Dune - The Book and the 1984 film *spoilers for both*

Absolutely not. God Emperor of Dune is an intellectual piece of science-fiction literature by a highly articulate, skilled writer that was pushing the genre as far as it could go.

The prequels are pulpy, throwaway Star Wars action novels. I commend Christopher Tolkien and the Tolkien Estate for resisting the temptation to licence out Middle Earth to other writers. You just end up with a diluted legacy from hack writers looking to score a quick buck.

 

Now, now. No need to insult Star Wars novels like that.

I think that if you get the right writers, it can turn out great (like the Second Foundation trilogy by Benford/Bear/Brin). Unfortunately that's rare amongst estate-sponsored continuations.

 

I gave the Second Foundation trilogy a shot mainly because I like Greg Bear. But I couldn't get past the first book, gave up in the middle of it. IMO Benford was a terrible choice for a Foundation novel.

 

That was due to Fremen terraforming efforts though. They and Kynes knew the part the sandtrout played and worked to inhibit that role. In any normall water rich environment, the sandtrout would have just trapped the moisture and removed it from the system. This of course eventually did occur again after the death of Leto and the rise of the Priesthood of the Divided God in Heretics.

This begs the question, has Kevin J Anderson ever written anything good? This guy is pretty much known for shitty sequel and prequel novels.

 

the Dune prequels are...interesting. some of them are like bad train wrecks. i can't say i enjoyed very many of them and yet i keep reading em.

as for Kevin J. Anderson i will say i really enjoyed his book Captain Nemo. but then, i love Jules Verne and Captain Nemo pretty much combines all the Verne novels.

 

The Venus Prime books (based on short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke, expanded by Paul Preuss) were quite good, seeing as they were all written by Clarke himself!

 

I give the Lynch finale rain a handwave by making it just a localised Arrakeen storm. So no worms/trouts affected (apart from the ones in the immediate area). But yes, anyone who's read the books will go: wtf?

 

I just pretend they're in da club.

 

I really like some of Lynch's films, especially Lost Highway, Wild at Heart and Eraserhead... but he's not a very smart guy. He certainly didn't understand the novel beyond its surface elements.

 

I'm a HUGE fan of the star wars novels (not every one obviously, but as a whole I love the star wars EU) so comparing the House books to SW novels is a compliment in my opinion. Kevin Anderson has written some great SW novels. As much as I love the Dune series, I could literally think of a ridiculous number of SW books I enjoyed more than God Emperor. Again, God Emperor, Heretics and Chapterhouse aren't bad (neither are the last two books in the series by Herbert/KA). But, they aren't close to the quality of the original 3 Dune books, and I liked the House prequels better, too. God Emperor, from what I can remember, just got ridiculous. It starred a whole bunch of characters you don't care about (and, because of the time jump after it, never see or here from again). Leto and Duncan are the only familiar characters, and I honestly can't remember anyone elses names from that book. I think there was a woman who had atredies blood and was a main character.

I also remember Leto getting killed, and then actually not totally dying because his mind was split into all the pieces of himself that seperated from his comical human/sandworm body. After GE, there is a time jump that leads to better books than GE, with some characters that are atleast somewhat memorable and a better plot than "Its about time for us to kill Emperoor Leto, right?". I know I'm sounding negative about GE, but I do like it. Its just my least favorite Dune book, and I can think of numerous other books that are much better than it.

As for the Tolkien stuff, that was definately a series that only needed 4 books. I'm glad its never been liscensed for new stuff (although, honestly, Peter Jackson's Hobbit is so loose an adaptation of the book it almost counts as a seperate version of the events in Tolien's book). That said, the LOTR stuff thats not Hobbit or the trilogy is pretty bad. Well, not bas so much as incomprehensible. I actually would love to see a good writer turn the Silmarillion and the other stuff into actual stories/novels that read like books. Right now, I've been defeated by the Silmarillion twice after about 70 pages. I can read complicated stuff, and I really enjoy reading. But, The Silmarillion is basically unreadable. I'm sure there is a good story in there somewhere, but it needs someone to turn it into an actual book. Besides that, the LOTR series has been left alone when it comes to books, and I think that was a good idea. The Dune series, though, is a totally different situation, and I think its only benefitted from having more books.

 

It's been the better part of a decade since I read God Emperor. Let me see if I can recall the essentials....

Spoiler: God Emperor of Dune

Paul was produced by the BG breeding program as the one who could see all possible futures. Leto has been taking that program further, trying to create someone whose future could not be seen. Simultaneously he has been ruling as an absolute tyrant. Once he achieves his breeding goal, he allows himself to be killed, and the sudden freedom from tyranny causes humanity to explode out into the universe ("The Scattering"), breaking the previous stagnation and spreading humanity beyond the ability of any one event to destroy. Simultaneously at least some of humanity inherits the genes making them invisible to future-sight. All of this is Leto's plan, what he calls The Golden Path.

Is that about right?

 

^Pretty much, you nailed it.

 

Actually, it's not really too far off the mark, since I think it was after reading one of Kevin J Anderson's Star Wars novels that Brian Herbert decided to select him as his co-author for the Dune prequels.

 

Even if true, that doesn't mean that KJA's work is typical of the line.

 

I totally forgot about that.

Spoiler: God Emperor of Dune

Yeah, GE of Dune was just weird. I'm pretty sure humanity was already pretty scattered. Besides, humanity almost dies anyway during the events of the rest of the books, so his plan wasn't very good. Also, why did it matter if people were alive whose future's couldn't be seen? Few people could see the future, especially the future of individuals.

Did he just not want to be bothered by seeing other peoples futures? It just sounds like he'd gone insane, which is probably not very far from the truth. GE is just the odd book of the series. The first three books go together, and the books after GE go together. You could honestly skip GE completely and read the rest of the books with only minor, nonessential problems. I'll be rereading it for my Dune series reread (I just finished House atredies and I'm now going on to House Harkonnen) so maybe my thoughts on it will have changed. Right now, its a decent book but not essential to the dune series.

 

Not only is kind of a big deal made about this in GE, but one needs to know it to fully comprehend what's going on in the next two.

Because Guild navigators.

Not really. Even if you could, I don't think you should.

 

I've read it twenty times .

It's obviously not quite finished, but it's Tolkien's main work. He started it well before he even wrote The Hobbit. It's the major work of his oeuvre. The guy invented an entire mythology all on his own, and that is a towering achievement worthy of immense respect.

 

It's more like an anthology of good stories, but they mostly have different groups of characters.

 

Yeah, it's a collection of great and beautiful stories. The life's work of a genius of language and mythology. It gets my vote as the best fantasy book out there, and I rank it up there with Dune as among my absolute favourite books to read.

I'm currently writing a sci-fi/fantasy novel, and every time I need inspiration I'll flick to a random page of The Silmarillion. Within moments, the spark is back in my brain.

 

If I recall correctly it was Anderson who approached Brian Herbert.

Paul and Leto essentially saw the same problem that humans under one rule and one Empire could be prone to being wiped out by one catastrophe such as Thinking Machines. In order to remedy that problem it was necessary to create the Scattering event and breed into humans an invisibility to prescience. That necessitated becoming the immortal ruler and guide of humanity by merging with the sandtrout, a sacrifice that Paul tried to avoid because he knew that it would eventually end not in death, but his consciousness trapped in all the sandtrout and sandworms.