Dune Encyclopedia

[Gobalopper]

This was posted in the alt.fan.dune newsgroup this weekend by Dr. Willis McNelly author of the Dune Encyclopedia, take a look:

FYI, the Dune Encyclopedia was not written by "Dune fans." Rather it was the considered extrapolations of a group of scholars in the academic community whom I personally selected. FH gave me virtual carte blanche to do as I pleased with the book, and told the publisher that I was the only academician whom he would approve for assembling the DE. It took about three years to put together, from the time the original idea came to me and the time of publication. While not all contributions are of equal value, and while some are purposely off beat or dryly humorous {see the essay on Cheops which tells you everything about the history of the game but nothing about how it is played}, remember that the DE purports to be written by scholars who have mined the Rakis Hoard. And the Hoard was "saved" by the GED and thus reflects his quirks, foibles, prejudices, preferences, and so on. Thus, inevitably, the DE is in a sense "skewed" by that fact.

Also FYI, by some cosmic coincidence, I was writing to Berkley/Putnam suggesting that I do a DE as a logical continuation or commentary on the first novels at EXACTLY the same day that a letter from Peter Israel, president of Putnam, was received asking if I would be interested.

Moreover, remember too that the Herbert estate holds the copyrights to all of the material in the DC, and I doubt very much if it would approve of anyone, this writer included, of doing anything with the material that might impinge on their rights.

Interesting note in the second paragraph, could there be a second Dune Encyclopedia?