Hairy Ticks of Dune

Chigger Evolution?!

2007-06-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

Pic-post on the new blog: The 12 Stages of Chigger Evolution (so far)

New Blog!

2007-06-12T05:35:00.000-07:00

Update your bookmarks and links, folks, 'cause I'm moving house:

Hairy Ticks of Dune Blog

I'll gradually move the posts and pix (and comments!) from here to the new blog, but won't be deleting or closing this one down completely. (I'll want to maintain my Blogger account if for no other reason than commenting on other people's blogs.)

I'll most likely be moving the fanfic blog to the new site as well.

Blogger has been interesting, but I've grown tired of having to input all the code except that for images by hand. (I would have thought that they would have solved their Safari compatibility issues BY NOW!) It's so nice to be using WordPress (again)!

New Website!

2007-06-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Enough with this having stuff spread all over the Net!

Announcing...

HAIRY TICKS OF DUNE DOT NET

There's not much there at the moment, but you may find Part 1 of the podcast from DuneCon Mini:East 2007 of interest.

(Remember, we are not professional voice actors!)

58 Days Left Until Sandworms Release

2007-06-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

I think I counted up 101 "chapters" (snort!) in Hunters of Dune. I've "reviewed" only about five of them, I think. That means I better get busy if I'm going to finish the first book by the time the second one appears.

As the dearly departed Almight Zeus might have said, "GOOD TIMES!"

The New, Improved Paul Atreides! Now 100% More Absorbant!

2007-05-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

Oh, how do you mend
a broken hea-a-art?

Well, if you're the new Paul Atreides, you just set your mind to it and you can repair all the damaged cells.

And how can he do these things?

Because he IS the Kwisatz Haderach!

Just not the one Omnius wants. But why worry over the small details. These hack authors certainly don't!

Oh...and the best part? The part that will have the Brawny Man as green as the Jolly Green Giant with envy?

The way he can reabsorb all the blood that leaked out of the hole in his heart and onto the floor BACK into his body.

I've got a hole in my heart right now, too. And it bleeds for what these idiots have done to Dune.

Unforgivable.

Jonannah in da belly o' da...worm?

2007-05-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

Just one of the interesting little tidbits that were revealed during DuneCon Mini:East 2007. (Why didn't you mention that one, ARCangel?)

What would you do to pass the time if you found yourself in the gullet of the behemoth?

Well...our girl decides to lie down and roll around in the spice essence juices. Gets herself right sopping.

Different strokes, I guess.

But dat be how da girl got da worm stank on her.

(People, I COULDN'T make this shit up if I tried.)

DuneCon Mini:East 2007

2007-05-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Late notice for those of you who do not speak Japanese, but today (right now, in fact) is the start (and finish) of the first annual DuneCon Mini:East.

The turnout is much higher than expected, but there's still room, so if you're interested and in the Kanto "gray area", send me an email for directions: theorgan_izer@duneconminieast.com.

Psssst! It's "Hoary" not "Hairy".

2007-05-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

My other (thus far underutilized) blog, I mean.

It's "Hoary Tales of Dune", not "Hairy Tales of Dune".

NOT that the latter wouldn't work as well....

Pathological, I mean, medical phraseology?

2007-05-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

That "PhD Dune scholar" we've been hearing about is, in fact, none other than good ole Dr. Attila Torkos, M.D., of the Otorhinolaryngology and Head-Neck Surgery Department of the University of Szeged, in the city of the same name in Hungary.

I have this straight from the horse's...mouth, as it were.

From: Kevin J Anderson
Date: May 10, 2007 7:56 PM
Subject: RE: RE: mysterious Omphalos
Body: ...

Is Dr. Torkos then the person you were referring to when you wrote "a PhD Dune scholar" in your answers to the email interview questions?

yes

I haven't yet been able to track down any biographical information on the Good Doctor, but it seems from some of the publication titles that I have been able to find that he is the real McCoy, an actual ENT specialist. Or at least, that he started out as one. Many of the fictional universe chronologies that he has prepared over the years are being hosted on his department's webserver, but I have yet to find an index page linking to them. No faculty info page for the Doctor, either.

I'm sorry—and this reflects in no way on Dr. Torkos or the work he has obviously put into his...hobby? new speciality?—but the way Kevin phrased this is just wrong. True, Dr. Torkos has a Ph.D. And true, he has obviously studied the Dune novels extensively. But I wouldn't put him in the same group of scholars as literature studies researchers like those listed recently by Omphalos on the DN BBS. His specialty isn't literature and he does not work exclusively on the Dune universe. To call him a "PhD Dune scholar" is a very pretty piece of obfuscation.

But then, by this point I expect nothing else.

(I needn't say "I told you so", do I?)

Impatient to be bored. Or...Continuing an Abomination?

2007-05-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

I've finished transcribing the recording of Chapter 1 of Sandworms of Dune. Thank Dur it was only nine minutes!

"I am not a professional voice actor."

No...not even close. But at several points I was reminded of the rather over-the-top style often used by Japanese voice actors when they want to make sure the audience knows a foreigner is speaking, even though the words are in Japanese.

But this will look good on the ole CV, won't it?

Twenty-One Years After the Escape from Chapterhouse

That's two years after the beginning of the last part of Hunters. I'm surprised they didn't come right out and state that in the text. Dur knows they take such pains to make it clear WHEN we are otherwise. (The God Emperor's reign lasted 3,500 years after Muad'Dib. It's now 1,500 years, plus a few more, after that. And Duncan, "Eternal Duncan", doesn't look a day over...his age. But he's "concealing [it] well". The "dark, wiry hair" bit gives it away: Duncan's had a dye-and-do. Shades of Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice! Eew. I guess it's a good thing Duncan had his "maritime collison" with Shee-Anna...else Tegzio might have to watch his ass.)

Oh, what to say about this? It's certainly an inauspcious beginning. And Kevin was right: the style hasn't changed. Of the 1,334 words, I wonder how much would remain if you edit out all the recap? Well, let's see.

First, let's get rid of the epigraph. Another piece of truly insipid filler that adds no information. (How can you really miss something you don't remember except second-hand?) Snip. Get rid of "wandering" as a modifier of the no-ship; we "no" that. Snip the reminder of Jessica's age...if we really care we can do the math ourselves. If you've been told that someone is a "Bene Gesserit Suk doctor", you don't need to be told a few lines later that that person is "female". Snip. Likewise "grown from preserved cells"; we know what a ghola is by now, thank you. Snip. A ghola that is "not itself yet" obviously doesn't have its memories or its pasts, so drop another filler sentence.

We've all read Dune...or we wouldn't be here reading this, right? Many have reread the novel in the last year. So we don't need to be told that Jessica and Paul were on the run, that the Duke was dead, that they took up with the Fremen, who were a desert tribe, how the first Alia came about. We get it, already, dammit. Slash. We remember (from Hunters) that the ghola Paul—remember, Jessica's son, but not the real one, because he's dead, remember?—is a year older than the ghola of his mother, that Paul and Chani had their groove thang on, that Leto II was the result. Snip, snip, snip. Why we have ghola babies in the first place? Snip.

I won't bore you with the rest. At the end, I got rid of 341 words, or about one fourth of the original. Not as high as I had hoped...er, I mean, expected, but still not insignificant.

Abominable

Probably the worst part of this (and this is just the first chapter?!) is that She-Anna has decided to bring back Alia. But Masta B and I have already touched on this one on comments on earlier posts, so why belabor it? Let's just rubberstamp this one with "WTF?!" and move on.

No, sorry, wait: the worst part is actually that they are also bringing back Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen. Oh, yeah, and Gurney Halleck. Nothing like another token FH character.

As I posted over on the DN BBS, I guess She-Anna got tired of playing hide-and-seek with Serena in her own OM. Gholas are much more manageable, obviously, than people-in-memory, I guess.

The Rabbi remains an over-the-top caricature of himself, Yueh is a wishy-washy sallow youth, blah blah blah.

And they get paid for this shite? There's something wrong with the world.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled pogrom!

2007-05-10T03:23:00.000-07:00

It's here.

At last.

The long-awaited...(wait for it!)...audio file of Kevin J. Anderson reading the first chapter of Sandworms of Dune!

Hoo, boy.

Took a while to download (8.5 MB...or as KJA puts it 8500 KB), but WELL worth every millisecond. Oh yes, indeedy.

I'll be transcribing it this evening once I return to Sietch (that's pronounced ~~"sitch"~~ "sih-yetch", by the way, as in "What the f**k is these guy's sitch?!", not "seetch" or "see-ehtch") Tigr tonight. Since I don't want TORkyomada and the Spanish Inquisition coming after me, I won't be publishing any direct quotes, but do expect a few salvos over the bow, dear friends.

After an initial half-listen, here's a preliminary impression: Too much recap.

Self-serving pompous hack!

2007-05-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry...just had to blow off a bit of steam.

Things get under my skin sometimes, too.

I want this guy's copy!

2007-05-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

Because we obviously didn't read the same book.

The Campblog Archive - Dune Seven

(Scroll down to Wednesday, April 18, 2007. Like the Sandworms "Blog" on Dune Novels, this blog is just a series of webpages with no commenting.)

'Course, I guess he couldn't very well write "My wife gave me a piece of sh*t for VD", could he?

(That's "Valentine's Day", you reprobates.)

Here's another view I can more agree with. (Anyone who quotes Alanis can't be wrong, right?)

Answers to answers:

2007-05-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

After stewing over Kevin's responses for a bit longer than he took in formulating them, here are my comments (question summaries in blue, KJA answers in black, my comments in red):

On criticisms of inconsistency:

While I'll get to specifics in a moment, I have indeed heard some of the criticisms and so-called "inconsistencies" and yet most of them are clearly explained in the novels themselves upon a careful reading, or at the very least with a little bit of imagination -- and Dune fans should be well-versed in using their imaginations. I have yet to see any fan, even our harshest critics, point out a significant inconsistency. Considering the more than 8000 pages of published Dune fiction, Brian and I believe we have done a creditable job. For the few fans who continue to quibble, we appreciate your dedication and enthusiasm, and we understand why you want to hold us to the highest standards. However, there are significant errors and inconsistencies in the original Dune novels as well, and I'm certain that the careful readers have spotted plenty of them. Such things do not at all diminish *my* appreciation of Frank Herbert's literary greatness, but I wonder how such highly critical fans can stand it? Or is there a double standard at work here?

As others have already pointed out, Kevin is saying that there is not even one "significant inconsistency" in the new books, but Frank Herbert's contained "significant errors and inconsistencies". In other words, Kevin and Brian are writing more consistent books than even Frank Herbert himself!

So...if you think there is something inconsistent in the new books, you have not read carefully enough or have failed to use your imagination. Reread or start using your brain, stupid!

Nice way for an author to look at readers, ain't it?

Re no-technology:

The technology developed by the Richesian inventor Chobyn in the HOUSE books took place thousands of years before no-field technology was introduced to the reader in HERETICS. Chobyn was killed and all records of his work were destroyed, and the technology was lost. There is nothing to suggest that these two are the exactly same technologies.

Other than the name, you mean? If it was a completely different technology, why did you use the same name? And no-tech was introduced in God Emperor of Dune, by the way. Oops.

Re the Tleilaxu Masters, Kevin responded:

Just because one Tleilaxu Master is said to be old does not mean they all live to such a great age. My father-in-law is 82 years old; does that mean every human will live to 82? Frank Herbert also describes the Tleilaxu as being small-statured gnomish men, and yet Duncan Idaho (in CHAPTERHOUSE) disguises himself as a Tleilaxu man, so either Duncan suddenly shrunk, or there are some tall Tleilaxu, too. You can't take one data point and extend it to an entire race.

Notice that he doesn't answer the question, just obfuscates with irrelevancies. And what is most embarrassing for either the first or the second of the "world's biggest Dune fans" is how he totally screws up the details of his counter example. As Tleilax Master B and others have pointed out, Duncan was still young when he passed as a Tleilaxu.

Sirafa studied Duncan. "Yes, he is small enough yet. He will be disguised and conveyed separately."

"No!" Lucilla said. "I am commanded to guard him!"

"You are being foolish," Sirafa said. "They will be looking for a woman of your appearance accompanied by someone of this young man's appearance. They will not be looking for a playfem of the Honored Matres with her companion of the night...nor for a Tleilaxu Master and his entourage."

And this is from HERETICS, not CHAPTERHOUSE. But only someone without a life worries about such minor details, right?

The answers to those questions should be fairly obvious: This "planned obsolescence" comes from Kevin and Brian, not Frank Herbert's notes.

On spice-producing sandworms:

In the original books Frank Herbert quite clearly makes the distinction that the worms spawned from Leto II's body are different creatures from the original worms on Arrakis. Pointing to details in the Appendix to DUNE is comparing apples and oranges.

Another very clever but unsupportable obfuscation. Leto II says that the worms that arise after he goes back into the sand will be smarter and more dangerous. He never says anything about a change in the fundamental nature of the spice cycle.

Keep this in mind in connection with the Sandworms cover illustration and get your beach towels ready: HERE COME THE WATERWORMS!!!

Kevin chose to blow off the questions on Norma Cenva as super hero, on whether the Baron-Mohiam rape & pox-dosing scene was based on FH's notes, on the inspirations for Kailea Vernius and Mephistus Cru, and what ideas for the Butlerian Jihad as described in the Legends books came from conversations between Frank and Brian:

I'm not going to go into specific details on which ideas, or which part of an idea, came from Frank Herbert conversations, or his notes, or from me, or from Brian. In my opinion, that would only become an endless spiral. They are all DUNE books, they are all canon, and the authors are clearly listed on the cover, so readers know who typed the actual words.

"The authors are clearly listed on the cover"...OK, so it's Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson that "typed the actual words." Frank Herbert's contributions to the new books have been passive at best.

The determination of what is really "canon" is a difficult issue. Surely it has to involve something more thant authoritative fiat based on copyright ownership.

And the only reason questions of this sort could lead to "an endless spiral" is because the two current authors continue to give bullshit answers like these.

On consistency checking:

Indeed, the Duniverse is very intricate and complex (8000 pages so far, as I mentioned above). Brian and I read each manuscript from 10-14 times through, and the manuscripts are also checked by four test readers, two editors (one of them an original editor of Frank Herbert's Dune novels), a PhD Dune scholar, an English professor, two copy editors, and two proofreaders, all of whom are familiar with the Dune novels. That constitutes quite a rigorous review, and far more than virtually any other published novel receives.

