Dune
I have been reading science fiction for most of my life, but was busy reading
computer programming books for several years, so didn't read many novels during
the 90s. Reading
The Spike by Damien Broderick renewed my interest in science fiction novels.
Many of the ideas he presented about the effects of rapid technology change came
from science fiction novels.
Back in the 80s, I had started reading the Dune novels by Frank Herbert. I had
purchased all the original novels, but only got around to reading Dune, Dune Messiah,
and half of Children of Dune.
The name I picked for my computer is Arrakis. One day when I was receiving about
100 virus a day in my email, I printed out the report from my anti-virus program
and took it to work. At coffee break I showed a couple of people.
Manuella
noticed that my computer's name was Arrakis and asked me about the Dune novels.
I had never been much interested in the new Dune novels written by Brian Herbert
& Kevin J Anderson, because I had assumed that the only reason for their existence
was to make money off his father's reputation. Manuella convinced me that they were
worth reading. She was kind enough to lend me The Butlerian Jihad and the three
Prelude To Dune novels. I read these four novels, and enjoyed them very much. Brian
& Kevin have gone over the original novels as well as Frank's notes in great detail
& have done an excellent job of filling in the background story leading up to the
original novels.
After finishing those first four novels, the others in the Legends of Dune trilogy
still hadn't appeared in paperback. Instead of waiting for these books to become
available I started to read the classic Dune novels, starting from the beginning,
since 20 years had passed since my first read.
The Dune books are a must read for anyone that wants to call themselves an avid
fan of science fiction. Not only because these books help define what science fiction
is, but also because they are a great read.
From the perspective of ideas about our technological future, the Dune novels
are not very good. The original Dune novel was written in the sixties, so Frank
Herbert can't be blamed for not making the technology of the distant future consistent
with what has actually taken place over the last 30 years. Maybe Brian & Kevin could
have done a better job at explaining the reasons behind the lack of technology in
the Dune novels. They came up with an explanation which is consistent with the original
novels, but not very consistent with the current state of computers, nanotech, &
biotech.
A good description of how the content of science fiction has changed in recent
years vs. the early years can be found in the Afterword to the book
Foundation's Fear by Gregory Benford. Here he is talking about how he got involved
in writing this novel which is based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels. Here is
a quote from the Afterword:
From Verne and Wells to somewhere near 1970, science fiction was mostly about
the wonders of movement, of transportation.
But in the past few decades we have focused more on the wonders of information,
of transformations at least partly internal, not external. The Internet, virtual
reality, computer simulations -- all these loom large in our visions of our futures.
If you have read The Spike or other recent books about
The Singularity , you will understand why any speculation about what it will
be like beyond the singularity is likely to be completely wrong. It is anyone's
guess when exactly the singularity will occur, but most experts in the field have
it arriving sometime before 2050.
My main interest has been in novels which describe possible events leading up
to the singularity, things to watch out for when I watch the nightly news. The Dune
novels, contribute little to this. One thing that kept popping into my mind as I
was reading these novels was the ideas of
complex
adaptive systems , on an Empire wide scale as well as the environment on Arrakis.
It is hard to imagine how Frank Herbert was thinking about complex adaptive systems
when writing in the 60s & 70s, since this field burst onto the scene during the
80s & 90s.
Here is a list of the Dune novels in the order they should be read:
Legends of Dune
Prelude to Dune
Classic Dune
Biography
wburris at telusplanet dot net |