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Dune: House Harkonnen
I've long been a confirmed Dune addict. One of my long lasting book passions has been collecting hardcover copies of each of the original series; when I found hardcover copies, then finding 1st edition hardcover copies. So, obviously when I found out that Brian Herbert, Frank's son, and well known science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson (most noted for his Star Wars series work) were going to be doing prequels to the series, I was quite anticipatory.
If you've read Dune: House Atreides, you can imagine my chagrin. OK, some people like it (I'm looking at you, Joseph Arruda), and I understand the reasons behind it. But that book was so abysmally horrid in terms of the one-dimensional characters that I figured Dune: House Harkonnen had to be better. After all, there was no where to go but up.
A tangent: I've never been a real fan of Kevin J. Anderson's work. In terms of the Star Wars series, Timothy Zahn pretty much defined that series, IMHO. So, to be upfront, Anderson is fighting an uphill battle with me.
The meat of the book is this: It explains where Feyd comes from, talks more about his parentage, and the relationships within the Harkonnen Family, which, surprise surprise, are pretty messy. But for those who are interested in the storyline and backdrop to the entire series, there's a lot of backgrond material on how the Atreides, Harkonnen and Corrinos interrelate.
But I'm a little puzzled about why the book is entitled House Harkonnen. Granted, we get the storyline about Feyd, how Rabban gets the name "Beast"...but that's about it in the Harkonnen end of things. The other plot lines are much more interesting.
The first is continuing the development of Pardot and Liet Kynes. You found out about Liet's background, growing up, and how he becomes the new Imperial Planetologist. You get some sense of his caring for Arrakis, as well as the the continuation from the prior book to the ecological project on Arrakis. Also on Dune, you found out more about the connections between the Fremen and the Bene Gesserit.
The Caladan/Arrakis has a number of points to it, some good and some so annoying it made me want to vomit. First bad one: Prince Vernius of Ix. Yes, I like the Ix portion of the storyline, and what the nasty Bene Tleilaxu are up to. But his character, and his sister annoyed me so much that I had a hard time getting through this section. Try counting how many times Vernius says "Vermilion Hells" between this book and the former. It's astonishing. Someone should teach the prince how to curse more. Seriously, though, those two characters are some of the weakest in the entire series. The relationship between the Princess and Leto is extremely predictable and stale. The only member of the whole family that I liked, the Earl Vernius has a plotline that extends basically the length of the book...for very little return.
One of the good parts of the Atredies portion is the meeting between Jessica and Leto - that's a good foundation. The other enjoyable part is Gurney Halleck - the storyline is not "enjoyable" but it's interesting.
So, overall, mixed review. If you are a Dune fanatic, like I am, you've probably already purchased it. If you aren't a fanatic, but are interested, I'd recommend reading the original series first. If you've read and liked it, this might be worth picking up - it's a quick read, and it's fun to head back to the Realm of the Padishah Emporer. But if you thought Dune was OK, but not great - DO NOT PICK THIS UP. If you are interested though, you can grab it from ThinkGeek.
The first "sequel" was so bad it became the first Sci-Fi book I've thrown away (recycled actually) in about 15 years. I'm not interested in being fooled twice. About the best I can say is that it was nice and big and hence I didn't run out of something to read when I was stuck in an airport. Someone talented at literary analysis could do a great "Why Frank Herbert was such a good writer" by noting the things that made his Dune books better than these even with similar characters, plot, settings, language etc.
Lots of great books are remade every 20 years or so when there are new societal insights, directors, actors and film technology. Consider Dracula, Cleopatra, Superman, Hamlet, etc.
Rather than badmouth Lynch, I look forward to the next film interpretation.
Actually I like Lynch a lot. Though it dropped many subplots, and was too dense for those who hadn't read the book, the movie possessed "film noir" or interesting intepretation of the Dune planets.