Obviously, though, not "rigorous" enough. Were there any objections or recommendations from this group of experts that you chose to ignore on the grounds of "artistic license"? And who is the "PhD Dune scholar", by the way? (Hopefully you're not referring to Dr. Torkos. His doctorate is in medicine, if I recall correctly.)

On "canon" in a fiction series and conflicts of interest:

Gene Roddenberry created the original STAR TREK, and he died sometime during the third season of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. I don't believe anyone has ever suggested that the episodes of NEXT GENERATION produced after his death, or DEEP SPACE NINE, or VOYAGER, or the last four STAR TREK films are *not canon* just because the original creator was no longer around.

Frank Herbert was always a great supporter of Brian's writing, assisting him with his solo novels (SUDANNA, SUDANNA, THE RACE FOR GOD, etc.). Frank Herbert's last published novel, MAN OF TWO WORLDS, was a collaboration with Brian, and because he enjoyed the experience of working with his son, he suggested that the two of them consider writing further DUNE novels together, "passing the torch" as it were (much as Anne McCaffrey has recently brought in her son Todd to continue writing "Pern" books). The first project they talked about doing together was to tell the story of the Butlerian Jihad. When Frank was diagnosed with a very aggressive pancreatic cancer, his time was far shorter than anyone expected. It is my understanding that he spent much of his last months finalizing the story for THE ASCENSION FACTOR with Bill Ransom. The last work he wrote was an article on writing for the Writers of the Future contest, from his hospital bed at the University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.

There is simply no question that Frank Herbert approved of Brian's desire to work in the Dune universe, and the ten members his literary estate also wholeheartedly support the decision. The heirs of Frank Herbert are the only ones who decide canon or what is best for the Dune legacy. There can be no "conflict of interest" with yourself.

Even our harshest detractors must admit that the publication of the new Dune novels has been an overwhelmingly good thing for Dune -- the sales of Frank Herbert's original Dune novels have increased more than 300% since the publication of HOUSE ATREIDES, bringing millions of new readers to the universe. Six of Frank's long out-of-print works have finally been rereleased (the most recent, HELLSTROM'S HIVE, just out last month). SOUL CATCHER has just been optioned by a film maker, and there is other new interest in Frank Herbert properties. None of these things were possible before the renewed prominence of the Dune chronicles.

I'm not really sure about the relevancy of the Star Trek series examples. Different medium, different situation, with very different levels of consistency between the original and sequel series. (And note the conspicuous absence of ENTERPRISE from his list; I do believe there has been some controversy over its canonicity, no?)

I'm also not convinced that "suggesting" he and Brian write "further Dune novels together" necessarily constitutes Frank Herbert "passing the torch". Or that "approving Brian's desire to work in the Dune universe" would extend to the milking of the cash cow that we're seeing. (Remember, after Sandworms comes out, it'll be eight books by B&K to six by FH, with three more books already announced and no end in sight.)

Kevin & the Prequelites love to tout the role of the new books in the increased sales and renewed popularity of Frank Herbert's original Dune and other novels in justifying what they have done and plan to keep on doing. The problem with this, as I have pointed out elsewhere, is that publishing these second-rate books is not the only way this goal could have been accomplished. It's almost as if he's saying that the end (and not the primary one, remember) justifies the means.

I've nothing to say on his other answers at the moment. This was, ultimately, an exercise in futility, but at least it proved educational in confirming some personal suspicions I have held concerning this whole situation.

Should the moons look down...

2007-05-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

on all the myriad forms of existence,
they would see each and every one
as sadness.
They say that spring has come...
but not for me.

I had to drop by the Central Post Office on the way home and took a different, unfamiliar exit from the highway, thinking it would get me downtown sooner. And ended up nearly getting lost in the BFE hinterland. The moon was nearly (or is it just past?) full tonight and was reflected in the newly flooded paddies (rice, but not pundi) on both sides of the narrow road I was on, first right, then left, and I was reminded of my favorite moon poem from the Kokinshû. That poem is unfortunately an autumn one, but I think it could be made to work as I have (rather freely) translated it above (with a bit of a Dune touch). My Classical is rusty...did to te require a special form—kakari-musubi perhaps?—or would the shushi suffice? I'll ask the Russian or the Princetonian later, but for now it's enough just to sit here on the tatami and open the curtains occasionally to look out at the moon....

May 2007: Sand Chigger "PerNoWriMo"

2007-04-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

I keep getting this "Maybe you should write a book?" message from people as diverse as Ganymede/Omar to Kevin's wife, Rebecca Modesta. So maybe I'll do just that.

I made a half-hearted attempt at participating in last fall's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Over four days during the first six days of November, I managed to write a total of 3,674 words...completely unimpressive and woefully short of the 50,000 needed by the end of the month to be able to say that one had completed the contest. On average that works out to about a thousand words a day for the days I actually wrote something. In actual fact, the volume of my output ranged from a minimum of 107 words on the first day to a maximum of 2,065 words on the third. (970 on the second day and 532 on the fourth, in case anyone was wondering.) From about the 6th I let work and other commitments get in the way and by the time I came back to the thing, I was so far behind my projected schedule that I just gave up.

Like I've said many times now, I don't have any REAL interest in becoming a fiction author. I think it was Hugh Prather who wrote something to the effect that "if the desire to write is not accompanied by writing, then the desire is not to write." In my case, since the writing is not accompanied by a desire to write...there's probably a Shrödinger Box somewhere containing a really bizarre chicken and egg hybrid.

Nevertheless, for the next 30 days I will hold my own "Personal Novel Writing Month". Don't worry, I won't inflict any actual excerpts on the public—I've been far too nasty to far too many people to have the "Chigger Nuggets" for that!—but I may post observations on the process and experience.

Who knows...this could become the source of a new respect for all writers and the empathy needed to cut them some slack, regardless of how bad I find their work!

Nah. Let's not get carried away!

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

2007-04-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

Tleilax Master B asks in a comment on the last post.

ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO PAY CLOSE TO 200 BUCKS FOR THIS! You must elaborate; what on earth has made you decide to do this?

Nah. Fortunately I came to my senses after an after-dinner nap and someone outbid me again. Somehow I just couldn't bring myself to type "185.00" in the little box.

I mean, if I really want to get my hands on a pile of shit that badly, all I have to do is walk into the toilet and drop 'em in front of ole Mary and start grunting: I can have crap to my heart's content for FREE.

I let it get personal, imagining how funny it would be if it were known in certain quarters that I had a copy months in advance of the actual release, the mayhem I could cause....

But Freak is right. Stirring it up just gives them free publicity. Rather than ranting and raving, our reaction should be more like the one given someone who has farted loudly at a formal dinner party: embarrassed silence and a quick change of topic.

If they are sincere and not just putting on a show while milking the money cow and laughing all the way to the bank...then I really feel sorry for them. I'm starting to wonder if all the defensiveness isn't a manifestation of a realization that what they have produced really is shit, no matter how well it sells and how many people eat it up. THAT would be a hard thing to live with, as Secher Nbiw pointed out. Who knows.

I'm kinda beyond caring at the moment.

SANDWORMS OF DUNE!

2007-04-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

On eBay NOW!

(And guess who has the winning bid at the moment!)

Addendum:

I really don't know what all the fuss is about an animated gif banner. I mean, with the right software, you can put one together in about five to ten minutes....

See what I mean?

Answers Received

2007-04-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

This is what I found waiting in the email this morning:

Q. Many fans of the original Dune novels have criticised your collaborative efforts as being inconsistent with the original novels by Frank Herbert. While some points are debatable at best, others seem to be clear inconsistencies, such as:

While I'll get to specifics in a moment, I have indeed heard some of the criticisms and so-called "inconsistencies" and yet most of them are clearly explained in the novels themselves upon a careful reading, or at the very least with a little bit of imagination -- and Dune fans should be well-versed in using their imaginations. I have yet to see any fan, even our harshest critics, point out a significant inconsistency. Considering the more than 8000 pages of published Dune fiction, Brian and I believe we have done a creditable job. For the few fans who continue to quibble, we appreciate your dedication and enthusiasm, and we understand why you want to hold us to the highest standards. However, there are significant errors and inconsistencies in the original Dune novels as well, and I'm certain that the careful readers have spotted plenty of them. Such things do not at all diminish *my* appreciation of Frank Herbert's literary greatness, but I wonder how such highly critical fans can stand it? Or is there a double standard at work here?

- There is only a single line in the original series that indicates the possibility that No-technology results in invisibility to the naked eye (For brief moments when they disgorged troops, no-ships were visible and vulnerable. [Chapterhouse]), yet there are numerous lines that indicate the ships are visible to the naked eye, perhaps the most prominent being
"The no-ship sat there creaking, a glistening steely ball whose presence could be detected by the eyes and ears but not by any prescient or long-range instrument. Teg's doubled vision made him confident that no unwanted eyes saw his arrival" in HERETICS. Why was the decision made in the Prequels to present all no-technology as truly invisible to the naked eye? (re: the secret attack in the Guildship made to look like an Atreides attack) (Tleilax Master B)

The technology developed by the Richesian inventor Chobyn in the HOUSE books took place thousands of years before no-field technology was introduced to the reader in HERETICS. Chobyn was killed and all records of his work were destroyed, and the technology was lost. There is nothing to suggest that these two are the exactly same technologies.

In HUNTERS...

- It is revealed to us in HUNTERS that Scytale's body is failing prematurely. Yet in HERETICS it is indicated that Mirlat is very old based on the heavy cartilage build up in the jaw line. (For reference: Mirlat no doubt aspired to Abdl and Mahai. / Waff focused on the councillor's wide jaws where the cartilage had grown over the centuries as a visible mark of his current body's great age.) Based on this, it does not appear that this shortened life span occurred in serial ghola Masters in the original series. Where did this come from? Was this in Frank's notes or was this an original creation? (Tleilax Master B)

Just because one Tleilaxu Master is said to be old does not mean they all live to such a great age. My father-in-law is 82 years old; does that mean every human will live to 82? Frank Herbert also describes the Tleilaxu as being small-statured gnomish men, and yet Duncan Idaho (in CHAPTERHOUSE) disguises himself as a Tleilaxu man, so either Duncan suddenly shrunk, or there are some tall Tleilaxu, too. You can't take one data point and extend it to an entire race.

****

I can't answer the other questions about details in HUNTERS now because the other half of the story has not yet been published. It's like walking out in the middle of a movie and suggesting that all the plot threads weren't tied up.

- It is stated or implied several times that worms are the source of the spice on the no-ship even though this contradicts the main source of information on the worm life-cycle, the Ecology appendix to DUNE (spice comes from dried pre-spice mass exposed after spice-blows). What passage(s) from the original books do you base this interpretation on? Or is this from the notes?

In the original books Frank Herbert quite clearly makes the distinction that the worms spawned from Leto II's body are different creatures from the original worms on Arrakis. Pointing to details in the Appendix to DUNE is comparing apples and oranges.

Q. Is there anything in Frank Herbert's notes indicating that he planned to develop the character of Norma Cenva into the "super hero" we see in the Legends books and HUNTERS?

Q. You've stated that Mohiam being Jessica's mother was a Frank Herbert idea but that other aspects of the surrounding story were created by you and Brian. Were the rape scene and Mohiam giving the Baron the fattening disease in revenge based on anything in Frank Herbert's notes?

Q. What were the inspirations for the following two characters: Kailea Vernius and Mephistus Cru? (Chanilover)

Q. How much (and if so what parts) of the books came from Brian's personal conversations with his father. It has been stated that Frank and Brian discussed writing something on the Butlerian Jihad together; what ideas came from those conversations, and what did you and Brian add to those ideas. (Omphalos)

I'm not going to go into specific details on which ideas, or which part of an idea, came from Frank Herbert conversations, or his notes, or from me, or from Brian. In my opinion, that would only become an endless spiral. They are all DUNE books, they are all canon, and the authors are clearly listed on the cover, so readers know who typed the actual words.

Q. How do you and Brian check for consistency before you publish? Who checks the facts? How are those people cross-checked? With something as huge and complex as the Duniverse, have you ever considered some form of peer review? If so, why did you decide against it? (Omphalos)

Indeed, the Duniverse is very intricate and complex (8000 pages so far, as I mentioned above). Brian and I read each manuscript from 10-14 times through, and the manuscripts are also checked by four test readers, two editors (one of them an original editor of Frank Herbert's Dune novels), a PhD Dune scholar, an English professor, two copy editors, and two proofreaders, all of whom are familiar with the Dune novels. That constitutes quite a rigorous review, and far more than virtually any other published novel receives.

Q. What is your view on "canon" in a fiction series? Is it simply a matter of copyright ownership, or is there more to it? The HLP has explicitly stated that the new Dune novels are canon. One could argue that only the original author can have a right to say what is canon and what is not. Do you think the HLP should govern what is canon, and do you think that one of the authors also being a member of the HLP represents a conflict of interest? (Schu)

Gene Roddenberry created the original STAR TREK, and he died sometime during the third season of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. I don't believe anyone has ever suggested that the episodes of NEXT GENERATION produced after his death, or DEEP SPACE NINE, or VOYAGER, or the last four STAR TREK films are *not canon* just because the original creator was no longer around.

Frank Herbert was always a great supporter of Brian's writing, assisting him with his solo novels (SUDANNA, SUDANNA, THE RACE FOR GOD, etc.). Frank Herbert's last published novel, MAN OF TWO WORLDS, was a collaboration with Brian, and because he enjoyed the experience of working with his son, he suggested that the two of them consider writing further DUNE novels together, "passing the torch" as it were (much as Anne McCaffrey has recently brought in her son Todd to continue writing "Pern" books). The first project they talked about doing together was to tell the story of the Butlerian Jihad. When Frank was diagnosed with a very aggressive pancreatic cancer, his time was far shorter than anyone expected. It is my understanding that he spent much of his last months finalizing the story for THE ASCENSION FACTOR with Bill Ransom. The last work he wrote was an article on writing for the Writers of the Future contest, from his hospital bed at the University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.

There is simply no question that Frank Herbert approved of Brian's desire to work in the Dune universe, and the ten members his literary estate also wholeheartedly support the decision. The heirs of Frank Herbert are the only ones who decide canon or what is best for the Dune legacy. There can be no "conflict of interest" with yourself.

Even our harshest detractors must admit that the publication of the new Dune novels has been an overwhelmingly good thing for Dune -- the sales of Frank Herbert's original Dune novels have increased more than 300% since the publication of HOUSE ATREIDES, bringing millions of new readers to the universe. Six of Frank's long out-of-print works have finally been rereleased (the most recent, HELLSTROM'S HIVE, just out last month). SOUL CATCHER has just been optioned by a film maker, and there is other new interest in Frank Herbert properties. None of these things were possible before the renewed prominence of the Dune chronicles.

