Just how bad are the Dune prequel/sequels?

[jollyreaper]

I know the two hacks involved are awful and the synopses I've read are like A root canal without anesthesia. But how bad is the execution? How far short of the mark do the books truly fall?

[Thanas]

Very short. The difference is akin to comparing Tolstoi to Eric Flint. The characters are bland, their motivation does not make any sense at all and the series violates continuity and internal story logic in every possible way.

[Themightytom]

Yeah Kevin J Andersen is kind of milking the shit out of the franchise. I read the Redwall series by brian Jacques growing up.. he's done dozens by now, but after the first three they just became massively formulaic. The same thing is going on with the prequel/sequels. Frank Herbert's editions were amazing for world building, for philosophy, for novel characters. The final "chapter", hunters of Dune, and Sandworms of Dune, is tolerable because it ties things up, but they CLEARLY used cameo's to link up their stupid prequel characters to the FH's work, which dragged the books out twice as far and seriously devalued Leto II and Paul Atreides as characters.


Most of the other shit you an easily live without spending time or money on. Butlerian Jihad is alright I suppose.

God Emperor of Dune is my favorite, Chapter House Dune following up, the first for it's amazing treatment of prescience, and the second for it's introduction of the SpeedForce.

[Guardsman Bass]

Dune: House Atreides is alright. It's not a great book, and it falls short of any of the Dune novels written by Frank Herbert, but it's an okay book. To its credit, this book kept me interested in Dune when I was younger, and had failed to successfully read through Dune itself (It's very easy to read for young adult readers).

The rest of that trilogy gets worse with each book, and the Butlerian Jihad books that I've read are just terrible. They take the interesting idea of the Jihad - a massive religious uprising against machines and "machine culture" that sets humanity back horribly, causes irreparable damage to historical records, and leads to great bloodshed - into a lame copycat of the Terminator storyline, with a war against sentient robots and a Skynet-like super-intelligent AI.

I haven't read the "Dune 7" books, but others have.

[jollyreaper]

Very short. The difference is akin to comparing Tolstoi to Eric Flint. The characters are bland, their motivation does not make any sense at all and the series violates continuity and internal story logic in every possible way.

Ow. Reading that physically hurt. Pretty much what I surmised from reading the write-ups but now I'm having Star Wars prequel flashbacks.

I tried finding some proof that JKA and Herbert Jr. lied about finding daddy's Dune notes but only found unsubstantiated speculation. I'm inclined to believe that they either made it up or vastly overstated what those notes were.

I understand that the Butlerian Jihad was part of the whole original canon but have trouble accepting the whole Terminator/Matrix vibe with moustache-twirling machines. The interpretation that made the most sense is the "thinking machines" were incredibly powerful expert systems, akin to genies in that they would do the will of their masters while having no will of their own. Powerful tools of oppression and dehumanization and giving their masters incredible leverage but having no will of their own. Because if they did there's just no freakin' way humans could survive, end of story.

The whole idea that the Honored Matres were out there during the Scattering and got their asses kicked by resurgent machines feels really off. If Skynet is back then humanity is toast. In fact, humanity never should have won the first time.

[jollyreaper]

The rest of that trilogy gets worse with each book, and the Butlerian Jihad books that I've read are just terrible. They take the interesting idea of the Jihad - a massive religious uprising against machines and "machine culture" that sets humanity back horribly, causes irreparable damage to historical records, and leads to great bloodshed - into a lame copycat of the Terminator storyline, with a war against sentient robots and a Skynet-like super-intelligent AI.

Yeah, that's the exact impression I had. Gotta dig up the Dune Encyclopedia and read up on it again. The contents there were supposed to be fanon that Herbert blessed and was planning to use as source material.

I read the Road to Dune and the adaptation of Herbert's original draft of Dune into a full novel. God, was it pedestrian. It's amazing how you can give the same outline to a good author and a bad author and get such different results. I mean yes, it only stands to reason and is to be expected but then you see the results and are surprised at just how good the good is and how bad the bad is.

