Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

What frightens me is that it's based on a story by someone who thinks BG RMs can be tortured and raped. I hope y'all are right that he's just there in name only. I'm sure someone who understood FH's material could do a good job.

Well, my optimism proves unfounded:

WarnerMedia wrote:“Dune: The Sisterhood,” an adaptation of Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson’s book based in the world created by Frank Herbert’s book Dune, from director Denis Villeneuve

https://www.warnermediagroup.com/newsro ... ce-hbo-max

The slim remaining hope would be that the description is in error (the announcement does caution, "Information set forth in this news release contains financial estimates and other forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results might differ materially") or that the adaptation will throw out most of the book, but this is certainly not what I hoped for or expected.

At least I don't have to watch it ... and neither the new movie.

This may be a good thing. Now I won't be tempted to watch it.

Oh boy, that didn't take long

Damn. I was hoping it might be set on Wallach IX, and feature long single take scenes where the characters walk the hallways and fire rapid and witty dialogue at eachother. Get Sorkin onboard and you could get it done.

Seriously though, this does seem a shame. I'm not familiar with the 'book' or the 'plot' it contains, but reading aramsham's suggestion of a GoT / Handmaid's Tale sort of style drama set in the future about a time that's only vaguely referred to in the original canon sounded like a good plan. Sufficient leeway there to write your own stories without contradicting what's already been written by FH, and even those other two.

But when I first heard about this proposal, my first thought was: Really? This is not a time period I feel needs to be examined or flesh added to the barest of bones FH gave us. That's the strength of his writing, he doesn't get bogged down in too many details about the peripheral things, yet they still come across as fully conceived. And that's the great flaw of the other two, they do exactly the opposite to cash in.

pcqypcqy wrote:But when I first heard about this proposal, my first thought was: Really? This is not a time period I feel needs to be examined or flesh added to the barest of bones FH gave us. That's the strength of his writing, he doesn't get bogged down in too many details about the peripheral things, yet they still come across as fully conceived. And that's the great flaw of the other two, they do exactly the opposite to cash in.

I think this is one of the most important things I learned here about enjoying story-telling. Yet it seems like every fan group for every piece of work out there wants endless tedious details about every single little thing instead of quality story-telling. I mean, sometimes it works, but it's for this reason that I'm generally opposed to prequels/sequels, new series or other extensions to a work that weren't planned as part of the story-telling process. It's almost inevitably bad.

I was intensely skeptical of the new series, and now it seems we have extremely good reasons to be, but I also agreed with Cpt. Aramsham about the general response to any announcement involving Dune. The knee-jerk fury among fandoms whenever something doesn't precisely match expectations is pretty ridiculous sometimes.

Totall agree. That's what I liked about Aramsham's idea, something vaguely connected to the universe but different enough that it could be its own thing without contradicting the canon or upsetting the fandom.

One thing that has always stuck in my head is a throw away line in Dune:

She stared at him, thinking of the Duke's men rubbing their woes together in the barracks until you could almost smell the charge there, like burnt insulation. They're becoming like the men of the pre-Guild legend, she thought: Like the men of the lost star-searcher, Ampoliros--sick at their guns--forever seeking, forever prepared and forever unready.

There's a whole book in there by the sounds of it, but FH was content just to let it add a bit of richness to his universe and move on. Surpised the hacks haven't tried yet.

Yeah, I love that passage too.

The show now has a co-showrunner (Dana Calvo, who created the show Good Girls Revolt) and a writers' room. They apparently started working a couple of weeks ago. Calvo has posted a couple of pictures to Twitter:

@danascalvo wrote:
This room is [brain emoji] [explosion emoji]

#DuneTheSisterhood ⁦@jonspaihts @rezaaslan @jordan_harper @notanothersarah @crashrosbe @minhalbaig

https://twitter.com/danascalvo/status/1 ... 6068120577

(Brain + explosion = mind-blowing, I guess? I don't speak emoji.)

I didn't know Reza Aslan was a TV writer, I just knew him as an author/pundit, but apparently he wrote for The Leftovers. As perhaps the most famous religious scholar in the US, he seems like a great fit for the material and a big get for the show.

