Here's an idea I've been toying with for a bit. This is sort of a test post.
In this issue people can just post about any sci-fi related material they've been consuming that doesn't fit into the club items.
Have a new series you've been watching and are dying to talk about? Read a book recently and have to say something about it? Dump all your thoughts here.
Trombone kleinbl00 JakobVirgil mhr OftenBen plewemt elizabeth blackbootz Meriadoc Tiger_the_Lion _thoracic johnnyFive tehstone rthomas6 War Dala OftenBen bhrgunatha kantos francopoli anatomygeek Purple_Ruby PTR Foveaux ThurberMingus moslydeaf LastingDamageII chowderchowder Merlin
Sounds neat, I personally just picked up the sci-fi classic "Dune" by Frank Herbert. Somehow I have owned it for years but never once sat down and cracked it open. I'm only a few chapters in (Paul is just now arriving on Arrakis) but I have been really enjoying it! I'm excited to dive into some of the worldbuilding aspects and see what makes this the classic it is!
I'm excited for you! Dune is my favorite fiction book of all time.
I'm happy for you. And if you enjoy this one, You'll have hours of enjoyment with all the subsequent books Dune and all the book in the series were the first books in my life I read more than once. I even tried 1 book in the same universe "written" by F.Herbet son's, Brian Herbert (if I remember his name correctly, I still have this abomination on my bookshelves, but wont look for it). It almost make me puke out of second hand embarrassment.
I mentioned in #pubski I've been reading Dune for the first time, and it's easily one of my top-favorite books now. I'm inclined to go back and watch the 80's movie, and also the miniseries which I'm not familiar with. Is the miniseries any good? I've also been reading some Harlan Ellison short story collections which I really like. The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World collection is pretty great.
So... I thought Dune was ...okay. Dune Messiah I made it halfway through and went "wait, there's nothing happening here" and decided I was done with Frank Herbert. The original cut David Lynch Sting'n'Stewart soundtrack-by-Toto Dune is kinda cringe-worthy but not ghastly bad. It's kind of what a David Lynch sci fi film about Arabs with a soundrack by Toto would be. The "Director's Cut" is "directed" by Alan Smithee for good reason. It grinds on and on and on and on and on. Vast swaths of the story are provided by janky storyboards and voiceover. The miniseries is worse than the Alan Smithee "Director's Cut."
I would argue that Lynch's Dune was close enough to count. But then, I'm not obsessive about Dune. It's a paint-by-numbers jesus story set on Planet Arabia in which the evil white people steal the oil from the noble Wahabi. All the ornithopters and sandworms in the world don't change that. That there isn't a Dune fan alive who considers the movie good enough is a lot of why I tend to not get along with Dune fans.
Donald Kingsbury, in the fairly-forgettable novel The Moon Goddess And The Son, spent an easy ten pages railing on Dune and what bullshit it was. I'm not that bad, but to me, Dune takes what's interesting about TE Lawrence and wraps it in a ham-fisted sci fi tale. Everyone I've ever met who feels strongly about Lynch's Dune also feels that Herbert's Dune is God's Gift to Sci Fi and the minute you attempt any objective discussion someone's sizing you up for a stake and stacked firewood. And that is why there will never be a "good" adaptation of Dune - those who demand it have long since lost the horizon.
Your point about high expectations is a valid one. I think in objective discussion we can say that no novel is perfect. Dune has its flaws though I think 'ham-fisted' is a point of experience and perspective. Give me your particular set of experiences relating to the creation and production of media and I would probably think similar things about Dune. I'm still on the audience side of the curtain so I'm allowing myself to enjoy the smoke and mirrors and ignore the wire that's really making Peter Pan fly, full admission. And I think that in objective discussion we can say that Dune has had a pretty powerful impact on science fiction writing, writers and culture in general. (Pardon the quality of this link, it was the first I could find that had the full episode.) The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy had an episode that was a shot for shot of God Emperor of Dune, as one example. For that and tons of other influences, I think that Dune deserves better than Sting and fever dreams.
