Jingo, by Terry Pratchett

[nemafakei]

Ok, is it just me, or are there too many strange similarities here to be normal?

- The whole desert thing is totally forgivable, but...

- Jabbar

- Carrot gets a few passages that sound just like Dune- about Paul Muad'dib (eg riding a camel - 'he shall know your ways as if born to them'), plus he still has a commander, as Paul defers to Stilgar sometimes.

- 'Beti' and some BG refenences

- The stuff about the disorganiser and the stuff about Paul's decisions ad his prescience about them

- The D'regs and the Fremen

etc....

[Usul]

Finally a fellow Discworld fan! I never noticed that when I read it but yes I see your point. But the D'regs seem different to the Fremen to me, all that about the eyeballs. I supose you could say Vimes losing the disorganiser was like Paul losing his prescience in Messiah. What BG references were there, those by Vetinari?

[Mordecai]

As I have said before Nema, the reason they appear similar is that they both have similar origins (the bedouin) and a lot of it is circumstantial - Jabbar is just two syllables, and also the context is totally dissimilar. The disorganiser is a recurrent theme in the recent watch books, and it otherwise has no shared properties with Paul's prescience. Beti is also a two syllable name, and more to the point, it is Arabic - another common source. Paul is seen as a Messiah even by Liet, but Vimes is kept as a prisoner by Ahmed whom the D'regs fear far more than Vimes.