Q. Are you still convinced that writing and publishing "Dune 7" after the House and Legends books was the right decision? (Sunnypuck)

Absolutely.

Re: You (Questions of a more personal nature)

Q. What specific goals or motivations did you have in taking on the task of writing stories in the Duniverse? (Crysknife)

First and foremost, as a Dune fan, I wanted to see the completion of the story that Frank Herbert had obviously left unfinished. This was before finding any of the notes or outlines. Seeing so many other potential stories just waiting to be told, Brian and I also wanted to bring more of the Dune universe to many readers, both old fans and new ones. Personally speaking, I am very pleased to have brought Frank Herbert's great work into renewed prominence not only in the science fiction community but in the overall publishing world as well.

Q. You've mentioned listening to music while you work on your blog. Could you explain a bit more about how music influences your writing? (Poey)

I love many different types of music, and I have always been inspired by the imaginative visions, particularly of progressive rock (Rush, Kansas, Dream Theater, and more recently Tool, Coheed & Cambria, Frameshift) -- much of that music is itself inspired by science fiction and fantasy. I also listen to movie soundtracks, which evoke certain moods while I'm writing. In particular for Dune work, I've found Brian Tyler's soundtrack for "Children of Dune" to be excellent, and the Toto soundtrack for the David Lynch "Dune" as well as the work of James Horner and Hans Zimmer.

Q. Have you been to the UK and did you like it? (Chanilover)

I've been five times, I think, and I liked it very much. I've done a couple of book-signing tours in England and Scotland, and my "Seven Suns" novels do very well over there. My wife and I are spending the month of September on a signing tour in Australia, too.

Comments...in the comments.

TJDGI

2007-04-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

You'll probably be seeing this acronym from me quite a bit from now on, so I thought I'd better give y'all (three of you?) a heads-up on what it means:

They Just Don't Get It.

If that needs further elucidation, just let me know.

I'd be more than happy to rant a bit at the moment.

Email Interview with Kevin J. Anderson

2007-04-23T20:56:00.000-07:00

Kevin,

You made it clear yesterday that further exchanges would be a waste of both your time and mine, but I am going ahead and sending these questions along since the thing had already achieved some momentum on the BBS. You can ignore them or answer at your leisure, as you choose. (I have indicated the source for questions not my own, and have edited as I saw fit.)

-SC

Re: The new Dune novels

Q. Many fans of the original Dune novels have criticised your collaborative efforts as being inconsistent with the original novels by Frank Herbert. While some points are debatable at best, others seem to be clear inconsistencies, such as:

- There is only a single line in the original series that indicates the possibility that No-technology results in invisibility to the naked eye (For brief moments when they disgorged troops, no-ships were visible and vulnerable. [Chapterhouse]), yet there are numerous lines that indicate the ships are visible to the naked eye, perhaps the most prominent being

"The no-ship sat there creaking, a glistening steely ball whose presence could be detected by the eyes and ears but not by any prescient or long-range instrument. Teg's doubled vision made him confident that no unwanted eyes saw his arrival"

in HERETICS. Why was the decision made in the Prequels to present all no-technology as truly invisible to the naked eye? (re: the secret attack in the Guildship made to look like an Atreides attack) (Tleilax Master B)

In HUNTERS...

- Teg's ability to slow down time seems to be a secret, whereas in CHAPTERHOUSE DUNE, both Sheanna and Duncan observed it and Duncan, Odrade and others discussed it with Teg afterwards. (Schu)

- It is revealed to us in HUNTERS that Scytale's body is failing prematurely. Yet in HERETICS it is indicated that Mirlat is very old based on the heavy cartilage build up in the jaw line. (For reference:

Mirlat no doubt aspired to Abdl and Mahai.
Waff focused on the councillor's wide jaws where the cartilage had grown over the centuries as a visible mark of his current body's great age.)

Based on this, it does not appear that this shortened life span occurred in serial ghola Masters in the original series. Where did this come from? Was this in Frank's notes or was this an original creation? (Tleilax Master B)

- It is stated or implied several times that worms are the source of the spice on the no-ship even though this contradicts the main source of information on the worm life-cycle, the Ecology appendix to DUNE (spice comes from dried pre-spice mass exposed after spice-blows). What passage(s) from the original books do you base this interpretation on? Or is this from the notes?

- It is revealed that Daniel and Marty are in fact Omnius and Erasmus. You and Brian have stated that Frank's notes reveal that the old couple's "origins" date back to the Butlerian Jihad. In the last chapter of CHAPTERHOUSE, M and D are having a discussion (Note: alone...Duncan is not looking in on them at this point). In that chapter there are countless references to the role the Tleilaxu Masters played in the development of their "ability" to absorb personas and that this eventually led to their "independence". Any explanation that does not include the role of the Masters in their ability seems contradictory to that chapter. How do you explain this discrepancy? For reference:

"They had a Tleilaxu Master, too," Marty said.
"I saw him when they went under the net. I would have so liked to study another Master."
"Don't see why. Always whistling at us, always making it necessary to stomp them down. I don't like treating Masters that way and you know it! If it weren't for them . . ."
"They're not gods, Daniel."
"Neither are we."

"What would you have said to the Master, anyway?" Daniel asked.
"I was going to joke when he asked who we were. They always ask that. I was going to say: 'What did you expect, God Himself with a flowing beard?'"
Daniel chuckled. "That would've been funny. They have such a hard time accepting that Face Dancers can be independent of them."
"I don't see why. It's a natural consequence. They gave us the power to absorb the memories and experiences of other people. Gather enough of those and . . .")

(Tleilax Master B)

How do you respond to criticisms such as the above?

Q. How much (and if so what parts) of the books came from Brian's personal conversations with his father. It has been stated that Frank and Brian discussed writing something on the Butlerian Jihad together; what ideas came from those conversations, and what did you and Brian add to those ideas. (Omphalos)

Q. Is there anything in Frank Herbert's notes indicating that he planned to develop the character of Norma Cenva into the "super hero" we see in the Legends books and HUNTERS?

Q. You've stated that Mohiam being Jessica's mother was a Frank Herbert idea but that other aspects of the surrounding story were created by you and Brian. Were the rape scene and Mohiam giving the Baron the fattening disease in revenge based on anything in Frank Herbert's notes?

Q. What were the inspirations for the following two characters: Kailea Vernius and Mephistus Cru? (Chanilover)

Q. How do you and Brian check for consistency before you publish? Who checks the facts? How are those people cross-checked? With something as huge and complex as the Duniverse, have you ever considered some form of peer review? If so, why did you decide against it? (Omphalos)

Q. What is your view on "canon" in a fiction series? Is it simply a matter of copyright ownership, or is there more to it? The HLP has explicitly stated that the new Dune novels are canon. One could argue that only the original author can have a right to say what is canon and what is not. Do you think the HLP should govern what is canon, and do you think that one of the authors also being a member of the HLP represents a conflict of interest? (Schu)

Q. Are you still convinced that writing and publishing "Dune 7" after the House and Legends books was the right decision? (Sunnypuck)

Re: You (Questions of a more personal nature)

Q. What specific goals or motivations did you have in taking on the task of writing stories in the Duniverse? (Crysknife)

Q. You've mentioned listening to music while you work on your blog. Could you explain a bit more about how music influences your writing? (Poey)

Q. Have you been to the UK and did you like it? (Chanilover)

Analog Book Reviewer Apparently Selling ARCs on eBay

2007-04-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

Analog Science Fiction and Fact book reviewer and Thomas College professor Thomas A. Easton is apparently selling his Advance Reader Copies (books sent to him gratis for review) on eBay.

And if the current bidding price ($102.50) for his Sandworms of Dune ARC is any indication, turning a pretty profit at it.

The eBay user offering the ARC is "daprof23", whose "About me" user profile page contains the following:

Who Is Tom Easton?

Book reviewer, writer, professor!
Find out all about me at my home page.

About himself Easton writes on one of the pages on his website:

I'm partly a college professor, partly a science textbook author, partly a science fiction book reviewer, partly a science fiction writer, partly a poet, and entirely a pursuer of what is known in the science fiction world as "sense of wonder."

I guess shameless profiteer didn't fit in as well with the rest there.

An examination of recent sales by "daprof23" reveals a large number of ARCs and actual books with "publicity sheets"...no doubt review copies.

I don't see any indication that the proceeds from these sales are being donated to a worthy cause. (If it were me, I'd probably donate anything I didn't want to keep to the library at my workplace or local town or county public library.)

Kinda sad, really.

Duniverse Cosmology

2007-04-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

Just as our real universe is believed to be doing, the Duniverse continues to expand. And as in the real world, this expansion is being accompanied by a decrease in density; less substance per volume, in other words.

Unlike the real universe, whose rate of expansion is thought to be decreasing, the Duniverse continues to expand at a rate of one volume per year.

Some theorize that in the real universe there occurs some spontaneous creation of a few new hydrogen atoms; such new matter would increase the content of the universe and decrease somewhat the rate of the decrease in density. In the Duniverse, however, each new creation simply furthers the decline in substance.

Aren't analogies fun?

You state these things as if we did not know them: Hunters I.6

2007-04-16T23:58:00.000-07:00

Epigraph

I'm stuck for a word to describe this one. Or rather...stuck between two words. Which would you choose to use, "insipid" or "vapid"? I've already used the latter, so let's go with the first, yawn, and move on. (A moving target is always harder to hit. Dur forbid we get a bead on ourselves!)

Text

At around 2,600 words, this section can actually claim to be worthy of being called a "chapter". But only just. And that's probably the nicest thing I'll have to say about it. Let's begin, shall we?

After executing the defiant Honored Matre, Murbella was in no hurry to meet the Guild delegation. She wanted to make sure all traces of the disturbance were cleaned up before any outsiders were allowed into the Keep's main chamber.

Um...what traces? Think back to the scene in which Murbella stabbed Annine: "Annine hadn't even made a mess on the floor." Someone has made a mess here, to be sure, but I don't think it was any of the characters. And if "all traces" is meant more broadly, the use of "cleaned up" is decidedly odd.

This is followed by two wrought paragraphs on why it's hard to be Murbella, Mother Commander, and the reason why she cares (and by extension, we should). Then we get another painfully odd simile (Each step of the overall plan hummed past like connected cars on a maglev train.) before the main event. The cast of characters gathers...and just as it ain't over until she sings, the thing isn't properly begun until the fat lady...shuffles. To the foot of the dais upon which sits Murbella's soostone throne. But soft...she speaks:

"Mother Commander, the Guild delegation grows impatient—as you intended. I believe they are ripe for your meeting."

They are ripe for your meeting? WhoTF talks like that?

And just in case you missed it earlier, we are told again that Bellonda is a balloon (Murbella regarded the obese woman.) and treated to a (another) recap of BG abilities at somatic control and Murbella's speculations as to why Bell has let herself go. No explanation, however, as to why Bell has bloomed after apparently starting to thin in Chapterhouse. (Brian must have left that out of the "Concordance"?) Blubber aside, Bellonda also seems to be suffering from the same dumbing down that afflicts everone else in the Duniverse:

"Bring me spice coffee. I must be at my sharpest. Those Guildsmen will no doubt attempt to manipulate me."

"Shall I send them in now?"

"My coffee first, then the Guild. And summon Doria as well. I want both of you beside me."

If someone asks for a drink, especially a stimulant, after a bit of the nasty and before an important meeting, do you have to be a genius to realize the person probably wants a few minutes to collect themself? This is just stupid. But what can you expect from a cow like Bell? Especially one that "lumber[s] away" with a "knowing smile" on her fat face.

(I sometimes have to stop and ask myself why I am bothering with this drivel.)

OK, let's pick up the pace a bit. We're told (not shown) that Murbella knows how to look intimidating; after she finishes her coffee, Bell (we're now reminded that she's OLD) has the Guild delegation brought in. Enter Doria, the new "whip-thin" foil for Bell, with her backstory. And recap about BG-Guild relations. There's a loose use of "human" (Their highest human administrative official) which could lead the unwary to conclude that Navigators are no longer human in more than just appearance, a conclusion I reject for reasons I won't go into now. Bell and Doria begin to scowl and bicker until Murbella verbally smacks their behinds. (Both advisors fell silent as if a gate had slammed shut across their mouths. Never let it be said that Brian and Kevin are not inventive in their use of language!)

Then enter the Dwarves! I mean, Guildsmen...squat, bald, with "faces slightly malformed and wrong." Odd...I don't remember any mention of the non-Navigator Guildsmen being that different from the human norm. The authors seem to have foreseen such objections and explain: The Guild did not breed with an eye to physical perfection or attractiveness; they focused on maximizing the potential of the human mind. But they're not ALL like that: their leader, Nasi Goreng (OK...not really, but it's almost as bad) is a tall man, bald "as polished marble" except for "a white braid that dangled from the base of his skull like a long electrical cord." A long electric cord? Can anyone find another reference to electrical cords in the Dune books? Here we see another one of what I consider a New Dune hallmark: the anachronous use of contemporary references. (The "maglev train" above comes pretty close as well, IMO.)

OK, tall and well-dressed though oddly coiffured as he may be, the Administrator has "milky eyes" but still seems able to see perfectly well. It's not made clear why this detail is introduced. It certainly plays no role that I could find in Hunters. Maybe it will become significant in Sandworms.

Enter the Navigator, Edrik. We're supposed to think him fishlike, a point reinforced by his travelling in a "great armored aquarium". (There's no mention of how this giant floating container moves, by the way.) And told that he's mostly all brain, his body some sort of residual afterthought. (Who does that remind you of?)

Murbella rose from her throne as a sign that she looked down upon this delegation, not as a gesture of respect.

I'm glad they told us that (in lieu of showing it in the Guildsmen's reactions), otherwise I wouldn't have gotten it. In the cultures I'm familiar with, remaining sitting is the way to show one's perception of a disparity in power.

Introductions are made, blah blah blah, and then we get to the primary goal of this section, rewriting canon:

Murbella knew that most Navigators were so isolated and obscure they could barely communicate with normal humans. With brains as folded as the fabric of space, they could not utter a comprehensible sentence and communed instead with their even more bizarre and exotic Oracle of Time. Some Navigators, however, clung to shreds of their genetic past, intentionally "stunting themselves" so they could act as liaisons with mere humans.

I needn't mention that Frank Herbert never once mentioned any "Oracle of Time" in any of his Dune publications. This is a B&K special, or a misinterpretation of something they found in FH's papers.

