Slashdot Mirror
Children Of Dune Tonight
JQuazar writes "Time to get to that Tivo and select 'pick programs to record,' Children of Dune starts Sunday on the SciFi channel!" Waiting...patiently...
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
We're having Spice Beer, Slig (Tofu) dishes and Freman cakes (pumpkin pie). Tomorrow we're gonna have Sandtrout (belly tuna with a little blue dye) and Caladanian wine. Not sure about tuesday.
The only rule is: No Talking! and you have to have read the books... non believers can stay home!
SciFi is also replaying their original 3-part miniseries of Dune during the day today, so if you haven't had a chance to catch it, start the Tivo a bit earlier and snag it as well
Download it here.
IIRC, at the end of Dune 2, Paul had run away into the dessert leaving his children at the mercy of the Bene Gesserit etc. Lot of people were dissapointed with the fact that Paul turned out to be a sissy after all.
Now, Leto and Chani have grown up sharing every memory; The abomination has gripped St Alia-of-the- knife. Everything now hinges on the awesome sacrifice Leto has to make. (Some sacrifice: he covers himself with sandtrout and becomes a human-worm meld that lives a thousand years as the God-emperor.) Someone refresh my memory : What else happens?
most of God-emperor was totally over my head, but Heretics and Chapterhouse were amazing. And now to ask the perennial question: who were the old couple at the end of CH:D?
I have found a truly wonderful proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, but unfortunately this sig is too small to contain it.
I dont have a Tivo, you insensitive cl..
Oh, wait... This is not a poll ? Never mind, move along, all you Tivos !
getSexySig();
SlashdotLemming says:
Hmmm, just more intellectually devoid crap for the masses. No wonder I haven't turned on my television for 12 years. Tripe tripe tripe.
Oh, wait, did you say SciFi channel and/or anime!?! Hell, I special ordered my TiVo already preprogrammed for this event baby!!
Save Farscape!!
IIRC, at the end of Dune 2, Paul had run away into the dessert leaving his children at the mercy of the Bene Gesserit etc. Lot of people were dissapointed with the fact that Paul turned out to be a sissy after all.
.
I must protest!
Paul Maud'dib was living the Fremen way! If you're blind (as Paul was) you're a burden to your people and you go into the desert to die. It was either that or live in hypocrasy. I thought it was a shame at first, but in the end I decided it's better to burn out than to fade away. After all, Paul bailed as the series got lame . .
Like you said, the books got really freaky after the second one. God Emperor was just too weird for me, and I gave up on the last two because I thought the series was in a death spiral.
But if you reckon they were worth it, I may go back and give them a go. What does everyone else think?
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
- No TiVo...
- Dune boring...
- Have 6 year old son...
I'll be watching the inside of my eyelids when this is on anyway.--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
You can find the miniseries under "Frank Herbert's Children of Dune". I took me a while to find it because I was looking under "Dune" or "Children".
its people like you that reafirm that I am sane, at least as a populace percentile rating
"Waiting...patiently... "
Impatience is the mind killer...
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I think they are worth it. I read them every five years or so. Some of the dialogue in the later books pisses me off, to be honest with you, but on the whole it's a rich universe to think about.
One thing I particularly like about it is that it's science fiction written with an emphasis on the psychological and philosophical, as opposed to the 'Hard SF' (technologically-based) and fantasy stuff (wizards, goblins, whatever, I couldn't give a fuck, really). There are themes in all 6 books that you don't really find in other science fiction, certainly not as developed anyways.
Tim O'Reilly in an interview with Herbert discovered that a lot of the first 3 books were meant as a riposte to Asimov's Foundation series -- there's a sense in Foundation that 'the wise men of science will save us', whereas Herbert felt quite strongly that trusting in any single group of people was a failure of intellect. (This has elements related to the Hard SF mentioned above, but I digress)
One thing I found interesting about the Bene Gesserit was that they were sketched initially as a female version of the Jesuits.
Enough of this. Read them, they're worth the effort. Really.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Since I have a super secret ability to see movies between the time they leave the theater and go to the video store, and since this movie about to go to TV was never in the theaters, I've already seen it.
First off, there are no real spoilers in this comment. Things like it's a 4.5 hour movie split into three 1.5 hour segments are fair game.
If you liked the first movie, you'll enjoy this one. This movie covers both the second and third books, of which I've heard bad things. If you like them just for entertainment then you'll do well. If you are a Dune fanatic, then whether you enjoy them or not depends on whether you enjoyed the books or not.
