Slashdot Mirror
Frank Herbert's Dune, 50 Years On
An anonymous reader writes: This October will be the 50th anniversary of Frank Herbert's massively popular and influential sci-fi novel Dune. The Guardian has written a piece examining its effects on the world at large, and how the book remains relevant even now. Quoting: 'Books read differently as the world reforms itself around them, and the Dune of 2015 has geopolitical echoes that it didn't in 1965, before the oil crisis and 9/11. ... As Paul's destiny becomes clear to him, he begins to have visions 'of fanatic legions following the green and black banner of the Atreides, pillaging and burning across the universe in the name of their prophet Muad'Dib.' If Paul accepts this future, he will be responsible for 'the jihad's bloody swords,' unleashing a nomad war machine that will up-end the corrupt and oppressive rule of the emperor Shaddam IV (good) but will kill untold billions (not so good) in the process. In 2015, the story of a white prophet leading a blue-eyed brown-skinned horde of jihadis against a ruler called Shaddam produces a weird funhouse mirror effect, as if someone has jumbled up recent history and stuck the pieces back together in a different order."
the story of a white prophet leading a blue-eyed brown-skinned horde of jihadis
They were not blue eyed in the normal sense of iris color. They were blue eyed in the sense that the drug they were saturated with had turned the whites of their eyes blue. And for heavy long term users it could be a dark blue making their eyes seem black at a distance.
... um, yeah, that's the eerie parallel. OK.
Yeah Herbert's "Shaddam" is similar to "Saddam", like Nostradamus' "Hister" was similar to "Hitler". Next season the "History Channel" will be running shows discussing possible extraterrestrial influences on Herbert's writings. :-)
Herbert was exactly writing about hydraulic despotism, which is a common thing for varying definitions of "hydraulic". Oil is the big one right now, but water is showing all signs of being the next. As for revolution, anyone compassionate enough to be a good leader will have to face the choice that what path they are embarking upon will lead to death and destruction. Playing a race card is just shock value clickbait...
T. E. Lawrence is missing in the action of writing summaries.
T. E. Lawrence is missing from many places, especially the reading lists of the politicians and diplomats who tried to manage the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, Lawrence is also absent from the reading lists of many who criticize the US' anti-terrorist efforts. Regardless of your opinions regarding the wars, US policy, etc Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" is an absolutely informative and insightful book and "both" sides of the issue will learn from it.
I wonder how long he or todays t.e,would last in the middle east today ?
One major difference between then and now is that according to the Arab leaders of the day who explained things to Lawrence, a fundamentalist movement arose once or twice a century for many centuries. And when these fundamentalists became troublesome the moderate majority would rise up against them, from the mosque to the street and everything in between. But the Arab leaders added that such fundamentalists are always lurking somewhere so it will be best to travel in native clothing and with a native guard in the desert.
Perhaps I am mistaken but I think the fundamentalists becoming troublesome refers to something far less than what we are seeing today. The cultural understanding and respect and the diplomacy of Lawrence would not help him much in an environment where being a local moderate muslim can be a death sentence.
"Lawrence would, I assure you, get along swimmingly," said Tony Blair.
Perhaps in the Saudi palace but not over the countryside he once roamed. The cultural understanding and respect and the diplomacy of Lawrence would not help him much in an environment where being a local moderate muslim can be a death sentence. Re-read your Seven Pillars. The fundamentalist herecies that periodically occurred were normally put down by the local moderates before they caused much trouble. Plus the protection of the Saudi king doesn't carry the weight it used to in the region. Things are completely different today in so many ways.
A good workmanlike book? It is to SF what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy, and one of the greatest pieces of world creation ever written.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Frank is a deeper fellow than all but a few really grasp.
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."
- Frank Herbert.
How perfectly does that describe the Guardian and most of its readership?
Um... not very well?
soylentnews.org
oh really? So you think the Guardian is an open minded institution that doesn't routinely engage in ideological advocacy of the same ideology?
Or that that ideology in question doesn't basically a have the same solution for everything?