@danascalvo wrote:

I ask that you (please) surrender your cell phone before entering the writers’ room. (“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.") Day 1.
#DuneTheSisterhood #HBOMax

https://twitter.com/danascalvo/status/1 ... 3792667650

I note that while there are multiple copies of Dune, I don't see any copies of Sisterhood of Dune or any other books by Brian and Kevin.

So that looks… somewhat promising, right? (Of course, that's the point of posting this to Twitter.)

Cpt. Aramsham wrote:Well, my optimism proves unfounded:

WarnerMedia wrote:“Dune: The Sisterhood,” an adaptation of Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson’s book based in the world created by Frank Herbert’s book Dune, from director Denis Villeneuve

https://www.warnermediagroup.com/newsro ... ce-hbo-max

The slim remaining hope would be that the description is in error (the announcement does caution, "Information set forth in this news release contains financial estimates and other forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results might differ materially") or that the adaptation will throw out most of the book, but this is certainly not what I hoped for or expected.

This is exactly what I feared, the fucking hack shoehorning his bulshit in the Dune mythos via TV.
It's the Trojan Horse he's been waiting for so long, and the Trojans are even building it for him.

Stupid Trojans...

Although I will admit that the lack of Shitterhood on that bookpile is comforting, I wonder if they'll be able to distance themselves from the actual "book" that bears the name of the show.

What worries me is that the copies of Dune are all new. Is this their first time reading it I wonder?

Is that a reasonable thing to worry about based on this picture?

Consider:

The tweet indicates that these are books they're keeping in the writers' room. They might be there to look stuff up in, to underline, to cross out passages that they use (so they don't end up using them twice), etc. They're probably being handed around among a dozen people, and might easily get lost.

Would someone want to use their personal copy for that?

Or they read it but don't own a copy (got it from the library, borrowed it from a friend, lent it to someone and never got it back...). Or they read it as a teenager and it's back in their parents' place. Or they read it as an ebook or heard it as an audiobook. Or they've read it so often that their copy is falling apart... Or they would have been happy to bring it in, but the showrunners couldn't rely on that since they hadn't yet hired all of them and had a chance to talk to them about it.

What I imagine happening is Dana Calvo saying to someone at Warner, "Hey, to write this thing we'll need a lot of reference books," and they say, "Sure, just buy it on Amazon and charge it to the production." And so she threw in a bunch of copies of Dune to have around (and probably the other Dune books too, though they're not seen here).

Several of the writers have made comments on Twitter indicating familiarity with Dune. And as long as they have that knowledge, I don't think it would necessarily be a bad thing if a few of them are coming to it fresh. It might allow them to see more clearly what would need to be communicated to an uninitiated audience.

Well i'd rather get carried away now and be prepared for the worst then be pleasantly surprised, but years of experience have made me wary of people who claim that familiarity with Dune.
If you have links or screenshots of such tweets, I'd be much obliged (I don't twitter)

But to answer your question, if I hypothetically was asked to collaborate to such writing, I would definitely bring my own copies.
And if they don't own it, how can they claim familiarity?
I started reading Dune when I was nine, and haven't stopped since, that's familiarity.

I talked about it with Freak last night and the thing is there isn't much info on the BG in Dune until you reach Heretics, so posting a picture of Dune to show you know about the topic would be like posting a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring for a series about Ents because Sam's cousin saw a walking tree once.

But I know I'm a sourpuss, I'm just battle scarred with all that jihad

Well, it's Twitter, so you know, they're mostly just little jokes about sandworms and the BG breeding program and talking about how this is a dream come true and so on. Nobody has posted anything that "proves" them to be experts on the topic, if that's what you mean.

lotek wrote:And if they don't own it, how can they claim familiarity?
I started reading Dune when I was nine, and haven't stopped since, that's familiarity.

Do I think most of these writers know Dune as well as you or I know it? No, of course not. Most people don't reread a book series 10 or 20 times and spend years discussing it on the Internet (except for Harry Potter, I guess). But that's moving the goalposts. The original question was whether "this was their first time reading it".

It would definitely be nice if they have someone like a consultant with a truly deep, encyclopedic knowledge of Dune to run details by. There's a natural worry that they might turn to Brian or Kevin to fill that role.