Of course, since I never made it through the rest, maybe I'm missing the big picture here. But I'm still really excited about the SciFi miniseries that I think is due out next month.
that's what it is. Don't get me wrong. I'm definitely a fanatic, I've read the books god knows how many times, watched the film(very reluctantly), played the games, and reread the books once again. But this stuff may concern the same subject, it does not contain the spirit of Frank Herbert and that's what made the books what they were...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Kevin Anderson, on the other hand, is just not that good a writer, and neither is Brian Herbert. I have read a few of the solo books of both and can confidently say that I have no interest in reading anything they collaborate on. Sudanna, Sudanna, for example, was amusing, but eminently forgettable. Blindfold was an easier read, but a very generic piece of sci-fi. Of course the people who wrote reviews at Amazon loved them.
Personally I think Candle by John Barnes (which was sort of reviewed here last week) was better than anything by either of these two authors, and Barnes might have the potential to be as much of a classic in his time as Frank Herbert is.
Writing is the only socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. (E. L. Doctorow)
They did not detect him in the no-ship with powers it was broken he was phasing in and out.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I read House Atreides and yeah, it sucked. Brian Herbert and Anderson obviously spent a lot of time studying Frank's style, but they got precious little of his substance. Frank Herbert was a passionate and educated ecologist, as strong a scientist in his own right as Asimov and Clarke (regardless of what you think of their writing). The new books (I haven't read "Harkonnen" yet, nor do I plan to) have people acting and talking similarly, but with little coherent motivation.
:) His son's a sorry hack, though, and Dune isn't the sum total of his work.
Also, who really gives a rat's ass? Dune is a messiah story. Writing prequels would be like writing prequels to the Bible. Who cares how Joseph and Mary met? Who their parents were?
Of course, some people do, and these people are buying the new book. But I suspect that most people who buy these books are pining for the old days, wishing Herbert himself had continued the Dune series. My answer: go read something else of Frank's. Dragon in the Sea/Under Pressure, The Green Brain, Hellstrom's Hive, The Sanataroga Barrier, The Eyes of Heisenburg. Frank wrote many great novels, and there's something to learn from each of them.
Also, notice my sig - I love Frank Herbert.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
IMHO, novels are defined by the author who wrote them.
In that case, what do you think of Brian Herbert's plan to finish his father's last _Dune_ novel, based on his recently-discovered notes? Will that book be "defined" by the father or the son?
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
Dammit, I previewed, too. Should be Santaroga Barrier. Very interesting novel about ecological and psychological dependence.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
It is an observation that in general books produced not by the original authors aren't as good as the original ones. You may suppose this is becuase of puritanical reasons. It isn't really. I have tried to read Benford/Bear/Brin continuations of Foundation, as well as Lee/Clarke's continuation of Rama. (Why do you think I actually mentioned them? Becuase I tried!) Gave up halfway - not worth the effort. But YMMV.
2.) "Vermillion" has two L's, Hemos. Yes, the phrase is annoying, but my sense of irony refuses to let you criticize it before you can spell it. ;)
That is all.
-Omar
Another well-known spin-off of the original series is the Dune Encyclopedia. Impossible to get nowadays, but well worth a read if you're a fan. You can sometimes come across it at swap meets or library sales.
There's also a core of fine fan fiction, such as Revenant of Dune, and some pretty good stuff at Usul's fandom page.
And for those of you old-skool enough to be into MU*s, there's an excellent Dune-based MUSH at dune3.fremen.org 4201, with an informative webpage at www.fremen.org/muds/dune3/.
THS
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THS
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"Poor girl looks as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market." - Simon R. Green
"Dune" isn't a christ story, it's a 'the one' story. It doesn't matter WHO is the subject, it could be Tommy, Neo, Connor, etc...
Remember, Moses was one, that's a HELLUVA long time before Christ...
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IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
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It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
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John
Granted, Frank Herbert wasn't the greatest writer of all time. Like many science fiction authors, his ideas were sometimes better than his execution. The rest of the Dune series, however, is fascinating. If you stopped after Dune Messiah I don't blame you - it's easily the weakest of the 6. Many people don't know that he wrote the first 3 books more or less at the same time. He's written (in the intro to Children of Dune, and elsewhere) that he spent 6 years researching and plotting the story before he laid pen to paper to begin writing. I think this shows - Messiah feels a little like a stepping stone to Children.
