Gloria in excelsis vitae, et in mundis pax omnibus bonae voluntatis

Peace find you and bind you in all that you do.

Best wishes from me, your own Sandy Claws!

Interlude: Repost of Material Deleted from the Dune Novels BBS

In the podcast interview linked to from his latest MySpace blog, Kevin says something along the lines of

"It's not like we're going to write Paper Clips of Dune or anything like that!"

At first this announcement came as a relief; a good thing to know, that.

But then I got to thinking: maybe his statement was just a clever bit of smoke-screen misdirection?!

Just in case, I'm ready with a cover proposal:



(Drop by my Flickr page for other upcoming book covers.)

NEWS!

Recently endorsed by Kevin's wife!

Just kidding. She dropped by my pix page on MySpace and called it "cute". I love people with a sense of humor!

The Reader's Lament: Hunters I.1.a-b

Memory is a weapon sharp enough to inflict deep wounds.
—The Mentat's Lament

I find it odd that the first section of a book whose writing style seems to presuppose a complete lack of memory of the part of the reader should begin with an epigraph invoking that very faculty. But maybe the authors were justified, judging from the large number of people who claim to enjoy reading it. For the first time in my life I regret that I am not an ADD sufferer! Because what is wounded by possession of a memory in this case—besides your willing belief in the story that unfolds—is memory itself! The memory of how good the original six Dune books were....

So OK, enough with the pleasantries. Let's bitch.

1. If anyone needs to be told that Rakis = Dune, they shouldn't be reading this book. Deadwood, snip snip.

2. Actually, Rakis/Dune isn't "lost", it's still merrily twirling its way around Canopus. What is this, an attempt at pathos? Try the other word starting with a 'b'.

3. The no-ship What-tha-ca? I don't recall it having a name? I guess they'll explain this eventually. And I'll shred it again.

4. Miles Teg is a clone. He's not a ghola. They tell us this themselves later. SO WHY CALL HIM A GHOLA HERE?! And he's not a "thirteen-year-old", he's a multicentarian IN THE BODY of a thirteen-year-old. Big difference, you'd think.

5. Stimulant beverage? Why not just call it spice coffee and be done with it? Who cares if there's no java in it?

6. "Rakis...the legendary desert planet"...they've already called it that once already. Enough repetition already!

7. If the "Honored Matre war vessels" are "undetectable", how can the archival images show them? (See 19 below.) And who was filming these archival images in the first place? Some BGs in another undetectable no-ship of their own?

8. Who equates explosions with pinpricks? Firecrackers maybe?

9. "Those new weapons must have been developed out in the Scattering. Teg pursued a Mentat projection. Human ingenuity born out of desperation? Or was it something else entirely?" OK, so much for the first-order projections; what about the second and third order ones?

If A, ingenuity born of desperation, desperation in the face of what? If B, then what else entirely? Developed by whom or what? This is a good place to develop amnesia, because gone are the subtleties and intricate reasoning of the old novels. This is our first glimpse of the infamous "loss of 50 IQ points".

10. Can an atmosphere catch fire?

11. "By strict definition...." Ah, at last we come to the ghola/clone thing. OK, so most people refer to him as a ghola even though he's a clone. Those BG always were sloppy in their use of language. And it's contagious: even the authors are infected!

12. "...the Honored Matres. Whores, the Sisterhood called them. And with good reason."

whore, noun. a prostitute; a promiscuous woman.

Um...I don't remember the Honored Matres doing it for money or really even for fun. It was more of a control thang, right? So what good reason is there for the BG to call the HM "whores". I mean, it's not like the BG never used sex for their own purposes, right? Anyway, the usage originated with Frank Herbert; it's an in-universe character thing, doesn't have to make sense. That doesn't mean there's "good reason" though.

13. WTF are "intuitive finger controls"? Something to control intuitive fingers? Whew, better grab me another cup of stimulant beverage...this is gonna be a long haul. Again, who recorded the images?!

14. Sheeana appears. Just in case you forgot, she's originally from Rakis. That's why she has "unruly umber hair flashed with streaks of copper from a childhood spent under the desert sun." With totally blue eyes, because she has eaten spice all her life. She's a Reverend Mother, too, by the way, in case you'd forgotten. With big pouty lips.

15. Reminder: Teg's body is thirteen; that means he's started going through puberty; crackly voice, rampaging hormones...or at least, you'd have expected the latter. And here he is alone with the woman who abused him as a boy, had her hands all over his "Shy Hoolewd"...and they don't explore this at all. (Maybe something to be grateful for, I guess.) "The Bashar accomplished a great deal in three hundred standard years, before I died." More person-perspective confusion. This time the path of infection seems to have been authors to character.

