Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

My "pet peeves"...
An understatement, if there ever was one.

-

In no particular order:

1. Rewriting the Butlerian Jihad, as an "evil AI ran amok" plot full of gore and simpleminded heroes (in the usual, boring sense which Frank Herbert exploded in Dune) doing manouvres out of Star Trek. It was a religious uprising, spurred on by what computers-as-tools were doing to humanity.

2. The various "Paul has a wonderful adventure as a kid"-plots which cheapen the universe, Paul's character, the impact of the story of Dune as an exploration of the hero myth and is directly contradicted by Frank's books.

3. Bene Gesserit's with psychic powers, including "guiltcasting". Which they all forget in Dune, oddly...

4. Jongleurs. Another damn group with magic powers who apparently taught Paul what he knew, belittling every word Frank wrote about the Bene Gesserit and all the skills Paul is drawing on in Dune and beyond, with specific references to their origin as it relates to the story being told (eg. BG as mother-figure/"the female" in Jungian sense, mentats as "pure cognition" and meditation, spice as "mystic insight", etc.)

5. Norma. A superhero who wishes all the bad stuff away and might as well have done so at the beginning. A superhero who is relebrated as such, despite Frank's specific and fully formulated wish to destroy the "myth of the hero" with the Dune chronicles.

6. Having KJA creations "take over" from the new Face Dancers, which Marty and Daniel are in Frank's universe. Who read Heretic and Chapterhouse and got the idea that these books was, among other things, about memory-as-identity(-or-is-it?) and collecting knowledge and experience as power on a personal and universal level? Who got the idea that it was about evil AIs coming to enslave the world?

7. The über-Kwisatz Haderach. Just the concept of it. Waterworms and über-spice is equally silly - "lets do the same thing only cooler, wilder and bigger?" Let's not.

8. Good-Paul and evil-Paul fighting it out. It worked in Army of Darkness, for the LOLZ. Not here. Nor does ruining the poignant tragedy of Paul and Chani's story by reviving them to live "happily ever after".

9. Worms producing spice directly. One begins to wonder whether they even read the originals...

10. The baron Harkonnen being fat because of a disease, given as revenge by a Bene Gesserit (who hate childlike emotional tantrums like revenge) because he raped her (despite being homosexual). While it is quite clear from Dune that he is fat because he "let himself go", revels in people's disgust and as a way to strike up the theme of humanity (who can exert selfcontrol over their lives even unto death) vs. animals (who cannot).

I have invited the author of http://sciencefictionscene.blogspot.com ... -of-2.html to respond to these here.

I hope, of course, to have a civil discussion and kindly ask that you all contribute to this...

I did too but my post hasn't been accepted(there was no foul language and just the right amount of sarcasm)

Lundse wrote:I hope, of course, to have a civil discussion and kindly ask that you all contribute to this...

You realize, of course, that this is the same clown who has made vague legal threats and menacing "I'm coming to Japan!" posts toward Chiggie, right?

All due respect, but this whole "civil discussion" thing is vastly over-rated. This guy's an asshole, just like Pestie, and just like most of the gutless preeks at Amazon. They are no more deserving of "civility" than any other internet loudmouths.

If it happens; great — more power to you. It just seems that you're chasing a unicorn that you're never going to catch. I've yet to see the venue that could successfully host a civil OH/preek discussion.

My two cents; YMMV.

Now, with that being said, that was a great list.

Nos. 1 and 7 are my personal hatreds ... gah, just thinking about them makes me want to take Hacky and Bobo and knock their fool heads together just as hard as I can. Twice.

I agree that civil discussion is almost certainly not going to happen, but they should be the ones to break down and resort to the behavior of children, not us. A huge part of our whole argument is that FH is complex mature writing, and the new junk is barely fit for a child in terms of complexity, message, prose (hell, it apears to have been written by children sometimes).

That argument sounds a lot better if we're the half that isn't acting like children. (Or... at least not the ones that start it )

but...

but...


they...

they...

They started...


They started it!!!!


It's not fair!

Hey, Lundse, knock yourself out. I'm all behind you being able to add yet another name to your sig list!

Edit: Btw, he claims he hasn't & won't read Winds, so the guilt-caster reference will be lost on him.

I had thought Lundse would be the one to lay out the facts, without adding "dipshit" to every line.

I think you'll have to work with him in his own playground, tho ...

if he/them/it does/do decide to show up here, I promise I won't call them mean names for atleast a week,
depending on their behavior - but if either one has looked around here, well, I've been a little nasty ...
no reason for them to think that wouldn't be the over-all treatment.

on the other hand, fuck 'em.

