(1) FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES: NO MORE LEO AWARDS. The day after we reported the 2024 shortlist, Furry Book Review pulled the plug on the Leo Awards. Here’s why:
They’ll be missed – there wasn’t a cuter award in the field!
(2) RECOGNITION IN TEXAS. Congratulations to Michael Bracken on being inducted to the Texas Institute of Letters. The honor society was established in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature and recognize distinctive literary achievement. Bracken, who long ago published the fanzine Knights of the Paper Spaceship, has since forged a distinguished career as a crime fiction author. His stories have been finalists for the Anthony, Edgar, Derringer and Shamus Awards.
(3) KEEPING UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA. In this highly amusing video Andrea Stewart says, “I swear I see the same six discussions going around online, in perpetuity.”
(4) ONE FAN’S EFFORT TO PROMOTE WORKS ABOUT CHINESE SF. Ersatz Culture’s list – “My personal recommendations of Chinese SF-related works published in 2023” – gives fans something to start with. It begins with these notes and caveats:
- Any of these recommendations that tagged with * is either someone I’ve corresponded or worked with, or a project which I’ve worked on, or contributed to, and so I can’t claim that those are unbiased recommendations.
- Links are generally to Chinese language pages/sites unless otherwise stated. An exception are Twitter links, which will generally be comprised of English language posts.
- My Chinese language skills are way too poor to be able to read the majority of real-world content without either a lot of effort or (far more likely) resorting to machine translation. As such, any writing that is particularly clever in a literary way is likely to pass completely over my head; I’m evaluating stuff on a very basic level. (This is why the writing I cover here is more on the news/factual side than criticism/reviews.)
- Further to the previous point, my dependence on machine translation means that my understanding of materials that I only possess in a physical form – i.e. all the non-fiction works I list – is at a very shallow and surface level; not much better than “I liked looking at all the pretty pictures”, to be brutally frank. As such, feel perfectly free to discount any of my observations on those grounds alone.
- This document only covers work published in 2023.
(5) VIOLENCE AND CHANGE. The Beeb remembers “The ‘banned’ Star Trek episode that promised a united Ireland”. There’s a reason viewers in Ireland might not.
When sci-fi writer Melinda M Snodgrass sat down to write Star Trek episode The High Ground, she had little idea of the unexpected ripples of controversy it would still be making more than three decades later.
“We became aware of it later… and there isn’t much you can do about it,” she says, speaking to the BBC from her home in New Mexico. “Writing for television is like laying track for a train that’s about 300 feet behind you. You really don’t have time to stop.”
While the series has legions of followers steeped in its lore, that one particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation has lived long and prospered in infamy.
It comes down to a scene in which the android character Data, played by actor Brent Spiner, talks about the “Irish unification of 2024” as an example of violence successfully achieving a political aim.
Originally shown in the US in 1990, there was so much concern over the exchange that the episode was not broadcast on the BBC or Irish public broadcaster RTÉ…
(6) NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY BACKERKIT CROWDFUNDER FOR ISSUES 3&4. New Edge Sword & Sorcery is crowdfunding its next two issues via “New Edge Sword & Sorcery 2024” at BackerKit. They’ve achieved their basic goal, now Editor Oliver Brackenbury says, “All our stretch goals from now on are pay raises for our contributors!” The campaign ends March 16.
Backing this campaign is a way to be a part of genre history: JIREL OF JOIRY will be returning with her first new story in 85 years! Jirel was the first Sword & Sorcery heroine, created by legendary Weird Tales regular, C.L. Moore. Like Alice in Wonderland with a big f***ing sword, Jirel had compelling adventures in bizarre dream-logic realms, balancing a rich emotional life with terrifying struggles against dark forces! Predating Red Sonja, she & Moore were a direct influence on Robert E. Howard’s writing, as well as so many who came after.
Alas, Moore only wrote a handful of Jirel tales – which are still collected, published, and read to this day. So it’s a good thing that when backers of the campaign helped it hit 100% funding in just under three days, they helped make sure a new story will be published! Authorized by the estate of C.L. Moore, “Jirel and the Mirror of Truth” has been written by the magnificent MOLLY TANZER (editor of Swords v. Cthulhu, author of Creatures of Charm and Hunger, and so much more).
