Kevin has a career for two reasons only, Star Wars and the amount of volume of crap he publishes. KJA has made a career out of invading other people's franchises and is a "best seller" purely because of the amount of crap he writes. He doesn’t have the originality to create his own franchises. If you have ever read any of his own creations such as Saga of the Seven suns you can see this for yourself, also the fact that his own creations are not well known proves my point (Seven Sons being the most prominent and still not too many people know of it).

Personally, Kevin knows that many people regard Frank as being one of the best, if not THE best sci-fi author of all time, and thats what Kevin wants to be regarded as (in his dreams), so he is muscling in on Frank's franchise in order to hog some of that glory (and doh).

[Kensai]

his fat arse

The new term/codeword for that is "back porch":

TheKJA: Such a gorgeous day, I think I'll sit on the back porch with the laptop while my characters explore unknown continents.
about 12 hours ago via web

I hope by "my characters" he dosen't mean the Dune characters. Then again I wouldn't put it past him.