16. "...her expression fell into a troubled mask." Thank Dur it didn't fall into his cup of stimulant beverage! That would have been a mess, what? OK, let's get this straight: he's been obsessing over these same images for THREE YEARS NOW? And no one has thought of an intervention? Curtailing his time in the archives chamber? OK.

17. "It had been their intent to prevent anyone...from finding the ship." Their intent? I thought Duncan did it all on his own, a spontaneous reaction to the threat he perceived from the old couple. Oh well.

18. "So many unknowns trouble me, where are we, who is chasing us...." How they expect anyone to buy (= believe) this crap, why does lint collect in my navel, do I really have the stamina to do this for the entire book?!

19. If there's humming, there's not silence. Duh. But here's confirmation, at least, of the ship's invisibility. (See 7 above.) And a reminder: It's big. They mean BIG. Just in case you hadn't gotten that bit yet.

20. "Now that his memories had been awakened...." Yeah, more than three years earlier. Strictly speaking, his restored memories do not tell him "what he had done up to his death": they only tell him what happened up until right before he died, when Odrade took the cell sample.

21. More recap: Teg and his merry band stole the no-ship; Gammu used to be Giedi Prime used to be the homeworld of the nasty Harks but they're all dead; Teg and the Duncan ghola (number twelve in an unlucky batch), blah blah blah, I did read the old books, thank you, a tree died for this, snip snip. But notice how they glaze over the slaughter of hundreds of HMs & friends, the gratuitous mentions of Muad'Dib and the ancient Butlerian Jihad.

22. Blah blah blah, nothing new to see here, move along now.

23. "That had been Teg's first life. His real memories ended there." Um...no, his real memories should end at the point where Odrade took the cells used to grow him.

24. "Now that he was alive again, he had a second chance." This idea of people getting a "second chance" seems to be an important one to B&K, seeing how they go on about it. Everybody and his brother (Paolo?) gets a second chance. Even the ones not usually thought of as having screwed up their first time around.

25. More recap, then this: "Better than anyone else, the escapees understood about the mysterious Enemy that continued to hunt for them, no matter how lost the no-ship might be...." Just what is it that they understand so much better than anyone else? I'm confoosed. Can anybody out there help?

Weary with the unnecessary repetition of things most Dune fans should remember, Sand Chigger stretched his many legs and hit "Publish" to post his initial musings, then wandered off towards the bedniche and the futons to see how far ChiggerBint had gotten in her perusal of their new copy of The Camel Suture.

Though he was struggling with text written as for a thirteen-year-old, he had accepted this task willingly, and would not truly rest until it was complete. En garde!

(v.1.1 - added blank lines between items)

Interlude: MySpace Sucks

Seems like you get more error messages than normal operations over there.


Yeah, yeah, I know, massive number of users to deal with, blah blah blah, it's free, blah blah blah.

Bite me.

If you're going to do something, do it right or not at all.

True of so many things....

The "Epi-Epigraphs"...A prologue of sorts?

So, just in case you didn't reread (or ever read) the last of the originals, these four "epi-epigraphs by way of prologue" (my title, since none is given for them) remind you of (or fill you in on) a few of the important details. Let's look at each in turn.

GUILD BANK RECORDS, GAMMU BRANCH

"[A]n empire was left to fend for itself"? Why this and not "the empire"? A curious attempt at adding mythic resonance?

Stripped of its energy and resources, the ancient government of the Old Empire fell away. New power groups took root and grew strong, but never again would humans allow themselves to depend upon a monolithic leader or a key, finite substance. Single points of failure.

Part of the problem with this one is that no date is given for it. Considering how the Guild itself is still dependent on "a key, finite substance", relying on their own stockpiles and, later, the Bene Gesserit on Chapterhouse for spice, that last seems a bit silly.

Some say the Scattering was Leto II's Golden Path, a crucible in which to strengthen the human race forever, to teach us a lesson we could not forget.

Who says that? "And what is the Golden Path? you ask. It is the survival of humankind, nothing more nor less." (FH, GEoD) The Scattering was not the Golden Path, but it was one element of it. Sure, we can attribute this error to character POV—that old Prequelite standby—and blame the author of this Guild record. But later in the book, when other characters are depicted as viewing Leto II and his Golden Path as failures and when we are told that the Thinking Machine forces have reached the edges of the human scattering, it becomes clear that the true source of the error and misunderstanding lies elsewhere.

