Slashdot Mirror
The Legends Of Dune - Volume 1: The Butlerian Jihad
The book starts out by giving a history of how the Titans took over the "Old Empire" after humanity had lost its drive and had relegated intelligent machines to handle the everyday tasks. The Titans used this lack of drive and the intelligent machine to quickly take over the Old Empire and conquered most of the known galaxy. Free humans rose up at the fringes of the galaxy to resist and push the Titans back, forming "The League of Nobels".
The Titans governed their planets with a increasingly sophisticated AI network and increasing brutality towards their human "slaves". In a bid to rule for centuries, and for possible immortality, the Titans underwent the transfiguration to "cymeks", robots with a human brain. After a century of Titan rule, one of the Titans, in a quest for more free time to indulge in hedonistic activity, relinquished too much control to his intelligent AI network. Eventually the sentient AI network computer evermind, which took the name Ominus, took control of all the Titan controlled planets and formed the "Synchronized Worlds".
After a thousand years of conflict and stalemate between the Synchronized Worlds and the League of Nobels the machines, with coaxing from the Titans, have determined that it is time to "corral" the wild humans and strike out, the logical target, Salusa Secundus, the center of government for the League of Nobels . Being so "unpredictable" to Ominus, the humans, taking huge losses, again resist the machine attacks. In part due to the AI scrambler shield invention of one Tio Holtzman that stops robots, but in an oversight, allowed the Titan cymeks, with their human brains, through.
Reconsidering their tactics, the machines instead move on one of the less vehemently defended planets, an industrial world with an abundance of resources, Giedi Prime. This time the machines manage to knockout the shield generator and take the planet. Once the league hears of this, the endless debates start within their government, as with any democracy, nothing gets done because all the politicians are afraid to commit. All except Serena Butler, she instead organizes a small band to sneak onto Geidi Prime and complete the secondary shield generator. This leads to Serena's capture and eventual transfer to the primary Synchronized World, Earth.
We get to see the first "friction" here between the Atreides and Harkonnen, the Sorceresses of Rossak with their telepathic and telekinetic powers are the beginnings of the Bene Gesserit. The foundation is laid for the Suk doctors, and the cover blurb that I read mentioned the Swordmasters of Ginaz, but I found only a slight mention of the planet Ginaz. Another cover blurb I read mentioned the Mentat school, but there was nothing in this book, one could see the use for them as the League of Nobels did not use any computers.
The book flows very well and I found myself drawn to read more and more. The book does not have the intricate plot within plot layout as the other Dune works, but then this book is being narrated from a historical perspective. Given this, I found most of the characters actions predictable, but I have read all other 9 books, so this being a "historical" narrative, this keeps the characters close to their roles that were hinted at/layed out in the previous novels.
I give credit to Brian Herbert for the foresight of enlisting the help of Kevin J. Anderson in the creation of the Dune "prequels" as he openly admitted that he did not possess all of the "tools" required to under take this project, kudos.
You can purchase The Legends Of Dune - Volume 1 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
As for the Dune books, only the first two were ever worth anything. Frank Herbert himself couldn't keep the series going at a high level of quality, and his son's work qualifies as nothing more than shameless exploitation of a franchise.
And I think it explains somewhat what the honored maitres were afraid of. At about 1/3 of the book it foreshadows some very powerful force that was sent out into the galaxy to germinate, and that force is probably what scares the shit out of everyone inthe last Dune book by papa Herbert.
Cute troll. I like the touch of claiming that Dune (1965) stole from Star Wars (1977). Of course, this is science fiction we're talking about, so perhaps a time machine was involved, and George Lucas is really Frank Herbert's father...
Yes, Dune, originally published in the '60s stole from Star Wars. Genius.
On your second point, I managed to get to book 5 before quitting I think. Haven't tried re-reading since then, though I still think the first is excellent (and have reread it). If you have knowledge of world religions, Dune becomes a lot cooler incidentally.
Does this mean the butler did it?
This book was mildly interesting in a pure historical context, but the authoring style bordered on being the worst I've ever read.
It was dry, unimaginitive, cluttered and and it just "tried too hard."
I particularly found it annoying that the authors (as with the House * books) found it necessary to explain EVERYTHING. For example, you met a proto-Fremen and blam! He rides the first worm. You see a group of recluse women and BLAM!, they are the proto-Bene Gesserit.
It seemed that the authors went out of their way to CREATE connections, and with that in mind, they felt it necessary to connect to EVERYTHING. I find it hard to believe that in a Galaxy whose history is well over 12,000 years old, that we would see the beginnings of so many familiar settings within a span of a year. I would think they would be stretched out over a greater period of time.
There is so little good sci fiction in the world, its really sad when a decent series continues to be exploited to the point where its fans start to detest hearing about the next sequel.
