Q&A With Kevin J. Anderson

[Mahdi]

My original E-mail:

On Monday, December 25, 1939, William Young <wayoung@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Hi, I write news for a very popular dune news site called fed2k

>(www.dune2k.com) and I wanted to congratulate Mr. Herbert and Mr. Anderson

>on recieving the Geffen award and was wondering if you could give me some

>info?

>

>1) It is rumoured that with Emperor: The battle for Dune westwood's license

>for producing dune games expired. Is this true, and if so are they trying

>to renew there license or is anyone else trying to get it?

>

>2) Throughout Mr. Herbert and Mr. Andersons prequel novels, they have

>changed the way of warfare in the Duneiverse from Frank Herberts world of

>knifes, swords, and shields, to using lasguns as the primary weapons. Why

>was this done?

>

>3) Have either Mr. Herbert or Mr. Anderson had any input in the new Dune

>miniseries by John Harrison? And if so, what have they dealt

>with?

>

>4) On of the biggest problems people have with the new prequel novels is the

>number of discrepancies between them and Frank Herbets original novels.

>Now, this is not unexpected seeing as niether Mr. Anderson or Mr. Herbert

>wrote the original novels, and even Frank Herbert had many discrepancies

>from book to book (occasionaly from chapter to chapter, eg. Maud'Dib's shape

>in a constellation then in a moon in the original) but there appear to be so

>many that a lot of people have even questioned if the authors read Frank

>Herberts novels. Do you explain these discrepancies away with a "cannon

>duneiverse" like the dune encyclopedea, or are they just mistakes you

>overlooked, which is understandable? Or are you going to try to corect them

>in House Corrino like you tried to correct the mistake of having Mohaim be

>Jessica's mother in House Atreides?

>

>5) Can you tell me anything about the plot line of House

>Corrino?

>

>Thank you for your time, I and the dune2k website greatly

>appreciate it.

>

>William Young

>"MahdiDLA"

>www.dune2k.com

>_________________________________________________________________________

Kevin J. Andersons reply (I never expected one of them to actually answer my e-mail, if anyone did I figured it would be some guy paid to reply to stuff like this)

Dear William,

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, we've been very busy. To answer your

questions:

1) As far as we know, the license has not expired.

2) You are not correct. HOUSE HARKONNEN talks about the Swordmaster training.

3) Brian and I read the first draft of the miniseries, but other than that, we

had no part in the production.

4) We have followed Frank Herbert's original novels, as well as the thousands

of pages of notes he left behind. We DID NOT follow the DUNE ENCYCLOPEDIA.

5) You will have to wait for the plot of HOUSE CORRINO. Hope you enjoy it.

Kevin J. Anderson

[ordos45]

wow, he answered all but one of your questions.

[Guest Fremen warrior]

I didn't know that there was E-mail in 1939. Please correct typo.

[Guest sardukar]

When are they planning to write dune 7?

[Mahdi]

Either in 2 years or 5.

[Mahdi]

1939 is not a typo, its a mistake in the hotmail system.

[NeoDevilbane]

I believe the Westwood license wasn't through the Herbert Limited Partnership, it was through Dino de Laurentis (the studio/company that produced the David Lynch Dune movie). That's why Dune 1, Dune 2, Dune 2000, & Emperor: Battle for Dune all (both cinematically & artistically) strictly resemble the movie. I'd suspect that's also part of the reason Westwood didn't play around too much with time settings in their games... it was because, by license, they *couldn't*, they were bound to the trappings of the movie.

If that license has expired, it's anyone's guess. Even if it has, they've renewed it before, haven't they?

- Neo

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Where did you get Kevin J. Andersons mail anyway?

[AlteaDeo]

thinked he sent his mail to one wrote in Dunenovels.com and KJA replied himself...