A Sandy Review
Jan. 25th, 2010 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So this past weekend I finished up Dune by Frank Herbert. I'd actually tried reading this during High School, but for some reason I never got very far into it and just gave up. I've watched bits and pieces of the movie but not all of it all the way through.
In the last couple of weeks though, Dune references were everywhere so I decided I had to pick it up and try again. I'm glad I did, but I think that the book has so permeated geek culture that it's difficult to get an honest impression of the work. I feel like it had a bunch of big ideas for the time in which it came out, but subsequent authors have built off of those ideas and internalized them to such a degree that it's hard to compare it to what's on the stands now. A bit like how a Model-T looks crude and primitive compared to a modern car. Sure, but if you'd never seen a car before, the Model-T was something magical and profound.
The big problem is that the book keeps making me ask questions that it doesn't really want to answer. I've already posted about how odd the whole "personal shields" are. Does the motion of the person wearing the shield factor into whether it activates or not? If something moving quickly is stopped by the shield will it then fall below the "speed limit" and be allowed to slowly penetrate? Maybe las-guns cause a chain reaction, but would masers? Hard radiation? For some reason, this concept was used in the "Deathstalker" series and yet it didn't make me ask all these questions (well, it made me ask a few later on). Probably because in that series, the shields were only effective against lasers (and thanks to "we know so much stuff, we've forgotten even more" lasers were the only missile weapons in use), but you could have all the sword fights you wanted.
The ending was very abrupt and again raised a ton of questions -- especially about the Guild. You're utterly dependent on this organic compound to move through space. What did you do before this? My working theory is that before the Butlerian Jihad computers did all the space navigation (and that these same brains basically did all the deep scientific/engineering thinking for humanity).
But now it's just some genetically-lucky folks and the spice and that's how they get around. Fine. And for some reason you don't want to overtly be in control of this all-important substance. Um...OK. But you haven't made every effort to try and synthesize this stuff? You haven't made every effort to try and transplant the maker ecology to another planet or some sort of vat-grown process? Really? Really?
Oh, and this stuff is addictive and will kill you if you run out. Now this raving loony is telling you he'll destroy the spice if you don't make him Emperor. Because "if you can destroy something, you control it". I've got a few issues with that right there, but let's not anger pseudo-visionary man. OK, so first off -- you've got stockpiles of this stuff, right? The vast stockpiles you've been sitting on because it's your ass if this stuff all goes away and you have no contingency plans whatsoever? Those stockpiles? Sure, it's won't last forever, but that just means your rates go up.
So. Call this guy's bluff. Remember, if he pulls the plug on the spice then he, his mother, his sister, his wife, his kid (well, he's dead now), and the entirety of the planet who look to him as a savior will all die from withdrawal. Is he really going to do that? Are his men so dedicated that they will all commit suicide by his command? If they are, do you really think it would've been wise to let a fanatic like that control humanity?
I mean, seriously if your limited pre-cognition can't see the future, you're no better or worse off than any regular human and you should plan like any non-prescient human would -- make some freakin' back-up plans.
But none of this was really what the book wanted to deal with, where it wanted to go. It really wanted to talk about predestination and free-will and stuff, but it just beggars belief to think that the Guild didn't have some plan for this.
And the Bene Gesserit, as the Appendix clearly shows, just had No Clue Whatsoever which makes their role as "genetic shepherds" kinda suspect.
Also, the book was pretty heavy on its foreshadowing. There's no "mystery traitor" the whole thing is spelled out by Pietr and then by the chapter intro snippets and stuff. A fair amount of dramatic tension was just drained off.
So...I have problems with this book. But I also think that there is a great deal of inventiveness and creativity and good writing here as well. I can see the amazing Model-T people saw when this first came out, but I also think that the pioneering it did now sits comfortably in sci-fi suburbia.
later
Tom
So this past weekend I finished up Dune by Frank Herbert. I'd actually tried reading this during High School, but for some reason I never got very far into it and just gave up. I've watched bits and pieces of the movie but not all of it all the way through.
In the last couple of weeks though, Dune references were everywhere so I decided I had to pick it up and try again. I'm glad I did, but I think that the book has so permeated geek culture that it's difficult to get an honest impression of the work. I feel like it had a bunch of big ideas for the time in which it came out, but subsequent authors have built off of those ideas and internalized them to such a degree that it's hard to compare it to what's on the stands now. A bit like how a Model-T looks crude and primitive compared to a modern car. Sure, but if you'd never seen a car before, the Model-T was something magical and profound.
The big problem is that the book keeps making me ask questions that it doesn't really want to answer. I've already posted about how odd the whole "personal shields" are. Does the motion of the person wearing the shield factor into whether it activates or not? If something moving quickly is stopped by the shield will it then fall below the "speed limit" and be allowed to slowly penetrate? Maybe las-guns cause a chain reaction, but would masers? Hard radiation? For some reason, this concept was used in the "Deathstalker" series and yet it didn't make me ask all these questions (well, it made me ask a few later on). Probably because in that series, the shields were only effective against lasers (and thanks to "we know so much stuff, we've forgotten even more" lasers were the only missile weapons in use), but you could have all the sword fights you wanted.
The ending was very abrupt and again raised a ton of questions -- especially about the Guild. You're utterly dependent on this organic compound to move through space. What did you do before this? My working theory is that before the Butlerian Jihad computers did all the space navigation (and that these same brains basically did all the deep scientific/engineering thinking for humanity).
But now it's just some genetically-lucky folks and the spice and that's how they get around. Fine. And for some reason you don't want to overtly be in control of this all-important substance. Um...OK. But you haven't made every effort to try and synthesize this stuff? You haven't made every effort to try and transplant the maker ecology to another planet or some sort of vat-grown process? Really? Really?
Oh, and this stuff is addictive and will kill you if you run out. Now this raving loony is telling you he'll destroy the spice if you don't make him Emperor. Because "if you can destroy something, you control it". I've got a few issues with that right there, but let's not anger pseudo-visionary man. OK, so first off -- you've got stockpiles of this stuff, right? The vast stockpiles you've been sitting on because it's your ass if this stuff all goes away and you have no contingency plans whatsoever? Those stockpiles? Sure, it's won't last forever, but that just means your rates go up.
So. Call this guy's bluff. Remember, if he pulls the plug on the spice then he, his mother, his sister, his wife, his kid (well, he's dead now), and the entirety of the planet who look to him as a savior will all die from withdrawal. Is he really going to do that? Are his men so dedicated that they will all commit suicide by his command? If they are, do you really think it would've been wise to let a fanatic like that control humanity?
I mean, seriously if your limited pre-cognition can't see the future, you're no better or worse off than any regular human and you should plan like any non-prescient human would -- make some freakin' back-up plans.
But none of this was really what the book wanted to deal with, where it wanted to go. It really wanted to talk about predestination and free-will and stuff, but it just beggars belief to think that the Guild didn't have some plan for this.
And the Bene Gesserit, as the Appendix clearly shows, just had No Clue Whatsoever which makes their role as "genetic shepherds" kinda suspect.
Also, the book was pretty heavy on its foreshadowing. There's no "mystery traitor" the whole thing is spelled out by Pietr and then by the chapter intro snippets and stuff. A fair amount of dramatic tension was just drained off.
So...I have problems with this book. But I also think that there is a great deal of inventiveness and creativity and good writing here as well. I can see the amazing Model-T people saw when this first came out, but I also think that the pioneering it did now sits comfortably in sci-fi suburbia.
later
Tom
