[HN Gopher] Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of ...
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Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's
Dune (2021)
Author : softwaredoug
Score : 256 points
Date : 2025-03-04 00:04 UTC (22 hours ago)
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| alabastervlog wrote:
| When I finally got around to reading _Seven Pillars_ , I wasn't
| too far in before I was convinced Herbert had the book on his
| desk the whole time he was writing _Dune_. So many minor
| similarities, little scenes that don 't quite match up but if you
| _squint_ they do. Even the arc toward eventually committing war
| crimes, while seeking some great end for the people he 's
| leading, feels like a connection. But also little stuff like the
| early travel scenes in _Pillars_ reminded me of early scenes
| among the Caladanians(?) in _Dune_.
|
| I think the part where I went "OK yeah this was _the_ reference
| when he was coming up with the core plot and character of Paul "
| was when I came across the part where Lawrence comes up with his
| novel guerrilla war strategy: he's sick, feverish, possibly
| dying, in a tent in the desert, tended by a few companions. When
| he comes out of it, he's got his Path. It's too perfect.
|
| [edit] Incidentally, it's not clear to me this author has a good
| picture of Lawrence's background. Lines like this:
|
| > In terms of clothing, Lawrence comes to accept the Arab dress
| as "convenient in such a climate" and blends in with his Arab
| companions by wearing it instead of the British officer uniform.
|
| make me think the author isn't aware that Lawrence had already
| spent a lot of time in the Middle East (especially, IIRC, modern
| Syria--so, near Damascus) very shortly before the war broke out,
| and that was a big part of why he was recruited by British
| intelligence for the mission(s) in _Seven Pillars_. It was on an
| earlier, pre-war trip that he 'd adopted Arab dress--unlike
| what's suggested (if not quite stated) in the film Lawrence of
| Arabia, he was already quite familiar with and comfortable in it.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| What's ironic is how people often point to plot points in many
| franchises (Star Wars, GoT, etc) as being derivative of Dune...
| Yet Dune itself is fairly derivative of other works
| ViktorRay wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Fac.
| ..
|
| A tale as old as time
| UberFly wrote:
| This is the final answer.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| This has relatively little relevance to Dune, which is
| basically the story of how the worse dictator in history
| rose to power (only to be surpassed by his son's 1200 year
| reign of tyranny).
| npodbielski wrote:
| Very interesting point of view, considering how Baron
| Harkonnen was depicted in Dune. I mean, was the life in
| Empire better or worse after he took power? Did life of
| common citizen changed much? My view was that he
| basically just replaced Emperor by himself and most of
| things was still the same. He even married the princess
| just for pretence.
|
| My view was that Herbert was trying to show how we could
| try to direct human progress and evolution if we would
| have ability to see the future. Both Paul and Leto II
| have such ability and they tried to do it with mediocre
| success. Tides of history were largely operating by
| forces they could not change but slightly skew.
|
| My though was that they were both just trying to do good
| for the mankind, kind of succeeded, but not much - Leto
| was by intention so bad that when he finally fall -
| people scattered through galaxy with those new ships that
| did not need spice.
|
| Was not this the real moral of the story? Resist stagnant
| empire and explore the universe? Basically the same as
| Foundation that is book from the same era?
| simiones wrote:
| The fremen jihad killed 61 billion people across the
| empire, including the sterilization of 90 whole planets,
| per details in Dune Messiah (quoting from a wiki, I don't
| have this kind of memory). It may be that life in the
| empire after this was over returned more or less to the
| same as what was there before, for those that survived -
| though I don't think the books go into any significant
| detail. Life on Dune was definitely better than it had
| been under the Harkonnens, but this is not necessarily
| true across the empire.
|
| > Was not this the real moral of the story? Resist
| stagnant empire and explore the universe?
|
| I think this is somewhat the general idea, but more
| specific. His main message is that charismatic leaders,
| even the ones with the best of intentions as Paul
| certainly was (and Leto II, though in a more complex
| way), are extremely dangerous and should not be trusted
| or followed. The empire overall would have been an
| unquestionably better place if Paul had been killed in
| the desert (except that perhaps the Bene Gesserit would
| have led people in an even worse direction if their plans
| had succeeded at the time). Arrakis itself would have
| been in a better shape if the fremen had risen up and
| overthrown their oppressors, but had otherwise stopped at
| that.
| npodbielski wrote:
| It may be because I have read this like 20 years ago but
| I remember something in a sense of accomplishment from
| Leto II when he was killed. Like: there is no way of
| stopping it now - the spread of humanity in the universe.
|
| So according to me first book was a bit dark: - Paul
| accomplishing his goal but failing ultimatively - per
| what you are saying - starting the jihad - In the second
| he is killed but we have his children - so again a bit
| dark but with hope. - In the third we have - making a new
| empire and change from desert to a green planet - so
| again hope for something better coming even if it is a
| but slow (god-emperor living for hundreds of years) -
| Then we have really two strange books but last one, at
| least last written by Herbert, ends with one character
| asking other one if the purpose of all those events is
| understood, and the second chacter realizes this purpose
| with kind of awe.
|
| So to me in overall Dune was a positive tale. according
| to you it is just grim sentence: do not fall for the
| words of false prophet. Imho if this would be just it,
| would be little sad.
|
| But maybe I should read them again maybe after so many
| years, the reception will be different.
| simiones wrote:
| I think your memory is mostly right. Leto II essentially
| wanted to instill into humanity this lesson, do not fall
| for the words of the prophet, permanently: his reign
| would forever be remembered as the hell that this can
| lead to. And yes, he was satisfied with being killed, as
| this was the goal of his plan as well: torture humanity
| for a thousand years, teaching them a lesson they will
| never forget (especially in the universe of Dune, where
| genetic memory is a thing), and then be defeated by them,
| teaching also that no evil is too big to overcome. Note
| that this is about any prophet, false _or true_. Both
| Paul and Leto II were true prophets, but this made them
| no less dangerous.
|
| But Paul is exactly the failed version of Leto II. Paul
| saw the option of doing what his son did, but didn't have
| the courage to do it. He instead chose to believe that he
| can become the benevolent dictator that would uplift
| humanity through his strong moral core, and instead
| brought only needless suffering to the galaxy and to all
| those around him.
|
| The good future that Leto II fought for is one where
| every human is truly unique and free, spreading in a
| thousand distinct directions, impossible to predict for
| anyone (which also implies that they are impossible to
| lead as an overall group, as they will never again accept
| to follow someone else).
| duped wrote:
| > Was not this the real moral of the story? Resist
| stagnant empire and explore the universe? Basically the
| same as Foundation that is book from the same era?
