Dune. Book discussion. (Spoilers welcome) KJA’s fanfiction sucks… right?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Everyone here agrees that only Frank Herbert wrote “Dune” and that the fanfiction by KJA sucks… correct?

[Loge]

I object to calling the KJA books fanfiction. If the authors were fans, the books shouldn't be so full of deviations from Frank Herbert's Duniverse. It has been a long time since I last touched one of those books, but they felt as if the authors hadn't even read Dune.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

44 minutes ago, Loge said:

I object to calling the KJA books fanfiction. If the authors were fans, the books shouldn't be so full of deviations from Frank Herbert's Duniverse. It has been a long time since I last touched one of those books, but they felt as if the authors hadn't even read Dune.

Fair.  I refer to it as “fanfiction” because it tends to piss off the KJA defenders in other locales.  They are quite numerous in other online locations…  

[unJon]

I’ve never read the KJA books. Read a wiki summary of the plot and it was awful. 

[SeanF]

Bad fanfiction.

It’s light years removed from Christopher Tolkien/Guy Gavriel Kay producing The Silmarillion.

[Marsala]

Penny Arcade's opinion

Edited March 30 by Marsala

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

34 minutes ago, Marsala said:

Penny Arcade's opinion

I don’t think I’d go… quite… that far… but I really don’t like them.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

KJA did write some good Star Wars comics but I don’t know anything about his Dune books except that he brings back Paul and Chani ?

[Ashartus]

My biggest issues with the KJA books (I subjected myself to a few) was that they are so tonally different from Frank Herbert's work. Paul of Dune and the Winds of Dune kind of fill in some of the gaps and with a better writer could have been interesting additions. The books about the Butlerian Jihad were just awful though and I'm still pissed off about Hunters of Dune/Sandworms of Dune - supposedly based on Frank Herbert's notes for the conclusion of the story but it later came out those notes were about 2 paragraphs. I suspect the ending kind of is what was intended about the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach and maybe even the enemy, but the execution was so terrible that they ruined it.

[Kyll.Ing.]

My main gripe with the first Dune book (admittedly, the only one I've read) is that the behaviour on display does not match the level of technological development.

For instance, so much of the culture of Arrakis obsesses over preserving even the least drop of water, to the point that spitting is considered a waste (and subsequently, it is a great honour to be spat at). Water is portrayed as near-infinitely scarce and infinitely valuable. Keeping even a few trees alive in the capital is seen as an exorbitant luxury.

And then the map shows that the planet has icy poles.

Why the heck did a spacefaring civilization put the capital (and for that matter, only) city of the planet in the middle of the parched desert, instead of the vastly more acommodating polar region, where ample water is available in solid form? Heck, the planet can't have a polar region covered in water ice immediately bordering a hot and dusty desert. There have to be some sub-polar regions that receives seasonal rain.

And even if the poles are culturally taboo or some other reason that justifies that humans need to live in the desert areas, Arrakis is shown to trade quite a lot with the rest of the Empire. I mean, it's the only place that produces Spice and exports it by the shipload, and shipping in the giant machinery to extract it seems not to be a problem. Heck, in the final act, an army of millions with battleship-sized landing craft descend on the planet in what appears to be a routine operation. So what's so difficult about shipping in some water for the capital city? A single iceberg could keep a city of millions from thirsting for a generation. And ice is one of the most abundant resources in the universe. There's a lot of hydrogen and oxygen to go around. For such an advanced civilization, it seems trivial to make the cities a little less inhospitable.

Then there's the Fremen hiding a rather expansive civilization in the southern hemisphere, unnoticed by the Empire because ... satellite pictures of the southern hemisphere are too expensive. The Fremen apparently bribe the Spacing Guild not to take any pictures. However, this makes the Empire seem woefully inept, as satellites really isn't high technology at that level of development. Shipping an army across the galaxy is not a problem, but taking a few scans of one of its most strategically important planets is too costly to be worth it?

The Fremen being better fighters than the dedicated warrior caste is laughable too. Sure enough, they are extremely well adapted to living in the desert, but that's a very specialized skill set for a very specialized environment, and leaves little room for learning to fight better than those who devote their entire life to fighting. It's reasonable enough that the fremen could outfight the Sardaukar in their own environment, but they sure as heck couldn't "sweep the galaxy" with a few thousand desert dwellers.

I think the book is well-written, but these logical inconsistencies bug me a little too much to get really invested in it.

