Slashdot Mirror

I distinctly recall that in the original Dune novel, , Paul Atreides is impressed by the frictionless containers used by the Freemen to hold water, and Dune was written in 1965. Nice to see reality catch up to science fiction.

Niven & Pournelle use it in The Mote in God's Eye (1974) and its sequel The Gripping Hand, in which a frictionless is used as a material to coat the inside of coffee machines, so that they don't need cleaning and don't retain odours from a previous batch.

I also recall seeing it in some story for use in waterless toilets - coat the inside and there is no need for flushing. Not sure which book that was, I have Heinlein in my mind, but that use might actually be from the Mote series too.

Makes sense of course, scientists rarely invent something never thought up before. You need to ask questions before you can answer them.

I distinctly recall that in the original Dune novel, , Paul Atreides is impressed by the frictionless containers used by the Freemen to hold water, and Dune was written in 1965. Nice to see reality catch up to science fiction.

All the above derived from the abomination that was the 1984 Dune movie and not from the award winning books.

Why redo the first book in the series when there are many more in the service. The current Dune is a great film anyway.

Because that is what the studio wanted to do. I've been following this for a while now.

If anyone is interested there is a lot more info on this going back months in this thread.

The board admin there is a friend of the Herbert family and has been posting updates on the new movie situation for the last year or so.

All three major Blizzard properties are rip-offs of someone else's ideas. Diablo was a rip of Rogue (and all Rogue-alikes everywhere); Warcarft was a rip of Warhammer; and Starcraft was a rip of Warhammer 40,000.

Big deal, I say. It's not like Games Workshop didn't draw on others' ideas too -- Moorcock and Herbert being prime examples. A messianic god emporer? Gosh, where could that have come from? This is the way it's supposed to work. Inspiration breeds inspiration. It's not so much "your" idea as it is your little twist on all the ideas you've absorbed from other people. You don't "own" it, because the person you got your ideas from didn't "own" theirs either. This stuff's not supposed to be locked down and inaccessible. If it was, we'd never have got Warhammer or WoW or any of the rest of it.

Secret Sauce: The Rise of Blizzard
Russ Pitts

In 1991, the internet didn't exist.

That is to say, it did exist (and had for some time), but to the majority of Americans it might as well have been a huffalump until the creation of the World Wide Web in (approximately) 1992, when the internet would begin to become both widely understood, and easy-to-use (therefore "of interest" to most people).

Yet in 1991, the internet (such as it was) was neither widely understood nor easy-to-use, which is why the prospect of playing games on the internet may have seemed like a good and bad idea simultaneously. On one hand, nobody was doing it yet - it was a virgin market; on the other, nobody was doing it yet - the risks were terrible.

In 1991, videogame industry leader Sierra launched the Sierra Network (later called the ImagiNation Network). It was geared more-or-less toward children, with cartoon-ish art and themes, but it allowed users to play a variety of games and chat with friends in online chat rooms - all for an hourly fee, of course. It was, in every way, ahead of its time.

Particularly in terms of what users were willing to pay. At one point, the hourly rate for access to Sierra's network had climbed as high as $6 per hour. This was in addition to the subscription fees users were already paying for dial-up access to the internet itself and (in some extreme cases) long distance telephone charges levied by the telephone company. By contrast, many telephone sex chat services charged less than half that amount.

The Sierra Network, not surprisingly, failed and was shut down in 1996 by AOL, who had acquired it from AT&T. Ironically, this was not too long after the internet had become both widely understood and easy-to-use, and right around the same time that several other online gaming services had begun to flourish. Among them, an exciting new service offered by a company called Blizzard.

The Sleeper Has Awakened
In 1992, a revolutionary videogame was released that captured the imaginations of gamers the world over, almost immediately selling half a million copies. One of the first "real- time strategy" games ever made, it tasked the player with building a virtual army by collecting resources and then constructing buildings that would produce their machines of war - all in "real time." While the player was at it, their "enemy" was doing the same, building up to an eventual showdown between the competing armies, after which one side would claim total victory. Whoever had the most machines or the best strategy would win the day. It was like chess combined with backgammon wrapped up in an erector set, and gamers loved it.

That game was not Warcraft.

Westwood Studios' Dune II , predating Warcraft by at least two years, was based on the science fiction books by Frank Herbert, and cast the player as one of three races bent on controlling the spice-infested planet of Arrakis. It has been described as among the best PC games ever made, and many still consider it the best example of its genre ever made. Yet, it was not without its share of problems.

As with any game based on a license, Dune II relied on the players' familiarity with the premise of the original works. The Dune series had sold millions of copies of books world-wide, and had been made into a feature-length film in 1984, but to many people, the story was simply too dense to get their heads around. Case in point: The resource Dune II players were tasked with mining, the spice "Melange," took Herbert an entire novel to attempt to explain. Called "the spice of spices" in his appendices, the fictional Melange has been attributed with prolonging life, allowing users to foresee the future, astrally project objects through time and space, turn people's eyes blue and make giant worms try to kill you

...and THUS, The Tleilaxu Masters are born unto mankind...

