I intended to have this counterpart to the previous thread posted tomorrow, but I figured why not now.
I am a lifelong fan of the Dune series, from the Lynch 1980s movie to the book (that I read years later and loved) to the unfinished works in the Path of Dune collection. Some of the post-Frank Herbert stuff isn't so good to me, but the setting and story and worldbuilding as a whole were always an inspiration for me. It lead me to believe that science fiction didn't have to always be stuffy, that it could be loaded with powerful pathos moments and compelling complex characters.
I admired Isaac Asimov and his overall body of work, but characters in his stories were almost like walking talking plot devices leading to what he really wanted to talk about, by contrast.
It went over a lot of people's heads, but the message that messiah figures and chosen ones and Great Man Theory in general was a dangerous and even ruinous concept was quite a novel message to weave through Dune's themes, especially in its Frank Herbert-written sequels.
Some of Dune aged very poorly, especially stuff like the gender essentialist woo about what women could do versus what men could do in the Bene Gessarit versus the Mentats, respectively. It also has a sort of "the gays are evil" old people bias, as presented with Baron Harkonnen. Even so, I'm a full believer in the idea that it's possible to accept criticism of things we enjoy without going full treat defender against such criticisms.
I'm a tremendous fan of the works of Terry Pratchett, and if I had to choose one series of his it would be the one he spent half his life writing, Discworld.
I was first recommended Discworld by my primary school librarian, I was a smart, clinically depressed child with a chronic pain condition. Terry made me laugh and laugh and laugh into the wee hours of the night.
His books have been a source of joy and solace for me ever since.
I cried the day he passed from this world.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
I love discworld too. I also cried when he died, to go from Alzheimers with such a incredible mind is some greek tragedy level stuff.
though his one on china aged poorly and reeks of orientalismIs that "Interesting Times"? Yeah, that one did have lots of weird shit overall. Probably my least favorite too. Didn't seem to have higher concepts throughout either. Most of them have some hilarious but good philosophical questions behind it, and that one just lacked it? I guess the first few also lacked it, but they were more fun still
I really like ASOIAF but i haven't really engaged with it in a few years. I'll return to the fandom when the new series drops.
Lower Decks was very enjoyable to me especially after it shed its Rick and Morty roots.
The Orville was similarly very enjoyable, especially after it shed its Family Guy roots.
Especially Game of thrones, Harry Potter, capeshit, anything grimdark, all Sitcoms (especially Friends and Seinfeld), and Star Wars.
I would if I had the time, but I'd probably get lost in the weeds with apocrypha like the Jihad-era brain-vatted cyborg hunts of unaugmented humans and how the techbros of today would totally do the same thing, up to and including bowing to machines as their gods, and how the early-age Atreides on Caladan had the right idea about what to do with those bazinga cyberbrains. :sicko-crowd: :porky-scared:
This smacks of Brian's heresy :no-oil:
spoiler
Mostly joking, but there's an interesting conversation to be had about the differences between how Frank and Brian interpret the Thinking Machines and Butlerian Jihad. I think it betrays a quite shallow understanding (on the part of Herbert the Younger) of the abstract concepts that drove the "psychedelic" feel of the original Dune works.
I, personally, am a subscriber to the Frank-puritan read of there were not necessarilly robots, there were not necessarilly cyborgs, but there were people who decided to allow computers to do thinking for them leading to a civlization of people voluntarily enslaved by their dependence on this technology and the inhuman machine-logic (The Algorithm (TM))that runs it.
Both are interesting tales with a bit of prescient social commentary to them; I just find the inferred Frank take to be more compelling. I also don't think it helps that with Kevin J. Anderson in the mix all of the ummmmm supplemental material just read like Star Wars EU novels to me.