Seventeen other authors are spread across the two new issues this campaign is funding, including names like Harry Turtledove, Premee Mohamed, and Thomas Ha. Even Michael Moorcock returns with an obscure Elric reprint not included in the recent Saga collection!
(7) APPLY FOR DIANA JONES AWARD EMERGING DESIGNER PROGRAM. Submissions are open for the Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program through April 2. This program focuses on amplifying the voices of up-and-coming tabletop/hobby game designers with a focus on creators from marginalized communities. The complete guidelines are here. Submit using the form at the link.
The Emerging Designer Program provides both access and support to those designers that have historically been excluded from the larger industry conversations. While we recognize this program is only a first step in that process, our organization is committed to pushing forward, learning from mistakes, and improving the industry we love.
Designers who are selected as finalists receive a free badge and hotel room at Gen Con, up to $2,000 travel reimbursement for both domestic and international travel, a $75 per day food stipend, a $2,000 honorarium for presenting their work, and a prize package of game design resources. They’re also showcased as a Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer at Gen Con.
Eligible designers should have released their first professional or commercial publication (including free, self-published, PWYW, and PDF releases) no more than three years before the selection year. A designer selected for 2024’s Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program should not have first published before 2021, for example. We interpret “hobby game designer” broadly, to include both narrative and game mechanics design.
(8) CREATORS VISITING THE CLASSROOM. “Are author visits worth it?” Totally, says Colby Sharp.
…On Friday, author/illustrator Philip Stead visited our school. He did three presentations, so that each one of our students and teachers could hang out with him.
His presentations were captivating. I was on the edge of my seat for 65 minutes.
Phil showed them his books, his process, his studio. He answered questions. He read them one of his books.
All the things we have come to expect from an author visit….
(9) THUFIR, WE HARDLY KNEW YE. “Dune 2 director says cutting one character from the sequel was the ‘most painful choice’” at GamesRadar+.
Like all page-to-screen adaptations, Dune: Part Two makes a few changes from the novel it’s based on. For director Denis Villeneuve, though, one change in particular was the most difficult to enact: the omission of Thufir Hawat.
“One of the most painful choices for me on this one was Thufir Hawat,” Villeneuve told Entertainment Weekly. “He’s a character I absolutely love, but I decided right at the beginning that I was making a Bene Gesserit adaptation. That meant that Mentats are not as present as they should be, but it’s the nature of the adaptation.”Thufir Hawat is a Mentat, AKA a human whose mind has been trained to have the same power as a supercomputer. Played by Stephen McKinley Henderson in Dune: Part One, he works for House Atreides and is a mentor for Paul (Timothée Chalamet), but was blackmailed into working for House Harkonnen after they orchestrated the murder of Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) – Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) poisons him and will only administer doses of the antidote if he complies….
(10) OUR EYEWITNESS. Camestros Felapton popped out to the theater and came home to write “Review: Dune Part 2”. He sounds worried about revealing spoilers, so be warned. Now it’s not like you don’t know the story, however, you haven’t seen what they do in the film.
…Dune Part 2 is nearly three hours long and if anything, the script has simplified the plot of the second half of the novel. The net effect is a film that appears to rush by in a stream of compelling images to the extent that it feels like a much shorter film. The space created by the simpler plot and expansive running time is filled with dramatic sequences that relish in the setting and the events of the story. Above all, the film taps into the sense of weirdness and immersion into another imagined culture that makes the book so beloved.
One thing I particularly liked was the way Fremen society was expanded upon. The impression of a planet of millions of hidden peoples with a variety of experiences and attitudes but also with a common culture was deftly done. The sietch communities feel like real places built by a complex society that is doing more than just surviving in the harsh environment and amid brutal oppression….
(11) BUCKET LIST. This reminds me of the crowd the last time I went to Dodgers game. Nobody was paying attention to what was happening on the field. “Dune 2 fans distracted by popcorn bucket after finally going to see the film” at Ladbible.
The glow of a mobile phone, the rustling of sweet wrappers and someone asking if they can squeeze past you to nip to the loo are things that can really distract you from the plot while you’re in the cinema.
But bizarrely, it’s the popcorn buckets which are diverting the attention of film fans flocking to watch Dune: Part Two.