|
| I think the "moral" of Dune shifts pretty dramatically
| between _Messiah_ and _Children_. Dune and Messiah are
| essentially a warning about charismatic leaders reshaping
| the world in their eyes, abusing religion and faith to do
| so, and harming all humanity in the process whilst losing
| their own. Paul Atreides is not a desert mouse, but a
| sandworm that consumes all in his path. This isn 't even
| subtext, it's basically stated explicitly both in the
| text and in later writing/talks by Herbert himself.
|
| In the later books I think it shifts a bit to a story
| that one must lose their humanity in order to save it,
| and it's important that Leto is _not_ Paul.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The first book I concur but the series goes in directions I
| would never have predicted in multiple places in later books,
| off the top of my head - books four and five stand out in
| memory, though he laid the groundwork in the first book.
| Talanes wrote:
| Sure, but when was the last time anyone claimed a major
| franchise was ripping off God-Emperor?
| throwup238 wrote:
| It's even more stark the further back you go. When the
| printing press was invented, it didn't usher in a new era of
| creativity but instead the first few centuries resembled
| modern Hollywood: shameless sequels and reboots. By far the
| most popular books were translations of Greek classics and
| rote derivatives of the Arthurian legends. It wasn't until
| the first iterations of copyright and a few other cultural
| shifts that a "professional" writer class was born and
| started to expand on the creativity of our stories. Until
| then publishing wasn't profitable enough to support a real
| creative process, so they cribbed as much from existing canon
| as they could to make ends meet. See how long it took science
| fiction to properly develop into a literary form, for
| example.
| llm_trw wrote:
| That's the third major use of the printing press.
|
| The first was for catholic indulgences.
|
| The second was for religious propaganda during the European
| wars of religion.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > When the printing press was invented, it didn't usher in
| a new era of creativity but instead the first few centuries
| resembled modern Hollywood
|
| It ushered in massive creativity! The early printshops were
| innovation hot-beds and quickly developed textual things
| that had never existed at scale before, like dictionaries,
| newspapers, political cartoons, encyclopaedia, technical
| drawings / manuals lacking copy errors, local maps, etc.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > how long it took science fiction to properly develop into
| a literary form
|
| How long do you think that took? There's a wide range of
| possible dates for each endpoint, but I don't think it
| reaches a century.
| jhbadger wrote:
| True, but the references in Star Wars to spice (spice mines
| of Kessel in the original, a reference to striking spice
| miners in Attack of the Clones) is pretty much only from
| Dune. Unless they were mining oregano or something.
| defrost wrote:
| The Dutch East Indies was literally "mining" spice (
| cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star
| anise, clove, and turmeric ) from SE Asia for European
| consumption and packing ship with gold bullion in exchange.
|
| There were _many_ actual "spice wars" fought in the region
| to wipe out competing crops, to build alliances, and later
| betray those local allies, etc.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > The Dutch East Indies was literally "mining" spice (
| cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star
| anise, clove, and turmeric )
|
| Only ginger and turmeric are found below soil, and even
| then you wouldn't usually describe farmers as "literally
| mining for potatoes."
| defrost wrote:
| The airquotes on "mining" would signify to some that
| _literal_ mining with excavators, screens, crushers, etc
| was not intended rather an operation that was _literally_
| on the scale of mining with an economic return on par
| with gold mining a rich vein.
|
| Others might disagree. English is a fun language.
|
| What cannot be disputed is the significant increase in
| national wealth brought home by the Dutch operations in
| what was known as the Dutch East Indies.
|
| Batavia ( now Jakarta) was the capital of the VOC's
| lucrative spice trade for 31/2 centuries.
|
| Ships laden with tamarind, mace, cloves and nutmeg - at
| that time worth more, gram for gram, than gold - sailed
| from there to the Netherlands and often wrecked on the
| Western Australian coast returning with gold.
|
| It's the value per weight part that merits comparison
| with Spanish aquisition of gold in the new world.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| However, using the word "literally" is a poor choice.
| "Figuratively" would be better, or even just leave out
| "literally" and allow "mining" to be interpreted by the
| reader.
| defrost wrote:
| It was deliberate choice in a sub thread that's
| _literally_ about _literary_ metaphors.
|
| As a native english reader, writer and speaker of some
| six decades I grasp the tension in the use of ' literally
| "airquoted" ' and embrace it.
|
| I also enjoy _Riddley Walker_ , the first edition of
| _Clockwork Orange_ (sans lexicographic annexure), and the
| outrageously provocative shock value of the opening
| sentence of Burgess 's panoramic saga _Earthly Powers_.
|
| Your opinion is noted and respected.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > I grasp the tension in the use of ' literally
| "airquoted" ' and embrace it
|
| I can appreciate that and hope that I added to the
| tension.
| kjs3 wrote:
| "Mine" can also imply "exploit".
| pepa65 wrote:
| Except that wasn't mining at all, except in a remotely
| metaphorical sense.
| xxs wrote:
| nowadays (past few decades) 'mine' (and farm) are often
| used in place of gather, esp. when it comes to game
| communities, e.g. 'mine' wood in 'warcraft III'. Farm any
| sort of materials, equipment, reputation, etc. So I
| suppose it's not that far fetched.
| syockit wrote:
| But definitely not in the parlance of late 70s when Star
| Wars premiered.
| xxs wrote:
| True, of course, however the spice mining in Star Wars
| refers to mining minerals and converting them to drugs.
| And of course, without any doubt both the mining and the
| spice have influence from Dune.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Figuratively "mining" spice
| llm_trw wrote:
| The wildest thing about European colonialism is that it
| was kicked off to get more spices for European food. Then
| in the worlds most bizarre twist European food gave up
| all spices a few centuries later and colonies had to
| invent something else to sell back to the colonial
| centre.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "All the spices", save for tea, coffee, and sugar, which
| continued to be imported in quantity. And are addictive
| to boot.
|
| A century or so later, laudenum.
|
| The spice trade itself didn't shrink so much as it was
| subsumed by other trade, I think, particularly as
| shipping capacity, reliability, and safety increased.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Other than sugar none of those are spices used for food.
|
| And even sugar became much less commonly used to in
| Europe.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| My point being that 1) the UK continued to import luxury
| consumables and 2) probably maintained spice imports,
| though I don't have hard data.
|
| If you have data to bring to the discussion I'd be
| interested in seeing it.
|
| Sugar is included in what were termed spices, FWIW:
|
| _In the medieval and early modern periods, 'spice' was a
| term liberally applied to all kinds of exotic natural
| products from pepper to sugar, herbs to animal
| secretions._
|
| <https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1777/the-spice-
| trade--t...>
|
| From the sources I'm finding (relatively few and vague,
| granted), my interpretation is less that total trade in
| spices (however construed) fell in absolute tonnage than
| that the per-tonne value dropped as the goods fell in
| price and were consumed by far greater shares of the
| population. It wasn't that spices were less a part of
| culinary culture, but that _because they were so common_
| (both senses of the word) they became less _significant_.