That's the first thing that came to mind, genetic engineering DUNE style.

Let the Tleilaxu religious furvor begin.

It's okay, we've got a few things up our sleves to take care of that problem.... We can fire up our own butlerian jhiad, or just call in NEO, or we can page that Sarah Connor lady and her kid.

There is still good sci-fi...
Take, for instance, this books for your summer! :-)

Kind of like the Butlerian Jihad?

I've been trying to come up with a better solution, but really, how could you feasibly socialize the legal system?

And now for a touch of levity...

I just finished reading The Dosadi Experiment. I really like the approach of the Gowachin legal system: two lawyers enter; one lawyer leaves.

I've never read the series though I hav read tons of sci-fi books. I saw the origional movie before I joined the Navy out of HS and started reading Sci-Fi. This is still the first half of the Frank Herbert Dune timeline. Its looking like one or two more mini-series' are in order (God Emperor of Dune,Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune). Let's hope this series makes a bundle so they keep making them.

Anybody read the prequels by Brian Herbert? Thoughts?

Yes, I've read them both, the "Prelude to Dune" trilogy as well as the first book of the "Legends of Dune" trilogy.
Well, the "Prelude..." was really intersting, but slightly less dense and exciting as the original work. But it was a really good read nevertheless.
The "Legend..." trilogy however is a completely different story. Judging from the first book and the outlook to the remaining two, the idea seems to be to introduce everything that exists in Frank Herberts universe, really everything. It seems strange to me that in all those tenthousands of years, nothing happens and suddently the Suk doctors and the Bene Gesserit and the Mentats and every other freak club^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H guild just pops into existence. And everything and everybody is connected by a very limited group of places and characters, with the authors having such a rush...
So no, I don't want to see the "Prelude..."/"Legend..." works to be used for film or TV mini-series/episodes whatever. I wish Brian Herbert and Kevein J Anderson had stopped after completing the "Prelude" trilogy.

Anybody read the prequels by Brian Herbert? Thoughts?

Yes, I've read them both, the "Prelude to Dune" trilogy as well as the first book of the "Legends of Dune" trilogy.
Well, the "Prelude..." was really intersting, but slightly less dense and exciting as the original work. But it was a really good read nevertheless.
The "Legend..." trilogy however is a completely different story. Judging from the first book and the outlook to the remaining two, the idea seems to be to introduce everything that exists in Frank Herberts universe, really everything. It seems strange to me that in all those tenthousands of years, nothing happens and suddently the Suk doctors and the Bene Gesserit and the Mentats and every other freak club^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H guild just pops into existence. And everything and everybody is connected by a very limited group of places and characters, with the authors having such a rush...
So no, I don't want to see the "Prelude..."/"Legend..." works to be used for film or TV mini-series/episodes whatever. I wish Brian Herbert and Kevein J Anderson had stopped after completing the "Prelude" trilogy.

Silmarillion is the only book I've ever quit in the middle of...
Man, you reliefe me of great pain. I actually thought that something inside my head must be wrong, since I could never get past the first few chapters of Silmarillion. And I love & adore Lord of the Rings as the book that made the biggest impression on me, ever.

To get back to the new Dune novels: They are OK. Not great, but certainly worth a read. However, I am more looking forward to the 7th part of Dune, since I read somewhere that half of the book had already been completed by Frank Herbert. Or at least important and detailed sketches. I really hope that Dune will not be blown up to inflationary many preludes and sequels, but looking at the official timeline, it might just be the case...

Yes, I know that others have already pointed to this but it seemed not to have been come trough. New try: At www.dunenovels.com you can download a free short story which takes place before The Butlerian Jihad. It includes no spoilers whatsoever and can be read at any time, since it is not tightly connected to the main book.

Yes, I know that others have already pointed to this but it seemed not to have been come trough. New try: At www.dunenovels.com you can download a free short story which takes place before The Butlerian Jihad. It includes no spoilers whatsoever and can be read at any time, since it is not tightly connected to the main book.

Yes, I know that others have already pointed to this but it seemed not to have been come trough. New try: At www.dunenovels.com you can download a free short story which takes place before The Butlerian Jihad. It includes no spoilers whatsoever and can be read at any time, since it is not tightly connected to the main book.

As one of those people who commented on PhysicsGenius's mistake, it does essentially invalidate his first paragraph. It shows he doesn't understand Dune's place. Really, not a big deal, but to make such an obvious mistake in essentially a first post - he might as well have claimed that Winston Churchill stole policies from George W. Bush.

The rest of his thesis is a naive, too. The original Dune series was five books long. That was the series. The four new books, and up to six more, are the serialization of the Dune universe akin to what's happened with Star Wars and Star Trek novels. They're novels which can't be taken too seriously.

FYI. If you go to the official Dune website, Frank Herbert's son Brian mentions that a complete outline for a seventh book was left behind by his father. There are plans to complete it after the prequels are finished. BTW, the Sci-Fi Dune series is a POS.