E) but I'm uhhh not trying to litigate anything here. I wasn't joking about the
minutesdays part.I, personally, am a subscriber to the Frank-puritan read of there were not necessarilly robots, there were not necessarilly cyborgs, but there were people who decided to allow computers to do thinking for them leading to a civlization of people voluntarily enslaved by their dependence on this technology and the inhuman machine-logic (The Algorithm ™)that runs it.
That's a compelling take. You might have convinced me.
The present day has plenty of hard-determinists already, and in the name of ideological purity, most of the ideas I've heard for how to reform society around adherence to determinism were Butlerian-era nightmarish to me.
:yea:
spoiler
I do not hold this percieved misunderstanding against Brian, though, because alot of the things that make this read of the text obvious are relatively new changes to our condition. Like, much of Brian's work is around the turn of the millennia and the internet and digital technology while there and impressive and certainly more highly evolved than in the 90's it is still (I think it's safe to say) before these more insidious systems were developed and widely adopted. We weren't having widespread conversations about how Twitter as a platform incentivizes anti-intellectual social interaction or youtube/facebook algorithms curating the information you recieve for you etc. back then.
It does lead me to ask though, how Frank perceived this so well despite being even further temporally removed from these things; but I think these same lines I drew with the internet and social media can be drawn with capital-curated media substituting the much more explicitly 1 to 1 translation of The Algorithm (tm)
i just saw john carpenter's the thing in theaters, so i'll go with that. one of the greatest movies ever made, just a beautiful film.
HUGE fan of Ted Chiang. Still have never seen the film about his short story (Arrival), but the stories are all so amazing. He wrote one story where a device is invented to allow a limited amount of data to be sent from one branch of the multiverse to the other that was created by starting the device. So people turn it on before making big decisions to have a way to text/call themselves in another branch to see how the important choice affected their lives. The exploration of that concept ended up making me cry despite it not being a sad/soppy story. Just astonishingly good.
He also wrote one about a brain implant that causes people to be unable to experience "beauty" of people that has some odd biological essentialism behind it, but it seemed more like just sci-fi explanation than relevant for the story itself. A bit lib in its analysis, but still just a great exploration
Hell yeah, Dune! Overall pretty much agree with your opinion, though I did read the books well before I saw the Lynch film (which I did find enjoyable, even if it was a fuck). Will also add I didn't care for the increasing horny that Frank put more and more of into the later books, you nasty old man. But I do still like the later books, even if they get super weird. I even kind of liked the Butlerian Jihad series by his son, even if it seems most the fandom hates all the things Brian has wrote.
Love Lord of the Rings as well; sent me on a love of linguistics and constructed languages that I still have. And I think most of the 'problematic' elements that people pick out of Tolkien are more a result of people mindlessly copying his world. Orcs = innately evil is I think okay for the world he set up, even if it is a bit lazy, considering they're a constructed minion race constantly under direct control of evil gods. It really only becomes directly a racist trope in DnD like world, where the orcs are inarguably people, who are only rarely under direct subjugation, and also are often 'native savage' coded. (and also Gary Gygax was absolutely racist, with his fukkin "nits make lice" lawful good paladin should kill orc babies bullshit).
There is legitimate criticisms for not having more good female characters, and for being hella horny for monarchy. There some 'product of his times' excuses you can make about the 'female characters' thing, and there are some badass women in the books, especially the Silmarillion, but would be cool if more. Funnily enough, with all the chud whinging, you can't directly criticize him for having all white people heroes, since he just very rarely even states their skin color. But of the three houses of man, the house of Hador is stated in an appendix to all be fair skin, and most blond or brown haired, while the house of Beor is described as: "...and many were less fair in skin, some indeed being swarthy.", and the last house, Haladin, described as like the house of Beor, but shorter. So a full 2/3 of mankind is just vaguely described as 'diverse skin colors'. Of the elves, nothing is directly stated, other than that they 'could not easily be distinguished from the Beor' which would imply that there are some dark skinned elves.
Will also add I didn’t care for the increasing horny that Frank put more and more of into the later books, you nasty old man.