I talked about it with Freak last night and the thing is there isn't much info on the BG in Dune until you reach Heretics, so posting a picture of Dune to show you know about the topic would be like posting a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring for a series about Ents because Sam's cousin saw a walking tree once.

There's a lot we don't know about the Bene Gesserit from Dune, but there's also quite a bit we do learn. In particular, I would argue that it's the book that gives us the best sense of how they operated as a political organization within the Padishah Imperium, how they were viewed by outsiders, and their ideology and goals pre-Kwisatz Haderach. The appendix is our best information about their origins. (And of course, we learn about the universe the show will be set in, beyond just the Sisterhood itself.)

There are a number of little tidbits that you can extrapolate from, too. For example, Mohiam says "The Lady Jessica was my serving wench, lad, for fourteen years at school." That tells us something about life at a BG school. (Quick calculation shows that Jessica can have been no more than seven when she began as Mohiam's serving wench.) There's a mention of "lay sisters" that I don't think is ever expanded upon (though they're also briefly mentioned in Heretics).

Like I've said before, the fact that Heretics and Chapterhouse are set five thousand years after Dune, and the Sisterhood has undergone so many important changes in that time, means that while they're good sources of insight into the Bene Gesserit, those books should be treated with caution and seen only as a loose guide.

As it happens, there is (what has been referred to as) a "Lord of the Rings" TV show currently under production, which reportedly will be about the Fall of Númenor. Now, the most detailed versions of this story are found outside TLOTR, although the history is summarized in the appendix, so would you feel the same way about a photo showing a copy of only that book by Tolkien among other reference volumes?

Cpt. Aramsham wrote:Well, it's Twitter, so you know, they're mostly just little jokes about sandworms and the BG breeding program and talking about how this is a dream come true and so on. Nobody has posted anything that "proves" them to be experts on the topic, if that's what you mean.

Yeah kind of, I mean even within the constraints of the character limit in twitter I guess it wouldn't be too hard to show how much of a nerd you can be ^^

Cpt. Aramsham wrote:

lotek wrote:And if they don't own it, how can they claim familiarity?
I started reading Dune when I was nine, and haven't stopped since, that's familiarity.

Do I think most of these writers know Dune as well as you or I know it? No, of course not. Most people don't reread a book series 10 or 20 times and spend years discussing it on the Internet (except for Harry Potter, I guess). But that's moving the goalposts. The original question was whether "this was their first time reading it".

Fair enough, am I being unreasonable hoping to have at least someone like us in there? You know how complex it is and even after all these years I feel like I'm just scratching the surface.
But I should certainly hope it was not their first time, I mean you're gonna write a show in someone else universe you'd be expected to know as much as possible about it and... damn that brings us to this dunnit...

Cpt. Aramsham wrote:It would definitely be nice if they have someone like a consultant with a truly deep, encyclopedic knowledge of Dune to run details by. There's a natural worry that they might turn to Brian or Kevin to fill that role.

They are definitely not that... Them and their fucking concordance, what a joke...
I know that kja is gonna push hard for this, what better way for him to finalise his taking over the franchise than steering the direction a tv show, what will become the truth of Dune as it has been done for many other universes that ended up on screen. I bet he can't believe his luck at this perfect storm.

Cpt. Aramsham wrote:

I talked about it with Freak last night and the thing is there isn't much info on the BG in Dune until you reach Heretics, so posting a picture of Dune to show you know about the topic would be like posting a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring for a series about Ents because Sam's cousin saw a walking tree once.

There's a lot we don't know about the Bene Gesserit from Dune, but there's also quite a bit we do learn. In particular, I would argue that it's the book that gives us the best sense of how they operated as a political organization within the Padishah Imperium, how they were viewed by outsiders, and their ideology and goals pre-Kwisatz Haderach. The appendix is our best information about their origins. (And of course, we learn about the universe the show will be set in, beyond just the Sisterhood itself.)

There are a number of little tidbits that you can extrapolate from, too. For example, Mohiam says "The Lady Jessica was my serving wench, lad, for fourteen years at school." That tells us something about life at a BG school. (Quick calculation shows that Jessica can have been no more than seven when she began as Mohiam's serving wench.) There's a mention of "lay sisters" that I don't think is ever expanded upon (though they're also briefly mentioned in Heretics).