Because if you don't know that... you haven't been paying attention.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
a British national who led the saudi's to revolt against the rule of the ottoman empire to help the british in the middle east. the story of Mohammed is probably more similar since the Muslims actually killed off the Eastern Roman Empire in the end. and there are theories that Mohammed's family was somewhat new in the area and were actually Jews who fled the Roman destruction of Israel during one of the revolts. the Muslim and ancient Christian/Hebrew names for God are virtually identical frank herbert didn't predict much of anything
I think the fundamental difference here (so to speak) is that ISIS is not a fundamentalist uprising. Oh, sure, they claim to be a religious movement, but everyone in the region does. Fundamentalism, in any religion, is not typically accompanied by using sexual slavery as an incentive to get young men to fight for you (ISIS has quite the flexible and convenient moral code).
My understanding of ISIS (mostly from a Muslim Arab coworker, so of course my "expert" could be wrong) is that they're "religious" in the same way Scientology is: they have all the trappings of religion, but it's all quite contrived. They emphasize whatever parts of scripture helps their goals and ignore the rest in a very obvious and transparent way that fools almost no one. It's not that they're murdering "moderate Muslims" per se, they're simply murdering anyone who speaks up about how evil they are, or simply speaks against them, whether on religious grounds or any other grounds.
There are many other places in the world where IMO the problem really is religious fundamentalism, but those guys aren't raising armies and conquering vast territory. Even in Afghanistan it's just one tribe after another, not a united fundamentalist army.
I think it's a mistake to confuse the problem with fundamentalist Islam in other parts of the world and other cultures with ISIS and the Arabian Peninsula.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Plus ca change...
30 year old description but still scarily accurate:
"The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is."
Many years ago, I wrote an article on Arabic and Islamic themes in Frank Herbert's Dune. It includes many etymological info on terms used in Dune.
Hope some of you enjoy it.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I just re-read Dune and Dune Messiah a month or so ago. I think Dune Messiah is terribly underrated, and a necessary counterpoint to the mythical heroism of Paul Muad'Dib in the first book.
Perhaps you meant to include it between Dune and Children of Dune? If not, you should give it another look - especially after a rereading of Dune.
semantics are everything!
My understanding of ISIS (mostly from a Muslim Arab coworker, so of course my "expert" could be wrong) is that they're "religious" in the same way Scientology is: they have all the trappings of religion, but it's all quite contrived. They emphasize whatever parts of scripture helps their goals and ignore the rest in a very obvious and transparent way that fools almost no one. It's not that they're murdering "moderate Muslims" per se, they're simply murdering anyone who speaks up about how evil they are, or simply speaks against them, whether on religious grounds or any other grounds.
I would argue that that's true of all religions, and everybody. If you can show me an entirely internally consistent religion and a person who follows 100% of those teachings exactly, I would be shocked! Everybody emphasizes whatever part of the scripture they want and ignore other parts. Some conservative Christians glide past the "Do not judge" part and spend a lot of time focusing on sexual immorality! Some liberal Christians glide past the many parts of the new testament that deal with sexual immorality and spend a lot more time with the "do not judge" part! That's just religion for you. Remember, even a religion as seemingly peaceful as Buddhism had adherents who really perfected the modern concept of the suicide bomber.
Personally, I was offended when President Obama attempted to define what true Islam was, and who was a true Muslim and who was a faker. How colonialist of him to attempt to be the arbiter and definer of native religion!
There are many other places in the world where IMO the problem really is religious fundamentalism, but those guys aren't raising armies and conquering vast territory. Even in Afghanistan it's just one tribe after another, not a united fundamentalist army.
I think you're partially right and partially wrong. The issue is that Islam to a very large degree overlaps with parts of the world that have maintained pre-modern tribal ties to a degree that most of us in the east and west are no longer familiar with. Thus, in Afghanistan, it's not that the fundamentalists aren't united, but that many tribal coalitions have been unified through fundamentalist Islam.
I think it's a mistake to confuse the problem with fundamentalist Islam in other parts of the world and other cultures with ISIS and the Arabian Peninsula.
I don't. We could have a nearly infinite discussion about the history of Islam, the history of the Middle East, the rise of the West, and the economic and social morass of much of the Islamic world. We would actually probably end up agreeing about a lot of these things! Militant fundamentalism used to be a part of Christianity, but was stamped out a long time ago. Militant fundamentalism in Islam has yet to be eradicated. If you think the trappings of Caliphate, the revival of the 'Uthman dinar and other potent symbols of early Islam, and the persecution of historical enemies exist in a vacuum, I think you're very wrong.
