Fed2k? I think that site's still going, or at least it was a year or two ago. Arrakeen went to hell after Baron of the Mice (the owner) disappeared, leaving Edric and me to run it, then Edric vanished, and I had to referee the Orthodox Herbertarians vs. the Prequelites on that forum as well, while trying to be diplomatic to Byron over at dunenovels so he wouldn't ban everyone from Arrakeen (he did ban Sandchigger; not too surprised at that). Then the InvisionFree forums got migrated to a new platform... twice. A lot of content was simply zapped. And dunenovels is shut down... it's a damn shame, since in and amongst the acrimony, there were some really good discussions, and some of my best Dune-themed posts got lost. I remember getting into an argument with one of the guys on Arrakeen, wondering why the Fremen couldn't have a thriving glassmaking industry, since they had all the basic ingredients there for the taking... and was told, "Nope. If Frank didn't write it, it didn't happen." Well, I'm one of the founding members of the OH, but I don't take as hard a line as that. If it's plausible and doesn't contradict canon (ie. it was never said there wasn't a glassmaking industry), why not? I wonder if that's what happened to one of the interactive fanfic forums I ran across... it was on an InvisionFree forum and the storyline took place between Dune and Children of Dune... if the HLP told them to shut it down, it might be because some of the storylines they were doing might have been too close to some of what KJA wanted to do with Paul of Dune. It's a shame. They had a good storyline going, and invited me to join them. I was in the midst of creating a character when the whole thing suddenly went dead. I wrote to one of the staff and asked if the stories could be preserved and got a "why bother" in response. As a collector of fanfiction (I have a large bookcase full of print 'zines - mostly Star Trek, but also Highlander, Darkover, Doctor Who, several volumes of filk music, and so on), this is a sad thing when quality stories disappear. At least nobody seems to have told them about the other fanfic sites. In that case, they shouldn't have split it up. I know the book is hard to film in a single movie... and while I love the cinematography of the Lynch movie (I saw it in the theatre, which is an entirely different experience than merely watching on a TV screen), it seems to me that the only way to really do justice to the story is to make it as a TV series.
I don't know how much control the Herbert Abomination and KJA have over things but they caused a lot of trouble for second life dune similations and roleplay on Second Life years ago. No other franchise ever paid attention or cared about what goes on there, but for some reason they did.
Yup, Fed2k. It still is around but I rarely visit. Not particularly active for a long time. Ah, Sandchigger. That man was so hardcore a Fedaykin would have thought he was a bit much. Entertaining as hell though. It very well may be that's why the site you used disappeared. I know of 2 it happened to for sure. I never actually dealt with Byron, all my communication with that group was with KJA & that was mostly just Q&A's. Their goal is to make money, not to please fans. Splitting it was the best way to do it but they weren't confident enough to film both halves at once, so we may end up uncompleted. It is what it is. If you go back to the early pages of this thread you'll see that one of the original plans was to film the first part of the book as a movie, then do an HBO series of the guerilla war against the Harkonnens and Saurdakur as an HBO miniseries, then return to a feature film for the climax. The Dark Tower was also planning the same release schedule (Dark Tower actually planned it first). But then Dune turned into two movies and the spin off show.
I remember that Second Life situation now that you mention it. They sure do love their cease and desist letters.
It never fails. As soon as I get interested in something, it gets discontinued, canceled, whatever. They had it shut down around the time when I finally had a computer that could handle it. Those two are insanely territorial. They just don't get what Lucas got. I know they see it as protecting their intellectual property, but seriously... was anyone making money off that Second Life thing? I have very mixed feelings about him. I respect his scholarship; he put in a hell of a lot of research into the things he was interested in. But he also decided that I was being "too nice" to KJA, like having a couple of civil conversations with him on MySpace, and inviting Byron to Arrakeen. I felt I had to, since people were feeding him all kinds of lies, that we hated Frank Herbert, and a bunch of other things. I wanted to show him how very much we respected his grandfather's legacy... and it all went to hell. I ended up having to demote and permaban my own staff because they couldn't behave with civility toward the people who were fans of the nuDune books. It's not that I liked the nuDune books... and it's not that I disagreed with the opinions of those guys. The dealbreaker is that on any forum I run, staff absolutely do NOT get to troll, flame, harass, mock, stalk, or belittle either the members or each other. It's not the first time that drastic step was taken, actually. My elevation to the admin staff came at a time when Baron demoted and then permabanned one of the previous admins for abusing his authority. Sandchigger stalked me around the internet after that, following me to various forums, copying some of my posts, and reposting them on his blog - twisting them in some very vicious ways. It got personal when he started talking about my dad. So while I can respect him as being knowledgeable about Dune, he's actually a horrible human being. At this point, if they want to try a C&D on the fanfic I posted on a couple of forums last year, good luck. It was a very short scene that's a crossover between Dune and The Peanuts comic strip. Actually, I should say a crossover between the Lynch movie and the Peanuts, since I included the family pug. I might expand it and post it on one of the fanfic sites. Byron wasn't too hard to handle most of the time, but there were occasions when he got a notion stuck in his head and it was very hard to budge him. I had to explain forum etiquette to him when he joined Arrakeen, since he kept the same username... essentially proclaiming himself to be an admin at Arrakeen (without the badge, of course). I had to ask him to change his name and he had a hard time wrapping it around his head that you do not ever join a forum and take on a username that means you're basically impersonating a member of staff. Sounds a bit on the complicated side. And they're mistakenly assuming that all fans will go to a theatre (never mind covid; it's been over 20 years since I last set foot in a movie theatre). Is Second Life still around?