Dune, while not the best book ever, was incredibly entertaining and some really unique concepts in it.
Pretty soon the Dune series is going to start showing up in the cheesey scifi book section next to the Star Wars and Dragon Lance crap. They should put the Robert Jordan stuff there as well since he seems to be writing an unending exploitation of his first couple of ok books.
Sigh.
Plus it seems like a lot of the ambience was stolen from Star Wars (Tatooine anyone?).
Read Dune's copyright. Dune was published twelve years before Star Wars was released.
At the risk of being moderated as a troll, axis-techno-geek's review wasn't a review at all, but just a summary of the book's contents. Except for the second to last paragraph, there was absolutely no analysis of the book.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for Slashdot to make informal arrangements with a couple contributors who are widely read in science fiction, and who are able to write reviews worthy of what quality sites Salon.com can muster.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
You've got to be kidding.
People are still interested in new episodes to this old fossil? Would we be even remotely interested in Skeeter Verne's "30,000 Leagues Under the Sea" or Coco Bradbury's "The Saturn Chronicles"?
Gimme a break.
Best Windows Freeware
They have a great universe, but neither of them is up to writing in it. It just gives me the feel of a couple of amateurs trying to be clever. They should stick to writing adventure storeis or some such. They can't handle the complexity Dune deserves.
Push the button Max!!!!
And the Jihad ended when cyborged Ibrahim Holzmann returned from his 400 year orbit, and was blow-up by some volunteer whose name escapes me.
I loved the original Dune series, all the way through Chapterhouse, must have read Dune 10+ times, and the entire series 3+ times (I know, no life). However, I was sorely disappointed by House Atreides, and couldn't even finish it. I found the the characters where extremely stiff, black and white, and uninteresting - totally lacking in the passion and subtlety found in the original series.
Anybody out there who had the same reaction to the first of Brian Herbert's Dune books have an opinion of whether things have gotten better or not? This review makes it sound like it might be worth it, but burnt once . . .
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
It's just DOM[1] syndrome kicking in again. It seems to happen to all of the Hard Scifi writers.
[1] Dirty Old Man. There is a definate relationship to the age of your average Scifi author, and the amount of sex in his latest works.
I read the internet for the articles.
I'll chime in a 'mee, too' about so about so many key events all happening so long ago, in such a short time.
But I'll add that this seems to be in part a Kevin J Anderson thing. Don't know if Herbert Jr. fought it, went along with it, or encouraged it. But my son is a big Star Wars fan, and reads the novels, including the KJA ones. These types of historical coincidence happen all the time in the Star Wars universe.
Maybe that's why I read only one or two for the 'good father' value, along with only one or two Redwall books a few years earlier.
Fan fiction tends to be that way.
At least in the later Dune (God Emperor of Dune+) novels by Herbert Sr. he had the good sense to allow some drift. Arrakis became Rakis, and other things got a little blurred over 3000 years. Yet we have 10,000 years of greater turmoil (probably leading to poorer bookkeeping) Atriedes, Harkonnen, Butler and the like come through with no corruption, and not even a giant worm to remember the correct spelling and pronunciation.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Why so long? They setup family names, institutions, types of government, nations. All of this is supposed to last 10,000 years?
Very little of any of these last more than a few hundred years just here on earth. Unless their universe goes absolutley stagnant for 10,000 years, what do they expect to be the same?
The rest of the history sounds interesting, but it would be more reasonable to set it less than a thousand years past. At least you could have some expectation that something would last to the "Dune" era in recognizable form.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Yes, it's supposed to be a grand, slow-moving epic, sweeping across the millennia.
No, it's not necessarily our own galaxy, or even our own universe for that matter. Things move more slowly. Humanity has slowed its pace, lost some of its pioneering, colonizing will. With the Guild Navigators' prescience, the Universe is open and available. No need to explore.
If you'd read the original books you'd understand that. Leto II's reign, for example. Lasted 3500 years. Not much changed. Planets changed, but attitudes didn't. That was part of the point.
Um, it certainly invalidates this part of his thesis:
If the refutation of a proferred example doesn't weaken a thesis, then of course, a valid example itself cannot strengthen it... and that's just silly: The point of an argument is not the stating of an opinion, bald and without elaboration. It's the marshalling of fact and logic to support your point. Choice of a poor example -- one betraying a certain sloppiness in research -- most definitely does impugn the whole effort, and rightly so.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I must preface this by saying I've not read this new book, so apologies if I'm off-base here, or if we're not up to the exact time in the timeline. This really makes me wonder if they're going to follow what was listed in the Dune Encyclopedia regarding Jehanne Butler being the cause of it all. Dr. Willis E. McNelly, the author of the Encyclopedia, was a friend of Frank Herbert, and Dr. McNelly was the only academic Frank Herbert trusted to do the work. Wish they'd put it back in print!