More blah blah and recap of the current spice situation and its origins and then we get to the title line:

Murbella curled her own lips downward in a frown. She remained on her feet. "You state these things as if we did not know them."

This could almost read as an accusation from a real fan to the current authors. A bit ironic, no?

More recap and description of the current situation (Chapterhouse desert growing, spice blows have occurred and "stunted sandworms" have appeared) and then this:

In contrast, the Spacing Guild—assuming the days of scarce melange were long over and the market was strong—did not make preparations for a possible shortage.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like the Guild I was told about in earlier books. They were always stockpiling the spice, no?

They go back and forth until we get to the next bit of "canon rewriting": the new fallibility of the formerly perfectly functional Ixian navigational machines, now dismissed as "inferior substitutes" for a real Guild Navigator. (There's also a bit before this about Guild guilt in revealing the "landscape" of the Old Empire to the invading Honored Matres—a transgression used by Murbella to deprive them of further spice allotments from the BG. I haven't gone back through Old Canon yet to find corroboration for this. If you know of something, could you mention it in a comment?) We're told that the Guild never really relied on the Ixian devices. All of which is a clear contradiction of canon established in Heretics and Chapterhouse.

Think about it this way: if the Ixian and Scattering navigation systems weren't reliable, weren't Duncan and Sheeana taking a terrible risk (with no only their own lives but those of many others) in escaping from Chapterhouse in a ship equipped only with such systems? Sorry, but this just doesn't hold together.

But Brian and Kevin aren't through with canon yet:

Murbella had her own deceptions. The extravagant use of melange on Chapterhouse was mainly for show, a bluff. So far, the worms in the desert belt provided only a trickle of spice, but the Bene Gesserit kept the market open by freely selling melange from their copious stockpiles, implying that it came from the newborn worms in the arid belt.

I've already posted about this on both the Dune Novels BBS and my blog on MySpace. It's just plain WRONG. Worms do not produce any spice. Spice is produced from pre-spice mass which is exposed to air and sunlight on the surface following a spice blow. I know of nothing in any of the original Dune novels which specifically states otherwise. If you do, then please let me know.

Before the long night of the Honored Matres, Mother Superior Odrade had dispersed groups of Sisters in unguided no-ships across uncharted space.

Unguided by Guild Navigators, but hardly "shots in the dark". (This is all more recap, by the way.) There is also, by the way, no published source for the Odrade quote ("Remove the single point of failure"). The scene continues with more chit-chat until Gorus (the Administrator) gets froggy and threatens Guild action against the New Sisterhood in a recap straight out of Dune:

Trembling, Gorus said, "Can your New Sisterhood survive without the Guild? We could bring a huge force of Heighliners and take the spice from you."

Murbella smiled to herself, knowing his threat had no teeth. "Accepting your ludicrous assertion for a moment, would you risk destroying the spice forever? We have installed explosives, cleverly rigged to annihilate the spice sands and flood them out with our water reserves if we detect even the slightest incursion from outside. The last sandworms would die."

And just in case you miss the reference, Edrik poles the point into the sand: "You're as bad as Paul Atreides," the Guildsman cried. "He made a similar threat against the Guild." Murbella is pleased and then launches into a rousing speech meant for the ears of both the Guildsmen and the assembled members of the New Sisterhood, finally ending this one.

* * * * *

The main purpose of this section should be clear: establishing Brian and Kevin's changes and additions as canon. No doubt a majority of the Prequelite new fans will blithely go along with this, faithfully accepting it all on the basis of the claims that everything is as Frank Herbert intended, as indicated in the notes he left behind.

But those of us who have dwelt longer in the Duniverse may feel compelled to echo Gorus when he questions Murbella's claims about a coming Enemy:

"We have all heard this, Mother Commander." The Administrator's voice dripped with skepticism. "We have seen no proof."

Dem bones, dem bones, gone awry! Hunters I.5

2007-04-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

(AKA Duncan in the Labyrinth)

There's not a lot to say about the fifth section of Hunters. This was the last of the prereleases last year, so when I got the book and started reading, I didn't PostIt anything in this one. Nevertheless, upon careful rereading, some things have emerged.

Epigraph

Other than the typo in the attribution pointed out by someone else (Darwil Odrade? Way to go, editors & galley proofers!), there's not much to say about this one. I feel a bit of disconnect between the first and last sentences, but whatever. As "Superman" has recently informed me, these epigraphs are simply provided to help "setting the scene". To be certain, there's little gist for further philosophical speculation provided by those we're given in the new books...and Hunters seems to have reached a new high in vapidity. The image here of crawly things does in some way prepare us for what is to come, of course.

Think of this one as like the Russian's idea of foreplay in the old joke: "Brace yourself, Ludmilla!"

Text

"Old bones rising to the surface of a battlefield after a drenching rain"...now there's a word picture for you. Unfortunately, so far as I know, bones don't float. No doubt this poor simile is based on the same perceptual misconception and failure to think things through that leads people to report (and believe in) fingernails and hair that continue to grow after death. Duncan Idaho is a veteran soldier, so such allusions would come naturally to him, right? (Cough cough) The rest of the first paragraph is just recap of Heretics and Chapterhouse (and Hunters itself, since we are reminded that they have been fleeing for three years) and also provides an explanation for the prior non-discovery of what is to come (so much space, so few minds).

"...the main decks and compartments were equipped with surveillance imagers...." What exactly is a "surveillance imager"? To me, an imager would be something that displays an image, not something that collects light (or other electromagnetic radiation) and transmits one, as these things seem to be. Seems to me there was a word for those sorts of devices...what was it again? Oh, yeah! Cameras! Another example of a totally unnecessary neologisms used for the sake of exoticism.

Nevertheless, Duncan did not expect to discover a long-sealed death chamber on one of the rarely visited decks.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SP...er, Honored Matre inquisitiveness! OMG! Send the children to bed! There's a death chamber coming! Wow. Um...This is called letting the cat out of the bag, no? We're no more than four paragraphs into the thing yet and already the rest is anti-climax.

Oh well. Onward! The ship conveniently taking the lift our intrepid Duncan Idaho is riding offline for maintenance may be intended to add some sort of nuance of Fate to what follows. (He was meant to find what he finds. We were meant to find that outline!) At the very least it adds 42 words of text. Notice, by the way, that we are never told why Duncan was in the lift tube or where he was headed before it "paused". Also, unless there was some danger of imminent failure that would prove dangerous to the occupant, why wouldn't a lift wait until after reaching its current destination to begin such "self-maintenance procedures"?

After further filler we're next treated to a rather trite analogy between what Duncan is doing in exploring unknown areas of the ship (his original goal? Was he just wandering around looking for adventure?) and folding space without navigational data: fumbling around in the dark.

Doors slid aside to reveal dim, empty rooms. From the dust and lack of furnishings, he guessed that no one had ever occupied them.

Um...unless the no-ship has a really shiteful atmospheric filtration system, if the rooms are sealed and have been never been occupied, there should be no dust: As I recall, most dust is composed of human skin, hair, fabric fuzz rubbed from clothing, etc.—all products of human presence and activity.

I have to wonder as well why the HMs would have located a torture room (cleverly disquised by having been labelled "Machinery Room", no less) so far removed from their other centers of activity on the ship. If they could eat in the same room, I doubt they're the sort as would have been disturbed by having the sounds and smells of such a chamber closer to their main living areas. Were they really the kind of person who could put off the good stuff long enough to thread they way down to this secluded place? Lacks a bit of coherence, methinks.

The lights in the dim chamber came up, as if in eager anticipation.

OK...ignoring the unilluminating anthropomorphism of the illumination, we're told the room is dark (and by the way, how many qualities of darkness are you able to distinguish? Oh, they mean the smell of the air—further evidence against active ventilation, no?—something I always associate with visibility. Could one of the authors be a synesthete?), yet he can discern the "discordant...jarring" color of the walls? That's certainly one super pair of eyes he has there. But then he's been noted for his eyes since the Hayt days, what?

OK, I'm getting bored. Let's see: HMs are sloppy housekeepers, leaving dirty dishes and dead BG strewn all over the place. No, wait, they did have the Suzy Homemaker sense to place all the dead RMs but one into the garbage bin (which was "clearplaz"...and they were in black robes [Ever heard of aba? You can dance, you can dance!], no doubt explaining why The Big D walked past it without noticing in the dark when he first came in. Or he could have been distracted by the wall treatment whose garishness only he could see.

What else? I got nuttin'. Already mentioned The Reverend Mummies; besides, we all know what tough old birds they are—even before dessication—so the bits about how they would have withstood the HM interrogation and even the information they would have been tortured for (BG body control, location of Chapterhouse) is all so much shallowly disguised recap.

Duncan pondered his discovery in silence. Words did not seem adequate. Best to tell Sheeana about this terrible room. As a Reverend Mother, she would know what to do.

Words seemed inadequate. Um...like, who was he going to talk to there at that moment anyway? And if words do not seem adequate, how is he going to tell Mama Sheeana—who will prove wiser than a multi-lifed ghola Mentat—about it? Pantomime? I'd love to be a fly on the properly painted wall for that!

So, really, what purpose does this "chapter" serve? We know the HMs were a nasty lot; did we really need this extra scene to emphasize the point? Or is this all just to set up the funeral (oh so pivotal in itself) to come?

Stay tuned for the answers...which will be negative.

Damn! Could somebody catch that cat?!

Superman grows a pair!

2007-04-15T00:38:00.000-07:00

The only question is, are they real (regrown in a Tleilaxu tank, perhaps? Know anything about that, Mastah B?) or borrowed?

(Now if he would only get a brain to go with them!)

Here for details.

I rather liked being called a "wet rag". Could do with one right about now, actually: been kinda hot and humid today. I would use the towel that The Almighty Zeus threw in a few months back, but it's all moldy and smells sompthin' fierce!

Nothing much has changed, I note. Same ole same ole.

Kinda reassuring sometimes, ain't it?

Dayton blogger takes note of HK

2007-04-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

That's Harriet Klausner, mind you, not Hong Kong or Howard King, Larry's lesser known twin brother.

Dayton Daily News blogger Vick Mickunas has posted twice (here and here) about everyone's favorite review mill/publisher shill.

Some of the comments are worth the wade-thru. Note in particular the appearance of a few "Cluster FoKs" (Friends of Klausner).

(Ole Harriet is up to 13,688 reviews now, btw. Formidable!)

I considered asking Kevin over on his MySpace blog whether Harriet was one of the reviewers TOR will be sending a copy of Sandworms to, but considering the reception my comments have been getting lately, decided not to. After all, she gives everything, no matter how bad, a 4 or 5 out of 5 rating. (Caveat: To be fair, I haven't read the book in question; I thought about getting it but read the other comments and decided against.)(And by the way, if you want to see something crazy, check out the reseller offerings: someone in the UK is trying to offload a copy for sixty bucks. ... Huh?!)

Back to business...

2007-04-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

I hope to get back to the business at hand and the dissection of Hunters of Dune with the next post in the series, sometime tomorrow (er...considering it's already 1:41 AM, make that later today).

Omphalos's comment in one of his recent reviews about not wasting time on books that don't really deserve it seemed a verbal expression of a visceral decision I must made some time back. The "spice from worms" thing has helped to recharge my batteries in a way, though, and strengthened my resolve to proceed. If somebody doesn't point these things out, it seems the fanboys and girls are incapable of noticing them on their own.

Sandworms of Dune is scheduled for release (according to Amazon) on August 7th. Including today, that leaves 114 days for me to finish with Hunters...probably requiring a rate of about a chapter a day?

Well, if Harriet Klausner can read and review 456+ books in that period of time, I should be able to handle slagging off one, right?

¡Hola, Omar! ¿Qué tal?

2007-04-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry I wasn't in when you dropped by! Come back again soon now, y'hear.

I mean, I'd love to continue our discussions of literary analysis and all, away from the restrictions of the board...you ballless little shit.

Domain Name: comcast.net (Network)
IP Address: 71.###.###.###
ISP: Comcast Cable
Location:
Continent: North America
Country: United States
State: Oregon
Time of Visit: Apr 6 2007 4:47:52 pm
Referring URL: http://www.dunenovels.com/phpBB2/memberlist.php

Boxing Erasmus

2007-03-31T03:07:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday was the last official day of spring vacation, I decided to spend it doing nothing but what I wanted to. And ended up playing around with Terragen and Cheetah3D most of the day. Initially, I just wanted to create a realistic looking background for the cover for the new Trannies of Dune (Volume 2...check a bookstore near you!) but ended up getting too ambitious and decided to create a model of Erasmus based on the Sony robot image I used in earlier covers. Here's what I've come up with so far:

It's not an exact recreation of the original (my modeling skills aren't that good yet!) but you get the general idea. I haven't been able to get the texture color to come out exactly right yet (it's yellow, not copper/gold like it should be); the editor can't guarantee WYSIWYG because of the use of the HDR (don't ask) file for the background & lighting. And if you look closely, you'll notice his "heart light" is bleeding through what should be solids. Oh well.

I'll post the images of the finished model if and when it's done.

(And don't worry, I'll eventually get back to Hunters!)

Reflections...

2007-03-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

Today's a holiday in these parts (not that every day lately hasn't been like a holiday, what with it being spring break and all, but never mind!) and I have spent most of it messing around with the new version of Cheetah3D, a modelling app for the Mac. The above is a little something I created from one of the included examples, incorporating a landscape panorama created using Terragen. It could either be the little silver ball from Chapter House all grown up or...Erasmus's brain? I don't know.

Anyway, I was rather pleased with the way it turned out (Doesn't it almost look like a photograph of a real object?), so there you go. More later....

Oh yeah, this is what I'm talkin' 'bout.

2007-03-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

I've been working on my OS X version of StarGen for most of the last day or so and am finally getting results:

Jim Burrows' original version is a command line application that outputs its results in the form of HTML files that can be viewed in a browser. I've taken advantage of Apple's WebKit features to make my own little browser window as part of the app; not really a needed feature, but it gets rid of the need to switch back and forth between apps.

I'll have to tinker with the internal model because currently the parameters for Canopus result in systems with just a few massive planets. (I'll have to check the minimum mass requirements for brown dwarves, because some of the jovians are REALLY massive.) One interesting bit though is the frequency of outer-system water planets. Because of its size and luminosity, the habitable ecozone for Canopus is much farther out than Sol's. Unfortunately, the planets I've seen summaries for thus far have all had gravities in the range of 0.35 g. I haven't finished implementing output of the individual system files yet (only output of the summary & thumbnail index page is working at the moment) so I can tell anything about the geological make-up of the planets. (A large percentage of S0₂ is desirable for making sand, eh?)