| Total tonnage and likely overall value were all but
| certainly _increasing_ , but the importance attached to
| formerly exotic goods (pepper, ginger, cinnamon, etc.)
| fell as _anybody could attain these_.
|
| Look to the history of the pineapple (of which there were
| once temples built in its honor in Europe) from exotic to
| highly mundane fruit for another example:
|
| <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-53432877>
| Angostura wrote:
| Harvesting, perhaps. I've never heard it referred to as
| mining
| RobRivera wrote:
| It's derivation all the way down.
|
| That's what renewed my passion for reading; revisiting texts
| with contexts in mind, history, intent, etc.
|
| I feel the education system really fails people with these
| little bits
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| On Star Wars and derivations... Bertram Thomas' Arabia Felix,
| about his crossing of the Empty Quarter, listed some names of
| stars, transliterated from the arabic.
|
| The north star, was written as Al Jedi... the Jedi. It goes a
| step further, in that it's arabic which translates as the kid
| (as in a goat, but the same way Hans refers to Luke).
|
| I'm not sure how much is coincidence, but reading about
| Thomas preparing to travel by starlight, it struck me as
| being remarkably reminiscent. I guess there are no original
| stories.
| lupusreal wrote:
| All creative work is derivative.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| I had friends that raved about Dune. Think they actually read
| the book.
|
| Later saw the movie and kept thinking there would be a twist.
| Was largely disappointed but the mother starting a holy war
| was a bit intriguing.
| lazystar wrote:
| adding to this... Avatar is often thought of as unique, but
| it's a blatant copy paste of Timothy Zahn's "Manta's Gift"
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216441.Manta_s_Gift
| pitaj wrote:
| Avatar the movie franchise? The most common thing you'll
| hear people say about it is that it's "Pocahontas in
| space".
| ViktorRay wrote:
| If you really wanted to you could say even George RR Martin was
| influenced by it.
|
| (Game of Thrones spoilers below)
|
| Look at the character arc of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of
| Thrones. You will find some similarities there too both with
| Dune and with Lawrence of Arabia. But with a female character
| rather than a male.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Alot more parallels than that
|
| Starks = Atreides, Ned = Leto, Catelyn / Sansa = Lady
| Jessica, Paul = Jon/Robb, Duncan Idaho = Benjen, Gurney =
| Aemon Targaryen / Jorah Mormont, Chani = Ygritte / Arya,
| Jamis = Tormund, Dr. Yueh = Littlefinger
|
| Lannisters = Harkonnens, Tywin = Baron Vladimir, Joffrey /
| Jaime = Feyd / Rabban (to some degree, traits are mixed
| between these characters)
| bongoman42 wrote:
| At some level you can map any epic to any epic.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Are you saying he knew their ways as if he was born to them?
| mtillman wrote:
| Related Herbert audio interview on the origins of Dune. Sorry
| it's a YouTube link. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A-mLVVJkH7I
| cyost wrote:
| This should be the transcribed copy of that interview
| http://www.sinanvural.com/seksek/inien/tvd/tvd2.htm
|
| The part relevant to the OP:
|
| FH: Well, one of the threads in the story is to trace a
| possible way a messiah is created in our society, and I hope
| I was successful in making it believable. Here we have the
| entire process, or at least the large and some of the subtle
| elements of the construction of this, both from the
| individual standpoint, and from the way society demands this
| of you. It's the references in there, you know, that the man
| must recognize the myth he is living in, because the creation
| of an avatar is a mythmaking process. We've done it in
| our...in recent times. Look at what's happening to John F.
| Kennedy.
|
| WM: O, sure.
|
| FH: Who was a very earthy, real, and not totally holy
| man...so here we have a likeable person, now, you see...
|
| WM: Yes.
|
| FH: But real in the flesh and blood sense who by the process
| of emulation becomes something larger than life, far larger
| than life, and I've just explored all of as many permutations
| as I could recognize in the process.
|
| WM: Oh, I-I caught overtones of Lawrence of Arabia in the
| thing, for example.
|
| FH: He could very well become an avatar for the...for the
| Arabs.
|
| WM: Right.
|
| FH: If Lawrence of Arabia had died at the crucial moment of
| the British...
|
| WM: Say, when Allenby walked into Jerusalem.
|
| FH: Yes. If he had died...if, for example, he had gone up and
| killed the people who were destroying his breed, walked into
| that conference and said, Gentlemen, I have here under my
| javala a surprise, Bang! Bang! Bang! and he had been
| killed...
|
| WM: He'd have been deified.
|
| FH: He would have been deified. And it would have been the
| most terrifying thing the British had ever encountered,
| because the Arabs would have swept that entire peninsula with
| that sort of force, because one of the things we've done in
| our society is exploited this power...Western man has
| exploited this avatar power.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| The part of that interview that's stuck with me after I
| listened to this last year was his comments about the feudal
| system (at around 38:30 [1]).
|
| _So, tribal organisation is a natural organisation of
| humankind. We tend to fall into it, given any chance at all,
| given the proper stresses, or given the proper lack of
| stresses._
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/A-mLVVJkH7I?t=2314
| inopinatus wrote:
| The discrepancy is easy to explain; Frank Herbert never owned a
| copy of _Seven Pillars_ but was instead inspired by a
| manuscript of desert adventures that he'd found on a train as a
| boy whilst holidaying in the UK.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I see what you did there.
|
| (those who don't follow: you can catch up on the _Seven
| Pillars_ wikipedia page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Pillars_of_Wisdom or like
| basically any biography of Lawrence, various forwards, et c.)
| pjmorris wrote:
| Clever.
| gostsamo wrote:
| > make me think the author isn't aware that Lawrence had
| already spent a lot of time in the Middle East
|
| it is actually mentioned in the article. you misread here, with
| the point being that knowing how to do something is not the
| same as accepting it for a normal activity.
| rozab wrote:
| I do think it's unfair when people claim Dune is a straight
| retelling of T.E. Lawrence's story. For instance I think the
| messianic aspects are drawn from other episodes in history,
| like the Mahdist War
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
| TeaBrain wrote:
| >unlike what's suggested (if not quite stated) in the film
| Lawrence of Arabia
|
| The scene from the movie is based on this passage from chapter
| 20 of Seven Pillars, which suggests that while he was familiar
| with Arab clothing before the war, there was a period of time
| when he was in British army uniform during the Arab conflict,
| until he was asked by Feisal to change into Arab clothes:
|
| "Suddenly Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his
| own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part,
| since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion
| as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how
| to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had
| been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive
| defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as
| though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in
| and out of Feisal's tent without making a sensation which he
| had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once,
| very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding
| or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which
| I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more
| decent in the desert."
|
| Also, the below quote is from the introduction, which I might
| add is perhaps the most beautiful introduction I've ever read.
