Sci-fi Channel's Children of Dune

jazdogg writes "Caught the trailer last night on the Sci-fi Channel for the new Frank Herbert's Children of Dune mini-series. I only hope this series is better than the previous one." I dunno - I liked the last Dune series, and am looking forward to this one.

Comments

Re:dune

[jjohnson]

Actually, Herbert had sketched out a seven volume story covering 10,000 years; parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was finished. And the second of Paul's children named Leto was consciously named that because Paul wanted a son named after his father.

Herbert got through six of the seven. His son has the notes for the seventh, and is preparing to butcher his father's legacy as he's done six times already with those godawful prequel books.

Re:dune

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Dune was initially conceived as trilogy. The first book sets up Paul as the perfect Messianic hero. The following two books tear down this hero and point out the perils of the hero myth with is so prevelant in our religions and culture. An excellent yet lenghty analysis written by Tim Oreilly can be found here: http://tim.oreilly.com/sci-fi/herbert/

Re:Linux?

[The Only Druid]

You're a fool. A notable point in Dune is that there are no computers. In fact, Herbert explains that millenia before there was a robotic revolution, leading to a banning of computers of any sophistication. The Mentats are human computers, performing such calculations, although they are an industrial society. Spaceflight is accomplished through the mental powers of Navigators to bend space.

Your post was completely off-topic and irrelevant.

Sorry if this is harsh, but you shouldn't post just to post.

Read Dune, Then Stop

[Nova Express]

Its easy to understand why Sci-Fi would make a miniseries of Dune, since it's a great book. Were it not for Hollywood's sequel mentality, it would be a lot harder to understand why they're making a miniseries of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune (which Sci-Fi is mashing together for the Children of Dune miniseries), which are not great books by any stretch of the imagination.

Here's some advice for those who haven't read any of Herbert's many Dune sequels yet: Don't. Not only were they not as good as the original, they weren't even in the same league. If you ask just about any serious science fiction reader, they'll tell you the same thing: Read Dune, then STOP! Dune Messiah sucks, Children of Dune sucks less than Dune Messiah, but still isn't a tenth as good as the original, and God-Emperor of Dune sucks the farts out of dead cats.

If you can just pretend that Herbert never wrote anything after Dune, you'll avoid wasting your time reading inferior sequels and tarnishing your memories of the original.

Re:Dune Messiah?

[Kaypro]

John Harrison, the screenwriter and co-producer answers (from here):

Q: What books does Children of Dune cover? Why not call it Dune Messiah?

A: After the enormous success of SCI FI's first Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries, SCI FI asked Richard Rubinstein and me to come up with a proposal for another. After a lot of thought and conversation, it seemed that the next books in Frank Herbert's epic presented unique adaptation opportunities as well as problems.

Dune Messiah by itself did not resolve completely enough to stand on its own; it set the stage for Children of Dune. But that third book couldn't be the basis for a new miniseries without the precedent of Dune Messiah. So I decided we should combine both books and create a continuation of the first miniseries. Simply put, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune would complete the saga of Muad'Dib and set the stage for what was to come.

There is a significant passage in Frank Herbert's Dune, spoken by Reverend Mother Ramallo, in which she tells Paul that "when religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows." Of course she means Muad'Dib -- he is the whirlwind. As Dune fans know, in Dune Messiah he is tortured by what that whirlwind has meant, of what has become of his revolution. And, as students of history, we know that "every revolution contains the seeds of its own destruction." In Children of Dune, those seeds have started to bloom. But there is an answer, a road that Muad'dib was unable or unwilling to take: the Golden Path. By the end of Children of Dune, Muad'dib's son, Leto II, is willing to go down that path.

So I decided to combine both Dune Messiah and Children of Dune into one seamless narrative that would complete this chapter of the Atreides on Arrakis and set the stage for the next 3,000-year era, the Golden Path, and the reign of the God Emperor.