TAMALANE

Two things here. The first is the first sentence ("Even the most learned of us cannot imagine the scope of the Scattering"), which now reads to me as an attempt to plant the seed of the idea that The Scattering was not infinite (and therefore could eventually be encompassed by the machines) and to reinforce the idea that the Golden Path may have been a mistake or have failed.

The second is the grammatical mistake in the third sentence: "Entire civilizations rose and fell while out there those who remained in the Old Empire sat in complacency." Spot it? As I have said elsewhere, they really need to find some decent editors and galley-proof-readers.

MASTER SCYTALE

Unlike many, I didn't go back and reread the originals before reading Hunters (but hopefully I'll have time to do so over the holidays), so I'm relying completely on memory when I say that I don't find anything particularly inconsistent in this one. I'm not sure what the point of including it was, other than to cast doubt on the abilities of the "Lost Tleilaxu" from The Scattering. (Considering how long it took the Old Empire Tleilaxu to learn how to replicate spice, however, I'm not sure this is a valid criticism on Scytale's part.)

MURBELLA

Isn't this extremely verbose for an "emergency message"? Only the first sentence is necessary for a "Be on the look-out" warning, only it and the second of any relevance to other BG outposts. Inclusion of the remainder seems completely inappropriate for a message of this type. (Let's paraphrase: I, your new leader, am wishy-washy.) But, just in case anyone has forgotten, it does remind us that a Big Bad is coming. (Note as well the implication that the no-ship occupants are now enemies.)

* * * * *

It may well be that these four initial epigraphs were based on something Brian and Kevin found in Frank Herbert's notes. I'm not sure I see the necessity of their inclusion here (or anywhere), however.

Preliminaries: Acknowledgements and Authors' Note

I don't have much to say about the Acknowledgements, except to note that this section may answer, for the careful reader, that oft-asked question "Who exactly are the members of the Herbert Limited Parnership?" And to simply point out in passing my concern over why a third party (Dr. Attila Torkos) had to be relied on to work "very hard on fact-checking and consistency." (Not to mention preparing the Duniverse timeline.) I would have thought the world's "two biggest fans of Dune" should have been able to handle this themselves. Especially since they have Brian's concordance.

The order in this is interesting as well:

And as always, these books would not exist without the unending help and support from our wives, Janet Herbert and Rebecca Moesta Anderson, or the original genius of Frank Herbert.

As for the "Authors' Note", the very first line probably sums up the feelings of everyone who knows anything at all about Dune: "We wish Frank Herbert could have been here to write this book." So do we all, so do we all.

The remainder is basically a rehashing of the standard story about how the new Dune books and Hunters came into being. Nothing really new here (but if I have to hear about the "excruciating cliffhander ending" one more time...), but let's recap the main details.

Brian and Frank had talked about writing something on the Butlerian Jihad together. Brian left things be out of respect for his parents memory until more than a decade after their deaths, at which time he started talking about "completing the project" with Kevin in 1997. [They fail to mention that it was Kevin that contacted Brian about this in the first place.] This next is worth quoting verbatim (emphasis added):

But apparently Frank Herbert had left no notes, and we thought we would have to do the project based solely on our own imaginations. After further discussions, we realized that a great deal of preliminary work needed to be completed before we could tackle Dune 7-not just laying groundwork for the story itself, but also reintroducing the book-buying audience and a whole new generation of readers to the incredible, highly imaginative Dune universe.

So, basically, they first planned out the story as they imagined it. And they had so little faith in the reading public (that in preparation for "Dune 7" people wouldn't bother to go back and reread the originals or read the books they hadn't gotten around to reading the first time) that they "decided to write a trilogy of prequels first—the Prelude series of House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and House Corrino."

When we began to dig through all of Frank Herbert's stored papers in preparation for writing House Atreides, Brian was surprised to learn of two safe-deposit boxes that his father had taken out before his death. Inside the boxes, Brian and an estate attorney discovered a dot-matrix printout and two old-style computer disks labeled "Dune 7 Outline" and "Dune 7 Notes"-pages describing exactly where the creator of Dune had intended to take his story.

Reading this material, we saw instantly that Dune 7 would be a magnificent culmination of the series, tying together the history and the characters we all knew in an exciting plot with many twists, turns, and surprises. In storage we also discovered additional notes and papers describing characters and their histories, pages of unused epigraphs, and outlines for other works.

I should note here that one thing that always bothers me about texts like this "Authors' Note" is the way they switch from a second-person plural to third-person perspective when describing things that either did. I halfway suspect that they are written by one author—namely Kevin—and that the other just signs off on them.