| I sometimes go back just to read it:
|
| "In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of
| Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my
| English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions
| with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me, At the same time I
| could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an
| affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly
| might he be converted to another faith. I had dropped one form
| and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed's
| coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense
| loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for
| all they do."
| languagehacker wrote:
| A comment mentions it, but Sabres of Paradise is another key
| component to understanding Dune as a referential text as it
| pertains to imperialism and religious fervor as an
| insurrectionist response.
| romaaeterna wrote:
| Lol. More like Dune lifts wholesale from Sabres of Paradise,
| translating the stories about Imam Shamyl into space, only
| adding some bits of LSD inspired trippiness. If anything,
| Herbert toned down the historical accounts. On the other hand,
| Lesley Blanch went for the dramatic over the historical in
| Sabres. The story about the Sultan that drowned his son's
| mistress, for example, was from a Greek movie version.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I was surprised how much more subtle in many ways Lawrence of
| Arabia was compared to dune
| Animats wrote:
| Reality is more subtle than fiction.
|
| Dune is desert warfare of the WWI era. Modern desert warfare is
| rather different.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| There's even a part at the beginning of Lawrence of Arabia film
| where he puts out a match with his fingers, and throughout,
| Lawrence proves his ability to overcome pain. Very reminiscent of
| the Gom Jabar.
| pier25 wrote:
| _" The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts"_
| lynx97 wrote:
| Wait, is putting out a match with your fingers a superpower
| these days? I can do that very easily, and it barely hits a 2
| on the 0-10 pain-scale.
| user982 wrote:
| Superficially, there is a sequence in the film where Peter
| O'Toole's very blue eyes appear to glow:
| https://youtu.be/nBiZu5C6lCo?t=12219
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Insane the full movie is just there on YouTube.
| felipeerias wrote:
| The parallels with Lawrence are obvious, but I find that the
| character of Paul Atreides follows some older models as well.
|
| Towards the end of the first book of Dune he has become an almost
| mythical figure, a Moses using his divine insight to lead his
| people to freedom, or a Mohammed throwing them into a global war
| of conquest.
|
| That ambiguity is perhaps the book's greatest achievement: Paul's
| actions are only justifiable if the reader believes in him
| completely (he has really seen all possible futures and picked
| the best one) or not at all (he just wanted revenge and could not
| have foreseen the consequences).
| itishappy wrote:
| That's what makes the rest of the series so fun!
| krige wrote:
| Interesting to note that the recent Villeneuve adaptation seems
| to lean heavily into the latter interpretation (Paul and
| Jessica especially are ruthless and want revenge/power) while
| the Lynch adaptation was probably more of the former (Paul
| really wants to do good).
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, that isn't how I saw the movie at all.
|
| They didn't _want_ revenge /power, they had no choice but
| take it or die. It's even said explicitly in numerous places
| in the movie.
| btilly wrote:
| The article makes reference to Tim O'Reilly's excellent _Frank
| Herbert_.
|
| That book is well worth reading by anybody who wants to better
| understand Frank Herbert, and is available for free at
| https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/.
| twilo wrote:
| Thanks for that. Some of Dune books read more like political
| science really...extraordinary body of work
| barrenko wrote:
| I wish there was some logic to the O'Reilly's website, I
| occasionally stumble upon great material such as this, thank
| you.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The 1962 film based on a romanticized version of Lawrence's
| journey... rested on the idea of the 'white savior,' whose role
| was to lend a sympathetic ear to oppressed peoples and provide
| assistance to improve their lot in life.
|
| I really think this is the wrong interpretation of the end of
| that movie.
| Animats wrote:
| It's very much the British Empire view of the world. Read
| Kipling's India tales.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Done. It's got nothing to do with this movie, though.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| Considering the British supplied weapons, explosives and
| tactics to the Saudi uprising "white man saviour" is not far
| from the truth no?
|
| I don't know why it is considered politically incorrect
| nowadays to say that the world as we know it was shaped by
| white people. Deng Xiaoping himself constantly told his own
| comrades how fucking pathetic China had become. And nobody
| could argue with him.
| dkarl wrote:
| This didn't sit well with me either.
|
| In the movie, Lawrence tries to resolve his apparent split
| loyalties by bringing the Arab and British interests into
| alignment and has a couple of initial exhilarating successes,
| but he ultimately fails, badly. Neither the Arabs nor the
| British live up to his idealistic expectations. The British use
| him in ways contrary to his intentions. He also discovers that
| his own idealism is compromised by his egotism and sadism.
|
| The beautiful, dramatic desert landscape, the danger of
| Lawrence's mission, the high political stakes for the Arab
| tribes, and the historical context of war all help create an
| illusion of the possibility of heroic transcendence that is
| deeply inspiring, but in the end, it is all human and mundane:
| human vices at the small scale and human politics at the large
| scale. There is no transcendence.
|
| I can see how some people walking out of the theater might have
| only remembered the feelings stirred up by the beautiful
| cinematography and the epic score, and forgotten absolutely
| everything else, but I think it's a better movie for sweeping
| the viewer up into that feeling before dropping them down into
| the political squabbling, betrayal, disappointment, and
| tragedy.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| The movie pretty explicitly has Lawrence trying to deal with
| these split loyalties and has him specifically aware that the
| result of his actions as a British officer end up screwing
| over his Arab allies.
|
| Not to mention the scene where he tries to pass as an actual
| Arab, the results of which aren't those of a stereotypical
| "white savior" story.
|
| I can't really say it's _not_ a "white savior" story but
| it's a subversive enough take on it that I'd recommend it to
| people who are turned off by white savior stories. The movie
| has much more depth than that.
| twilo wrote:
| Mostly based on The Sabres of Paradise...
|
| Paul is based on Shamyl 3rd Imam of Dagestan from that book
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Frank Herbert said him self in an interview that Dune was
| inspired from Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch and that book
| is the story of Imam Shamil of the north caucasus.
| larodi wrote:
| Was looking for this comment, thanks. There was also a very
| lengthy article by s.o. about the fact which traces the origins
| of many details.
|
| The presently discussed article 'Paul Lawrence of Dune' sound
| as if written for political goals, rather than actual
| understanding of the origins of Dune.
| int_19h wrote:
| While we're on this subject Imam Shamil had an interesting
| contemporary counterpart figure that I think deserves more
| recognition:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunta-Hajji
| sans_souse wrote:
| I have to ask does anyone know _why_ the site asks "Are you
| between 13 and 15 years old?"
|
| Rather odd both the question and the specificity.. Would this not
| be the same as asking; "Are you 14 years old?"
|
| Not to mention I almost clicked "Yes" thinking it was asking the
| more common "Are you at least this many years or older?"
| fells wrote:
| > Would this not be the same as asking; "Are you 14 years old?"
|
| "between x and y" normally includes the endpoints.
|
| For example, if someone asks you to pick a number between 1 and
| 10, everyone would pretty much agree that 1 and 10 are
| acceptable choices.