[jollyreaper]

Oh fucking christ I'm reading that Dune 7 thread. It's like driving railroad spikes up my nose but I'm going to finish. I need to see how truly awful they are. TEKI-LILI – TEKI-LILI – TEKI-LILI !

[Nephtys]

Read the old Dune 'Sequel' thread, it's.. pretty bad.

I listened to them all on audiobook while I was working two years ago. They're all bloody terrible, and get worse and worse.

The only two that were actually kinda entertaining were House Atreides, and House Corrino. Those were just your kind of pretty straightforward political space adventure. Everything else is rubbish, especially Dune 7 and the Butlerian Jihad series.

[jollyreaper]

KJA must be the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect -- he's too stupid to realize he has no business going anywhere near the series.

The thing I have to remind myself: "You think his ideas are so shit? You know the difference between him and all the haters? He's published. he pinched off that rancid loaf and got it on paper while you guys have nothing to show for it." Trying to work up enough rage to finish something. Let's see...work up some more rage..."The Tolkien estate has commissioned KJA and LucasFilm to produce a Lord of the Rings Expanded Universe, a multimedia project consisting of comics, books, video games and new movies."

[evilsoup]

"The Tolkien estate has commissioned KJA and LucasFilm to produce a Lord of the Rings Expanded Universe, a multimedia project consisting of comics, books, video games and new movies."

OK I'm pretty sure you are joking, but please reassure me. Because that would be a terrible idea, even with a good writer. You are joking, right?

[jollyreaper]

I'm joking now but I'm dreading the day the trailer comes out. All the time it was... you finally really did it. YOU MANIACS! YOU'RE MAKING A SEQUEL! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

[Irbis]

The thing I have to remind myself: "You think his ideas are so shit? You know the difference between him and all the haters? He's published. he pinched off that rancid loaf and got it on paper while you guys have nothing to show for it." Trying to work up enough rage to finish something. Let's see...work up some more rage..."The Tolkien estate has commissioned KJA and LucasFilm to produce a Lord of the Rings Expanded Universe, a multimedia project consisting of comics, books, video games and new movies."

...



...

I'm going to go curl somewhere and die weeping quietly.

[Crazedwraith]

"The Tolkien estate has commissioned KJA and LucasFilm to produce a Lord of the Rings Expanded Universe, a multimedia project consisting of comics, books, video games and new movies."

OK I'm pretty sure you are joking, but please reassure me. Because that would be a terrible idea, even with a good writer. You are joking, right?

Googling that expression has exactly one result. This thread.

[jollyreaper]

Like I said, joking but would not be surprised...

[PainRack]

KJA..... relies heavily on hooks to sell his novels. Its incredibly bad.

For example, Atreides reliance on air and seapower now manifested itself in a fleet of merchant ships posing as warships and carriers?

We're not talking about the internal canonicity of Atreides being a poor House anymore, its just.... Ok, I know they have air and sea power... how do I protray this! I know, I scare off the invaders with a fake camouflagued fleet!

The funny thing is, I SWORE that plot hook was used recently in another novel just before Atreides came out.

And it just gets worse from there. Hell, one can see it in ALL of his other series books. The X-files?Nuclear ghosts! That's it. Nuclear ghosts! And I have everything Mulder/Scully do be marginally linked to activities on nukes in the past! Heh. At least it fitted into the X-files episodic element.

[jollyreaper]

The sad thing is that artistic merits are not market concerns. Sometimes being good is rewarded. Other times you can take a dump in a bucket and call it art. "What are you saying, I'm terrible? Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how much money I'm making."

[Stark]

It's almost like licenced fiction sells on branding to fanboys who will read literally anything that uses the trademarks. If people weren't so desperate for new material there might be quality standards in licenced scifi. :v

[jollyreaper]

Who to blame, who to blame? Is it the fans for buying any old crap with a licensed product or the publishers who only produce crap? The publishers do have an ability to steer the market.