Technically they are well done. The effects are as well done as the first miniseries, and the acting is on par with the first. If anything lacks, I'd say it was due to the books they are following rather than any problems of the production. Since I haven't read the books I can't comment on how well they follow the plot, except to say that the summaries I've seen online match the movies.
All that said, I enjoyed spending a nice quiet evening with my wife watching it. It was a long evening (4.5 hours), but we were glued to the set, so we couldn't turn it off and continue it later. I'd hate to see it with commercials and with time in between. If you hate that to, then be aware that you video store will have it on its shelves on May 20th in DVD and VHS.
I'll reply to this post with a movie summary.
-Adam
Basic plot summary (not too spoilerish): Paul has a fremen concubine and a wife (who is from another house). Paul and the fremen woman are trying to have kids, but find that they can't, so they use an ancient fremen fertility treatment which not only helps pregnency, but speeds it up and give the child born special abilities due to the spice.
Paul becomes blind due to a terrorist attack on a city he is visiting. The ancient fremen way has blind people go out into the desert to die, which is rather respectful since they don't demand the body water they carry at death. His sister reigns while his child is growing up. A fremen prophet rises up against alia (pauls reigning sister), saying that arakis is and should be a desert planet, rather than the green earth-like planet pauls and now his sister's reign has made it. The worms are dying because of this.
Real story (Big spoilers): Pauls public wife is giving his fremen concubine contraceptives. The are discovered, and decide to use the fremen method to overcome their effects. She has twins, a boy and a girl, and dies in childirth. During this time those who were instruction pauls wife to give the contraceptive launch another plan to prevent the birth or kill the children. They fail, but pauls wife dies due to the speed of the pregnancy and delivery. The children grow up under the care of pauls wife and sister (their aunt), as paul leaves for the desert due to his blindness. During the remainder of the movie paul lives as the prophet testifying against his own riegn and sister. Most of the other characters do not realize this, but suspect it so they don't have him assasinated as they would any other detractor.
The remainder covers the treachery of another house trying to disrupt the spice trade so they can gain additional power and control. This fails due in part to their own treachery, and in part to pauls mother. Sister alia becomes delusional and power hungry, and eventually kills herself. Pauls son becomes one with the worms, and thus endowed with power begins to bring down the house of paul atreides, bringing arrakis back to its desert self.
There's more, but I gotta go.
-Adam
But if you reckon they were worth it, I may go back and give them a go. What does everyone else think?
:-)
Spoiler Warning!
After Dune, just about everything is depressing. God Emperor of Dune was weird enough, but wait until you come to Heretics of Dune.
Herbert builds up a belief system, where he just shows everything that you knew and respected fade away. And things that you loved to despise, or did not quite like of, like say the BG, turn out to be almost the nice guys!
And then you will realize why Leto-II was good to the BG in the God Emperor series! He knew that the BG had a much much bigger role to play.
Now Dune:Chapterhouse. Thats another very very weird book. Its almost like telling you, everything you knew, or thought that you knew, is false. And you hardly got to see the tip of the iceberg.
He leaves it on a very weird note - either he was planning to write more or did not want to, or knew that he'd not live to write more. Coming to Marty and Daniel, read this article. The ending of the Dune series is just as weird as the ending to Asimov's foundation - just about anything could happen, and you're left with infinite possibilities, and infinite questions
So on the whole, the whole series has a little sad note, and a very weird feeling, but you come away satisfied, although with lots of questions!
Now my question is, what really happened to Ix? Because in House Atreides by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, he discusses some very weird things about the Atreides and the Ix houses, and some weird characters and the like. Any ideas? I would also like to read more about the Butlerian Jihad, guess Brian is writing a book on that?
For those who think that the Dune books provided diminishing returns, there's at least one other geek-friendly choice for your viewing pleasure tonight. Game Show Network is airing "Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal", also at 9 ET. It's the story of Michael Larson, an out of work ice cream truck driver from Ohio, who managed to beat the system on a network game show. He realized that the "random" prize board actually followed a few basic patterns, including two spaces which would continually give him more spins on the board. He then memorized the patterns, got onto the show, and set the earnings record for TV gameshows before Millionare came on. It's a fun story. GSN is airing a documentary about his plan and both episodes of his original appearance tonight.
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.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
the first miniseries was AWFUL.
:-)
Every character was totally uninspiring and the acting was just... horrible (never to mention the odd accents getting in the way of everything).
Kyle MacLachlan can act the pants off this Alec Newman guy.
William Hurt is a normally a fine actor, but in the dune miniseries they had him as if he was permanently goosed up on nyquil or something.