I bet all the water rings Mandy's holding for me that you will go on for about a week,
reposting everything we've ever said about Keith, and they will still not get it...

Lundse wrote:1. Rewriting the Butlerian Jihad, as an "evil AI ran amok" plot full of gore and simpleminded heroes (in the usual, boring sense which Frank Herbert exploded in Dune) doing manouvres out of Star Trek. It was a religious uprising, spurred on by what computers-as-tools were doing to humanity.

2. The various "Paul has a wonderful adventure as a kid"-plots which cheapen the universe, Paul's character, the impact of the story of Dune as an exploration of the hero myth and is directly contradicted by Frank's books.

3. Bene Gesserit's with psychic powers, including "guiltcasting". Which they all forget in Dune, oddly...

6. Having KJA creations "take over" from the new Face Dancers, which Marty and Daniel are in Frank's universe. Who read Heretic and Chapterhouse and got the idea that these books was, among other things, about memory-as-identity(-or-is-it?) and collecting knowledge and experience as power on a personal and universal level? Who got the idea that it was about evil AIs coming to enslave the world?

7. The über-Kwisatz Haderach. Just the concept of it. Waterworms and über-spice is equally silly - "lets do the same thing only cooler, wilder and bigger?" Let's not.

9. Worms producing spice directly. One begins to wonder whether they even read the originals...

10. The baron Harkonnen being fat because of a disease, given as revenge by a Bene Gesserit (who hate childlike emotional tantrums like revenge) because he raped her (despite being homosexual). While it is quite clear from Dune that he is fat because he "let himself go", revels in people's disgust and as a way to strike up the theme of humanity (who can exert selfcontrol over their lives even unto death) vs. animals (who cannot).

All of these can be shown as contradictory with plenty of quotes from the original hexalogy. Has anyone bothered compiling such a collection of "proof positive" text quotations? (I have fished a few quotes regarding the Butlerian Jihad from the first four books some time ago, might be useful) I have no idea if this could be somehow used directly against the duo, but it sure would have helped convince (convert?) the more critical-minded people who have just been mislead by insufficient information/wrong reading order/whatever.

stickied in Prequels/Sequels:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1538" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=44" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Man, if you search with my name as the author I've literally written essays on how those two have screwed it all up. Nothing works, people write it off as minor and unimportant, no matter how bad the error.

SandRider wrote:stickied in Prequels/Sequels:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1538" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=44" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well, what I had in mind was a bit more centralized database with as many quotes form the original books about each topic as possible. Basically, a concordance with the primary goal of systematizing information from Frank's books in the first place.

Oh, and I can't seem to find any quotes from Children corresponding to this:

dunaddict wrote:And of course, Alia starts getting fat when she is possesed by the Baron in Children of Dune, and STDs can of course not be transfered through OM.

MrFlibble wrote:. Basically, a concordance with the primary goal of systematizing information from Frank's books in the first place.

no swear words plz

Well, what I had in mind was a bit more centralized database with as many quotes form the original books about each topic as possible. Basically, a concordance with the primary goal of systematizing information from Frank's books in the first place.

NB4: "email Brian and ask for a copy of his" ....

MrFlibble wrote: Oh, and I can't seem to find any quotes from Children corresponding to this:

dunaddict wrote:And of course, Alia starts getting fat when she is possesed by the Baron in Children of Dune, and STDs can of course not be transfered through OM.

I don't have my PDFs on this computer, but the quotes are there if you look, I just re-read that book recently and I remember her gaining weight after becoming possesed quite clearly. Not to mention that to anyone who had read Dune it should be just blatently obvious that FH intended the Baron's weight to be a reflection of his character/personality, and blaming it on a disease obviously undermines that effort in character building.

As for organized concordances detailing all the contradictions the new authors have made and the quotes that prove that they are in fact contradictions (not even counting the just plain mistakes and inconsistancies within their own writing), ideas have been bounced around and worked on from time to time, but this is a HUGE undertaking. We're quite literally talking about an entire book's worth of material, as some of their novels (Sandworms for example) contain a minimum of one glaring contradiction per chapter, often getting closer to one per page, and again, that doesn't even count their general mistakes (for example they depict lightspeed ships taking over the gaaxy, but it all somehow happens in months instead of hundreds of thousands of years) Not one I'm adverse to of course, but I'll do it on my own time unless someone else really gets a serious effort going and inspires me to help.

I'm going to read Children of Dune again soon. Hopefully I'll remember this thread and find the quote. But if anyone else knows, please say so and I'll add it to the concordance.