[Loge]

That landing operation certainly wasn't a routine operation. IIRC, it would have taken the Harkonen decades to pay back the debt it left them in. That's also why the Atreides didn't expect a force of that size. It was practically unheard of. 

The Fremen weren't good fighters before Paul came. They couldn't take on the Harkonen, much less the Sardaukar. And they weren't just a few thousand. I think the figure of ten million is mentioned. That's the total population but it would still make a force of above one million. 

Space travel is the monopoly of the Spacing Guild, and that includes stuff in planetary orbit. So the emperor can't just put his own satellite there. And it was the Harkonen who ran the planet to begin with. 

As for the planet's ecology, that probably doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, especially based on what we know now, but I don't see much of a problem there. Particularly in a setting where there is interstellar travel (which is apparently instantaneous) or genetic memory. There's certainly nothing wrong with there being no rain on a planet without water. I don't remember if they mine the polar caps for water but I think they do. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

30 minutes ago, Loge said:

The Fremen weren't good fighters before Paul came. They couldn't take on the Harkonen, much less the Sardaukar. And they weren't just a few thousand. I think the figure of ten million is mentioned. That's the total population but it would still make a force of above one million. 

No.  They were very good fighters and defeated several units of Saudaukar during the sneak attack on Duke Leto.  

What they weren’t was well organized.  

Leto was excited by the prospect of recruiting Fremen into the Atreides army.  He just didn’t have time to pull that off.  Paul essentially excuted Leto’s plan to organize the Fremen into an effective fighting force… after Leto was killed.

Edited April 2 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Werthead]

On 4/2/2024 at 9:27 AM, Kyll.Ing. said:

My main gripe with the first Dune book (admittedly, the only one I've read) is that the behaviour on display does not match the level of technological development.

For instance, so much of the culture of Arrakis obsesses over preserving even the least drop of water, to the point that spitting is considered a waste (and subsequently, it is a great honour to be spat at). Water is portrayed as near-infinitely scarce and infinitely valuable. Keeping even a few trees alive in the capital is seen as an exorbitant luxury.

And then the map shows that the planet has icy poles.

Why the heck did a spacefaring civilization put the capital (and for that matter, only) city of the planet in the middle of the parched desert, instead of the vastly more acommodating polar region, where ample water is available in solid form? Heck, the planet can't have a polar region covered in water ice immediately bordering a hot and dusty desert. There have to be some sub-polar regions that receives seasonal rain.

And even if the poles are culturally taboo or some other reason that justifies that humans need to live in the desert areas, Arrakis is shown to trade quite a lot with the rest of the Empire. I mean, it's the only place that produces Spice and exports it by the shipload, and shipping in the giant machinery to extract it seems not to be a problem. Heck, in the final act, an army of millions with battleship-sized landing craft descend on the planet in what appears to be a routine operation. So what's so difficult about shipping in some water for the capital city? A single iceberg could keep a city of millions from thirsting for a generation. And ice is one of the most abundant resources in the universe. There's a lot of hydrogen and oxygen to go around. For such an advanced civilization, it seems trivial to make the cities a little less inhospitable.

The icecaps are tiny, and they are both located on the open bled. The cities have to be on the Shield Wall otherwise they'll be destroyed by the worms.

There is a "worm line" beyond which the worms' can't approach either icecap, but I believe this was not discovered until many years or centuries after colonisation, and even then that's no good if all the approaches to the city are cut off by worm routes. As it stands, Arrakeen and Carthag (the only two cities of note on the planet) are still only a few hundred kilometres from the northern icecap.

[Take on Me]

I've only read the first 3 Dune books.  Still have a few Herbert books to finish.  I've toyed with the idea of exploring KJA's expanded universe, but too many negative reviews have held me at bay.  Are any of them worth a read?  My reading hours are in short supply, so I'm picky about what I invest them on.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

21 hours ago, Take on Me said:

I've only read the first 3 Dune books.  Still have a few Herbert books to finish.  I've toyed with the idea of exploring KJA's expanded universe, but too many negative reviews have held me at bay.  Are any of them worth a read?  My reading hours are in short supply, so I'm picky about what I invest them on.

Don’t waste them on the KJA fanfiction crap.

[Lord Varys]

On 4/2/2024 at 3:49 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No.  They were very good fighters and defeated several units of Saudaukar during the sneak attack on Duke Leto.  

What they weren’t was well organized.  

Leto was excited by the prospect of recruiting Fremen into the Atreides army.  He just didn’t have time to pull that off.  Paul essentially excuted Leto’s plan to organize the Fremen into an effective fighting force… after Leto was killed.