I first saw Lynch's Dune in theaters and I first read the book when I was ten. I'd had no media production experience whatsoever when I experienced it. The movie was cringe-worthy when I saw it; not even being nine was prophylactic against "for he is the quizat haderach!" But the book is no better. The basic bones of Dune are the basic bones of Le Morte d'Arthur; they match Campbellian monomyth as well as anything. I've never heard of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. That's okay. Most people have never heard of Dune. And not to twist the knife or anything, but those who have heard of it know the David Lynch version.
It must be Dune season then. I've been taking my time with it, so I'm about 2/3rds of the way through. The basic plot is known to me, but one of the wonders of this book is how it basically spells-out all the clues you need to know how the story proceeds with the opening epigraphs and such, yet still remains enthralling.
I agree! You're further along than me but I can almost tangibly feel some of the mysterious, foreshadowing going on. Really excited to see what happens. I'm also extremely surprised about how I don't think I know any spoilers for this book. It seems to have gone through generations without being spoiled like other series (like Star Wars and everybody knowing Vader is Luke's father) which I find pretty impressive.
I don't know if you COULD really spoil Dune. Individual plot points maybe but not the whole thing. There are simply too many things to cover. So excited to see the Dune wave sweeping hubski. Dune has been my favorite piece of fiction since high school and it holds up to time and rereads super well. Cheers! Enjoy it!
So. Fanboy in me wants to say 'EVERYTHING SPICE DUNE FLAVORED IS AMAZING!' Realistic fan wants to say 'The Frank Herbert books are good. The stuff written by his son and Kevin J. Anderson are okay. The movie is entertaining but not representative of the depth of the book, also lampoons some stuff that is in my mind philosophically important. (Herbert put a lot of work into the book for a reason. He wanted the whole thing to be able to be taken as a gestalt) I think when we are judging the whole series (Excluding canon debate) the important thing is to unfortunately judge each segment of the sandworm separately. The detailed breakdown is this. Dune as a standalone novel is pretty damn rad. As you already know the characters are unique (Even if their archtypes are not), the setting is rich and vibrant, and Herbert's dedication to evocative description makes the whole thing just a pleasure to read. I give copies of it to friends and family as holiday presents sometimes. The novels Frank Hebert wrote after Dune are not as focused and tend to get sort of lost in the weeds in some ways. They are worth a comprehensive read I think and I really enjoy them even if I tend to skip around bits when I reread. Overall they take a lot of the consequences of Dune through their 'natural' progression and unfortunately Herbert died before finishing it outright. If you enjoyed Dune, there is a high probability you will enjoy the later novels. The novels written by his son and Kevin J. Anderson are... Dune flavored pablum. They scratch the itch when the itch arises but I'd rather get the uncut, pure SPICE writing of FH himself. Some of it does read like fanfiction. If you are used to fanfiction, I think it's half decent. If you're not used to fanfiction, I'd leave it alone. I have watched clips of the movies and read enough about what was cut to have no interest in watching them or the miniseries. In my mind the thing has to to be tackled game of thrones style or pretty much not at all. This next movie attempt is a big gamble with a director who hopefully can translate decades of 'what if' into something both the fandom and mainstream can tolerate if not enjoy. Meant to post this hours ago, oops!
I've been reading The Expanse series (forgive me, unsure how to italicize words on Husbki) - after churning through the TV show on Netflix. I'm really enjoying it, onto book 3 now but I have heard rumours it gets quite... out there... in the coming books. I will wait and see I suppose. For now though, it's kept me coming back for more after each chapter.
I saw season one of the show. I liked it enough that I’d like to continue watching the show, although last I checked it wasn’t available on any of the streaming services I have. The show’s handling of the intrigue and espionage portions seemed rather contrived, and the guiding of the main characters through the plot seemed too convenient and forced, but I might expect that’s easier-swallowed in the source material.
That's pretty accurate I think - my tolerance for those issues is pretty high when I find something new, though I found myself thinking along the same lines at points. I really enjoyed the characters and their interactions, along with the acknowledgement of realistic issues in space (gravity, air, maneuvering). The second season gets more political which I enjoyed - the concept of mankind spreading beyond Earth and how quickly we would still form tribes according to our location piqued my interest. The issue of governing a people so far removed from their "Headquarters" that it takes months to reach them was something I just simply hadn't though about prior to the series. While it has it's issues, it's making me think a great deal!