Have you ever heard a evangelical Christian Bible study or lesson? It's interesting. They will focus to an incredible degree on each word of the verse they are studying. They will talk about the word in the original Greek (or Aramaic, etc.) and its connotations, how it compares to other Biblical accounts, etc. We're talking nitty gritty minutia and some interesting historical analysis. BUT, they also start with the inviolable precondition that the Bible is the literal word of God and divinely inspired. So, forget any line of reasoning like "Maybe Paul said XYZ because of his Jewish heritage and don't forget that the Roman governor had been stamping down on ABC, so if the early Christians wanted to avoid being persecuted, they had to act this way." The correct answer is always "Because God."
Same for ISIS. They are VERY grounded in history, but they are very one dimensional. Belittling (or disregarding the validity of) their beliefs is a huge mistake, however.
Wow. Herbert, looking for exotic inspiration for his stories, uses elements of the Arab, Persian and Muslim world thus making his stories very different from the vast majority of scifi at the time, which tended to be was based in civilizations resembling those built by Jews and Christians in moderate climates (most authors start with what they and their readers are familiar with and then get busy telling a story). Herbert floods his stories with words that have a middle-eastern sound, scenery straight out of "Lawrence of Arabia", middle-eastern-style tribal and martial behaviors, and titles the first book "Dune" as if to put a huge capstone advertizing this on the endeavor. This is all obvious to the early readers of the work. The military aspects of Dune are obvious both in the way the off-world forces approach Arrakis (an actual Arabic word) like Westerners approaching the Arab/Muslim world. The Fremen are clearly modeled on the tribal people of the middle-east, and therefore are organized and fight as those people have historically organized themselves and fought (absent the scifi props of worms and such). Even the spice is an allegory both for oil (which from a Western perspective "must flow" and is required for transportation across large distances) and for actual drugs (such as the heroin from Afghanistan)
Decades pass
Ignorant morons pickup the book "Dune", skim through it (or, admittedly, SOME even READ it), and declare that the author was amazingly prophetic and that aspects of what he wrote seem to have a mysterious connection to the modern world etc.
[face palm]
One one level it's very a funny display of extreme ignorance, but on another level it's a disturbing display of intellectual failure. This confusion about cause-and-effect, source-and-sink, and otherwise backward thinking is right up there with cargo cultism and is an indictment of the reasoning and education of the person displaying it.
That is complete nonsense.
Everyone I'm aware about doing bible interpretations is fully aware about the fact that the bible was written by humans.
We all know Jesus was not "walking on water" as the amaraic phrase only means "to stroll at the beach".
With all due respect, "everyone you're aware of" does not constitute probably much but a tiny fraction of the diversity of religious belief in the world. Just google "Bible divinely inspired" or see the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inspiration or view a local evangelical or fundamentalist church service. Many Christians do believe that while the Bible was written by humans, it was divinely inspired and as such is the literal word of God.
This belief is even more universal in Islam, where there is much less of a history of critical or literary theory reading of the Qur'an. It's a tenet of faith that the Qur'an was "revealed" to Muhammad one revelation at a time. There is a concept of the "Umm al-Kitab" -- the mother book -- a sort of celestial ur-book of wisdom and religious teaching that sets there floating in the ether. The Qur'an is but a portion of the umm al-kitab that God chose to reveal to Muhammad.
Care to point some out? AFAIK the new testament has not much to say about sexuality.
Sure. Most are in the Pauline epistles (that's actually why I mentioned Paul in the section of mine you quoted), but they appear directly as quotes from Jesus too. Here are just a few:
Jesus:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/matthew/passage/?q=matthew+5:27-28 -- Looking at a woman with lust is the same as adultery. (Matthew 5:27-28)
http://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/matthew/passage/?q=matthew+5:31-32 -- Divorce is as bad as adultery. (Matthew 5:31-32). (You can also get out of these two that adultery is bad)
Paul:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/1-corinthians/passage/?q=1-corinthians+5:1-5 -- Sexual immorality is a big deal. (1 Corinthians 5:1-5)
http://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/romans/passage/?q=romans+1:26-32 -- More on sexual immorality. Those practice such things (one of such things being ... well, read it and see!) are "deserving of death." (Romans 1:26-32)
You can find probably dozens more.
Huge stretches of the book are internal monologue or whispered conversations in dark rooms, where two people exchange few words and pages are spent on exposition. The book is unfilmable; or rather, you can make a lot of movies with the title Dune but they're going to end up just sharing character names and the general bag of situations.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.