Do you really know that many people who should know better and actually do? ;)
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
Brian, if you're reading this...
Your father was a very talented man, and we all enjoyed his work tremendously. Dune is my favorite work of SciFi. But...it's your father's work and not yours. If you'd like to please his fans and put a little cash in your own pocket, could you please take a lesson from Christopher Tolkien?
While your work is interesting, it's not Dune and can never be. Dune is the work of Frank Herbert, and none other. So, may I humbly suggest taking his unpublished work and notes and arrange those into a book? I'd throw down cash today for a Dune:Silmarillion type work. I'll bet a lot of other people would too.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Ok, here's the short version of this post: letting Herbert Jr. and Anderson take over the Dune Franchise is a bit like letting Penny Marshall direct the next LOTR movie. We'd all go to see it anyway, but we'd cry because we know how much better Peter Jackson would have made it. So in my opinion, if anyone other than the dearly departed Frank should be allowed to embrace and extend the series, everyone should because surely someone would do a better job than this.
Here's the slightly elongated version:
I am huge Dune fan. I wanted to cry after I read the last line of Chapterhouse Dune, because I knew there would never be anymore, I had read the very last line of the very last dune book.
Well, imagine my surprise when the Dune:House N series appeared. I was torn but hopeful.
Well, the first two were like good fan fiction. They built a little bit of structure for events that happened later, were mostly consistent and pretty fun to read. But nothing like Frank's work.
The third book (House Corrino) was awful. I'll never get those hours back.
What bugs me is that no one else can add to the Dune canon except the copyright holders, so those of us who love it but do not profit from it are forced to watch in horror as the average quality of the official series is diluted.
I haven't yet read the book being reviewed here, and against my better judgment I probably will eventually but I'll be shocked if it's any good. It's just a shame that just because Herbert Jr. shares half a set of genes with Herbert Sr. that we have to be subjected to his inferior fan fiction while other, more talented writers who would like to add to the series can't publish and profit from their potential works for fear of legal reprisal.
Thank you for reading.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
OK, this is an honest question. I'm not trying to troll here.
But I have been a SF/Fantasy fan for most of my life. I am a huge fan of the classics, modern writing, and all of the (good) stuff in between. It should also be mentioned that I'm also not JUST a SF/Fantasy reader either--my reading stretches over a fair range.
That said, Dune is the ONLY book I have EVER failed to finish reading, once I got more than ten pages into it. In fact on my third (and last) attempt, I read some 400 pages of it, and couldn't be bothered to pick it up again.
I found Dune utterly uninvolving. Heavy, ponderous, dull, stilted, and just bloody painful reading. I had no interest in characters, stories, or outcomes in it.
So what am I missing that sequel #9, written by the son of the original author, is getting created at all, let alone cheered enthusiastically?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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.
In a fricken' universe of some hundreds of thousands or millions of worlds (don't recall which off hand, don't care), the only IMPORTENT ones are the ones which exist in the other books! Wow, 10,000 years eariler and the only importent planets are Giedi Prime and Salusa Secundus. And look, the only social institutions that exist other then The Big Bad guys are the ones that exist in later books: Mentats, Bene Gessirit, the Suk, and if the League of Nobels doesn't eventually become the Royalty of Dune's time, I'd be stunned.
Ten thousand years and nothing changes.
I don't know about everyone else, but I find this a distinct marker of lack of imagination on the part of the authors. Herbert himself was not so limited... in the last two books (best two of the series, IMHO), he brings in numerous players that have no existence in the earlier books. He wasn't limited by the stuff he established in later books.
Star Wars fiction also often suffers this problem, though not always. Some of it is very good and actually explores things not directly in the movies. Others would lead an impartial outside observer to believe that either A: There are only two planets in the entire galaxy or B: Endor is the capital of the galaxy, and Ewoks are the dominant race, because they never have any imagination and step outside of previous work. Oh, and the galaxy has a sum total of about 30 or 40 people in it, etc. etc. You get the idea.
Look, budding authors, if all I wanted to do was revisit the universe, I'd just re-read the books! Let me explore a bit... show me something new.
I heard Kevin in late September talk at a Denver bookstore.
So far in the series:
(1-6) Frank Herberts six Dune books.
(7-9) The three book prequel.
(10) First book of the Butlerian trilogy.
Coming:
(11-12) Second book of Butlerian trilogy done; third book being written.
(13-15) A fill-in-the-gaps trilogy between the prequels and #2 (Dune Messiah) on how Atriedes got assigned to Dune; How Paul's jihad went, etc.