Orignally has this as a top level comment because I missed yours. SO this is just a copy/paste. ---- After Amazon's last ditch rescue of The Expanse, I decided to read the books, spurred on by Wes Chatham saying what he genuinely wanted most for his career (after hearing about the cancellation) was season 4, in particular because of the story arcs in Nemesis Games (the 5th book.) As I read through I'd re-watch episodes until I passed the show. A really unusual experience - watching something so close to having read it, but enjoyable. It's a little confusing when various characters and plots differ, but I think I gained a lot more from the TV show than if I hadn't read the books or if I'd read them years before and forgotten lots of details. The books themselves unfold very much like serialised TV and the authors have obviously spent a lot of time thinking about how to keep you turning the page. Nothing particularly deep, profound or that pushes sci-fi forward, just well crafted stories and characters that keep you on the hook. A bit preachy and politically correct, but not too in-your-face to make you stop reading. They dwell too much on the theme of tribal conflict without a truly thoughtful or insightful payload. It's not mind-bending sci-fi, but a good, honest and entertaining read.
All sci fi is allegory. The problem with series is if your allegory is "we're all people" then over the course of four seasons you will eventually go from this to this to this because your market research will tell you that subtlety does not buy you marketshare. Tomorrow is yesterday is a Star Trek episode about time travel that is not also about hate crime. However, it is also objectively bad.And every time travel episode in Star Trek is a hate crime. Holy shit.
I've noticed that we've all had our expectations reset by the onslaught of utter bullshit that is the modern entertainment industry. Stranger Things is the most brilliant thing since X-Files but people forget that at the time, X-Files was mediocre at best. Star Wars has become big-budget Star Wars fanfic. The whole of the industry hinges on "remember that good movie? Does this movie remind you of that good movie? See? That means it can't actually be a bad movie!" DS9 has about a season and a half, maybe two seasons of good material. That puts it ahead of pretty much everything that has come out in the past 20 years.
Ernest Cline was born in '72. The Duffer brothers were born in '84. Duffer Brothers definitely smear second-hand nostalgia all over Stranger Things but Cline's mainlining his own fuckin' self-grown nostalgia. I mean yeah. I guess it's nice that Winona Rider is working again. But I mean... Cline had to have read Neuromancer. he had to have read Snow Crash. He had to have read Ender's Game. And what he took from that was Ready Player One.
[edit] somehow I missed Foveaux's comment where I should have replied from the start.
So, I'm reading this In conjunction with Kevin J. Anderson (Which I am starting to think is a stand-in name like Smithee, not a real person, despite the fact that the real person has been proven to exist.) Neil Peart (Yes, that Neil Peart) wrote a book called Clockwork Lives. It's a steampunk fantasy setting where a young woman has been given an enchanted notebook that collects the stories of people's lives. She must fill the notebook (By fun, steampunky, alchemical means) with stories of interesting people to claim her inheritance and find out the truth about her father's semi-mysterious past. I'm about halfway through it and I'm really enjoying myself. The exact style of the writing feels a little... haphazard I guess. Though I suppose that's what happens when you have two writers of vastly different levels of experience collaborating. Not hating on Peart here, but he doesn't make his living writing books. The story is engaging, I sort of give a damn about the protagonist, and the world that the story is set in is neat and tidy (Not a lot of unanswered questions, if that makes sense) while feeling expansive and exotic.
Well... I've been really delving into the world of Ex Machina. It does such a great job of weaving so many different concepts together, that it's fun to delve into each one individually. Especially being in AA, I've gained a new perspective on one of the main characters than the last time I have watched it. Granted... the last time I watched it was in theaters. I like the idea of wetWARE, I like the idea of a Turing Test being used, and I love the lighting and the set design being used as key components of the story. That guy from Portishead helped with the soundtrack. I've also been really thinking about this film called Predestination that is based off this really great short story.
The Vorkosigan Saga is getting me through my time in LA. I've probably read the first four books three times but the last time I read them there were only four. I tried A Deepness in the Sky for about eight hours and hated it a lot.