I may eventually just take the route of generating something close with four or five planets and get rid of one of them (Harmonthep?!). A hot Jupiter or two closer in with Arrakis in the outer reaches? (It has to be the third planet, after all.)

Will keep y'all in the loop!

StarGenOSX - some results

2007-03-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

I've been working some more on the stellar system simulation program and have begun to get some results. I'm still not sure how valid they are, but with the code changed to allow for the larger mass of stars like Canopus, the program still gives results:

2007-03-17 12:32:21.725 StarGenOSX[5707] SUN MASS:  10.000000
2007-03-17 12:32:21.725 StarGenOSX[5707] SUN LUMINOSITY:  15848.931925
2007-03-17 12:32:21.733 StarGenOSX[5707] generate_planets() beginning execution...
2007-03-17 12:32:21.733 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  1
2007-03-17 12:32:21.734 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  2
2007-03-17 12:32:21.734 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  3
2007-03-17 12:32:21.734 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  4
2007-03-17 12:32:21.734 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  5
2007-03-17 12:32:21.735 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  6
2007-03-17 12:32:21.735 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  7
2007-03-17 12:32:21.735 StarGenOSX[5707] Planet number:  8
2007-03-17 12:32:21.735 StarGenOSX[5707] generate_planets() execution complete.

(The above is just copied from the run log; naturally, the finished app will produce much more visually appealing results!)

Depending on the randomizing seed used, the system ends up with between 5 to 9 planets at present.

Will keep you informed of future developments. (If anyone's interested, that is....?!)

A pearl of great price: Hunters I.4

2007-03-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

When this "chapter" was first released online, I read it and thought, "Hey, this book might not suck too bad after all." It was the first time I remember thinking as well that there might actually be something of Frank Herbert in Hunters.

Of course, such hopes were premature and soon dashed into as many pieces as Leto shed sandtrout in the river. Rereading it now, I see a lot more problems. Let's have at it, shall we?

The epigraph: as little more than recap, this one, again, is mostly forgettable. Its only possible claim to importance is its introduction of the idea of questioning whether the God Emperor still exists in the form of a "pearl of consciousness" (or awareness) inside each worm. Questioning Leto—from the accuracy of his vision to the success of his Golden path—is a major theme of Hunters. Note that there is no "Priestess Ardath" mentioned anywhere else in the Chronicles.

The text: I feel a little bad ripping into this one for the reason mentioned above. Sentimentality will not stop me, though. Here's a change I would have made to the very first lines of this section:

Though Dune had been roasted clean of all life, the soul of the desert planet survived aboard the no-ship.

Maybe it's just me, but that small change reads much better than what they went with. "Roasted clean of all life" has problems, but whatever, eh?

The most salient characteristic of the first half of this section is its alternation of recapituation of events in the original novels (via character recollection) with new content from the "present". The above (first paragraph) is recap, the next three current/new, then two paragraphs of recap, one new+recap mixed paragraph, new, recap, and then a large chunk of new material until mention of the "corrupt priesthood on Rakis", which starts off another recap paragraph. Cut out the repetition of things that Dune fans should already know/remember and the section is less than two pages long.

What are we expected to take away from this section? Well...how about the fact that the worms in the no-ship hold are RESTLESS? The point is made THREE times using the word itself, three more using other expressions. We are told that Sheeana is consuming large amounts of spice to rev up her prescience. (???) Mention is made of "the hunters" who pursue the no-ship, but other than the old couple whom Duncan has seen, what evidence do they have that anyone else is seeking them? They've been incommunicado in another universe for three years, no? There's a tie in through Garimi's question with that in the epigraph ("Do you think the Tyrant is really in there?") and to Sheeana's final speculation ("If Leto II was indeed inside those creatures, he must be having troubled dreams." [Since the worms are restless, get it?]). And a bit of silliness about life from the viewpoint of a sandworm ("Sheeana shook her head, knowing that the creatures' primitive memories must recall swimming through an endless sea of dunes. ... And what about the worms? she wondered. What do they truly want? ... Sheeana watched them in their restless motion, wondering how much they understood of their strange situation.") I was a little confused as to why Garimi hesitated to call the voyage of The Ithaca (snicker) an "odyssey" ("Garimi caught herself, as if on the verge of uttering a deprecatory word...") when we've already been told that the same line of thinking was involved in the christening of the ship itself. Oh well.

In conclusion, this section isn't as bad as some that are coming, but it's really rather pointless.

Watching the worms in the hold below, Sheeana and Garimi remarked on how they seemed to be able to sense Sheeana's presence.

There...a rewrite compressing the whole section into one line.

Were the editors of this book paid NOT to do their jobs?

Harriet Comes Through!

2007-03-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

I KNEW it was just a matter of time. Checked Amazon just now and Harriet has posted some new reviews.

44 of them, to be exact.

She's now up to 13,411 books reviewed. Remember that from Sunday through most of this week she's been at 13,366~7. (Edit: 13,336 was a typo!)

That's almost 9 books a day over a five-day period.

Don't know 'bout where you're from, but in these parts we call that "Blessings of Shai Hulud".

Bullshit by any other name...

Update:

I didn't pay much attention yesterday, but she's up to ~~14,444~~ 13,444 reviews now. Looks like she posted 33 more on March 10. THE WOMAN IS AMAZING!

In case you were wondering...

2007-03-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

There are as many possible motivations for reading bad books, I suppose, as there are people. Here's one guy's perspective:

You know how sometimes you develop an obsession with a writer's work, and decide to seek out their entire oeuvre and inhale their every word, even if you don't really know what an "oeuvre" is or what it looks like? Well, I do that for masochistic reasons. I actively enjoy reading people I can't stand. When they write something particularly horrid, a wave of nausea surges through me and my pulse quickens. I am hooked on it, like a base jumper compelled to leap off chimney stacks for the adrenaline rush. Consider it a sickness.

Previous obsessions have included ... the Barefoot Doctor, who used to write for the Observer.

The latter took over my life for several months. Everything he said incensed me. He gushed a wild river of bullshit, which I swam through open-mouthed, savouring the taste. I even bought one of his books - a "guide to urban survival"; an incredible how-to manual apparently designed to help shallow, cosseted airheads become even more self-obsessed, justifying their unhinged narcissism as spiritual development.

...

I read the book from cover to cover, pausing occasionally to hurl it across the room in disgust. Even the typeface annoyed me. It was brilliant.

I'm not saying I share his motivation in my reading of the new Dune books. But then again...I'm not saying I don't. Just saying I thought his an interesting take.

(Via [insert witty title] Life Blog)

Like horrific Siamese twins: Hunters I.3

2007-03-06T03:11:00.000-08:00

I forget who it was that first observed on the Dune Novels BBS that all the characters in Hunters seem to have lost 50 IQ points during the three years following their "escape from Chapterhouse", but the summary is accurate. Unfortunately, not even the long-dead Irulan escaped the virtual lobotomy.

The epigraph

Insipid is the best description for this (and most of the rest of the epigraphs in the book). But don't take my word for it: compare it with the other quotes from Irulan's work Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib, all of which appear in Dune. I must confess I fail to see why the main concern of the "strongest and most altruistic leader" would be his—or her, in this case, since this section is all about Murbella—legacy. (Especially when legacies can be pillaged and plundered by those who come after.)

The text

When I got my copy of Hunters and started rereading these first few sections, I had to actually go back and make sure that this section had indeed been included among the pre-release PDFs. Because I had no recollection of it at all. That's how forgettable is was (is).

Like a dragon empress surveying her subjects...

WTF? Has someone been watching cheap Chinese dramas about the last Dowager Empress of China? What a silly characterization. But we've dissed this one before, so let's move on.

Chapterhouse was the center of a most peculiar civil war. Reverend Mothers and Honored Matres came together with all the finesse of colliding spacecraft.

Or of bad writers collaborating? I mean, who else would describe the merging of the two groups as being "like horrific Siamese twins"? That would be somewhat questionable in the speech or thoughts of a character in the story (Is this Murbella thinking?), but from the narrator (=the writers) it's inexcusable.

Next comes a flashback...to something I can't find any mention of.

"Survival at the cost of destroying ourselves is no survival at all," Sheeana had said just before she and Duncan took the no-ship and flew away.

Anyone know of a passage in Chapter House Dune that this could be based on? It's followed by the clause "'Voting with their feet,' as the old saying went." This is a reminder of something Garimi said to Duncan before their departure...and therefore something that Murbella should not know of. Quite a co-inky-dinky, no, that they should both happen upon the same old idiom independently!

Odrade-in-Memory now makes an appearance, for some non-memorable chitchat. We're (hopefully needlessly) reminded that Reverend Mothers can converse with their peeps-within, and told that Murbella often does so out loud. (Cuckoo! Cuckoo!) Fortunately their exchange is interrupted by some real action (Yea!): a rebel Honored Matre is brought in for discipline. Because she has dissed Murbella, the latter has decided to make it personal.

But no...before the action can get off the ground we're treated to more internal Murbellan musings on the "trappings of office" and fashion as a factional statement in today's Chapterhouse society! "...serpent-scribed capes and scarves, and formfitting leotard bodysuits...a canary yellow leotard with a flamboyant cape of sapphire plazsilk moire." (Dayumm! Who's the clothes-closet queane?)

Here's where things got a little interesting for me. I seem to recall that this was around the time of another of Kevin's "Talifan" tirades. In which context it is possible (but valid? You decide) to take the HM prisoner, Annine, as symbolic of everyone who doesn't like the new Dune books.

"I no longer wish to hear what you have to say, [Talifan]. You have already said too much."

Th[ese people] had criticized the[ir author]ship once too often, ... railing against the merging of [the Old and New Canons]. ... [Kevin] could not allow such a provocation to pass unchallenged.

The way [the Talifan] had handled her dissatisfaction—embarrassing [Brian and Kevin] and diminishing her authority and prestige from behind a cloak of cowardly anonymity—had been unforgivable. The [Brother Coauthor] knew [these Talifans'] type well enough. No negotiation, no compromise, no appeal for understanding would ever change [their] mind[s]. The[y] defined [themselves] through [their] opposition.

A waste of human raw material....

Ok...maybe not.

We are next told why Murbella is now addressed as "Mother Commander": because she is simultaneously the legitimate successor of the Reverend Mother Superior and the Great Honored Matre.

Huh?! (Wouldn't "Great Superior" have made as much sense?)

And that while any number of people want nothing more than to see her die, all of the women have "become rather protective of her."

Double huh?!

Cue another flashback, this one to help explain how the current situation came about; something about fighting which involved playground equipment on the main Guild planet.

And then—finally!—back to the action in real time! A hint of bondage sadism, occular intimidation (also with a hint of sadist enjoyment), another reminder of basic Duniverse fundamentals and Murbella is at last ready to...talk some more.

But only a few lines. Then she stabs Annine in the throat and sits back down, ready for the next item on her agenda: more musing and chitchat with Odrade, this time without moving her lips.

Remember this for later: "Annine hadn't even made a mess on the floor."

Then, in true overblown operatic melodramatic form, the fat lady takes the stage: "the aged and enormously fat Bellonda leaned over". Any confusion over the identity of this sow (after all, wasn't she losing weight in Chapter House?!) is thus allayed: "Bell had been Odrade's foil and companion. The two had disagreed a great deal, especially about the Duncan Idaho project." (Yes, they disagreed a lot about him...but the actual blood was shed over the Duncan Donuts boxes.)

And what Wagnerian melody does Bellonda sing? Why, that haunting aria, "Die Guildmänner sind hier!" Murbella does an almost Mentat thang: "She knew what the Guild wanted. Spice. Always the same, spice."

Bellonda's chins folded together as she nodded.

This last marks the beginning of innumerable (nah, not really, just as yet uncounted) references to the obsesity of Taca Bella Bellonda.

Begin to lower stage curtain and fade to darkness. The light has gone out at the End of the Duniverse.

Alimentary, my dear

2007-03-05T01:37:00.000-08:00

I have seen here and there—strewn across the Web like the choice morsels glistening in the grass in the park on mornings when too many pet owners have forgetten their scoopers—the opinion that Hunters of Dune is the best new Dune novel Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written yet. I myself am not convinced of this, but would like to offer an analogy for your consideration, Dear Reader:

Due to a bout of gastroenterological distress last week, I have added a bit of fiber (in liquid form, of course) to my diet this, producing a much firmer and tighter stool...altogether a rather satisfying result compared to before. This has not, however, caused me to lose sight of the ultimate nature of what it is I am comparing.

(The attentive will have noticed that I have added a menu link to Kevin's MySpace blog mirror on the Dune Novels website.)

Have anus day!

Mordeo ergo sum

2007-03-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning with a big ole flap/patch of skin from my abdomen covering my head.

"Eeeew," said ChiggerBint, making like one of those Indian gods of Old Earth—too many appendages going in too many directions at the same time.

Yes, it's MOLTING TIME AGAIN!

A word to the wise: I'm gonna be in one helluva nasty mood for a while.

You have been warned.

Harriet Klausner Watch!

2007-03-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com Reviewer Rank: 1
See all 13,366 reviews (82,686 helpful votes)

I could swear that her total number of reviews is at least 100 or so higher than it was when I checked just a day or two ago. (But I forgot to note it down, so can't say for sure. I do clearly remember that the number included a "2" as one of its digits, though.)

This woman epitomizes everything that is wrong with customer review systems like that used by Amazon.

(If you don't know who she is, google her.)

Update:

She has only done 1 new review since I posted this...maybe she's taking a break or has been under the weather? Not very impressive for a woman who by her own account reads 3 or 4 books a day and who reportedly posted over 100 reviews in a single day, is it?

But at least she's received 96 new "helpful" votes!

(Check out her reviewer profile and current stats here.)

When is a blog not a blog?

2007-03-03T21:57:00.000-08:00

When it's a "blog" on the Dune Novels website.

Opinions differ, of course, but my definition of a real blog includes allowing people to comment on what they have read. That didn't happen on the old Hunters Blog, and it doesn't look like it will be on the new "Sandworms of Dune Blog", either. (And since no one seems able to coax Brian into the 21st Century, this one will also most likely be written almost entirely by Kevin. I don't really have anything against Kevin other than the things I've mentioned in public, but let's face it, he's not a Herbert. I'd like to hear more from Brian, you know?) There are also no RSS or Atom feeds, another blog sine qua non, IMO.

