The Harkonnens

[SandChigger]

Right. OK, that makes LOTS of sense.

I rest my case so far as why you're here and what you're up to. Go ahead, shill away! :)

[ErasOmnius]

I really wonder about all of this Dune 7 line of thought.

Chapterhouse is so close on the heels of Heretics, at such a topsy-turvy point in Frank Herbert's life, I have strong doubts as to whether or not Dune 7 'outlines' ever existed.

I remember Beverly Herbert dying, then Herbert publishing Heretics, the DUNE movie fan-fare which he was a part of, the marriage to Theresa Shakelford, the release of Chapterhouse, then his death.

I know it could have been possible an outline was made, but that is one busy two-year period.

Takin' my meds...

[SandChigger]

That's actually an important aspect of the story that has never been mentioned once so far as I know: when did Frank Herbert get (contract) those safety deposit boxes and when was the last time he visited the savings & loan and accessed the contents?

Those are questions for which there should be definite answers, in the records of the S&L.

(There should also be some sort of timestamp on the files on the floppies that presumably the technician who recovered the contents

[Mahdi]

I recall after some of the original criticism that there was no way Frank left detailed outlines for 8 novels in a safety deposit box that Brian and Kevin claimed to have found boxes and boxes of more of his writing in his old attic.  Maybe it was Dreamers of Dune they wrote that?

[Mahdi]

My mistake, it was a garage.  Although I still seem to recall something about attic papers too....

http://forum.dune2k.com/index.php?topic=4328.0

[Wolf]

It was both. It seems Brian & Kevin never got their stories straight. From the two adjacent footnotes of the Wiki article on "Dune (franchise)":

^1Neuman, Clayton (August 17, 2009). "Winds of Dune Author Brian Herbert on Flipping the Myth of Jihad." AMCtv.com. Retrieved August 19, 2009. "I got a call from an estate attorney who asked me what I wanted to do with two safety deposit boxes of my dad's ... in them were the notes to Dune 7 -- it was a 30-page outline. So I went up in my attic and found another 1,000 pages of working notes."

^2"Before Dune, After Frank Herbert." Amazon.com. Retrieved November 12, 2008. "Brian was cleaning out his garage to make an office space and he found all these boxes that had "Dune Notes" on the side. And we used a lot of them for our House books.""

EDIT: Wow, there are even more:

^3"Dune 7 blog: Conspiracy Theories." (December 16, 2005). DuneNovels.com (Internet Archive). Retrieved October 12, 2008. "Frank Herbert wrote a detailed outline for Dune 7 and he left extensive Dune 7 notes, as well as stored boxes of his descriptions, epigraphs, chapters, character backgrounds, historical notes

[MrFlibble]

Wolf, thanks for the detailed research on the subject! :)

[SandChigger]

Note how the outline has grown with time? At first it was just 2.5 pages or so and not all that detailed (necessitating their adding a lot of their own material, right?) but by last summer it had grown to 30-some pages.

Must have been printed out on that absorbent paper that swells? ::)

[Wolf]

That and the total number of documents recovered. 1,000. "Over" a thousand. 3,000. Nevermind that initially it was unclear where the documents were recovered: in the safety deposit box, in Brian Herbert's attic, or in Brian Herbert's garage. Then there's the apparent disagreement/retconning over the status of the House books in relation to the discovery of the documents. The House books hadn't been planned. They had only been planned. They had already begun work that had to be "revised."

This many discrepancies on this many different issues leads me to conclude pretty much one thing: there are no documents. There never were any documents. At most, Frank Herbert had a legal pad with scattered notes, which probably wouldn't be useful to you even if you were Frank Herbert. That's it. I think I'm joining the Talifan.

[Mahdi]

Oh, I believe there were documents.  I believe there were safety deposit boxes.  I don't believe that those documents contained detailed plot outlines for each and every book Brian and Kevin have written.  I believe they were probably random notes and thoughts Frank had written and discarded himself in the 25 years he wrote the Dune series and have little to nothing to do with anything published since 1986.

[SandChigger]

I believe they were probably random notes and thoughts Frank had written and discarded himself in the 25 years he wrote the Dune series

Hence this:

<a href=" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/139/324834608_204939c80c_o.gif" /></a>

To be fair, the only books they've actually claimed were based on FH outlines are the two "Dune 7" disasters, plus the "Spice Planet" novella included in The Road to Dune. But they have claimed to be using the notes and character & chapter sketches, etc., to various degrees in the others.