Yeah, the Fremen are the best fighters in the known universe and that is because of the environment they live in. Salusa Secundus, the 'prison planet' which forms the Sardaukar is also a very hostile environment which created a similar but less effective martial culture.

The entire take of the new movies, especially the second part, of presenting the Harkonnens as 'colonizers with big guns' undercuts the message of the book which has the Fremen as the people totally in control of their own planet. The reason they don't drive away the outsiders is that they are not unified and don't really care about them as they only live in two very small cities.

The one thing some of the Fremen later learn from Jessica and Paul are Bene Gesserit fighting skills, but they are not taught to everyone.

It is the fact that the Fremen and their religious zeal are in control of everything that puts Paul in the tight corner that his own wishes and life don't really matter in the end ... the Jihad will come, regardless if he lives or dies.

What the books fail to actually explain is what exactly the point of the Jihad is. What the goal is. Paul has the Imperial throne in the end, a huge majority of CHOAM shares, he controls everything and everyone. And all that wealth and power will also profit the Fremen. So why do they feel the need to butcher billions...? Don't they share the feeling that they have won already? Is it about how to correctly worship and pray to the living god and his divine sister? Is it about Fremen puritanism and superstition? We just don't know. The Jihad just sits there as an elephant in the room in Dune Messiah and we have no clue what the point or even pretext was.

And the logistics of it all is also kind of weird. No great house or other powerful faction would actually want to oppose Paul openly, now that he can cut them off permanently from the spice. The Guild certainly would do what he wanted ... but if nobody is going to resist you openly why the hell would you (Fremen fanatics included) want to massacre billions of people rather arbitrarily...?

On 4/5/2024 at 12:56 AM, Take on Me said:

I've only read the first 3 Dune books.  Still have a few Herbert books to finish.  I've toyed with the idea of exploring KJA's expanded universe, but too many negative reviews have held me at bay.  Are any of them worth a read?  My reading hours are in short supply, so I'm picky about what I invest them on.

If you want to read something else check out The Dune Encyclopedia after you finished book 4 (it contains information up until that point). That is really a masterpiece of 'fake history' in all its glory and really the cornerstone against which similar books should be measured against.

You find something fun literally on every single page in that book. Best nuggets still are the list of all the Emperors, the article re-imagining Muad'dib as a native Fremen pretending to be a lost Atreides, or the tragic discovery of a certain Duncan ghola that Leto II is unfortunately suffering from a hereditary mental disorder...

It is also great how the pre-Butlerian history of the universe is imagined, how the concept of 'Empire' is projected back in time to dominate even the history we know, and how the origins of the Bene Gesserit are traced back into the human prehistory.

Have to admit, though, that I actually do like most of KJA's Star Wars novels. Those characters he gets pretty well. 

On 4/2/2024 at 3:19 PM, Loge said:

Space travel is the monopoly of the Spacing Guild, and that includes stuff in planetary orbit. So the emperor can't just put his own satellite there. And it was the Harkonen who ran the planet to begin with. 

It is pretty clear why the Guild would do what the Fremen want. They need the spice ... and the Fremen bribe them with spice. So if something makes sense in the setting then the fact that Fremen and smugglers both can count on the Guild to turn a blind eye to their activities.

Of course, there is a kind of problem in the history of the setting as I'm not sure when and how the spice of Arrakis was discovered and used to build up the Guild of the post-Butlerian feudal empire. The ban on thinking machines disrupted/greatly hindered space travel for a time, but it makes little sense to assume they only stumbled on the spice and its magical properties when they were in need of that. Rather the spice would have been known beforehand, only slowly becoming the ultimately important 'fuel' of the feudal empire as it developed. The fact that substances like spice existed would have only allowed the ban on thinking machines to be enforced (more or less) in the entire known universe as if the only means of space travel was through thinking machines then there would have been people fighting back against the ban imposed by the Butlerian fanatics.

By the time of Dune pretty much everybody uses it because spice is the best substance for a number of things society depends on ... but that wouldn't have always been the case. For instance, we know that the Bene Gesserit can create Reverend Mothers using spice/water of life as well as other potentially lethal drugs. The navigators may have already experimented with other drugs until settling finally and exclusively on spice from Arrakis.