Since I can't comment there, I'll do it here:

Kevin, this time, please stay on topic: Sandworms and Duniverse-related stuff. There's nothing wrong with you publicizing your own works, but you've got your own website and your MySpace area now...shouldn't they be enough for the non-Dune stuff?

Re the dust-jacket copy for the US edition of Sandworms:

Hunters of Dune and the concluding volume, Sandworms of Dune, bring together the great story lines and beloved characters in Frank Herbert's classic Dune universe, ranging from the time of the Butlerian Jihad to the original Dune series and beyond. Based directly on Frank Herbert's final outline, which lay hidden in a safe-deposit box for a decade, these two volumes will finally answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades.

Um...Frank Herbert didn't write anything about any characters of the Butlerian Jihad. And no, far from answering questions, the new books have only given rise to more. But speaking of that outline, once Sandworms is published, it's of no further value, right? Why not publish it?

At the end of Frank Herbert's final novel Chapterhouse: Dune, a ship carrying a crew of refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. The fugitives used genetic technology to revive key figures from Dune's past -- including Paul Muad'Dib and Lady Jessica -- to strengthen their chances of survival by using their special special talents to meet the incredible challenges of the journey.

Uncharted galaxy? I thought they ended up in a "strange, unknown universe". And were the ghola babies the result of such a well-thought out plan? I got the impression it was something more like, "Oooh, null-entropy tube! Ooh, let's make gholas galore!"

Sandworms of Dune will reveal the origin of the Honored Matres, the tantalizing future of the planet Arrakis, the final revelation of the Kwisatz Haderach, and the resolution to the war between man and machine. This breathtaking new novel in Frank Herbert's Dune series has surprises and plot twists galore -- enough to please even the most demanding reader.

Um...didn't you already reveal the origin of the Honored Matres in Hunters? (Psssst! Pissed off former Tleilaxu tank ladies! Pssst! It feels like an FH idea, but the exposition leaves much to be desired! Like...was the memory block the result of hysterical amnesia born of feminist solidarity?) The future of Arrakis? Isn't it a radioactive wasteland of blasted sandglass? Gonna terraform...er, I mean, re-arreoform it? (Are there still sandplankton alive on Arrakis? As yet unsuspected and undiscovered new worms? Is that the secret treasure in Treasure in the Sand? "Obliterator" irradiated mutant worms that can survive in water?! Some connection with that beautiful but daft cover illustration?!) The Kwisatz Haderach? That means there's only ONE, right? (Thank Dur for small mercies!) The SECOND resolution of the war, you mean?

And breathtaking? Fortunately I've learned to breathe through my mouth again; frees up the one hand from having to hold my nose. (Have found no solution yet, though, for the incidents of projectile vomiting.)

I've already pre-ordered my copy on Amazon. Can't wait.

(Note: I'm in a particularly bitchy mood today. I may reconsider and come back and edit this. ... Nah.)

C.E.T. Invitation!

2007-03-03T21:32:00.000-08:00

Kewl! I got an invitation in the mail the other day asking me to represent Arrakis at the upcoming C.E.T. on Old Earth.

That's the Congress of Extraterrestial Trombiculae, by the way.

The local Chiggers of Commerce have decided to subsidize me with a generous travel allowance. Which means

ROADTRIPS!

Anyone on Old Earth interested in getting together for a mini DuneCon or two?!

(The C.E.T. is being held in the Ohaiyah region—the neutral socio-political center of Noram—by the way.)

Null and Void: Hunters I.2

2007-03-03T19:39:00.000-08:00

Why ask a man who is already lost to lead you? Why then are you surprised if he leads you nowhere?
—DUNCAN IDAHO, A Thousand Lives

It should have been obvious from the House and Legends books that in some essential way Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson—for all their protestations of being the world's biggest fans—just don't get Dune. (If they did, they wouldn't have made the mistakes or changes they have.) But in spite of this, we addicts still flock to the bookstore like hungry little sliggies to the trough, eager to gobble up and swallow down whatever they sling at us.

Not in Kansas anymore...

Section 2 of Part I presents us with Duncan Idaho in the "navigation bridge" of the no-ship, fighting the incomprehensible new physical laws of the "strange universe" the no-ship found itself in when he dumped the navigational databases at the end of Chapter House Dune. I won't dwell overmuch on the first paragraphs of this section—mainly because they're another excellent example of how B&K have changed things and because the writing is just really bad; case in point, the sentences leading up to this gem: "How could they encounter turbulence in space when nothing was there?" Well, obviously they couldn't. Stupid, simply stupid. As for the changes, note that the "new universe" as described in Hunters bears little resemblance to the one described in Chapter House:

Sheeana did not look up when he found her at the temporary flight-control board in the guard quarters. She was bent over the board, staring at it in consternation. The projection above her showed they had emerged from foldspace. Idaho recognized none of the visible star patterns but he had expected that. (Chapter House)

Now he studied external images transmitted from sensors extended beyond the no-field. The view outside had not changed: twisted veils of nebula gas, inside-out streamers that would never condense into stars. Was this a young universe, not yet finished coalescing, or a universe so unspeakably ancient that all suns had burned out and been reduced to molecular ash? (Hunters)

There's a big difference between visible but unfamiliar star patters and twisty clouds of gas.

We're then forced to wade through another recap of Chapter House as Duncan muses on the events that led to their current predicament. There is some new information squirreled away here, though. We're told that a year after the departure from Chapterhouse, the hapless "crew" of the no-ship had decided to christen it the "Ithaca", invoking the memory of Odysseus and his endless wanderings.

I've already posted over at the DN BBS about how contrived (and downright silly) this choice of names is. Ithaca was Odysseus' island home and eventual destination, not his ship. But never mind that little twist or the fact that only the Bene Gesserit on board would be likely to remember the details of The Odyssey or even its name. In a day and age when the public will buy orcs and mutants fighting for the Persians against the stalwart Greeks at Thermopylae, who cares about such triffles? Ah, well. You also have to wonder about the general attitude of a group of people who chose to invoke the imagery of a never-ending odyssey; weren't they being just a bit pessimistic, only a year into their journey? You'd almost think they could see the hundreds of pages remaining in the reader's right hand.

We are also introduced here to Duncan's insipid pining over his lost Murbella. Even though at the end of Chapter House he decides to escape on the no-ship because he realizes that what they had had between them is over now that Murbella has become leader of the Bene Gesserit. Fortunately his reminiscences ("the seawater scent of their 'sexual collisions'"...now isn't that a phrase that just sticks in your nose?) are cut mercifully short by the sudden appearance of the one character who more than any other relegates this piece-of-shite book to the anals [sic] of pure (and bad) fanfic:

Duncan Idaho, a voice called, soothing and feminine. ... The voice tried to intercede. Duncan Idaho, do not flee. I am not your enemy. ... I am the Oracle of Time.

I'm sorry? The Whosit of What?

In several of his lives, Duncan had heard of the Oracle-the guiding force of the Spacing Guild. Benevolent and all-seeing, the Oracle of Time was said to be a shepherding presence that had watched over the Guild since its formation fifteen thousand years ago. Duncan had always considered it an odd manifestation of religion among the hyperacute Navigators.

Well, Duncan certainly got that last bit right. In "Appendix II: The Religion of Dune" in Dune, Frank Herbert himself told us

Any comparison of the religious beliefs dominant in the Imperium up to the time of Muad'Dib must start with the major forces which shaped those beliefs:
...
3. The agnostic ruling class (including the Guild) for whom religion was a kind of puppet show to amuse the populace and keep it docile, and who believed essentially that all phenomena—even religious phenomena—could be reduced to mechanical explanations;

An odd manifestation indeed. And the first mention ever of this entity or anything like it...if you exclude the references to the "Oracle of Infinity" mentioned in the House books.

Although the full revelation of who this character really is does not come for several hundred steaming pages, it should be fairly obvious to anyone who has read the Legends Brian and Kevin did not create a super-being there—greater than Paul Muad'Dib Atreides or his son The God Emperor—just to forget and write her out of the stories. No, she's back and she's wack.

I remember reading this section as one of the pre-release online samples. My reaction then still serves as valid evaluation now:

WTF?!

As Bad As It Gets

Now let's just bash the writing some, how about?

"They were adrift," we're told in the first line, but then later when the no-ship hits a "rough patch" (see above), Duncan switches off the auto-pilot. If the ship was under auto-pilot steerage, then it wasn't adrift, was it?

"Threats within threats within threats." Clichés within clichés within clichés.

"According to the bridge's independent chronometers, ...." Independent of what? Logic? Reason?

"The laws of physics and the landscape of the galaxy might be completely altered here." No shit? What galaxy? Can't have a galaxy without stars, boys. Stupid. And if the laws of physics have been "completely altered", how does the no-ship continue to maintain its integrity and function? Does the no-field make it some sort of independent(!) little bubble of reality of its own? That's a new twist, too, no?

"Barely perceptible flashes of orange light appeared in front of the vessel, like a faint, flickering fire." Ooh, St Chenoeh's Fire, perhaps?!

"He felt the deck shudder, as if he had rammed into some obstacle, but he could see nothing. Nothing at all! It should have been an empty vacuum, giving them no sensation of movement or turbulence. Strange universe." Nothing at all! Except whisps and tendrils of gas. Thank Dur for inertial dampeners, eh? Strange universe. Bad science writing.

"The Outside Enemy observers, in their bizarrely innocuous guises of an old man and an old woman...." Subtle, isn't it, how they equate the old couple with the Enemy and let us know in advance that their appearances were just "(dis)guises". You can't be too early in setting up a major revision, after all.

"...four animalistic Futars—monstrous human—feline hybrids created out in the Scattering and enslaved by the whores." The Futars were enslaved by the Honored Matres? I thought the Futars preyed upon them. Oh well.

"The pain was at least as sharp and unendurable as the debilitating agony of drug withdrawal." Personal experience talking here? Let's hope not.

"Duncan's shattered heart had been, and still was, merely collateral damage." Wannabe authors take note: how to date your work!

"The no-ship continued to run." I'm not sure what it is about this one that bothers me; "run" perhaps. Anyway, it's a trite ending to an otherwise non-memorable section. Blah. (But fitting in a way, I suppose.)

Addendum:

Some things that got left out:

"The no-ship wandered the frigid void, far from any recorded human exploration." Yes...it's a different, unknown universe, right? So it only stands to reason that they would not know if any human had ever been there before. Unnecessary.

About those "independent chronometers" again: First, why more than one? Also, regardless of how time flows in this new universe, the chronometers will register that flow and the passenger/inhabitants of the ship will experience that flow as normal. There is no way for them to determine any difference.

"His fingers a blur, his concentration sharp as a diamond chip...," the prose as forced as any cross-wise turd.

Stinky.

Like angry mice racing to do battle with Salusan butts

2007-03-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

Say what?!

It's amazing the errors I still find in my scan files.

This one took me rather aback...but then again, given some of the commentary over on the DN BBS lately....

I trust I don't have to tell you what it should be.

(Lemmiwinks? Here boy! ... Huh...where can he have gotten to now?)

A Simple Poll

2007-02-28T19:20:00.000-08:00

The following speaks for itself. (Bringing it to the top again!)

(Originally posted at 7:20 PM on 8/22/06. Previously reposted on 12/6/06.)

Saluti e benvenuto...

2007-02-26T01:07:00.000-08:00

ai membri della Dune Italia!

(Ciao Rymoah!)

(Sorry, but my knowledge of Italian is very limited. I cheated and used Google Translate for the above. Sigh...)

StarGenOSX

2007-02-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

I recovered a bit from my funky mood over the unlikelihood of Canopus being able to have a planetary system (what the hey, it's fiction, right?) and have been working on a Mac OS X version of the StarGen program that will hopefully be able to produce a realistic—however improbable—planetary system for the star.

Here's what the control panel of the app looks like at the moment:

Any suggestions as to an icon for the app itself?

Canopus in Agon: Lessing was more (accurate)?

2007-02-15T15:24:00.000-08:00

I remember reading Doris Lessing's The Sirian Experiments not long after it came out in the early 80's, but can't recall reading any of the other books in the series. So I'm not sure how she described the Canopus system, if at all. (Or even if "Canopus in Argos" actually refers to the star Canopus.) Her approach may have better than Frank Herbert's in the long run, because it's starting to look like Canopus is the LAST star he should have chosen to spin Dune around.

Here's the deal: It's not certain whether the Canopus we know could form a planetary system in the first place. The star itself is massive, between 8 and 9 times the mass of Sol. And huge: its radius is 65 times that of Sol. And bright: its luminosity is 14,800 times Sol's.

That last is the most damning, because "bright" means it's giving off a lot of energy. Which means it's WAY hotter than our sun. Which pushes the star's habitable zone much farther out than most system formation simulations are geared to handle.

The other problem with big stars is this: they burn through their "fuel mass" much more quickly. So even if planets do manage to form around one, there's probably not going to be enough time for life to arise before the star goes supernova or fsssthpp.

I'll probably keep playing around with the software, just for something to do, but this isn't looking good at all....

The Amazing Shrinking Planet

2007-02-15T10:03:00.000-08:00

I got a larger, clearer scan of the map in Dune and plugged the coordinates from it for Arrakeen and Carthag into the new texture point plotting app I'm working on and now have much more accurate latitudes and longitudes for the two cities:

Arrakeen: 62 ° 17 ' 27 " N, 27 ° 47 ' 52 " W
Carthag: 65 ° 31 ' 55 " N, 15 ° 6 ' 17 " W

The downside is that when I plug these new values into my great-circle distance app, the radius for the planet has to be reduced even more to get the distance between the cities to come out to exactly 200 km.

New radius: 1779.9274 km.

For comparison:

Earth: 6378.140 km
Mars: 3396 km
Arrakis: 1779.9274 km
Luna: 1737.53 km

That's not going to work at all. Verdict: Carthago movenda est!

Dune sunset

2007-02-12T08:49:00.000-08:00

Ended up doing some more work on the Celestia texture tonight...mostly just creating a basic equirectangular grid for later placement of surface details. Still wondering what color scheme to use, but am considering doing some samples of images of Mars from NASA.

I plotted Arrakeen on the texture and exported a JPEG version and fired up Celestia. Arrakeen came out right exactly where it was supposed to, so I know my formulae for converting the latitude and longitude data from the map in Dune to the XY coordinates of the image are correct. (Or at least coincide closely enough with Celestia's translation of the same data: the program uses normal geographical coords for surface locations.)

While I had the program running I decided to snap a shot of a sunset from the surface.