Yes. It may not have the numbers it once did, but it exists. Sadly the DIY sandbox ethos of the place has started to die as professional developers have changed much of it to a very slick hd world. It looks good, but as a developer it gets harder and harder to keep up with the pros. I ran a pre-ENT Trek rp for a few years. I don't know much about the Star Wars groups except they were based on Legacy for a long time. Trek has both TNG and TOS groups, and there isn't a lot of cross traffic between them. But the Dune areas are all gone, or drastically changed their subject matter to survive. No one ever made a dime off of it as far as i know or solicited from it. Star Trek, Who, and Star Wars communities are likewise extremely careful not to do anything that would seem like making a proffit. You may have one person come along and try to sell a uniform but that gets stopped, generally.
Not sure why anyone would want to torture themselves with that repetitious, childish crap. KJA/BH don't even understand that space battles happen in three dimensions and they completely ignore relativity when using STL ships.
When people beat the same drum about a series for so long then it makes me highly skeptical regarding that attitude.
Your decision of course, and I can see the interest. I'd never try to get someone not to read a novel. I really wanted to like the new books when they came out. I have a respect for even low grade pulp. I slogged through House Atreides, the first of the BH/KJA novels. After about two chapters, House Harkonnen was the first novel I ever threw in the trash. Right on top of some coffee grinds and a Yoplait cup where it belonged. Wasn't even worth trading in at the used bookstore I frequented in those days. I wouldn't do that to anyone. I don't believe a word about Brian Herbert's tale that he found this mass trove of notes showing how to write all these books. I don't doubt he found a few notes. He and Keven J DuraPlastSTeel Anderson then decanonized the Dune Encyclopedia, so they'd have nothing to interfere with their new take on a dead man's work. I know a bit about the later books, and the liner notes enough are cringeworthy. I think its ok to realize Frank Herbert died before he could write his final Dune novel, and we'll never know how he meant it to end. If people like the way these two wrote it, fine. It's all entertainment, but I think it did a huge disservice to the father that the son and his talentless hack associate rode the coattails on. And I will give Brian Herbert this much: I actually do like his writing, in context. I read his old novel Sudanna Sudanna decades ago and greatly admired it. It was nothing like Frank Herbert's work nor did it try to be. It was fun and thoughtful and compassionate. No attempt at plans within plans or world building so intensive it takes the joy out of the hands of the reader's imagination. But writing is a business and when you have a petroleum reserve like your pop's legacy, you start drilling wells everywhere you can 'till the field is pumped dry. But he could have done better than KJA. I try to be nice about writers. I moonlight as one occasionally. Most of us have fragile egos. KJA is a talent-less hack capable only of turning trees into pulp with black marks on them.
I guess that's the difference for me. Until being on the Internet I didn't know I was supposed to hate these books. House Atreides was fine when I read it. I didn't like Harkonnen but Corino was OK. But, it was largely something that I regarded as outside of Dune proper. Like, no matter what, Dune as a novel stands by itself. All the follow up material, even by Frank Herbert himself, feels outside of that original work. So, I may not enjoy Brian Herbert's work or find it as interesting as the original work. But, then, nothing ever would be. So, I just have a weird view on all this work. I don't have any personal interactions with these authors, nor do I have any opinion on them as people. No doubt others do and have strong reactions to it. Maybe it's my weird irrational desire to find some good even when things are considered so horrible. Or simply that nothing can be that bad. Again, completely irrational and it won't make any sense and no doubt many will give me strange looks, and doubt my sanity.
If @fireproof78 wants to check out the Brian Herbert/KJA novels, that's his prerogative. Insisting that they're bad and shouldn't exist or be read is just closed-minded gatekeeping.
If you can divorce them from the originals the house trilogy and the butlerian jihad trilogy are standard pop sci fi. Same stuff KJA wrote for star wars. Enjoyable enough for what they are. If you're a fan of that you'll probably like them well enough. After that they took a noticeable downward turn. And they also became impossible to divorce from the OG materials, being direct sequels and interquels. It's also around then KJA started saying anyone who preferred the OG books over his novels were "Talifans" which did not sit well with the fanbase....
I don't know if I divorce them so much as they don't carry any weight at all. It's like looking at fan art to me, or even official art. It is one artist's interpretation of another artist's work. It can't really take away from the original, at least as far as weight and importance to me. Dune was something I grew up reading, writing ideas for, and playing games from. So, these books will carry as much weight as the Dune 2000 RTS game. Not saying that Brian Herbert or Kevin Anderson are wonderful people. But, their views on the original work mean little in terms of personal enjoyment. Take that as you will.