Like I've said before, the fact that Heretics and Chapterhouse are set five thousand years after Dune, and the Sisterhood has undergone so many important changes in that time, means that while they're good sources of insight into the Bene Gesserit, those books should be treated with caution and seen only as a loose guide.

There is indeed a bit of data that transpires pre-Heretics, but in-universe everyone is basically clueless as to what or why as far as the BG is concerned, just like the reader, and it's obviously intentional.
I'd think that even the changed Sisterhood would still tell us what they were by showing us what they are not anymore. And Leto II does mess around with them enough to give us a lot of insight too. Totally forgot the "lay sisters" thing, will go check it out

Cpt. Aramsham wrote: As it happens, there is (what has been referred to as) a "Lord of the Rings" TV show currently under production, which reportedly will be about the Fall of Númenor. Now, the most detailed versions of this story are found outside TLOTR, although the history is summarized in the appendix, so would you feel the same way about a photo showing a copy of only that book by Tolkien among other reference volumes?

Good point. Let's say I'd feel as wary of someone claiming to write in the LOTRO world without wanting to show the actual books too.
And it's been a while but doesn't the Silmarillion cover the fall of Númenor?

lotek wrote:I know that kja is gonna push hard for this, what better way for him to finalise his taking over the franchise than steering the direction a tv show, what will become the truth of Dune as it has been done for many other universes that ended up on screen. I bet he can't believe his luck at this perfect storm.

Is that his ambition? I've always had the impression that he's just looking for a steady paycheck. Has he ever tried to get any of his characters into the new Star Wars movies, for example?

lotek wrote:Good point. Let's say I'd feel as wary of someone claiming to write in the LOTRO world without wanting to show the actual books too.
And it's been a while but doesn't the Silmarillion cover the fall of Númenor?

Yeah, the story is covered in the LOTR appendices, in The Silmarillion, in Unfinished Tales, and in several of the History of Middle-Earth volumes. Tolkien fans can't complain about a lack of documentation!

There might be some rights issues with this hypothetical scenario: all the reporting I've seen only mentions Amazon licensing the rights to create adaptations based on TLOTR, so who knows if they're allowed to use those other sources. It would seem smart of the Tolkien estate to hive off different parts of the legendarium in separate deals, but then you can't really split it based on book, since most of them overlap and sprawl across many different stories, and granting a license to adapt only one particular draft of a story that has been published in multiple versions seems like a recipe for a legal nightmare.

I've always had that vibe off kja's whingeing/bragging that he felt like he should be a critical darling (sic) (got that quote somewhere).
Something along the lines of how he didn't understand why his genius at delivering them words on time was not recognized.
I don't know if he tried it on with SW, but with Dune he does hold a better position rather than being one of the dudes that made some SW, he's now THE guy in charge of the Dune mythos. And since he has repeatedly pissed all over canon with his stupid, I'd say that him shoehorning that through visual media wouldn't surprise me.

RE Tolkien
Indeed no lack of documentation here, whereas Dune was always sparse with that, to the same effect in my eyes.
I'm curious to see how that show pans out, considering how the Tolkien estate gets credit for its handling of the franchise.

That's the quote

tehkja wrote:“I don't like every writer's style; for instance, I have never been able to get through Ursula LeGuin, China Mieville, or Iain Banks, all of whom are critical darlings.”

Wow!
There might be a more concise way to 100% convincingly express "I have very poor taste in science fiction writing", but I don't know what it would be. Impressive, in a way!

lotek wrote:That's the quote

tehkja wrote:“I don't like every writer's style; for instance, I have never been able to get through Ursula LeGuin, China Mieville, or Iain Banks, all of whom are critical darlings.”

I guess the big pop-up book of science fiction stories is more his speed.

Where does this quote come from originally, by the way? Google only points back to this forum.

Cpt. Aramsham wrote:Where does this quote come from originally, by the way? Google only points back to this forum.

I'll try to dig that out for you

Wasn't it a news announcement on DuneNovels? I wouldn't be surprised if they scrubbed the internet of that term.

It might have been a twitter