| Terr_ wrote:
| The ambiguity of such questions drove me up the wall as a
| child.
|
| My mother has a story about how I would ask about future
| events as "the day after the day after the day after the day
| after the day after today", which in my mind was much clearer
| than "in X days" why it wasn't clear how rounding occurred.
|
| Clearly, this set me up for a career involving off-by-one
| errors.
| haraball wrote:
| Norwegian has the phrases "fra og med" and "til og med",
| where the "og med" means "including". So "from and
| including Monday" removes the ambiguity.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Ha! That's truly funny and obeys some kind of comedy rule
| about taking the story one way and then veering in a
| different direction. Well done, indeed.
|
| Our daughter used to say "yesterday's yesterday" when she
| was 4ish and I really liked it.
| mock-possum wrote:
| They would be technically acceptable yet they would feel
| exceptional
| superkuh wrote:
| Samuel Butler's 1872 "Erewhon" fiction book which features a
| society which banned all complex machines because of a prior
| machine intelligence uprising is the direct, and directly
| referenced, inspiration for the "Butlerian Jihad" in the Dune
| book series.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Lawrence of Arabia was also a story about how superpowers abuse
| people and use them as chess pieces stabbing them in the back.
| But at least the Saudis had the last laugh.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" at the Riverside Theatre on Wisconsin
| Avenue in Milwaukee in 70mm in the summer of 1962, the year it
| was released. I was overwhelmed ("blown away" as a term of art
| didn't exist back then but would be an apt description). I was SO
| thrilled when, after nearly two hours, the screen said "There
| will now be an intermission." Never heard of such a thing back
| then for a movie!
|
| I note that the film is now available for rent in 4k. I'm gonna
| take a flutter and watch it on Vision Pro.
| UberFly wrote:
| Too cool. I've always wanted to watch this and you've inspired
| me.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| 20 years ago when I was living in Shanghai, my girlfriend was
| a member of the communist party (meritocratic she was
| enrolled because she had great grades). She had regular
| meetings with a small group of members of the party and they
| had regular discussions after being told to watch certain
| movies.
|
| Lawrence of Arabia was one of those movies she had to watch
| to later discuss with other members... So we watched it
| together, had great discussion about it. Later when she went
| to meet with the other party members, they discussed the cult
| of personality surrounding the character and the use of
| guerrilla tactics.
|
| (Another movie they all watched like this was 7 years in
| Tibet)
| foldr wrote:
| A minor point, but it was hardly the first epic movie to have
| an intermission. Gone With the Wind has one, for example, and
| is a similar length.
| pjmorris wrote:
| A friend raving about it got me to go see the 1989 reissue, and
| I was similarly overwhelmed/blown-away. The intermission only
| added to the sense of it being an event.
|
| Last year, I dragged friends of mine to see it in the theater.
| They, too, were amazed. Now, we've been reading up on those
| times.
|
| The reading list, so far:
|
| 'Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making
| of the Modern Middle East', Soctt Anderson
|
| 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom', T.E. Lawrence
|
| 'A Peace to End All Peace', David Fromkin
| edm0nd wrote:
| It's such a great movie! The entire story of El Aurens is
| extremely fascinating.
| ggm wrote:
| Other people have documented Herbert's obsession with the
| californian ecology movement and dune re-establishment. I think
| he took things happening in small scale and used them as
| filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale.
| ggm wrote:
| Oregon not California.
|
| https://niche-canada.org/2020/04/24/frank-herberts-ecology-a...
| variaga wrote:
| The Oregon dunes are a great place to visit (at least, I
| enjoyed them) - not like anything else you'll find in North
| America.
|
| And you can tell people you've been to the dunes that
| inspired "Dune" :)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Dunes_National_Recrea.
| ..
| radarsat1 wrote:
| > I think he took things happening in small scale and used them
| as filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale.
|
| I think this must be a common thing that good scifi authors do.
| I saw a talk by William Gibson many years ago where he
| mentioned something very similar, he called it "part of his
| science fiction toolkit".
| ggm wrote:
| Kim Stanley Robinson is carrying the story forward.
| sunami-ai wrote:
| This showing up here at the same time articles about the push for
| tourism in Saudi Arabia showing on major news outlets.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| With recent events I've been thinking about Dune lately. Once you
| start to compare what happens in dune to what is happening now,
| it's rather unpleasant.
|
| Prescience allows for the complete domination of humanity, but to
| some degree we already working on pre-prescience. Privatized
| intelligence companies have grown as part of our corporate
| surveillance state. These companies, like palantir, act as
| "truthsayers," divining the state of reality from incredible
| amounts of information for those with the money to buy it.
| America has companies that rival countries in terms of power, and
| these intelligence companies that service them can act as king
| maker and influence, subtly or directly, with some very giant
| levers.
|
| The US government is closer to the Landsraad, each house is a
| corporation, each CEO a duke or baron.
|
| Peter Thiel is likely the reverend mother architect of a recent
| messianic rise to power.
|
| I am not 100% sure exactly what the Bene Gesserit were supposed
| to represent, but on a deep level I think they represent
| intelligence agencies like the CIA.
|
| Social Media has a lot of overlap with "the voice." With A/B
| testing various groups with divisive messages, to see what
| divides most effectively, it creates a means of control. Nobody
| was commanded to show up on jan 6, but the "command" to do so was
| heard. This is very in line with frank Herbert's idea of what the
| voice was. A/B testing messages on humans at scale is like
| learning the voice.
|
| We now have Cameras, RF Receivers (blue tooth/driver's license
| detection), phone backups, website logs, and a host of other
| surveillance all centralized, maybe not directly, into the hands
| of private intelligence. With all these sources of information we
| are getting closer and closer and closer to prescience. We are
| still limited by computing power to make sense of all the data,
| but the god emperor of dune was not. With the rise of AI, we now
| have the potential for a thinking/processing agent with no sense
| of morality to be assigned to every single individual, in order
| to carry out the absolute crushing of any nascent dissent before
| it can become cohesive enough to threaten those in power.
|
| We are dangerously close to uncheckable totalitarian rule. When
| our rulers do something we don't like, they will laugh and say
| "what are you going to do about it?" Every potential weapon
| purchased will be fed into their "prescient" machine, so will
| every communication with another individual, and every use of
| transportation. When your personal AI agent determines you are at
| risk of "doing something about it," an example will be made of
| you.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > We are dangerously close to uncheckable totalitarian rule.
|
| I'm not sure we need to look to the future for that. North
| Korea has really shown that modern weapons and 80s era
| intelligence and propaganda methods, applied brutally enough,
| are enough to keep ~20 million people under extreme poverty and
| deep obedience for 80+ years now, with no signs of stopping (at
| least not from internal pressures) any time soon.