I'm glad you mentioned that first. I had a bad feeling that if I did, some Hexbear people that have spent weeks, even months, just sort of tracking my posts and regurgitate their old grudges would jump on me saying anything about sexy sex treats. Most of their ire for me stems from :awooga: criticism, which I guess shouldn't come as a surprise. Yeah, even if I liked Frank Herbert's work to the point of it being a definitive early experience in literature that inspired me for a lifetime, the later stuff approaches dirty old man territory and detracts from his older work.
Orcs = innately evil is I think okay for the world he set up, even if it is a bit lazy, considering they’re a constructed minion race constantly under direct control of evil gods.
The Thermian Argument ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk ) can be invoked here, where just because something is said to be divinely ordained or even (super)naturally normal in the canon doesn't mean that it's ideologically a good thing. I really like Tolkien's work and also the first three Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies and I especially like the Rankin Bass animated ones from the 1970s (Studio Ghibli was once called TopCraft and got their start there!), but I believe but could be wrong that Tolkien himself at least briefly explored the idea that orcs had song and culture and weren't fundamentally evil as much as lead by evil. For fun, I'll link to this too. https://existentialcomics.com/comic/175
(and also Gary Gygax was absolutely racist, with his fukkin “nits make lice” lawful good paladin should kill orc babies bullshit).
I speak as a D&D player and dungeon master with decades of experience when I say fuck Gary Gygax categorically. In my opinion Monte Cook established the spiritual roots for how D&D is best played, not "lol you see an elf in front of you. Fight/Talk(Charisma roll to see if he lets you pass)/Run?" :d20-ah-fuck:
Of the elves, nothing is directly stated
I personally would get a kick out of a Tolkien treatment where the majority of the elves were black, maybe even with African aesthetics in their costumes. It wouldn't really contradict the canon and the chud meltdown would be legendary. :d20-fuck-ya: :yes-hahaha-yes-l:
Generally agree. The horny in the later books striked me as absurd enough it mostly just elicited and eyeroll and a chuckle, but I also very rarely like 'on screen' sex/romance in fiction, so I wouldn't be the target audience even if it wasn't weird.
And yeah, fuck Gary Gygax. But, I didn't mean to completely handwave away the orc problem in LOTR, its more that I think that its less of a problem in LOTR than it is in a lot of later fantasy, where orcs are just tribespeople for you to slaughter. Tolkien had some issues, especially the whole "dying mad about vatican 2", but he feel like he was generally less racist and sexist than a lot of his contemporaries. Which, isn't an excuse, since he did still misstep with their depiction, but considering how contradictory and conflicted his different notes are about orcs and the possible origin and makeup, reads to me as someone who knew he wrote himself into a corner, and couldn't really find a good solution to make it right, and chose to just ignore the problem. Which, isn't great, but could be worse I guess.
Speaking of Chud meltdown, like how all the gods were all kind of genderfluid, in that they explicitly wore myriad forms before settling on their favored shapes?
Speaking of Chud meltdown, like how all the gods were all kind of genderfluid, in that they explicitly wore myriad forms before settling on their favored shapes?
I don't think the chuds have melted down about that one because they don't know about it in the first place. :shrug-outta-hecks:
I remember my brother telling a younger me that most dune readers end up getting to God Emperor and dropping it there (if not at dune messiah, because they didn't understand the anti messiah figure bit), only to read it and be confused because I thought it was clearly the best one.
I was glad to note on many Dune shit posting spots that Dune fans seem to love it
James bond, especially the newer stuff with Daniel Craig, absolutely blew me away. Casino Royale is such a good movie. I'm a big fan now.
Arnold Swarzenegger movies - huge fan. The terminator 1 is a legitimately really really good movie. At worst, they're still very entertaining movies and Arnold just has so much charisma I always like watching him act.
The Terminator's voice is practically made for prank call sound boards. :cyber-lenin:
