Keith J. Hackerson's DUNE BLOG / tehKJA's Blahg(kjablog.com)

[Ampoliros]

My god its full of !

[Tleszer]

[lotek]

My take on this:
Bless the Little Hiker and his microbrew. Bless the coming and rubbing of him. May his passage smudge my world.

NICE!

You are definitely my new favoritestest sick-puppy! (Sorry, merkin, but I gotta follow my heart... and stomach. )

I'm flattered to be able to outsick you and merkin

May his passage cleanse my passage.

Sorry.

HBJ

the Hall of Mirrors!!

[D Pope]

I just want to get it all in one spot so I can forget it forever.

Bless the Little Hiker and his microbrew.
Bless the coming and rubbing of him.
May his passage cleanse my passage.

[Tleszer]

It has been said before, but it bears repeating.



Thank you.

[lotek]

this is poetry at its finest!

[Tleszer]

Look, I know I may be a little... odd... but I think I'm afraid. lotek seems to like this erotic poetry a little too much.

[Sev]

Today's blog is about Frank's birthday - one telling sentence:

"His Dune novels have remained steadily popular, but in recent years many of his long out-of-print titles have been republished due to a resurgence in readers."

You just know that if the asshat thought he could get away with the credit, he would've done - "... republished due to the spectacular international successes that my... er, our... sequels have been"

[A Thing of Eternity]

They've actually taken credit for the reprints a number of times. Actually, they're probably not wrong about it. It doesn't sound like the publishers were planning on reprinting anything, the HLP asked them too (from what I've heard).

[Kojiro]

I seem to recall that the reprints predated their McDune stuff, considering that I remember buying a brand new, shiny copy of Dune just a couple years before the first of the House trilogy came out.

[A Thing of Eternity]

No, not the Dune reprints, the Dune books never went out of print. We're talking about stuff like Hellstrom's hive, Dragon in the Sea, etc, which were out of print and then brought back.

[Omphalos]

They've actually taken credit for the reprints a number of times. Actually, they're probably not wrong about it. It doesn't sound like the publishers were planning on reprinting anything, the HLP asked them too (from what I've heard).

Ill bet the SciFi miniseries have as much to do with reprinting as those two guys. And a rocketing interest in classic author's back catalogs too.

[Kojiro]

Ineed, Frank Herbert is not the only classic sci-fi author whom has been receiving the reprint treatment in recent years.

[D Pope]

They've actually taken credit for the reprints a number of times. Actually, they're probably not wrong about it. It doesn't sound like the publishers were planning on reprinting anything, the HLP asked them too (from what I've heard).

Ill bet the SciFi miniseries have as much to do with reprinting as those two guys. And a rocketing interest in classic author's back catalogs too.

Ineed, Frank Herbert is not the only classic sci-fi author whom has been receiving the reprint treatment in recent years.

How does HPL take credit for that?

[D Pope]

By the way, what has KJA buried in YOUR sandbox lately?

[A Thing of Eternity]

They've actually taken credit for the reprints a number of times. Actually, they're probably not wrong about it. It doesn't sound like the publishers were planning on reprinting anything, the HLP asked them too (from what I've heard).

Ill bet the SciFi miniseries have as much to do with reprinting as those two guys. And a rocketing interest in classic author's back catalogs too.

Fair points actually, hadn't considered those.

[Sev]

I won't re-post Keith's latest blog outpouring, as Rob has already done a spectacular demolition job on it in his 'Craft of Writing 'thread - but one thing I did notice for the first time is Keith's mentioning of Star Challengers 2. I don't recall him mentioning anything about it before, not the plotting, the brainstorming, or the actual writing...

Yet Jabecca has:

Monday, start writing Star Challengers 2.

Slow out of gate on new book chapters—only 9%!

Star Challengers 2 Space Station first draft scribometer at 22%.

Just wrote another Star Challengers chapter. Scribometer at 45%.

Wrote last chapter in Star Challengers 2. 1st draft Scribometer: 100%. Brain fried. Will plunge into editing tomorrow. . . .

STAR CHALLENGERS isn't being written by Kevin J. Anderson! - he might look at it occasionally, polish it, edit it, whatever-the-fuck-he-does-while-watching-DVDs - but he isn't writing it. So in the same way that Bobo Herbert gets used for Dune for his name, KJA does for this - just pitiful.