| tpm wrote:
| It's not enough, you also have to take into account specific
| culture and circumstances. The same as in NK could have
| happened in several other countries in Southeast Asia
| (Vietnam, Cambodia), Africa and South America (various
| communist dictatorships) and Europe (all countries behind the
| Iron Curtain). So why only North Korea?
| ViktorRay wrote:
| I believe the answer is the hereditary nature of the North
| Korean system. That is what is different in North Korea
| compared to those other countries.
|
| It leads to a country that is essentially a slave society.
| The owner is the Kim family. The other top people are
| overseers. The population are slaves. Propaganda and
| censorship of the outside world maintain the system.
|
| This was true of the other Communist countries also but I
| think the hereditary nature keeps it going. It's the only
| thing that distinguishes North Korea from the other
| Communist states.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > Communist
|
| Thew way you are using this word is wrong. It might be
| cosmetic communism, but it's clearly a totalitarian
| state. You called the population slaves, which is very
| much not workers owning the means of production.
|
| Communism is an end state, but no government gets there
| because once a force is strong enough to forcibly
| redistribute resources to people not powerful enough to
| take those resources themselves, the redistributors
| choose to redistribute the resources to themselves
| because they have unchecked power. Communism collapses
| into totalitarianism in almost the same way democracy
| collapses into oligarchy.
|
| Communism is a description of a power relationship. It is
| supposed to be a re-distribution of power, but in
| societies that claim to have tried communism, _resources_
| get distributed for a time, but power does not. So you
| get distributed resources (cosmetic communism), but not
| distributed power (structural communism).
|
| This then leads to the deeper problem. Communism becomes
| a scare word that means authoritarianism which taints
| marxist ideas, which taints socialism.
|
| There is a balancing act. Too much re-distributive power
| -> power centralizes to those capable of redistribution
| -> unchecked power -> authoritarianism. Too little re-
| distributive power -> power centralizes in those who
| continue to consolidate their power -> unchecked power ->
| authoritarianism.
|
| By using the word communism to describe authoritarianism,
| you damage the ideas necessary to prevent democracy from
| the same fate.
| frankvdwaal wrote:
| And what about the Butlerian Jihad? It was a war against
| Thinking Machines, devices that would do the thinking for
| people. People were becoming less critical, they stagnated,
| left all that thinking work to machines, which meant that the
| technocratic class that controlled these machines effectively
| controlled mankind.
|
| I think Frank Herbert would have a field day with our modern
| era of algorithms.
| barrenko wrote:
| Future always seems to flip-flop between utopia and dystopia,
| but that usually just ends up being myopia.
|
| *as some variant of Paul archetype rises and returns the branch
| to a coherent timeline.
| 6stringronin wrote:
| The whole concept of Paul atreides seemed entirely orientalist,
| in Edward Said's coinage of the term.
| keepamovin wrote:
| I'm convinced Herbert had some deep knowledge of psi phenomena.
| His descriptions of truthsayers reading people, timelines, race
| consciousness, and prescience are very similar to real
| experiences. His emphasis that it emerges through a combination
| of genetics and training of subtle awareness, plus the suggestion
| compounds could provide access to a state that could be sustained
| without them - also ring very true. The exploration of its
| paradoxes (destructiveness and utility of prophecy), and the
| contrast of those intuitive skills with the pure analytical ones
| of the mentat (or even of thinking machines) are also very deep.
| I think the idea that humanity's future involves a deeper
| engagement with and interplay of all these forces is also super
| likely. Perhaps he was friends, through his naval service, with
| people in the UK's version of Stargate (US psi and remote viewing
| programs). Surely there was such a program, tho I'm not aware of
| any releases of information about it.
| zabzonk wrote:
| i just got downvoted for saying elsewhere that this "needs an
| /s" - but this either does, or you need some help.
| Havoc wrote:
| > you need some help
|
| That seems a bit strong given all the wild stuff believe in a
| religious context.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Don't even need religion to see wild stuff, or to know that
| your intuition has something to it beyond calculation from
| experience.
| balamatom wrote:
| I was walking by the sea the other day and saw a man
| drowning.
|
| "You need help," I said helpfully. Mercifully, even!
| zabzonk wrote:
| perhaps he was just waving
| balamatom wrote:
| Might be. That'd certainly explain the ambulance I saw
| there on my way back, the dripping wet shape on the
| stretcher, covered with some sort of tarp (which I
| thought I recognized as torn from a nearby beach bar
| that'd been closed for the winter, emergency services
| over here being underfunded as they are.) But idk, they
| might've been picking up a beached dolphin or something.
| (With an ambulance?!)
| zabzonk wrote:
| Sorry, I didn't mean to belittle your experience, or the
| guy's demise.
|
| I was making a bit of a heartless pun of sorts on Stevie
| Smith's poem:
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46479/not-waving-
| but-...
| keepamovin wrote:
| Thanks for the help!
| balamatom wrote:
| Herbert and similar _are_ the release of information, the main
| "psi phenomenon" explored over the XX century being precisely
| the remotely induced belief in "psi phenomena". That rabbit
| hole goes deep, though I have my doubts as to whether it leads
| _out_.
| keepamovin wrote:
| No, psi predates modern sci fi and experiences of it are not
| generated by that. Belief is easy to find in preceding
| centuries too
| balamatom wrote:
| I'm not talking belief either, I'm talking _praxis_ ;)
|
| IME, what you refer to by a Greek letter is either "just
| there" as part of one's perceptual and cognitive
| functioning, or "just isn't" - the latter obviously being
| the predominant case, being more adaptive for survival in a
| newly Enclosed world. One even has some degree of control
| as to enabling or disabling it. Without guidance as to
| avoiding its many pitfalls, though, it's still very easy to
| end up in a psychotic state, or some other uncomfortable
| frame and shape. Subsequently, the manifestation of cosmic
| love commonly called "natural selection" does what it's
| known to do...
|
| (My pet theory is that Abrahamic faiths, the promotion of
| Christianity to state-religion, and the consequent Dark
| Ages, were all parts of a sort of mass political reaction
| to people overdoing that sort of thing. Took a bunch more
| centuries than expected to even force it underground,
| though. And, as these things go, it reemerged nearly
| simultaneously in the form of the indigenous knowledges of
| colonized folk, who were subjected to more of the same
| violence, and then some.)
|
| What was being tested last century is whether the so-called
| _" they"_ can switch it on or off for you, remotely;
| authors of fantastic literature, even if not directly
| informed from "on high", happen to be in a good position to
| sense these workings and conduct discourses on them. Makes
| for good business, too, since it is only natural for humans
| to want some enchantment in their lives. However, the
| background psychological pressures of living in perpetual
| encirclement naturally (well, m _i_ metically) drive people
| to compartmentalization, such as the confining of these
| experiential coagulates into the sphere of "fictions" (if
| not outright "delusions", the distinction being, for the
| most part, simply of medium of conveyance.)