Then the sets. Many of them were BLINDINGLY obviously sound stages, especially the desert scenes. It was very distracting.
The only thing distracting about the Lynch production was Duke Leto speaking into a socket wrench
As jumbled as the Lynch dune production was, and despite how much it deviated from the book, it was easily a million times more enjoyable than the miniseries production.
Given all that, I guess they can hardly do worse than the first miniseries. Nowhere to go but up...
Kid Leto's business plan:
1. Wait while your whole family dies in "accidents" or is "posessed by ghosts".
2. Become one with worm
3. [...]
4. Prophet!
To understand and enjoy the (original) miniseries, it is vital to understand one critical point.
It's not a movie. It's a filmed theature production with a few special effects.
Without that, you're doomed.
The performance of the Baron Harkonnen is most telling and what first twigged me to this; after the big space scene with the House Atreides moving off Caladan it looked like a movie, but as the planet Dune fades into the Baron's face, who is quite obviously delivering a soliloquy, I understood.
After that, the soundstages, the extreme lighting, a lot of other little things, it will all make sense. I also think that given the obvious budget constraints the hybridized approach allowed a superior product to be produced, vs. the cost of doing the whole thing as a movie. The cost of filming "on location" would have been truly prohibitive, and the project would simply never have been at all. Considering the IMHO fine quality of the final product, I think it's worthwhile.
I didn't find the acting flat, I found it appropriate for that environment.
I suspect the same will be true of the sequel, though as I can't get the Sci-Fi channel (sob!!!) I won't know. So watch it as a recorded theatrical production, not as a movie, and I think you'll see what I mean and enjoy it more.
The only thing that I really feel was sacrificed and I wish they had tried a bit harder ($$$) was they lost the feeling of being out on the Dunes. Even just one shot on location with a nice sweep away (my choice would have been as Paul and Jessica emerged from the ornithopter just prior to finding the Fremen) would have added a lot and I would have forgiven them the rest of the soundstage stuff. (Remember in Star Trek VI the huge pull-away done on location in Alaska? Effective, even though all the scenes on each side of that were soundstage.)
I have read the series four times now, and God Emperor still comes out on top!
The plot of God-emperor was inherent in the original plot of Dune. (I can't speak to the TV series. I heard about the atrocity of a movie, and assumed that a TV series would be even worse.)
... wrong.
Anyway... Dune was basically about ecology. Dune Messiah was about politics. Children of Dun was about duty. God Emperor was about evolution. Chapterhouse Dune was about death.
I don't have a one word summary for Heretics of Dune, but the one-word summaries are clearly too shallow anyway.
When evaluating any action taken by Paul, Ganima, or Leto II, one must always ask themselves what future are these people manuvering away from. (Not towards. One of Paul's early discoveries was that manuvering towards a future was a bad idea. The secret was to manuver away from the one's you don't want to encounter.)
Leto's "Golden Path" is called that as a reference to the Sun Kings. It is a particular kind of balenced madness, similar to multiple personalities taken to the limit, but in this case each of the personalities is a person who has lived. It is presented as an autocracy, but the ego is not in charge (i.e., Leto isn't the autocrat.) This is something that it's quite difficult to be consistent about, and to me it seems that he slips many times. It ends with all of the personalities that had been Leto spending an appearant eternity in a sensory deprivation condition. (This is a part of why he manuvered things so that 'Rakis was bombarded with atomic weapons until there was nothing left alive. That brought the eternity of sensory deprivation to an end, for most of him.)
In the series taken as a whole, the main theme is "don't be short sighted!". Of course, if Paul had been braver, then HE would have taken the Golden Path, and spared Leto. The alternative was the end of humanity. We aren't given any details of how this would have happened. But there are indications that Siona is the answer, and that without her the Bene Tlielaxu could have built killing machines (think Saberhagen's Berserkers) that would have ended up killing everything. But Siona is impossible to trace.
The prequels are atrocious. They aren't a part of the series, no matter what they claim. No Ships were not invented until towards the end of Leto's reign, and were one attempt to work around him. That failed. (He could see them.) This is an important element in the God Emperor. Siona was the answer that he invented, but he was continually pressing others to come up with answers that he couldn't forsee... probably because he hated the end that he could see he was headed for.
I'm skipping a lot, and trivializing an extremely deep work. And it's been about a year since I reread the series. But there's an immense depth and coherrence. You may not agree with all of his assumptions or conclusions (I think some of them are silly), but trivializing it is
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.