vs The Expanse: we are headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense but humanity’s salvation will come from… Nevermind, we’re fucked.
Truly ? What aspects of it ?
I mean they do have universal basic income on earth but apart from that humanity is all kinds of fucked. And it doesn’t exactly get better as the story progresses.
The fact that the earth is even united and not completely screwed is already a great start. It was even recovering from climate change before Inaros.
Not at all. It always looked like something in between for me. Humanity is still struggling but moving forward, and most people live under various kind of regimes but no big bad Empire.
Thing is, the Asimov Foundation universe could actually fit in the “past” of the Dune universe.
This idea is oddly fascinating. Now we just need a good sci-fi writer to produce the “missing link”.
Maybe the robots in Asimov’s universe lead to the creation of Erasmus and eventually the Butlerian Jihad.
We do. In some of the set in the same universe novels but not written by Asimov there are references to Brain Fever. A disease that virtually 100% of humans get at least once that makes them dumb for life. All advancement in galactic culture comes from the like 1 out of a million people who were immune.
That would account for Dune. Dune only makes sense if you assume that everyone is stupid and living in a hazy of drugged religious fantasy. Ffs the main power of their space witches is to use a sexy voice. Which everyone knows about! Just put in earplugs or jerk off prior or get gay guys or use deaf people or get straight women before dealing with one. Thousands of years of eugenics defeated by 30 cents of earplugs. Dune everybody!
The witches go around when everyone is still young and tell them to never buy earplugs
Ffs the main power of their space witches is to use a sexy voice. Which everyone knows about! Just put in earplugs or jerk off prior or get gay guys or use deaf people or get straight women before dealing with one.
Not only is there nothing in any the books to even suggest that this is the mechanism by which the Voice works, there is a very prominent scene where the main male character uses the Voice to compel other male characters to do his bidding.
(In fact, in the later books a “corrupt” version of the Bene Gesserit shows up that does explicitly use their sexuality as the source of their manipulation power, and the Bene Gesserit find this absolutely abhorrent.)
In the non-canon book Psychohistorical Crisis, the Dune universe is part of the past of the Foundation universe. The Fremon are known as the “Frightful People” to historians.
I’ll let you all guess which one was published in the 50s and which one was published in the 60s.
Both of these are terrible takes on the books.
Spice is not a solution in dune in fact the whole 4th book and the end of the third are centered around forcing humanity to wean itself off spice so that it may evolve.
The central concept is that humanity must not depend on machine or drugs or complicated eugenics and must instead look inwards and improve itself by facing hardship.
In foundation (at least the start) the complicated maths is essentially there to prove that all establishments fail and survival requires constant change. Very differently from dune foundation sees technological superiority as key to this and importantly the ability for society to change in order to support the technological progress.
Even if you don’t agree with the above neither book aims to “fight imperialist bullshit” if anything they both quite staunchly support the idea of a benevolent dictator controlling all.
Or is Dune about the folly of different types of dictatorship; sadistic, benevolent, religious or machiavellian? Taking only the first book (because that’s as far as I’ve read) every leader is thwarted or confined by the consequences or weakness of their own style of leadership.
I read an interview where frank said that his intention was for Dune to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of charismatic leaders (which is to say, the “classic” hero archetype). Which - for the first book - tracks pretty well. The free are basically just used as cannon fodder for Paul to win back his power (and a lot more), then when he wins, he sets them loose on the universe because he can’t control them.
The trouble I have with that though is that he goes on to contradict that point in later books, but I won’t get into that because I don’t want to spoil anything for you
It’s honestly crazy how many people can read Dune and completely misunderstand the themes of the book.
Though to be fair, it sometimes feels like Frank himself didn’t fully understand what themes he was going for. Books 1-3 were staunchly “Beware of heroes, charismatic leaders will lead you to evil and despair”, then in GEoD, we find that literally the only hope for humanity was millenia of oppression by a totalitarian government.
But either of those two takes is still wildly better than “spice saves the universe” lol
Dune has one of the most complex (and necessarily logical) universe in it. I’m not surprised every reader found different themes more fitting.
Dune had no good guys, none at all.
Everyone was out for themselves or their narrow view of what was just and best for humanity from their simplistic and self-centered perspective.
Leto 2 was the exception because he was out for his narrow view of what was best for humanity from his broad, self-centered perspective that still didn’t really lead anywhere.
The actual point of the books is that no ideal survives the test of real time, and over time civilization tends to ossify, so we are doomed to catastrophe by our very nature.
I think Dune has very many themes, but the biggest one is the dangers of religion (which is not really portrayed in the movie I think)
The 2022 movie covers the first half of the first book and that theme only really comes into its own in books 2 and 3.
I mean, I feel like manipulating a whole culture’s established religious beliefs to place themself at the highest seat of power and war a holy war in their name is a pretty poignant display of “religion bad, m’kay”
Yeah but if you don’t know about the books it doesn’t necessarily look like manipulation. That’s only made overt when you read the latter books
One of the reasons why the original movie was so good. Stripped out all the religious garbage and kept the worms
The original movie was good for the art direction and fantastic acting by supporting characters.
That’s kinda where it ends though, comparing the two of them, the new Dune features human emotion which is pretty cool; all the main characters were kind of animatronic feeling in the old one imo.
The source material has limitations. It is difficult to make characters have depth when in the novel they have none. If you sit down and try to describe the characters of Dune you can really only do it by their job or what they did in the novel. You can’t describe their personalities. Compare this to Star Wars.
But, the book characters were intentionally written to be pretty emotionally flat? The Gom Jabbar scene… Jessica showing emotion doesn’t make it a bad scene, but it kind of undercuts how the Bene Gesserit work. Their whole thing is conquering their emotions and being composed and in control all the time. Jessica’s turmoil is internal while her face is stoic. That’s her whole character at that point in the book. she’s not a very good Bene Gesserit, but she’s faked it real well.
Except Duncan and Gurney. They should have had personality. That’s Their purpose in the books. To be the ones who show Paul what being a real human is like beyond the Duke (laden with responsibility and the knowledge that his entire house and the thousands of people that rely on it are teetering on a knife’s edge) and Jessica (basically a magic robot concubine who was raised from birth with the sole purpose of furthering a generations long genetic project her captors teachers were working toward). They’re meant to be a breath of fresh air that give Paul the foundation to be a real boy.
Ok, either the internet can’t identify a great joke or… no, I guess the only reasonable explanation is that your comment whooshed over people’s heads.
You don´t mean that abomination made by Lynch that shits all over the book do you?!?