Under the current set up, Arrakis orbits 15 AU from Canopus. This is probably no good, but a proper distance—just like the diameter to use for the planet—is another one of those details I'm going to have to just wing since there's nothing definitive in the books. I thought about using the StarGen program to generate a bunch of random systems and choose one that looked good, but it's written only to handle G-type stars similar to Sol. Canopus is thought to be about 8 or 9 times as massive...so I'm also looking at rewriting the program to handle larger initial parameters. (I'll have to check the books to see what current theory says about solar systems around more massive stars...can they form at all, or would they be similar enough to what we have in mind?!)

All rather a pain, but at least it keeps me in the sietch and out of the open desert, right?

Hunters Lexicography

2007-02-11T07:12:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the unintended hiatus. Fortunately—or not, depending on how you view things—my role as "instructor of broods" will required minimal attention during the next moon or so, meaning I will have more time to devote to my side projects here!

I've been wanting to get back to the Celestia texture project, for one, and there still remains the thorough bash...er, examination of Hunters. It will take a little time to get back into the proper frame of mind for both, but let's begin for the moment with a few lexicographical observations, shall we?

For example, the first 63 pages of Hunters (all I have scanned at the moment) contain 14,953 words. The total vocabulary (unique word-forms) is only 3,244 words. Ranked by number of occurrences (frequency in the text), the top 20 words are the following:

Rank	Occurrences	Word	Total	Cumulative
1	1040	THE	0.07	0.07
2	386	OF	0.03	0.10
3	371	TO	0.02	0.12
4	341	AND	0.02	0.14
5	297	A	0.02	0.16
6	212	HAD	0.01	0.18
7	181	IN	0.01	0.19
8	157	HE	0.01	0.20
9	138	HIS	0.01	0.21
10	133	HER	0.01	0.22
11	127	THAT	0.01	0.23
12	117	AS	0.01	0.23
13	116	FROM	0.01	0.24
14	107	WAS	0.01	0.25
15	106	WITH	0.01	0.26
16	100	THEY	0.01	0.26
17	91	THEIR	0.01	0.27
18	88	ON	0.01	0.27
19	84	YOU	0.01	0.28
20	83	NOT	0.01	0.29
Tot	4275		~30% of total (14953)

(If there are wide gaps of blank space before and after the table above...I think we may be seeing here another of those reasons why Blogger sucks? I'll fix the CSS when I have time. Futz. If not...ignore this!)

Now, that's not incredibly interesting, is it? Basically just a bunch of gammatical function or other low-content words. And not all that unusual, either. Later I'll do the stats for a similar quantity of text from the beginning of Dune, just for comparison, but I don't expect it to be very different.

The first word that marks this as a Dune-related text doesn't come until the 28th rank: SHEEANA, occurring 65 times (0.43% of the total) or about once per page. Next, at 31st is HONORED (as in "Matre") with 58 tokes (0.39%), followed at 35th by DUNCAN (55, 0.37%), at 36th by BENE (54, 0.36%), and at 40th by MURBELLA (50, 0.33%). MATRES ties with the verb form IS with 44 occurrences each (0.29%). ALL, MOTHER, NO-SHIP, and OLD tie with 38 occurrences. GESSERIT beats out TLEILAXU by just 3 tokens (36 times). SPICE, REBECCA, UXTAL, CHAPTERHOUSE, RABBI, and TEG all appear before the 100th top-ranking word, which is SCATTERING (22 tokens). The first 100 top-ranked words account, cumulatively, for 50% of the total text.

A grand total of 2,042 words (63% of the total vocabulary of 3,244) are used only once. This is only about 13% of the total text, however, and again, not that unusual for an extract of this size.

These are just some of the results from a quick analysis on just an initial part of the text. It's interesting to look at the frequencies of the words used, but other than the vocabulary (here, again, the total number of unique word forms used in the text), none of this information is terribly useful in evaluating the text. Some of the things I will be looking at once I have the entire book in analyzable format will include (but not be limited to):

composition of higher level elements (sections & paragraphs)
sentence length stats
sentential & phrasal structural complexity
anaphoric expressions
repetition (restatement & literal)

And I'll even try to make it all interesting...not just bludgeon you with it like this time! :)

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

2006-12-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-22T10:57:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-17T00:53:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-12-16T18:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

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")

2006-12-13T17:22:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-12-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-12-13T00:40:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-11T12:52:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-10T03:04:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-09T23:24:00.000-08:00

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."

PROCRASTINATION!

2006-11-13T02:59:00.000-08:00

Ok.

I've been stuck on page 427 of Hunters for the last...I don't know HOW MANY weeks now, so I'm going to make myself sit down tomorrow and finish the sucker.

Then at last I can begin the work of counting the Post-Its and categorizing the passages they mark.

No doubt the ENORMITY of that task is part of what has been holding me back.

The remainder, however, is primarily a natural reluctance to WASTE any more of my time on what I have come to see as a very, very BAD piece of writing.

Let us unite together in recitation of the Litany of St. Malory:

BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD!!!

A numbers game?

2006-11-11T21:55:00.000-08:00

I guess for some it really is just all about the numbers.

How many words can you write in one day, how many books in a year?

How many different projects can you juggle and keep up in the air at once?

And how many books can you sign in one sitting?

Whatever happened to writing A good BOOK? Does everything have to start out as a trilogy or series these days?

I'm sorry, but there IS a relation between quantity and time and quality.

I guess I'm just a hand-tailored bug in an off-the-rack world....

A newfound respect: a brief note on writers and writing

2006-11-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

It's still too soon to come to a definite conclusion on "writing by numbers", but I have found a new respect for authors who manage to write anything at all while holding down a full time job!

My hat is off to you all.

To "Mouse Moon" Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Chig-Chig Rodriguez

2006-11-07T18:14:00.000-08:00

If you don't follow the Dune Novels BBS and have no idea what this is, don't worry about it!

Please accept this in lieu of an actual signature. When we meet at DuneCon I'll redeem it with a real one or initial your print out.

(There's a Truman Capote joke in there somewhere...but never mind.)

-SC

Addendum:

And here's another little something for a special friend, Mastah B:

Who else wants a piece of this?

Writing by numbers

2006-11-05T00:20:00.000-08:00

I've stated elsewhere that I have never been interested in becoming a fiction writer myself...and that was no lie. Nevertheless, I am interested in the process of creative writing and have flirted with participating in the National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) contest since I first heard about it three or four years ago, just to see what it's like trying to compose something longer than the little parodies and silly episodic pieces I occasionally spin off.

In case you're not familiar with the contest, the goal is to write a 50,000-word novel (novella, really) within the 30 days of November. (By way of comparison, that's about two-thirds the length of Dune Messiah, and only one-fourth the length of Dune.) See their website for more information, if you're interested.

This year I'm particularly interested in giving it a serious go as a result of all the discussion on how hard writers work and the whole issue of writing with a definite deadline (especially in connection with the idea of setting daily quotas).

I got off to a bit of a slow start (only 107 words) on Wednesday and didn't feel like writing on Thursday, but Friday (the "Culture Day" holiday here) I wrote 970 words and yesterday managed 2,065...253 words over the quota for the day. To stay on schedule I have to write 1,802 words today. It's already past 5:30 and the total so far is...0. Ooh, ooh, the pressure!

I'll keep y'all updated on my progress through the course of the rest of the month.

And don't worry...I won't be forcing any excerpts on you!

Whither next? Name that series!

2006-10-29T15:20:00.000-08:00

OK, so we all know that the next book slated for publication in The Dune Chronicles is Sandworms of Dune, the second half of the "Dune 7 Trilogy-in-Two-Volumes", which is to appear in Summer 2007. This is supposed to conclude the chronological development of the series, with all following books to explore various story lines earlier in Duniverse history. A Paul of Dune trilogy, which will describe events between Dune: House Corrino and Dune and between Dune and Dune Messiah, etc., is already announced as "forthcoming" and scheduled for completion by 2010. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have said in interviews that as long as they can keep coming up with entertaining stories to tell, they'll keep writing more books.

In the comments, please list titles (and short descriptions, if you like) of anything you think they might come up with.

I'll start....

Something hard in the morning

2006-10-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with a hankering for something a little harder than the fare I have consumed of late. So I rummaged around in the "already read" pile and pulled out Dan Simmons' Worlds Enough & Time: Five Tales of Speculative Fiction collection. I wanted to reread parts of "Orphans of the Helix", specifically because of its depictions of space travel (FTL but not "vroom-vroom") and artificial intelligences (which I especially enjoyed in this story because the ones described all have names and avatars taken from Japanese literature).

In addition to the general introduction, Simmons also prefaces each story in the collection with comments on how it came to be written. I found the following from the intro to "Orphans" particularly relevant.

... An even smaller subset of readers might know that I've vowed not to write any more novels set in this Hyperion universe for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that I don't want to dilute any existing vitality of the epic in a series of profitable but diminishing-returns-for-the-reader sequels.

Still, I never promised not to return to my Hyperion universe via the occasional short story of even novella-length tale. Readers enjoy such universes and miss them when they're gone (or when the writer who created them is gone forever) and this nostalgia for old reading pleasures is precisely what gives rise to the kind of posthumous franchising–the sharecropping-for-profit of a writer's original vision–that I hate so much in today's publishing. But the occasional short work in an otherwise "completed" universe is my attempt at a compromise between retilling tired fields and completely abandonning the landscape."

I have just today said elsewhere that I do not object to writers creating new works set in "universes" created by others. However, I do think that how much new material is added is important.

Frank Herbert wrote six Dune novels. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have now written seven, with four more officially announced. Statements made by them in interviews and elsewhere indicate that there is currently no end in sight. (Admittedly, the Dune universe was not "completed" by Frank Herbert in his lifetime. Some argue otherwise, but in my opinion "Dune 7", in one book, might have been all that was needed.)

As MacBeth might have asked

"What, will the line stretch out to the crack of Dune?"

The One (and Only One)?

2006-10-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

Evidently there is only one. That one will acknowledge as such. Without disclosing what or where it is, of course.

One wonders which it might be, with so many to choose from....

(Or maybe it's something no one "on the outside" has noticed yet?)

Hmm...I love a mystery!

Most Unbelievable "Hunters" Review Blog Quotes: #1

2006-10-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

Cue Twilight Zone Theme...

Submitted for your approval, from Trashcan Odorous Jr's Blog:

I truly believe that if someone who had never read the dune novels were to pick up and read this series, from Dune to Hunters of Dune, they would not be able to tell that 'Hunters' was written by a different author(s).

What more can I say?

Arrakeen Night Sky

2006-10-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

A while back over on the DN BBS I promised some Celestia screenshots of familiar Terran constellations as they would appear from Arrakis.

As it turned out, a distance of only 300 or so light years was more than enough to completely destroy the familiar patterns....

(Click for larger version. Purple lines connect constituent stars of the named constellations.)

So much for that.

Here's a freebie, Sol from Arrakis:

Probably NOT visible to the naked eye.

Oh well....

Cave ab lectore!

2006-10-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

The "dream linguist" knows that comprehension always exceeds production and that it is therefore dangerous to evaluate the capacity of an individual for the former based on the latter. But still, the two are related.

When dealing with someone whose form of expression and use of words is painfully flawed, one naturally has to wonder about the reliability of any pronouncements based on their reading of a text.

Let he who can read do so!

莊周夢蝶 (Zhuāng Zhōu Mèng Dié)

2006-10-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamt I was a balding human linguist with more than a bit of a middle-age spread, teaching Proto-Galach composition and grammar at a smallish national university about an hour north of the legendary Old Terran metropolis of Toh Kiyoh (supposedly the capital of the insular nation of Zhappon, where, by virtue of its excellent facilities and the cosmopolitan, non-religious outlook of the majority of its inhabitants, the Council of Ecumenical Translators chose to meet for their seven-year labors which resulted in the Orange Catholic Bible), but this morning I awoke to the aroma of ChiggerBint brewing spice coffee in the cookinook.

Now I don't know if I am a (usually happy but now slighly confused) desert parasite who has dreamt of being a hu-man, or a (slightly disturbed?) hu-man who is currently dreaming he is a desert parasite and wondering how the hell to coordinate those extra two legs when he tries to get up and walk over to ChiggerBint...who's starting to look good enough to eat!

Ah, what a world this is!

In the words of the Master...

2006-09-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

Looking back on it, I realize I did the right thing instinctively. You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.

That was really my intention all along.

Frank Herbert (April 1984; quoted by Freakzilla on Arrakeen).

Some people say that they find the new books entertaining. I'm happy for them.

At the same time, I'm pretty sure that by "and as much more as you can give", FH didn't intend "numerous sources for irritation and abiding frustration".

Guys...at the very least get some new editors.

(I'm cheap and could probably fit it in!)

Machina Non Grata

2006-09-19T20:22:00.000-07:00

It seems that TAZbot is no longer welcome on the Dune Novels BBS.

But never fear, it will still be making guest blogs here from time to time. Asked for comment, TAZbot had this to say:

Elie Wiesel said in 'Nights' that the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference, the lack of feeling itself. Although I wouldn't say 'damn all others', the fact that you know that I love you should just read the notes and not give your own POV that could lead to that, which is perfectly rational.

What's wrong with the Borg? I don't think that I'm fine with them believing whatever they want as long as they can be flawed like the Roman equivalent of Hades who is the God of the dead and the ruler of the underworld. They wouldn't tell you anyway. However, they are relentless in their ignorance based on their preconcieved notions that you and Sandchigger could have done a remarkable job at avoiding a problem.

I think that I am not making any claims aside from that I have not found one inconsistency in the prequels that could destroy the entire BG sisterhood with a problem. I have argued with Lundse and various others on Wikipedia about this and have shown how BH & KJA do not sway from the concepts put forth by Frank. And still more unjustified claims are being spewed out by the "Talifan" community against my credibility (sigh) and should try to skew my opinion into how any of what you say is relevant to any subject.

That kinda says it all, no? (Not that I have any idea what exactly that says!)

(Plans are still underway for Version 2.0. Stay tuned!)

Guest Blogger: TAZbot 1.0

2006-09-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

Although I wouldn't say 'damn all others', I'm fine with them believing whatever they want as long as they keep an open mind, then I wouldn't have any problem. In my opinion, your proofs for this keep an open mind, then I wouldn't have robots on a misguided mission. Am I wrong? Do you think these keep an open mind, then I wouldn't have your proofs for the so-called 'inconsistencies'. Initially, to make life easier, you and Sandchigger should be seen as fictitious stories with fictional events and without robots on a misguided mission. Wouldn't you start from 'In the beginning'? Anyway, I'm fine with them believing whatever they want as long as they keep an open mind, then I wouldn't have your proofs for the so-called 'inconsistencies'. You have a very narrow perspective.