|
| Thankfully, as we all know, fiction is something that
| doesn't exist, and it doesn't take much to realize how this
| statement cuts both ways.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Concerning truthsayers:
|
| It is absolutely the truth that a liar will automatically have
| a difficult time knowing when another person is being truthful.
| They will both automatically tend to believe the person is
| lying and not know how to recognize the signs that a person is
| being completely truthful.
|
| It's the opposite of an honest person being more easily conned.
| It's not in their expectations, because of their own lack of
| devious ways.
|
| That's part of the reason that dictators rise to power on the
| backs of the gullible -- most people are just not that utterly
| ruthless, dishonest, or mean-spirited. All these GOP folks
| being fired and deported by Trump are just incapable of
| comprehending either how vile the man is or how stupid they are
| (which is why he targeted them with his cons).
|
| And America would be in a better situation right now if more
| Americans had their heads out of their asses enough to know
| that that is a bad, bad dude, who cares about one and only one
| person: himself and those that serve him.
|
| All that said, the first step to recognizing liars is to be
| brutally truthful, especially with yourself. The worst lies we
| tell are the ones we tell ourselves.
|
| [ETA: ps: I love you, my friend. Keep shining your light!]
| cess11 wrote:
| Robert Evans did an introduction to the life and deeds of
| Lawrence a while back, which I thought was interesting.
|
| First episode:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o77rpNge5Uw
| iamacyborg wrote:
| So 40k is Lawrence of Arabia, neat.
| wdbm wrote:
| The trick, Muad'Dib, is not minding that it hurts.
| corry wrote:
| I'm 100% onboard with the 'Lawrence of Arabia inspired Dune'
| theory but I think one of the cleverest things Herbert did with
| Dune is to introduce a 'visionary substance' (spice) into the
| otherwise austere Islamic-adjacent motif.
|
| He not only shrouded the spice in ritual and religion (which
| isn't THAT suprising considering many human societies used
| visionary substsances, and Herbert was a child of the 1960s
| psychedelic culture too) but also give it a central place in the
| economy and functioning of the empire.
|
| What if a visionary substance was the real deal that gave you
| insight and precognition? What a rebel leader took full advantage
| of such a substance? What if that was combined with religious
| fervour?
|
| Dune is basically space war + outsider Messiah + Islam +
| psychedelics
| ldbooth wrote:
| Plus oil geopolitics
| keepamovin wrote:
| Yeah, that's smart too. And how the "Spacefaring Guild"
| requires spice to navigate the best routes between the stars.
| Oil for transport. Everyone brought to their needs by Pauls'
| threat to switch off the oil supply. It's all so smart,
| Herbert was a hypergenius I think.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| > Herbert was a hypergenius I think.
|
| DUNE is (one of?) my favorite fiction reads and I have to
| resist turning all "fanboy" over it sometimes.
|
| I love the sensation in DUNE that I'm inside a fully
| fleshed-out universe where the vision is so large I can't
| even see the edges, but here's one thread you might find
| interesting.
|
| ...that said...
|
| I never really "got" the rest of the series. Never felt
| like Paul and his actions were acceptably justified beyond
| "yeah we would've all died out, trust me".
|
| Separately, the whole, uh, female superpower thing came off
| as eye-rolling simp-nerd fantasy that wasn't up to the
| standard of the first book. It wasn't even spice-induced,
| it was just /muscles/ taking over mens' minds.
| jawilson2 wrote:
| > DUNE is (one of?) my favorite non-fiction reads
|
| > non-fiction
|
| I have some bad news for you...
| inanutshellus wrote:
| hahah are implying DUNE isn't historical non-fiction?!!
| ;) Thank you; fixed.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| _Children of Dune_ is my favorite thus far (just finished
| _God Emperor_ ... and don't intend to continue the
| series).
|
| With that being said, Frank Herbert certainly (IMO) is a
| genius of pure vision and worldbuilding but he is a
| serviceable writer at best.
|
| By the aforementioned fourth book, he no longer has
| anything to add to his consideration of prescience/fate
| and is increasingly focused on sexuality. And his writing
| on sexuality is about as un-sensual as I can imagine.
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's been a while since I've read them, but I recall
| Heretics and Chapterhouse being better than God Emperor.
| Although also weirder.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I've found that "escaping from one's editor and writing
| things you think are cool or sexy" is a common hazard of
| being a successful author, especially in SFF. Look at
| George R.R. Martin's complete inability to actually
| finish a damn book, or Robert Jordan's insistence on
| incorporating detailed descriptions of people's clothes
| alongside gobs of spanking and ceremonial nudity. And
| those are series I enjoyed despite their flaws.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The sex stuff is a bit weird and cringe, but they're
| still great books. I just re-read Heretics again as I'm
| making my way through the whole series again and frankly
| in many ways it's the best book of the series if you can
| get past the weird sex stuff.
|
| There's plenty in there still about prescience.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| Yeah I like the first book the most. The series went off
| the rails.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Never felt like Paul and his actions were acceptably
| justified
|
| I actually like what Hurbert did with paul. He made
| someone that was a god amongst man and then completely
| destroyed his legacy. Paul both was and wasn't a hero
| depending on the perspective of the person in the story.
| Herbert did a good job of showing the dangers of
| worshiping an authoritarian leader.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Paul Atreides actions really are never acceptabl\y
| justified because the later books basically show them to
| be unjustified. Or at least contradictory. It's a bit
| confused, but he is shown to be a brutal genocidal
| dictator, and his son even more so... Paul even alludes
| to Hitler at one point... It's just that Herbert makes
| them the protagonist and makes it confusing for the
| reader how sympathetic they should be.
|
| And we basically just have to take Leto II's word at face
| value that he was preventing humanity's extinction,
| but...
|
| By the time of Heretics, Herbert was basically coming
| right out and saying that prescience in fact alters the
| timeline rather than "just" predicts it. Which is kind of
| crazy if you think of two things:
|
| 1) Every Guild Navigator using the spice induced
| prescience to plan and fold space is altering reality
|
| 2) Spice comes from an alien being. The only aliens in
| the Dune universe.
|
| (disclaimer: I don't count Brian Herbert's books & and
| whatever might be in there... what I read of those made
| me not want to read more)
| nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
| Don't forget ecology
| taeric wrote:
| It bothers me that this doesn't actually sound that far from
| what a lot of folks seem to genuinely think? People are
| desperate for a panacea. But only if it works on the elites, it
| seems. Heaven forbid we come up with something that merely
| helps people lose weight.
|
| Worse, a lot of people mistake euphoria moments for being
| right.
| lazide wrote:
| It's compelling because of course that is what people want.
| macartain wrote:
| Plus he also had the smarts to use plausible mechanisms to
| remove advanced computers (the Butlerian Jihad) and nuclear
| weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a historical event
| IIRC? it's been a while..) from the technologies available to
| the Dune universe. This allowed the exploration of all sorts of
| human developmental possibilities - the Bene Gesserit and
| mentats, advanced schools of martial art and mental discipline
| etc.