Anyway, Faulkner is said to have advised writers to "kill their darlings"; I can't help but wonder if Brian and Kevin had the wisdom to do this once they found the outline and notes and papers. To dispense with what they had come up with on their own when it ran counter with Frank Herbert's original intentions. (If, like me, you believe there are inconsistencies in the new books, then no doubt you will, like me, believe this was not the case.)

In the remainder, they point out how foolish it would have been for them to try to imitate Frank's writing style, a point which I agree with them on: that would no doubt have been much more painful that what they have given us. I do not agree, however, that avoiding imitation necessarily entails action-centric, dumbed down pablum. Or "pacing" that dictates hundreds of chapters of only three or four pages. And they again crow about how sales of the originals have gone up since they have been writing the new books. Well, no real Dune fan could complain about that, right?

Or not? I still believe that the new books give readers who come to the Duniverse through them a skewed impression of what Dune is really all about. It's not about vroom-vroom space travel and terminator-like robots bent on exterminating the human race. It seems obvious to me that a lot of the "new fans" don't get this. And I think the cause is the new books. But don't try to sell that to B&K, because they aren't buying it. In their minds they're doing a great thing, keeping the legacy alive.

At least they are nice enough to warn us, though:

Much more of the epic remains to be written, and we intend to create additional exciting novels, telling other parts of the grand, brilliant tale that Frank Herbert laid out. The saga of Dune is far from over!

Well, I for one can definitely wait.

(reposted from 12/11/06 1:07 PM)

De gustibus non disputandum est (aka "Rules of Engagement")

IN ANSWER to Tleilax Master B's questions in his comment on the previous post...

So how do you feel about us commenting on the sections or your comments? Are you wanting some interaction in that fashion or is it more of a read and ponder situation?

I'm doing this simply to express my own opinions, but I am also interested in what other people think about the book(s) and any comments they may have on my opinions.

But the one thing I am not interested in is arguing about it, because the majority of what I will be discussing here is very much a matter of literary tastes. And as we should all known by now, there's no accounting for or real point in arguing over those.

By all means, comment away to your hearts' content!

Before I begin in earnest...

I want to make one thing perfectly clear:

NOTHING HERE IS INTENDED AS AN ATTEMPT TO PERSUADE YOU TO BELIEVE AS I DO OR THAT MY OPINIONS ARE CORRECT OR THE ONLY ONES POSSIBLE. MY ONLY PURPOSE IS TO CLARIFY WHY I PERSONALLY DO NOT LIKE HUNTERS OF DUNE (OR ANY OF THE OTHER NEW DUNE BOOKS, FOR THAT MATTER). IF YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED IN READING MY REASONS, THEN JUST GO AWAY.

Basically, it's the writing that bothers me most. Sure, the cavalier introduction of their own ideas into the stories—in seeming disregard of the inconsistencies this sometimes creates—is pretty bad, but it's mostly the writing. I might have been able to forgive a multitude of other "sins" if the damned things were just better written.

I still haven't read anything else by either Brian or Kevin, but if what they have created together is any indication of what they produce individually, maybe they should consider a change of occupation? Or at least clarify what they are doing?

I don't have any problem with the existence of a young teen fiction market or with people targetting that demographic when writing. But I do have a problem with writers trying to pass off such books as fit for more mature readers.

(I hope to have the post for Hunters I.1 ready and up by the weekend.)

Interlude: Another upcoming title...

Grocers of Dune

Based on a shopping list by Frank Herbert.



Wait for it.

You hear that? That is the sound of inevitability.

It's just a matter of time when every item is a dairy product....

Interlude: Huntersについての日本語ブログ

ブログ名は「青方偏移」で、投稿日付は最早３ヶ月前になるところ（2006年09月15日）。

まだ細かく読んでいないが、リンクはこちら。

Hunters of Dune: TOC for Part I

Here is the Table of Contents for Part I of Hunters, indicating initial page number and my abbreviations for the sections. The text associated with each division is composed of a snippet each from (1) the epigraph (in italics) for the section and (2) the main text (first three words capitalized), or just the main text in the case of subsections.