Also, there is actually a set of core elements in the outline & notes discovery story that has remained constant; it's the little peripheral details that seem to change.

1. They hooked up and got together at Brian's place in Seattle one weekend to "brainstorm" (important KJA term) and plan out House Atreides & the other two House books.

2. Some time afterwards (2 wks?), Brian was contacted by the estate attorney with news of the discovery of the boxes at the S&L.

3. A while after that (House Atreides already sent to publisher?), Brian discovered the [this next best imagined as if Carl Sagan reading it:] "boxes and boxes of notes" in his garage attic(?!).

Examples of the weird little details that change, besides numbers of pages: Brian found a key to the safety deposit boxes. Or they had to have someone come in and drill the boxes open because they didn't have a key. Blah blah blah.

At this point, there seems to be little reason to believe anything they say. And forgive me if I am too skeptical, but pix of two floppy disks on a website does not constitute "evidence". ::)

[Eliyyahu]

I am much more inclined to believe that Brian found thousands of pages worth of notes from Frank telling him how worthless and disowned he is than to believe he and KJA found a single page worth of support for the nonsense they have written.

[Wolf]

Haha, Eliyyahu, you've just given me this amazing image of Brian Herbert cracking open the box to find a thousand-page manuscript that begins:

"Dear Brian, You hated, unintended consequence of my humid youth..."

[Dante]

That was the funniest thing I've read all day.

[arnoldo]

In House Harkonnen, the Baron names a town on Geidi Prime after his father Dmitri ( a rather Russian sounding name).  Also the topology of Geidi Prime  also suggest a Russian origin for House Harkonnen (the planet is mostly covered with Tundra).  The Planet Lankiveil itself also evokes imagery of a Siberian wasteland covered with ice.

[SandChigger]

In House Harkonnen...

Exactly. So unless you can prove that any of that comes from Frank Herbert's notes and isn't just the result of the "Two Braintrusts" (=The Hacks Twain) also having come to the same "D'uh! The Harkonnens must represent the Russians!" conclusion, it is completely irrelevant.

(And it's GIEDI Prime. How long have you been doing this, again?)

[MrFlibble]

That was the funniest thing I've read all day.

True ;D

[arnoldo]

House Harkonnen also explores the relationship between House Rabban and House Harkonnen.  After Abulurd Rabban lost control of Arrakis, his son, "Beast" Rabban took over.  For those interested in the etymology of words  dune.wikia.com states, "Rabban ربان is contemporary Arabic for a ship's pilot. "

[SandChigger]

House Rabban? Never heard of them outside of the McDune crap. (Btw, it's more common to use italics for book titles.)

And that etymology entry is lifted verbatim from here:

http://baheyeldin.com/literature/arabic-and-islamic-themes-in-frank-herberts-dune.html

Poor Khalid! Everyone steals his work but no one gives him credit. Even the @DuneNovels account on Twitter (run by Byron or Kim?) was doing it. Of course, the Herbert/Merritts are no longer exactly known for originality, now are they? ;)

[Eliyyahu]

Rabban in Hebrew comes from the same root that rabbi comes from, meaning great, much, numerous, important.

Paul claims to have studied under Rabban Gamli

[SandChigger]

As it says in Appendix IV: The Almanak en-Ashraf (Selected Excerpts of the Noble Houses) in Dune, in the entry for COUNT GLOSSU RABBAN, Rabban was a distaff (matriarchal line) [sur]name borne by both Beast Rabban and Feyd-Rautha before they were adopted into the household of their uncle, the Baron Harkonnen.

There's no indication that there was ever a "House Rabban". Must be in those secret notes they're always referring to. ::)

[Eliyyahu]

Who are you to doubt the KJAV?

[SandChigger]

Someone with a working brain? (Instead of a no-count brian.) ;)

[Caid Ivik]

House Harkonnen also explores the relationship between House Rabban and House Harkonnen.  After Abulurd Rabban lost control of Arrakis, his son, "Beast" Rabban took over.  For those interested in the etymology of words  dune.wikia.com states, "Rabban ربان is contemporary Arabic for a ship's pilot. "

It would seem plausible to use a "ship captain" for a kind of squire rank, vassal to the baron, or if "Rabban" was a shortened (suffix -na in arabic means "our") form of something like "our master", like here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabb - hence a title, rather than a name. It has to be in those notes  :)

[SandChigger]

Except that Herbert said that in Dune it's a name. ;)

Anyway, FWIW, Wehr gives a different voweling for "ship captain": rubb