|
| On the topic of the Butlerian Jihad, and its echo of the
| historic Islamic taboo on art representing living things -
| looking around the current world and bearing in mind how
| twisted out of shape our social conversation has arguably
| become so quickly given that iPhones only landed in 2007... you
| have to wonder whether it is such an outlandish idea. Looking
| at the news over the last few weeks and months makes me realise
| that it is incredibly hard to see outside your historical
| moment, until things _just happen_! There are many
| possibilities and reality can get weird...
| robotresearcher wrote:
| The personal force-field shield was clever too. Removes
| bullets from the story, in favor of martial arts.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Force-field was innovative.
|
| Every other fantasy-type movie in a modern setting I cannot
| take seriously...Avengers, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.
|
| Like, just use a gun. Whatever you were going to attack
| with, put that in a gun, and attack at 45rpm, 3000 ft/s.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Force-field was innovative.
|
| Yes, although the shields were fudged somewhat to allow
| knife fights. It would also seem that mankind lost the
| ancient secrets of body armour.
|
| > Like, just use a gun. Whatever you were going to attack
| with, put that in a gun, and attack at 45rpm, 3000 ft/s.
|
| There was even one Dr Who episode where the Daleks
| replaced their beam weapons with machine guns [0].
| Although only because there was some sort of 'unknown
| force' that disrupted the guns without affecting the
| other Dalek systems.
|
| [0] https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Death_to_the_Daleks_(T
| V_story...
| paulddraper wrote:
| > although the shields were fudged somewhat to allow
| knife fights
|
| Right. Shields can protect against high velocity things,
| e.g. bullets or shrapnel. But not slow moving things,
| e.g. air and hands.
|
| This contrivance means ancient weapons still have a
| purpose.
|
| This effect is similar to non-Newtonian fluids. (In fact,
| there has been research into using non-Newtonian fluids
| for body armor [1].)
|
| ---
|
| > It would also seem that mankind lost the ancient
| secrets of body armour.
|
| There are a few instances of armor in the movies
| (Harkonnens, Leo Atreides and Gurney Halleck, one of Paul
| Atreides' visions), but the books make virtually no
| mention of it.
|
| The in-universe explanation is that the fighting style
| was much closer to ninjas than knights. Which means
| light-to-no armor was preferred.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_armor
| CodeMage wrote:
| > Every other fantasy-type movie in a modern setting I
| cannot take seriously...Avengers, Harry Potter, Star
| Wars, etc.
|
| > Like, just use a gun. Whatever you were going to attack
| with, put that in a gun, and attack at 45rpm, 3000 ft/s.
|
| This is one of the many reasons why I like the Dresden
| Files universe. Wizards wield incredible power, but a
| wizard can still be brought down by a sniper.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| are you telling us AI slop is not Haram?
| foobarchu wrote:
| Nuclear weapons exist and are used, they call them atomics. I
| believe they are used to break into the city in the first
| book. The big taboo seems to be using them against people.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Correct. They nuke the rock wall to let the worms through.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a
| historical event IIRC? it's been a while..)
|
| They have them.
|
| But there's a moral taboo and a practical MAD one.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a
| historical event IIRC? it's been a while..)
|
| They have them ("atomics"). If bored into the planet, they
| are powerful enough to split it.
|
| The Great Convention (akin the Geneva convention) prohibited
| the use of atomics. A convention that...well, no spoilers.
| ericol wrote:
| > and nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a
| historical event IIRC? it's been a while..)
|
| If I recall correctly, they are banned from use on people
| because that's how the machines tried to annihilate mankind
| (it's been a while..)
| ilamont wrote:
| > and Herbert was a child of the 1960s psychedelic culture
|
| Was he really a child of this culture? He was in his 40s by the
| time Dune came out in 1965, with large parts of it written in
| the early 60s, when psychadelics seemed more of a fringe thing
| used in beatnik circles, academic labs and prisons.
|
| OTOH, the concept of invaders seizing territory for spice or
| other unique natural materials (Dutch and Portuguese in the
| Moluccas, Japan annexing Taiwan) drugs shifting empires (Opium)
| and special substances and techniques needed for long-distance
| navigation (citrus, astrolabe) had been around for centuries.
| corry wrote:
| I hear you, but I believe he publicly commented on
| psychedelics and visionary substances and their inspiration
| for Dune's spice. He studied the natives of North and South
| America which have many examples of these things.
|
| I don't have a source handy, but can share what Paul Stamets
| recounted a personal conversation with Frank in his Mycelium
| Running book as reported on the Dune wikipedia page:
|
| "Frank went on to tell me that much of the premise of Dune--
| the magic spice (spores) that allowed the bending of space
| (tripping), the giant sand worms (maggots digesting
| mushrooms), the eyes of the Freman (the cerulean blue of
| Psilocybe mushrooms), the mysticism of the female spiritual
| warriors, the Bene Gesserits (influenced by the tales of
| Maria Sabina and the sacred mushroom cults of Mexico)--came
| from his perception of the fungal life cycle, and his
| imagination was stimulated through his experiences with the
| use of magic mushrooms."
|
| Totally agree with you on the invaders part. I think this is
| why Dune is so great, it blends A LOT of things together into
| a coherent narrative.
| shaunxcode wrote:
| "we have prophets at home" : the prophets at home : ketamine
| and dmt fueled madness
| zaphirplane wrote:
| My memory of the book is faded and relying on the recent movie.
| Why is the rebellion in your opinion Islam like. Dethroned
| prince, lost prince, rebellion against colonization, empire
| mining a colony are very much a common trope
| johnklos wrote:
| It's an interesting article with some contrasts I hadn't
| considered, but as a tangent, why does the site think it needs
| 200% CPU constantly, even when not scrolling, just to show me a
| wall of text?
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Many writers of genre fiction rely on their audience having read
| fewer history books than they have. I saw people online calling
| George Lucas a prophet for depicting the decline of the Republic
| in the Prequels, but he really just read a couple of books about
| Ancient Rome. And dragons and zombies make the premise of "what
| if the Mongols invaded during the War of the Roses" a lot more
| exciting.
|
| Originality is overrated though, so I don't mind. One of my
| favorite science fiction novels, The Stars my Destination by
| Alfred Bester, is transparently based on The Count of Monte
| Cristo.
| newsclues wrote:
| Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of
| the Modern Middle East Book by Scott Anderson
|
| One of my favourite books on the topic
| danielskogly wrote:
| Interesting to see that Isaac Asimov's Foundation isn't mentioned
| anywhere. The Wikipedia-article says the following[0]
|
| > Tim O'Reilly suggests that Herbert also wrote Dune as a
| counterpoint to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)#Asimov's_Foundati...
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