Sir Terry Pratchett said, regarding fantasy:
“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”
I think pretty much the same can be said for Herbert (and before him Asimov) when it comes to science-fiction…
(Reading the article, though, it seems Herbert might have been a bit more of an arse about other authors being influenced by him than Tolkien or Asimov ever were…)
I was never a giant fan of the Lensmen books, but there’s a lot of Doc Smith’s story in Star Wars.
A multi species police force with telepathic powers and a symbol known and respected on all worlds?
For the uninitiated.
Stop me if you heard this one…
A youthful squire, with the aid of a knight errant, his trusty steed, and a powerful wizard, go to rescue the beautiful princess from the evil Black Knight and his fire breathing dragon.
Both Lucas and Herbert were plugged into fundamental cultural mythology:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
And they did that very differently. Lucas played the archetypes straight while Herbert deconstructed them.
I was just talking about this, about how Paul is not a typical hero. Sure he’s the ‘chosen one of prophecy’, but only because of generations of genetic manipulation to create someone with his abilities and centuries of spreading superstition and prophecies. Even then his actions are only sort of heroic in that he helps free the Fremen but thus drives them into a holy war against the entire empire.
It’s a really cool way of leaning on existing tropes in a self-aware way.
It’s important to note that Dune was published in 1965, Star Wars premiered in 1977, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 but the Hero’s Journey took a while to become a well known concept.
Lucas has an interview where he talks about going to a lecture by Campbell on the Journey as part of his college studies, while Campbell was observing these common tropes have existed as long as storytelling the idea of this formula existing was still relatively new.
Yes the common trope of a desert planet with a powerful worm-like guy that has a face and arms having spice orgies in a palace. That’s just a common trope that exists… well just in Return of the Jedi and in God Emperor of Dune which was coincidentally published just around the time RotJ was being written.
And the old saw of someone having a vision of their lover dying during childbirth, trying to prevent it, getting an offer by an evil cloner dude to bring her back to life, and it ends up happening anyway, and surprise… it’s twins! That kind of stuff is all over mythology, right?
Hey I love Star Wars too, but come on, Lucas burrowed very heavily from Dune.
Why did he think that? Also, why have no one mentioned Valérian and Laureline? It is much easier to argue was more than just a little inspiration?
The comic was published in 1967, ten years before star wars.
I remember seeing more side by side comparison somewhere, and the list of passing coincidences was very long. I think it was this one
And I dont get why Avatar from Cameron was not sued.
in 1979 Herbert and Ranson wrote "The Jesus Incident ":
A planet named Pandora habited by violent various beasts
The human survive in a Colony and cant barrely go out, because of the wild life.
The whole planet is covered by an entity protecting the planet it is named: AVATA. who comunicate with blinking light.
There is a scene, where one of the main human run around the human camp folded by many monster.
To survive on the planet, the human created special Clone with better reflex.
The Clone were badly treated and rebelled against the Colony
And Arrival by Villeneuve (or the book it pretend to be from) Is bit for bit from the novella :“Try to remember” From Herbert.
Aliens try to communicate to humanity.
Some woman manage to do understand their language.
But some military try to smugle a bomb in the alien ship.
The book it pretended to be from is the short story “Story of your life” by Ted Chiang which seems to be a bit different from “Try to remember”:
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Aliens arrive
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Woman learns their language and it completely changes her perception of time which makes her tell her daughter her(the daughter’s) whole life’s story on the day of her birth (Hence the title)
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Aliens leave at some point and nobody knows why
Deathworld by Harry Harrison pre-dates all that:
I don’t remember a Death Star or a princess to save in Dune. Or robots.
I don’t think it’s a rip-off either, but the Dune franchise does actually involve some princesses and robots
Which Dune book had robots? I thought that robots had been banned in the Dune universe.
Well, the Butlerian Jihad was a big influence obviously, and later in the series they end up fighting some leftover AIs from that era. But yeah, a very different take on robots between the two