I stopped buying Star Wars EU material as a teen. Love the original movies but nothing I've read about since has made me the slightest bit interested in going back. Same with Trek. Gave up on DS9 around the time Babylon 5 came and I never looked back. Voyager, Enterprise, more stinkers. My griping about this sort of thing is pretty much about how they're sucking the oxygen out of the room for anything new.

I wonder how many people are desolutely buying the crap hoping it will get better and how many think complaints are just the bleating of nerds and the material is fantastic. I wonder how many people read the original Dune novels and found the prequels to be worthy. I wonder how many started on the prequels and found the originals dull and uninteresting.

[khursed]

I read all of them, and the original are definitely top notch, whereas the pre-quels and sequels are somewhat bland.

I liked it, but then again, I'm easy going when it comes to reading.

I've read god-emperor at least 15 times and the original dune novels at least a dozen times, but the pre-quel and sequel, only twice.

The best book they made for me, are the one between the gap, the paul of dune, and the other one i can't remember now were the best of their work as far as I am concerned.

[Guardsman Bass]

It's almost like licenced fiction sells on branding to fanboys who will read literally anything that uses the trademarks. If people weren't so desperate for new material there might be quality standards in licenced scifi. :v

The question is whether the fanboys are the ones actually buying this stuff, as opposed to the people who

1. Thought the cover and inner sleeve plot summary were cool and picked it up at the bookstore, or
2. Don't know Dune except in the vaguest sense of having heard of it.

[jollyreaper]

Well, they keep selling and I can't imagine there being that many noob buyers getting one, being dissatisfied and buying another. Makes more sense when talking things like hit movies doing game licenses because they'll sell even if the game is terrible.

[Irbis]

I stopped buying Star Wars EU material as a teen. Love the original movies but nothing I've read about since has made me the slightest bit interested in going back. Same with Trek. Gave up on DS9 around the time Babylon 5 came and I never looked back. Voyager, Enterprise, more stinkers. My griping about this sort of thing is pretty much about how they're sucking the oxygen out of the room for anything new.

Eh, I have to disagree here, both WH40K and SW have tons of crappy EU material, but there are also authors who bring a lot of fresh, original good stuff to the table. Though, yeah, SW EU reached so crappy level at one point I sort of gave up on it.

[jollyreaper]

Warhammer is more of a collaborative effort to begin with, a shared world. The whole thing is EU by definition so the good material is rising up fr a lower standard. The Star Wars stuff is all descending from a higher standard. Might just be a matter of perspective but warhammer can surprise by being good but star wars only disappoints by being worse than I expected.

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

Get the Dune Encyclopedia off of a file sharing program and you have all the prequel you need.

[Nephtys]

KJA..... relies heavily on hooks to sell his novels. Its incredibly bad.

For example, Atreides reliance on air and seapower now manifested itself in a fleet of merchant ships posing as warships and carriers?

We're not talking about the internal canonicity of Atreides being a poor House anymore, its just.... Ok, I know they have air and sea power... how do I protray this! I know, I scare off the invaders with a fake camouflagued fleet!

The funny thing is, I SWORE that plot hook was used recently in another novel just before Atreides came out.

And it just gets worse from there. Hell, one can see it in ALL of his other series books. The X-files?Nuclear ghosts! That's it. Nuclear ghosts! And I have everything Mulder/Scully do be marginally linked to activities on nukes in the past! Heh. At least it fitted into the X-files episodic element.

I think part of it, is that KJA just doesn't seem to understand what he's writing.

'Hmm. Ix is an industrial powerhouse. I know, it'll all be all of ONE CITY that can be invaded by footmen with swords! Brilliant!'.

I thought part of the background in the original Dune was that Leto acknowledged that he was an alright ruler with a fair amount of compassion, but mostly it was the work of his propagandists to make him seem like a saint? Welp. Guess he always was a saint and hero.

Also, the Bene Gesserit mastered psychology and prana-bindu body control. Okay. Why the fuck are they able to cloak themselves and project amnesia beams, and crash planes from miles away?