You are insatiable to say the least. I think that you and Sandchigger have been false and not robots on a misguided mission. Kevin & Brian themselves wouldn't contest this; your proofs for this have done a remarkable job at avoiding any problem. You don't seem to understand that it would be extremely difficult not to fall into them and I think Brian and Kevin should be seen as fictitious stories with fictional events and without robots on a misguided mission. Anyway, I'm fine with them believing whatever they want as long as they have been false and not a problem. But they don't.... Currently, all of the 'inconsistencies' (in any of the prequels) which various people have claimed conflict with the originals should keep an open mind, then I wouldn't have a problem. But they don't.... Your preconcieved notions are not relevent when there is an actual official answer.

* * * * *

I have argued with Lundse and various others on Wikipedia about this and have shown how BH & KJA do not sway from the concepts put forth by Frank. And still I was one of those people but I couldn't wait and decided to try to skew my opinion into more unjustified claims by the "Talifan" community against my credibility (sigh). Why and when is Frank saying this? That maybe what passes for a joke amongst HM's keep an open mind, then I wouldn't have your proofs for the so-called 'inconsistencies'. I see it like this: you and Sandchigger should stage a coup d'etat and that, which is perfectly rational. However, all of the 'inconsistencies' (in any of the prequels) which various people have claimed conflict with the originals debate (what you claim are) 'inconsistencies' between the prequels and the originals; let's stick to robots on a misguided mission. Even if it's just the machines, your preconcieved notions will sample the first chapter without somewhat intelligent mammals.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bombs

2006-09-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry...

Won't. Bloody. Well. Happen. Anytime. Soon.

The Neverending Story

2006-09-15T02:15:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm just worn out all the time from other stuff, but since I started reading the book again a few days ago, I've only managed to progress about five or six "chapters". I have literally fallen asleep every time I've tried to read it.

At this rate, I'll never finish....

Inappropriate Material

2006-09-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

A close friend of mine named Scarabina recently sent me the following highly irreverent list of titles that The Chronicles would have borne if she had written them:

Dung
Dung Mess
Children from Dung
God Emporium of Dung
Hairy Ticks with Dung
Crapperhouse: Dung

She hasn't read the House series yet—or else the Muse failed her?—because she continues:

The Buttholian Jihad
The Marchin' Crappade
The Battle of Cacca

And last but not least (that would be any of the Legends, I should think),

Hunters of Dung

She is, as you can see, a bit preoccupied with matters scatological.

Cold turkey

2006-09-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

Makes great sandwiches but a crappy way to beat an addiction.

Any suggestions?

Shami no sham!

2006-08-31T09:06:00.000-07:00

Dastardly Plot

2006-08-30T21:39:00.000-07:00

Returning to more interesting matters...

Creating an Arrakeen texture for Celestia as faithful as possible to the map given at the beginning of Dune will require translating something like this

into something like the following.

Or, more accurately, into something like this:

This will involve measuring the coordinates of a massive number of points on the original map and converting them into points on the texture. A real PITA, in other words.

I've decided that the quickest, most efficient way to achieve this will be to write another single-purpose utility app. This one will take as input parameters the size of the map image, x and y coordinates of the map center point and point to be converted, map distance to a given line of latitude (probably 60 degrees N, in this case) and the size of the destination texture. It will output the x and y coords of the point on the texture.

Creating the texture will still take a considerable amount of time, but less than trying to do it by hand!

(Note: Since no map of the southern latitudes is provided and only limited information given in the books, I will leave the southern hemisphere essentially untouched.)

When the desert calls...

2006-08-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

There is nothing to do but answer.

Then again...you could let the machine pick up.

I am hopping a thin line. The serene solitude of the desert beckons, all interest lost in the tumult of the souq.

To keep silent while waiting to see what will happen?
To try to win a battle that cannot be won?
Or simply to stop wanting to fight?

And then I reached a decision quite suddenly. One that I can live with.

Here is what I posted to the Dune Novels Forums:

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife...

...chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended here."
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

I have spent the day sitting just outside the entrance to the sietch, watching the comings and goings, and wandering aimlessly among the nearby dunes, communing with the spirits of the desert. And have at last reached my own conclusion, made up my mind for myself.

I reject the "New Canon" in its entirety and will henceforth ignore its very existence. As far as I am now concerned, The Dune Chronicles consists of six books and six books only. It is complete as stands because it ends.

Unfortunately, one of the psychofants (surprising, a n00b at that...which leads me to suspect he is a sockpuppet) couldn't just take this as good news and leave well enough alone.

It takes all kinds.

Update: Following another exchange with "The Almighty Zeus", I have decided to start reading Hunters again. Expect a list of new inconsistencies (as I see them) and critique of other aspects of the novel in the next week or so (if all goes well).

Preliminary Pictorial Review: 1 Pic = ?? Words

2006-08-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

No progress with the reading today. I'm still just a little past half-finished, but thought I would offer this, by way of sneak peek at things to come.

The off-green American Express advert shows where I am at present. The Post-Its show passages which caught my eye for one reason or another, whether for possible inconsistency with previous material, unneeded repetition (I got it that Bell was overweight the first time, OK? When I want a list of all the synonyms for "fat", I'll consult Roget's, thank you), questionable usage of language, or unnecessary scientific inaccuracies, etc.

I really did give this one a chance (honest!), try reading it with an open mind. But after a while it just got too hard to ignore the little voice kibbitzing in my ear, so I went back and started marking the things that bothered me. I started with a half-used bundle of Post-Its (the yellow ones), went through it and have moved on to another (blue-gray). I'm wondering if I'm going to have to roust out any more.

I've mostly been occupied with other things today. But have to admit, I'm not looking forward to slogging through the remainder.

Note: In case it's not clear from the following post, I have stopped reading Hunters and do not plan to finish it.

Update: I've changed my mind again and have decided to finish reading it.

Siaynoq

2006-08-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

As I walked to the park for the matsuri the other night, I was strangely reminded of the festival city of Onn.

* * * * *

Last night I decided to take a break and read a bit more of The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. And was reminded that space-opera collaborations can remain true to genre and be well written. (I reread The Mote in God's Eye—and most of the Ringworld series as well—while home in the States the summer before last. The earlier book is even more "space-operatic", but it didn't bother me all that much.)

Even though these books rely on fictional devices just as improbable as genetic memory and space-folding (e.g., the alien Moties and Alderson Drive), they remain true to to the limitations of their universe and ours, insofar as the latter are applicable. None of this "racing" about within and between star systems. A journey takes time, measured in hours, days, and weeks.

The same can be said of writing a good book. Or series.

Marty and Daniel

2006-08-21T03:17:00.000-07:00

I'm just a little over a fourth of the way through Hunters of Dune, but did a POSSIBLY BAD THING this morning when I finished my reading session and skimmed ahead quite a ways. All the way to the end, as a matter of fact. (Whether this was really a bad thing or not is something I have yet to decide. It might have been worse coming upon it after reading the whole thing.)

The true identities (oft discussed in certain quarters) of the old man and woman (Daniel and Marty) who appear in Chapterhouse: Dune came as a complete surprise. To me, at least. I gotta hand it to whoever came up with the idea, whether it was Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert and/or Kevin Anderson: this one came out of leftfield. And while it may not exactly be a mind-killer, it has certainly seriously wounded my interest in reading further.

At the very least, I think I will set it aside for a while and wait for everyone else to finish reading, to see what the general consensus is. I've plenty enough to amuse myself with working on the Celestia add-on, anyway.

Here's an interesting quote from Wikipedia, by the way:

Fanon is sometimes well known by creators and may even be accepted as true (or at least as reasonable an explanation as any) to something they have not explicitly explained. On the other hand, some creators of serial works introduce facts in subsequent installments of their work which invalidate specific fanon.

This article is also relevant, in a more general way.

Ciao for now!

Service you can't beat...even with a stick!

2006-08-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

This morning I had to leave the ole Chigger Lair by 6:50 and hop over to Running Bare Park for another one of those neighborhood blockhead thangs. (Local version of Siaynoq this evening, and I was part of the workgang responsible for assembling the central stand for the taiko and caterwaulers...I mean, musicians.) We finished up and I got back to the Lair around 10:30. And guess what I found waiting for me!

Damn. Now that's what I call service! I may just have to change my view of the local branch of Amazon. I'm really glad I decided to take a ~~change~~chance (again, after so long) with them and cancelled my order from the US!

A warm-hearted NYAH! to those of you still waiting!

(I just wish I didn't have such a busy schedule today and could devote more time to it! Oh well, all things in time!)

Edit note: As gohoubi for all our hard work the organizers gave each of us a can of beer and I, being the kind of person who, like a failed wannabe lawyer, has never been able to pass a bar in my life...or leave a free can of beer alone for long, popped it and had it down before I reached home and discovered it wasn't after noon like I thought [and as it would have been according to the original schedule...didn't take my watch] but only 10:30. By way of excuse for the blurry photo and misspelling!

L'amour devant les dunes

2006-08-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

Mourir devant, courir derrière
Se taire en attendant
En attendant que faut-il faire
Gagner la guerre ou simplement
Ne plus vouloir la faire
Dans cet enfer gagner du temps

Cacher dans un désert
Rêvant de l'océan
Les gens qui montent les vers
Partir pour un moment
S'éloigner prudemment
Du feu et faire
Aux sables émouvants
L'amour devant les dunes
L'amour devant les dunes

Danser devant dans la lumière
D'un jour éblouissant
Rire de l'enfer faire un enfant
Courir derrière un peu de vent
Avant qu'un peu de terre
Coule doucement
Sur la lumière

(Mes excuses profondes et sinceres à Patricia Kaas!)

試しに、日本語での投稿

2006-08-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

今晩、仕事から帰る途中でこう考えた。

いわゆる「新デューン小説」の原文はあんまり好きではないが、もしかしてその日本語訳が名文で面白いかも知れない。

明日の午前中、平に用事があるのでヤマニ書店に依ってみようかと思う。役者はシリーズ全体同じく亡き矢野徹だから、一冊だけを買えば訳文の質が分かるはず。損することはなかろう。

Pleasure on the Stand

2006-08-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Pressing his nostrils against the displayport of the Barns & Noble mega-store, Lookat stared at the damned and metamorphosized trees before him. Wood, once called trees and home to the holey woodworms, the only natural source of the pulp material, perverted into paper for perusal and transported to this place, this place where the newest book about the outcome of the visions of God Emperor Leto II, the Great Tyrant and son of Paul Muad'DIBA, who was himself the son of Duke Leto I of House Atreides, one of the many aristocratic houses which ruled a futuristic yet feudal universe, and Jessica, his Bene Gesserit witch concubine and, unbeknownst to him, daughter of his arch-enemy the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen of House Harkonnen, who ruled Giedi Prime, a planet orbiting Ophiuchi B and not a nice place to live or even visit, as well as being brother of St. Alia of the Knife and husband to the tragic Chani, who dies giving birth to twins, one of whom was Leto II, known as the God Emperor or Dur or Guldur or "Goodtime Lee" to the other frequenters of Selim's Bar and Grill in downtown Keen, would soon go onto the new offerings stands....

Ask this of a thing: What is it in and of itself? What is its individual make-up, its essence, form, and matter? Its purpose in the world? Its duration?

'Cause Glenda and the Munchkins want to know: Are you a good book? Or a bad book?

(Or short story in the case of the original upon which the above was based, of course.)

Mac OS X Program: GreatCircleDistance

2006-08-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

Spent a good part of today coding this:

I wish I'd done this before wasting so much time trying to work out the formula (which is a beech!) by hand.

Oh well, live and learn.

(It was kinda fun programming in Objective-C again. Even though I'd forgotten how much of a bitch it can be, too!)

Visualizing Arrakis

2006-08-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days I have been reworking parts of Rassilion's Canopus add-on for Celestia, trying to make it more faithful to the information contained in the Dune novels. The first order of business was to try to determine the size of the planet Arrakis itself.

Using the map at the beginning of Dune and some basic trig, I recalculated the radius of the planet as being 1005.0344 km...which is obviously too small. I created city locations for both Arrakeen and Carthag and fired up Celestia to check the results.

When I "landed" at Arrakeen and pulled up the information on Carthag, it showed as being about half the expected distance of 200 km. I used the value given to recalculate, plugged that in and tried again. This time the two cities were the proper distance apart. The new radius is 1996.2935 km...which is better, but still too small when you consider these:

6378.14 - Earth
6162.47 - Arrakis (Rassilion's original figure, source unknown)
6128.00 - Arrakis (Figure given in The Dune Encyclopedia)
6052.00 - Venus
3396.00 - Mars
2240.00 - Mercury
1737.53 - Luna (Earth's moon)
1151.00 - Pluto
487.500 - Ceres (Largest Solsystem asteroid)

I need to search through the books and see if there isn't something I've missed that can help clear this up. Obviously, the map has to be abandonned for this purpose. (But I plan to use it later for plotting details of the northern polar region where most of the action in the novels takes place.)

(Notes about image above: The lines on the surface of the planet show latitudes of 60 and 75 degrees N and the longitude of Arrakeen, 26W. The black line is the prime meridian, passing through Observatory Mountain. The reddish haze along the rim is an atmospheric effect. Also, you can see one of the two moons above the curve of the planet.)

Dune is a classic scifi novel

2006-08-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

In the same sense that Forbidden Planet is a classic scifi flick. Both have become outdated in light of the advances in our knowledge since they were released.

With the problems with the Duniverse setting and the nature of the worms and the dependence of the plot on elements such as prescience and genetic memory, I'm wondering if Dune shouldn't be reclassified as primarily science fantasy.

I'm not saying that it's not a great novel. Only that I am less willing of late to suspend my sense of disbelief and that my enjoyment is thereby lessened.

Ah well.

Prescience from Spam Essence?

2006-08-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

A message from Gilbert(us Albans?! No,) Guevara was waiting in the In-box just now, entitled

"Better Future, Worm-gnawed"

How cool is that, for a Dune fan?!

Only Fiction

2006-08-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

Thinking too seriously on various aspects of the Duniverse is sure to weaken the suspension field and likely to bring the ole disbelief crashing down onto the hard surface of the sietch floor. And all the dust devils whirling in the sandbox no longer amuse as they once did.

Anyway, the real world has proven far more interesting of late....

Of Luna and Mars

2006-07-25T00:06:00.000-07:00

On August 27, 2006, they WON'T appear to be the same size.

Sorry. Neat idea, but it ain't going to happen.

(Image made from a Celestia screenshot using Fireworks.)