Final proof:

He (their agent) also talks with Rebecca about a young-adult series she’s got in the planning stages with June Scobee-Rogers, the widow of the commander of the last Challenger mission.

[SandChigger]

2003?!

Where did you dig that one up from?

[TheDukester]

Good find, Sev!

Very interesting stuff. So it looks like Teenage Retards in Space might be a Becky project? But Becky has zero name-recognition ... so they toss in a clown who does (at least with readers of poor YA). And, let's face it, a guy who probably should legally change his name to "& Kevin J. Anderson."

This is fascinating stuff.

[Sev]

The 2003 one came from the MACHINE CRUSADE TOUR WEBLOG: Week 1

Tedious stuff, Brian was 'under the weather' again.

[TheDukester]

Yeah, poor Brian ... "under the weather," again, huh? Shame.

[Kojiro]

I think he's drinking again because he's starting to realize what he's done, considering all of their little spats.

[SandRider]

no, I don't think Brian feels "remorse" - and I don't think he's intentionally trying to fuck-over Frank's Legacy in an act of
petty revenge ... I think he had fairly good intentions in the beginning; the problem occurred right after the mistake of letting
Keith in the door, who immediately began plying Brian with alcohol ... it started slowly and seemingly innocent on the surface ...
Hey, Brian, try this micro-brew! A fan of mine in Steamboat Springs makes it in his shed out back of his house ...
Gee, I dunno, Kev ... haven't had a drink in a long time ...
Aww, hell, Brison, this ain't a drink, it's just beer ...
Well ... okay ...
There you go, buddy! Here, have another growler ...

from there, Keith began fortifying the beer with pure grain alcohol ... once Brian was off the wagon, he was easier to control
and bully into doing what Keith wanted ... it also clouded what little reason he had left, to the point where he began believing
what Keith was saying about "World's Biggest Dune Fan" and adding to and enhancing Frank's Dune ... that they really were
doing a good job, and that Frank would be proud of him ... not the greatest of literary critics to begin with, his judgement slowly
eroded to the point that Keith was actually sending him photocopies of Chinese Take-out Menus by FedEx, on which Brian would
scrawl with a crayon and send back as his "chapters & tehKJA's edited chapters"; Keith would call him and lavish praise ... originally,
it was his reluctance to embrace new technology that kept him off the net, but later it was just nonfunctional alcoholism; he couldn't
figure out how to turn on the TV either, and the maids had to flush his toilet several times a day, so he never read all the criticism and
outrage over the McDune on amazon and scifi webpages ... Keith told him the OH Jihad was one Japanese guy in the basement of a
Tokyo community college ... so, oblivious the real world, today Brian Pherbert woke up ... right about now; he'll have a breakfast of
vodka and orange juice, someone will come in and turn on his KC&the Sunshine Band 8-track, set it on repeat and check on him in 10
or 12 hours, and he'll sit in a chair by a window, drinking and watching the birds and the sunset and the city lights come on, thinking:
"Well, daddy, it took awhile, but I'm finally making you proud ... hey, ask Mama where my keys are ... can't find'em anywhere ..."

[Kojiro]

[SandChigger]

KJA has finally blahgged about the trip to the UAE.

The best part of the rather longish post is this pic, in which KJA provides posterity with the visual reminder that



DUNE WILL FOREVER BE OVER HIS HEAD.

Other tidbits (not all in original order):

And it came about because of Terra Incognita.

NOT because of any of the McDune books.

(Interestingly, I found that the Arab world has almost no awareness of Dune at all, not even the original novel or the movies.)

He doesn't know much about the "Arab world" at all if he did NOT know that. Or that science fiction in general has a very small readership there.

Many of the local women wore full black abayas, some with faces covered, some wearing gloves; the men wore a white dishdash, the flowing outfit most familiar as “Lawrence of Arabia.”

I KNEW he rewatched the DVD as part of his "research" before leaving home!

But the book fair people told Rebecca just to stay away from miniskirts and tanktops and she would be fine.

HOLY MAKER!!! Someone HAD to tell her to avoid those things?!





My impression from the first Terra Incognita book was that the "Uraban" [read: Arabian] culture got short shrift when KJA was doing the research and world-building stuff for the series. It's rather disappointing to learn that the people at the UAE still seemed to eat it up.

Or maybe that kind of shallow treatment is all they expect from the West now?