Subj : SF Novel:  Dune
To   : Grymmjack
From : Angus Mcleod
Date : Thu Jun 09 2005 11:06 am

  Re: Which SF author are you?
  By: Grymmjack to Angus Mcleod on Thu Jun 09 2005 06:23:00

 >  > It certainly is a fabulous book.  Plots within plots within plots!  :-)
 > 
 > i've heard good things about it. it is just daunting looking at it, and it's
 > only volume 1 i've got (or the first of the many in the saga)...

First there was 'Dune'.  Then came 'Dune Messiah', followed by 'Children 
of Dune'.  After this came three other works, for a total of six books.  
After Frank Herbert's death, his son (Brian?) in collaboration with at 
least one other author, sought/seeks to capitalize on the success of the 
series by extending it with additional books.  Herein is my opinion, 
which will no doubt introduce some controvacy:

'Dune' was a stupendous book, truly a great work of science fiction 
literature.  It is detailed to an almost /fractal/ degree, and 
demonstrates a really genius imagination at work.  Fabulous.  A 'must 
read' novel.  This book is complete, and unlike many other SF and fantasy 
novels that only 'work' as a part of a trilogy/series, you could read this 
book alone, and not feel that a part of the story was missing, or had been 
left untold.

'Dune Messiah', and 'Children of Dune', continue the story, from the point 
where 'Dune' left off.  If you read and enjoy 'Dune' then you will 
probably enjoy reading 'Messiah', and 'Children' too, but (IMHO) they 
don't have the richness, the cohesiveness, and the sheer /believability/ 
of 'Dune' itself.  In short, books #2 and #3 are not as good as book #1.  
You might even argue that they dilute the "goodness" of the trilogy, when 
taken all together.  But that is a point subject to ferrocious debate.

From book #4 ('God-Emperor of Dune') the slump became more pronounced, and 
the last two books in the classic series ('Heretics of Dune' and 
'Chapterhouse: Dune') did not reverse the slide.  As a voracious reader 
and someone who thoroughly enjoyed the original 'Dune' novel, I completed 
#6 only because I felt I should read them all "for completeness sake", not 
die to any sense of enjoyment.

When young Herbert published the first of his follow-on works, I was quick 
to read it.  It was not *bad* in any real sense, except that it did not 
have the fine-grained sense of depth in the details that the original 
master-work did.  It suffered in comparison to that which it tried to 
emulate, largely because it was a tapestry woven from far coarser threads 
than the original.  I never bothered to read any other of Herbert Jr.'s 
other (many!) contributions to the world of 'Dune'.  I would probably do 
so, if one came my way, but it isn't like his first addition made me feel 
I had to buy his others from Amazon and have them shopped overseas.....

 > i am anxious to read the one where people say the guy lost his mind a 
 > bit.. when he got into the whole god thing. or maybe it was another 
 > book he wrote, but i heard that the went insane, or slowly lost his 
 > mind when he was exploring it's depths in relation to the creationism 
 > and so forth.

Well, in Frank Herbert's 'Dune' universe, religion seems to be given two 
treatments.  Primarily, there is the religion of the desert Fremen, who 
worship Shai-Hulud, the desert sandworm.  This is an obvious nature- 
worship cult, like worshiping bears, etc.  

There are also the machinations of the Bene Gesserit.  We are left to 
believe that *all* religions (including the worm-worship of the desert 
Fremen) were ENGINEERED by the Bene Gesserit, to benefit their own selves 
and their breeding-program.  By means of planted legends, carefully 
crafted "scriptures". etc, the religious engineers of the Bene Gesserit 
are implied to have visited all places of human habitation in the ancient 
past, and fabricated the local religious sects now found there.  An 
interesting idea!


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