The last 3 are very different. God Emperor of Dune, for all its faults, is one of the most fascinating character studies ever put to paper. It's a good book, too, and worth a read. The last 2 focus very strongly on the Bene Gesserit, and make up somewhat for the 2D female characters in the first 3 books.
No one before or since Frank Herbert has realized such a coherent (I don't mean, of course, "correct") vision of the future. His books are political, economic, ecological, religious. Most science fiction ignores this as background noise, but he correctly believes that it drives character motivation to a great degree.
So yeah, leave Messiah alone. I re-read the series earlier this year, and I couldn't get through more than 40 pages of it. So I skipped it. Children is better. And I think you owe it to yourself to at least give God Emperor a try.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
I'll say yes to that. It has to be enjoyable, preferably with the same style and extending its universe in a coherent fashion. An example is Dan Simmons' Hyperion, and Fall of Hyperion. Two books of wholly different styles, but hanging together nicely. I can't imagine anyone else coming in to write consistently within that universe.
And the baron being a fitness freak seems just a cheap way to think of a Bene Gesserit punishment...
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
What is the plural of 'Harkonnen'?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
OK, so it's a cheap exploitation, and its authors lack the depth of vision that Frank Herbert had. But if you're *going* to do a cheap exploitation, they picked a pretty good place to hang it on the story lines. Trying to write Dune: Volumes 7,8,9 would have been an utter failure - even Frank Herbert was running pretty dry on stories by the end. Picking a random thread and going sideways would be pretty lame, though perhaps Frank left around some notes they could use; writing Other Children Of Dune to try to make up for the relatively lame Children Of Dune would only emphasize that Frank was the better writer, since they'd be lamer than it was. Doing a prequel at least gives you *some* chance to think about "where did these characters come from? What makes them tick?" which wasn't in the original. Worst you can do is come out like the lasest Star Wars I: A New Prequel.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I see this is posted as news, but why not create a separate story category for book reviews? Surely that's more apropos. (And since I've raised the subject, I'd still like to see a separate category for religion | metaphysics | spirituality, since that's come up from time to time.)
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
When reading prequels, it is REALLY important to remember that you are prescient. You KNOW how it turns out in the end. It's like reading the last chapter of a mystery novel. You've not going to encounter suspense on major plotlines like that -- its just not possible. What you ARE going to get is the background into "What made 'character' who he/she is?"
That's not to say there won't be suspense at all, simply that it will be in "the details"... the rules of war / swordmaster training plotline, etc. You know he's a Swordmaster, but its all the fine details of that process that are withheld and slowly spoonfed back out.
Overall I liked both, and can't wait for Dune: House Corrino to come out (next year is it?)
D
The Duncan Idaho storyline with the swordmasters or Ginaz and the background on the rules of war. This I thought was *very* cool. No it is not Dune and maybe someone besides Anderson should have been brought in but I thought that overall it was very solid. Now what I would like to see the do is take Brian (for the names sake) and someone else (Neal Stephenson leaps to mind) and do a set of books based during the Butlerian Jihad (sorry if my spelling is off at work nothing to check with) Stpehenson because I think his take on the AIs would be great. I would love to have a book with the Battle or Corrin in it. OTOH I really hope they don't do a book about Paul's birth I think that would take things just a step too close to the great original.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The original Dune books have the Duke as having always been a fat bastard, not an fitness fanatic layed low. In trying to "reveal" some hidden portion of the Dune past in their money milking prequels (ooh, sounds familiar!) they ignored the fact that the Baron was portrayed as a lazy sensualist when he posseses Alia, causing her to become overweight and slothful.
Ignoring the original series, its religion and its subtlety can also be tacked on to the list of problems with this abuse of the Dune name...
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
I always feel so bad for Duncan Idaho. Eight books spanning five thousand years and they just won't let him stay dead...
"...heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Hopefully the SciFi series won't have characters whispering their thoughts to themselves. Whenever Kyle McLachlan kept whispering "the spice..." to himself I wanted to yell "Yo, Spice Boy! No one can hear you!"