Part I: THREE YEARS AFTER ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE, 15

1. Memory is a weapon/ON THE DAY he died, 17
1.b. WATCHING IMAGES OF the final bombardment, 21
2. Why ask a man/THEY WERE ADRIFT, 23
3. The strongest and most altruistic/LIKE A DRAGON empress, 29
4. Legend holds that a pearl/THOUGH THE DESERT, 34
5. Some like to live/EVEN AFTER SO many years, 38
6. Learn how to recognize/AFTER EXECUTING THE defiant, 41
7. Do the Masters truly control/FACE DANCER REPRESENTATIVES, 49
8. Three years of wandering/THE JEWISH PASSENGERS were given, 56
9. We lay this body/AS A VETERAN battlefield commander, 63
10. Is there a more terrifying/AFTER THE FUNERAL in space, 68
11. We carry our grail/THE AIR SMELLED of spice, 73
11.b. DEADLY EUPHORIA BURNED through her veins, 77
11.c. RINYA CONVULSED ON the table, 77
12. It is only through constant/DUNCAN FACED HIS opponent, 78
13. Illusion, Miles. Illusion/NOW BROKEN BY the Face Dancers, 82
13.b. ARRIVING AT THE core world, 83
13.c. DESPERATELY RELIEVED TO be away, 88
14. There is no escape/RINYA'S BEEN GONE FOR a month now, 90
15. Once a plan is conceived/WHEN SHE WAS confrontational, 96
16. Even our ship's no-field/HIS MIND NUMB after the shouting, 101

Hunters of Dune: Brief Table of Contents

Here is a brief table of contents for the American hardcover edition of Hunters of Dune:

(Main Title Page), 3
(Dedication), 5
ACKNOWLEGMENTS, 7
AUTHORS' NOTE, 9
("Epi-Epigraphs"), 13

Part I: THREE YEARS AFTER ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE, 15
Part II: FOUR YEARS AFTER..., 105
Part III: SIX YEARS AFTER..., 145
Part IV: ELEVEN YEARS AFTER..., 195
Part V: THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER..., 229
Part VI: FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER..., 265
Part VII: SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER..., 323
Part VIII: NINETEEN YEARS AFTER..., 365

BRIEF TIMELINE OF THE DUNE UNIVERSE, 521

(I will link the above to relevent posts as I make them.)

Blunder Hunters of Dune: Prelude

What makes a beginning such a drag is that you have to be REALLY careful to take extreme care that everything is in balance. You know this, right? Well, all those Bene Gesserit sisters, you know, those Goth-wannabes in the black robes, well, they know it, too. 'Cause there's nothing worse than a lop-sided endeavor, you know? So get the balances right at the beginning....Like with Muad'Dib, you know, that Paul dude that this whole story revolves around, like he's the freaking center of the universe or something, talk about what a mind trip that must have been, everyone worshipping you and everything? Anyway, like Muad'Dib...everyone thinks he was born on Caladan, where he grew up, you know? But that's just because someone wasn't careful and screwed up a beginning somewhere. Paul was really born on Kaitain, you see, 'cause that's where all the action was. But all the confusion that one little mistake caused. Wow. Now you see what I'm talking about?

—from "An ADD Teen's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

ONE OF THE TECHNICAL defects of Hunters of Dune as a book is its lack of a Table of Contents. But when you actually look at the contents, you can understand why both the authors and the publishers were probably loath to include one. (A full and detailed one would have added somewhat to the length of the book, no doubt increasing the price? And a minimalistic one would have been next to pointless.)

Someone trying to create one for themself will find that the "X Years After Escape from Chapterhouse" divisions provide a ready starting point...but what are you to call them? "Chapters" feels a bit off, so I have opted for "Part I", "Part II", etc. Then there is the question of the subdivisions of each of these. Again, something in me rebels at calling something of at most 10 or so pages a "chapter", so I will refer to them as "Sections".

I am currently putting the finishing touches on the Table of Contents I will use in future posts as I begin my dissection of this sorry piece of...work. I hope to be able to post it tomorrow.

(Originally posted at 3:04 AM on 11/29/06)

Decide now to stand firm and help dispel the pall over Dune

I've read that Frank Herbert brought back Duncan Idaho because the fans wanted him to. If true, this would indicate that he was sensitive to what his fans wanted. How about we see if Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson share his feelings?

BOYCOTT ANY NEW DUNE BOOKS AFTER SANDWORMS OF DUNE UNTIL THE HERBERTS AGREE TO RELEASE THE "DUNE 7" OUTLINE AND SOME OF THE RELEVANT NOTES MATERIALS.

True, the publication of Sandworms is still about a year away, but it's not too early to let them know how we feel. Now's an especially good time, before Brian and Kevin get too far into the planned Paul of Dune series.

Give us some of what we really want before (or while) proceeding with your own plans.

As my friend Guernsey Haddock is fond of saying, "Milking's a thing for cattle."