(16) A "Road to Dune" book consisting of unpublished notes and short stories found in Frank's estate papers. Both authors are strongly opposed to a Christopher Toklein series, i.e. where Chris published 12 books on every scrap of paper his father wrote.
(17) A sequel to Frank's sixth book based on full outline found in the estate papers and initial work by Frank. (The amount of this material is highly controversial and we may being hoodwinked here.) Supposedly we learn more where the last no-ship went, who the mysterious farmer couple were, and something more about the scattering culture.
Kevin also mentioned how the co-authorship works. Both authors completely rewrite everything up to ten times in alternating shifts. Both authors work on other projects in the meantime. Brian H. does not fly in airplanes (a scifi tradition), so he rarely makes it out of the west coast.
Actually, Frank Herbert himself was the one that originally complained about Lucas ripping off the story. I've read in various places that he considered a lawsuit. He wrote several pages in a short essay within Eye about this topic where he points out that there are statistically too many similarities for this to be mere coincidence.
I actually finished this book last week. Although, you cannot even begin to compare the writing abilities of father and son, I've enjoyed the new books. Each book has gotten a little bit better and I actually enjoyed this book.. it had good pacing and got you involved in the story. SPOILER??... My only complaint is that it seemed to me that several things that were claimed on the book jacket, like the betrayal that made mortal enemies of Harkonnen and Atreides, were not actually in the story! Maybe I missed something?
I've read some of Brian Herbert's own works (I can't remember offhand who he was collab'ing with originally, but it didn't help), before he got involved in extending DUNE. Fact is, Brian is a dull writer who tends to beat what plot he has to death, and seems to mistake sufficiently convoluted for "intricate and detailed".
With the first Frank/Brian collaboration, I could tell TO THE WORD where Frank stopped writing and Brian took over. The difference in real content was that dramatic, at least to my writer/editor eye.
Anyway, after reading 3 or 4 of Brian's books and co-books (if that's a word.. well, it is now), I gave up on him entirely.
You're right that other authors can't write in the venue -- unless they get permission from the franchise owners (I'm not sure who the legal owner is at this point, having not followed it that closely). But certainly if someone really wanted to, they could ask to be licensed for a book. Tho for all I know, arguments over creative control, and whether Brian Herbert reserves the right to [gods save us] rewrite the resulting novel may be the real show-stopper.
(Now let's see if slashdot is speaking to me. It's been disappearing my posts ever since the move.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The series really did peak at Dune Messiah, though. A short, simple story showing how a mob can take a movement intended to better humanity and pervert it into an excuse to kill and destroy anyone they don't like. In the end, it becomes a stunning critique of organized religion; how it can destroy even its leader.
Oh, and I agree with you about Brian Herbert. Shooting's too good for the bastard.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Hey, that's MY back yard they're plagiarizing! :)
:)
There's this gadget you can buy that goes whap-whap to scare away gophers. Friends have one, and I keep warning them about the worm problem..
(Tremors, anyone?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
KJA took the storyline of Timothy Zahn's good "Heir To The Empire" Star Wars books and turned it into Star Trek-esque technobabble, "My goodness, how will Luke and friends save the galaxy today?" and "Oh, let the precocious little tykes fix everything" nonsense. That opened the floodgates for other Trekkish hacks like Vonda N. MacIntyre (yes, the same one that wrote a thousand bad Trek novels) to try their hand at Star Wars. Her "Crystal Star" was particularly wretched, even by the standards of her fellow (I know the word is overused in this post, but it's just so damn appropriate) hacks. Take your average Trek book, switch "Enterprise" for "Millenium Falcon" and throw in a stock "Leia's Children Go Missing Yet Again" sideplot, and that's what you end up with. More technobabble and less plot than your average Voyager episode.
:)
Not even Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston (best known for their original ideas in the X-Wing series) and Zahn's return could salvage the whole steaming pile that is "New Jedi Order".
And as for shameless exploitation of a franchise, I'd like to mention a few Foundation sequels being authorized by Isaac Asimov's estate (ie relatives who want to milk the old guy's corpse for all they can get). Poor Isaac. At least he'll never have to suffer through the eyesore that is "Foundation and Chaos".
Hey, I enjoyed this. Is there any chance for me to be a paid book critic? Anyone hiring?
Personnally, I don't have time for any of them. Brian is not Frank in either imagination or skill. Not that this is a major insult, Frank was a master.
However, Brian did recently find his father's COMPLETE OUTLINE for Dune 7. So, Brian and Kevin will write that, which I will gladly purchase, after they are done with their prequels. Hurry up guys!
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
That's when the three major powers in the human universe make an alliance - the Lion Throne, the Spacing Guild, and CHOAM...it happened about 16,200a.d. Being a Dune fan, I actually made a calendar with both Christian and Guild dates. Gotta format it up in html....