The people we now know as the Fremen were Zensunni wanderers who only colonized Arrakis during the feudal Empire era, a couple of millennia before Dune, not before Butler's Jihad, so it stands to reason that Arrakis may have been a part of the feudal empire before it was actually colonized by the people we now as the Fremen. Then we would see the Guild helping the Zensunni to find a home on Arrakis for some reason, while at the spice was already harvested on Arrakis. In fact, I just checked that the Dune Encyclopedia has the Fremen been brought there only about 4,000 prior to Dune, both to give them a home and to have an independent means of access to the planet and its spice. The Fremen were designed to live on that planet, having gone through many hardships on other worlds before, including a stint on Salusa Secundus.

Arrakis as a planet is a fief the Emperor hands out. It stands to reason that sometimes the Corrinos themselves did some of the hard work there (or some princes from cadet branches) or that the need to hand out Arrakis as a Imperial fief with a lordly overseer only arose at a time when the need for spice in the entire empire was so great that it really had to flow constantly. Before that, the Guild may have allowed may independent contractors to do spice-mining on Arrakis, especially at a time when the planet was not yet fully colonized by the Zensunni.

[Kyll.Ing.]

10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Yeah, the Fremen are the best fighters in the known universe and that is because of the environment they live in.

Which really makes no sense if you think about it for a few seconds. The environment they live in teaches them to conserve water, stay cool in the heat, and walk funny to avoid upsetting the sandworms. There's nothing in the Fremen's environment that suggests they get overly much training in fighting like soldiers (especially when compared to soldiers that get all of their basic needs cared for so they can spend all their time and energy practicing combat). One might as well say that the Inuits are the best fighters on Earth because they live in the harshest environment. In reality, hostile environments tend to demand all the attention of its inhabitants to keep them alive, leaving very little time and energy to learn other skills.

[Lord Varys]

6 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Which really makes no sense if you think about it for a few seconds. The environment they live in teaches them to conserve water, stay cool in the heat, and walk funny to avoid upsetting the sandworms. There's nothing in the Fremen's environment that suggests they get overly much training in fighting like soldiers (especially when compared to soldiers that get all of their basic needs cared for so they can spend all their time and energy practicing combat). One might as well say that the Inuits are the best fighters on Earth because they live in the harshest environment. In reality, hostile environments tend to demand all the attention of its inhabitants to keep them alive, leaving very little time and energy to learn other skills.

I think you have to approach this differently. This society is distinctly different from anything we know. For about 10,000 years the societal order has been frozen into a perpetual status quo. There is no war in this world, as the Empire includes effectively all human settlements and there are no aliens or other enemies. Conflict, if it happens, can only happen with permission of the Guild unless it is a confined to a single planet. That should be rare, though, as the Empire consists of planetary holdings which are given to the great houses as fiefs by the Emperor. If new planets are colonized or in need of pacification then the Sardaukar would do that before a planet is granted to a great house. Conflict between great houses - which are the only legal entities which have interests that transcends a single planet - is strictly regulated by the rules of kanly. There are no or very few open wars in this world.

We also have the technological power balance with the atomic weapons of the Landsraad keeping those of the Corrinos in check as well as the lasgan/shield problem which effectively means fighting among soldiers goes back to a certain type of hand-to-hand combat.

Shaddam IV colluding with the Harkonnens to destroy Duke Leto is a huge breach of protocol.

That means that soldiers as we know it are actually pretty rare as most planets in this setting would never see wars as we know them. The Sardaukar and Fremen's fighting skills are shaped by the environments they live in ... and those planets are both exceptional in the sense that weather and climate control means are not used to turn the planets into paradises as most or all of the other planets are.

The Corrinos train their Sardaukar in a world where lots of lots of people are killed by the natural surroundings as well as by the training itself ... and the Fremen do the same. They also constantly fought each other on a monstrous world and the idea is that the people living through that ordeal are, in an evolutionary sense, best suited to survival in such harsh conditions. That is then combined with a fierce martial culture.

If you read on you will see how quickly and easily the changing living conditions on Arrakis - both a milder climate and different lifestyle coming with it being the new imperial throne world - change the Fremen.

[SeanF]

Dune (like ASOIAF to some extent), relies on the trope that a harsh environment creates almost unbeatable warriors (Sardaukar, Fremen), who can rout ten times their number of soft, “civilised” peoples.

Whereas in reality no army is that good.  And civilised peoples are actually pretty good at inflicting lethal violence.

In reality, Paul’s military dominance comes down (as in real life), to logistics.  He has a monopoly of spice, the Universe’s equivalent of petrol.

[.H.]

This series of blog posts has been posted on the board numerous times, but I guess some might not have come across it before, but it covers the trope that the Freman seem to operate under pretty well.

Edited April 15 by .H.