I mean, there has rarely been a more long-winded, dull book with shoddy characterisation, awful prose and a setting that lacks interest. If it wasn't for the fact that the other science fiction around at the time was even worse, nobody would have ever even considered Dune, let alone call it a "classic".
One of the reasons that I loved the dune series was their scope. Few books in any genre manage to successfully (or even unsuccessfully) carry a story over several thousand years.
It was interesting to watch the development of their government, the way the Bene Gesseret would engineer religions and entire societies, the way the God Emperor built up Arakkis...
Sure, some of the dialogue was a bit bogged down, but I sat down and read the first 5 books in less than a month. It also gave me a lot of interesting ideas about OUR society and cultural development, which (IMHO) was Herbert's whole point to begin with.
Sometimes it isn't the plot line that causes something to succeed or fail... it's the effect on the reader that make it great.
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
Question - Does anyone know whether this will be any good? I was watching the Dune movie (the long version) on sci-fi a while back and I kept thinking how it hadn't aged especially well. A lot of the effects just don't look good, or even worse, look like obvious special effects.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
All of these Brian Herbert books are written based on a very small (less than a hundred pages total) collection of Frank Herbert's notes they found in the attic. I would much rather see the raw notes collected into a book, than to see these hacks try to write 500 pages of drivel to fill in the spaces between the actual stuff Frank Herbert wrote.
The new prequels are worh reading once for their elaboration of the Dune universe. However they lack depth and sublty. The original series you could get more out of it re-reading it several times because there was a lot of texture and under-explained background.
This is the same as Kubrick's space odyssey versus the sequel. Kubrick explained little- just presented imagery and action. 2010 explained everything and took the mystery out of it.
The Dune website said this is the title of third volume. I presume it covers Paul's childhood, goes more into depth about the Emperor's machinations, and the reason for awarding Arakis to the Attredies. The book has been finished and is in editing.
I suspect that would be fertile ground for exploration of the Dune Universe. That is the major historical event in Dune history (I forget about 2000 years earlier). It laid the ground for the new organizations like the Guild, Bene Gesserit, Ix, Empires etc.
In the six or so millennia of human history that we have decent archeological and written records- the Jewish-Christian-Islam religious triad is a late-comer. Egypt and Mesopotomia each had a fairly stable pantheon going for 3-4 thousand years or more. Why was there a lot of religous flux for the millennia 600 BCE - 400 CE and then things fossilize again? Frank Herbert looks at another religious upheaveal in the far future, and millennia-old organizations behind the scenes.
First off, the characters are not that one dimensional as you claim. I grant you that some are, but they are usually fringe characters. The later books in the Dune series had similar characters too, pretty much simple but needed to move plot along.
Now the Ixian prince is interesting because he wants/wanted to do something but never had the chance to learn how to act as he should of. In essence he had to learn his role while Duke Leto learned his. His big problem was that its very hard to learn a role when your actions are constrained such as his. For the most part I think he fell by the wayside as his sister obviously took center stage in the second book.
The books do provide lots and lots of background helping explain how the situation arised in Dune. I don't find them bastardizing the stories, for me they finally fill in the little details that were seemingly missing.
As for the book naming, the authors simply laid down names for the series without regard to the focus of the books. However the second book does concentrate a lot more on Harkonnen people that the first. BUT, where you are confused is that you seem to expect it to concentrate on the Baron, but he is not all that is Harkonnen. Duncan and Gurney are both involved heavily, and their stories are very important to set how the Harknonnen worlds were/are.
As for the Emperor and the Bene Tleilaxu situation is very interesting and folds in well with the last 3 books of original Dune (with artificial spice).
Now the only issue I have with the books is the power exhibited by the Bene Geserits (sp?). To me the current authors have made them too powerful in the aspect of their mental powers. Sorry, but the fact they could detect Rabban in the no-ship was uncalled for and not-canon. It was an ability the sisters did not have in Chapterhouse. If all they had to do was detect people then the issues in Chapterhouse about detecting no-ships would have been a moot point.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"