Dune Sequels & Prequels

[driftingcloud]

Just a quick glance through my DE and I notice some striking similarities between certain ideas in BJ yet the authors claim to absolutely not use the DE as a reference at all. Lets see....Holtzman in the DE was essentially their inspiration for a cymek. Norma Cenva and Aurelius Venport are detailed at length but I don't remember them being mentioned in any of FH novels (someone mentioned a brief bit about them in GEoD, would you mind refencing the page/chapter in the paperpack edition for me so I can look it up?) If I were a truthsayer, I would be saying that I sense some stretching of the truth when BH an KJA talk about their workings with Frank's "notes"...

[Emperor Harkonnen]

of course Kevin and Brian cannot write like Herbert, neither can Mcnelly in the DE. but someone have to follow up the idea of the duniverse, don't you think?

don't you want more books, or do you just want the duniverse as it is, with no knowledge of the future after Chapter house? (I haven't read chapter house, no spoilers please)

[driftingcloud]

>don't you want more books, or do you just want the duniverse as it is,

>with no knowledge of the future after Chapter house?

Yes, I would love to have more books, but as I am just beginning to delve into these written by BH and KJA, I am beginning to be very afraid at what they will do for the sequel(s) to Chapterhouse. Personally, I never felt that Chapterhouse ended on a cliffhanger the way people have purported it to. Frank Herbert always wrote each of his novels to stand both on their own and he finished them at a place where I always felt satiated and satisfied. The "cliffhanger" bit seems to be a marketing ploy to scoop up additional readership in the new stuff. These new books by BH & KJA are trying too hard at connecting anything and everything, that their "cleverness" becomes at once transparent and obvious. In one chapter they tell you what's going to happen, and then they repeat it all over again a couple chapters down the road. Their connections between books (spoiler here for those of you who haven't read BJ or House Atriedes)

such as the really lame historical renecatment of Aescylus' play Agamemnon in House Atriedes and Paulus Atriedes' comment that "We weren't always as well respected as we are now," presupposing the father of Vorian Atriedes to be the cymek Agamemnon in BJ clearly show where these two writers' understanding of Frank Herbert's universe is. Not even on the same page, not even in the same universe as the father. Trying to be "complex", the simply weigh in at well below clever.

I am very afraid at how many lame connections will be strewn through these six books just to give us a clever wink or 2 (or 200 winks) in Dune 7 (and 8 and 9 and whatever.) I don't read dune for the clever winks, and as with any artform, when the performers (the writers in this case) wink at the audience (the readers in this case) the art loses all of its credibility. I read dune for the breadth and depth of connections to the human sipirit and soul and how they speak to things that were almost undreamed of before they were written. If these books can awaken in each of us just a bit of what may have been awakend in Maud'Dib or in the other awakend peoples in the series, then a great deal more will have been achieved that simply fleshing out the Duniverse.

I will read all of the new books out of loyalty to the Dune series, and will get copies of all movies that are made, even if they are bad or very bad. But I will also recognize the lack of talent and hypocritcal facade these two young writers have chosen to swim in.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

I think that Brian and Kevin are talented. I love reading their books. I acctually enjoyed reading Butlerian Jihad more than Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. I think that they write good, at least for people like me who doesn't like to read. I only read the dune books because I like dune, I hate reading.

[bob_fox]

the dune feeling doesnt require the same technology, philosophy or even culture, it is the writing style I am talking about.

Yes, Frank definitely had a very different writing style (he's one of the best writers ever, you know), but you have to agree that what you just mentioned (philosophy, etc.) does have a small effect on writing style. And I do think that BJ has a very strong 'Star Wars' feel about it, which is not completely desirable in a Dune story.

[Leto le Juste]

I agree with you sven, in the BJ you can "see" the interstellar cruisers which destroy everything. But in a second time you can observe the choices made by "cogtiors" and "cymeck" and the fight in themselves to stay "human" (think about the love story between Agammemnon and Junon);

So I believe it is a "film-book": it is easy to make a film from such a story while it is more difficult with a novel like COD....

A bon entendeur.....

[Emperor Harkonnen]

a movie from BJ would be great! but first the original novels! ;)

[Harq al-Harba]

the dune feeling doesnt require the same technology, philosophy or even culture, it is the writing style I am talking about.

[snip]

From what iH ave read of frank, I dont think he would mind brian and kevin continuing the Dune series, in fact frank probably would have liked brian continuing the series. He would see it as just more fiction to entertain the masses as he would put it. But to me, and how I take the universe. I dont like it. It is just a personal opinion. THat is the wonder of fiction. Each person builds his or her own perspective on such things.

In the end brian and kevin dont do it for me, and the DE does better in all things that the DE covers. That is all my opinion

I have been out of the Dune universe as it were for some time.

[driftingcloud]

I am now about half-way through House Harkonnen, having read BJ and the House Atreides. What I am realizing while reading them is the huge mistake Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson have made in completely discounting the Dune Encyclopedia. They say on one hand that DE is not Dune canon, yet they are taking from it at random at the same time. They incorporate bits and pices, but are using the excuse that it is not canon to have free reign to go in any other direction they please. This is what gnaws at me the most while reading their books.

DE was around for nearly 15 years before they wrote their first prequel, and as such is was the only bit of knowledge about the Dune Universe any of us have had since Chapterhouse and Frank's subsequent death. I think the authors have missed one of the lessons so clearly laid out in Heretics and Chapterhouse, that if you can't defeat all of them, your best plan is to merge WITH them. Merging the best of DE and franks notes would have made many more happy readers.

Then they go on making a point to show is in BJ how history can be falsified, especially with the Agamemnon charcater and his son, Vorian. Even in the DE, the references are historical findings, years after the death Leto, God Emperor. In fact, many of the manuscripts that the DE is "based" on are from the God Emperor's hidden stash of secrets and were penned by the God Emperor himself or by his historians. BH & KJA would have done better to point up this fact and assume that historical accounts can be misleading rather than insisting at every turn that DE is not authorized (even though it is and was 100% authorized, in fact Willis E McNelly is the only person Frank would trust to do DE) and don't coincide with Frank's notes. And then they turn around in the same breath to create whole histories that are widely divergent from anything Frank would have possibly written. It's this bald-faced hypocrisy that is on nearly every page of their writing that annoys me through every chapter and every word I read. I only hope that some day someone will be able to write some semblance of Dune history or expansion that truly can co-exist with Frank's vision, even if it means writing on the same events but from a different perspective. I wonder how the Tleilaxu might interpret many of the events that I am reading about in the HA, HH & HC? I bet their stories would describe an entirely different perspective than the Imperium's overly repeated hatred of the "dirty Tleilaxu."

[heythurman]

I LOVED cod. It gets so awesome. Finish it or you'll hate yerself  :O . Also, i didn't like God. emp of dune. It was a lot of philosophy and talking rather than plot and action. Then books 5 and 6 ROCK. so yes. YOu must finish it! :D

[Andrew]

Listening(in his head) to Leto II isn't all that exilerating, but the rest of it is pure magnificance.

Yah 5 and 6 have the most military action I think.

[Harq al-Harba]

I finished BJ and The House Atreides book now, and was amazed to see the difference in writing styles.

[Andrew]

Exactly, they tell you everything in the prequels, but Frank never let us know what was going on behind the scenes that would let us know exactly what would happen and when. You could say the originals were spontaneous, whereas the prequels are drawn out so that a 6 year old can read them and know everything about the previous prequel books by reading the last prequel book.