Then again, when you see them, you can understand why.
Rather than fighting to get a ticket in a packed out theatre, audiences are instead scrapping over the limited edition container which the classic movie snack comes in.
Focus has fallen on the unique popcorn buckets which have been released as part of the promo for Dune: Part Two, rather than what’s actually going on in the sequel.
(12) NECESSITY! Tiny Time Machine 3: Mother of Invention, the final book in John Stith’s “Tiny Time Machine” series, was released today by Amazing Selects™, an imprint of Amazing Stories.
In Tiny Time Machine 1, Meg and Josh discovered a time machine built into a cell phone and used it to avert a disastrous future. But along the way, Meg’s father, the inventor, was killed.
In Tiny Time Machine 2: Return of the Father, Meg and Josh brought a sarcastic AI, Valex, from the future to help them enhance the tiny time machine so it can open a portal to the past, and did their best to rescue Dad before his ex-partner could harm him.
Now, Meg and Josh are back in a third installment, Their mission: to venture even farther into the past so they can save Meg’s mother before she dies in the hospital mishap that originally triggered Dad’s efforts to build the tiny time machine. Along the way, they must fix the future again and survive a final confrontation with Dad’s ex partner.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born March 4, 1946 — Patricia Kennealy-Morrison. (Died 2021.) Patricia Kennealy-Morrison as she later called herself was hand-fasted to Jim Morrison in a Celtic ceremony in 1970. It would be by no means a traditional relationship and that’s putting it mildly.
So it shouldn’t surprise you that much of her writing would be Celtic-tinged. The Keltiad, a fantasy series, was set far, far away. I mean really far away, possibly in another galaxy. There are eight novels in the series and one collection of short stories. She intended more works but the publisher dropped it when sales fell off.
So how are they? Well, maybe I’m not the best judge of literary style as I thought the Potter books were badly written and these I think are equally badly written. Think clichéd SF blended ineptly with Celtic fantasy.
Now when she decides to write in a more a traditional fantasy vein she is quite fine, as in her Tales of Arthur trilogy which is The Hawk’s Gray Feather, The Oak Above the Kings and The Hedge of Mist. It’s actually pretty good Arthurian fiction.
Now the last thing I want mention about her is not even genre adjacent. She did two mystery series, the best of which are The Rock & Roll Murders. All but one are set at music events such as Go Ask Malice: Murder at Woodstock and California Screamin’: Murder at Monterey Pop. The era is nicely done by her and the mysteries, well, less evocative than the people and the setting but that’s ok.
The other mystery series, the Rennie Stride Murders, involves and I quote online copy here, “She’s a newspaper reporter whose beat is rock, not a detective, and her best-friend sidekick is a blonde bisexual superstar chick singer.” It’s set in LA during the Sixties and is her deep dive in that music world according to the reviews I came across.
They have titles, and I’m not kidding, like Daydream Bereaver, Scareway to Heaven and Go Ask Malice. No idea how they are, this is the first time I’ve heard of them.
(14) COMICS SECTION.
- Popeye – you’ll need to scroll down to read the March 3 strip, which is what we want to feature.
- Peanuts from 1955 has more about satellites and other dangers.
- Hi and Lois reveals a child’s-eye view of autographed books.
- The Far Side shows who else unexpectedly lives on the Yellow Brick Road.
(15) GAIMAN ADAPTATION. At Colleen Doran’s Funny Business the artist explains “The Secret Language of a Page of Chivalry: The Pre-Raphaelite Connection”. Many images at the link.
Adapting Neil Gaiman’s Chivalry is a decades-long dream fulfilled. The story as text can be enjoyed on multiple levels, and so can the art. You look at the pages and see the pretty pictures, but the pictures also have meta-textual meaning. Knowing this secret language adds to the experience….
…For example, Ford Madox Brown’s Work, a painting which took some 13 years to complete, was first exhibited in 1865 with a catalogue explaining all its symbols and elements. There is nothing in that picture that doesn’t mean something.
I brought some of that visual meta-textual sensibility to Chivalry, (and I’ve written about the symbolism and meanings in the work in other essays.)
I also brought into the work direct Pre-Raphaelite art references….
(16) DUNE WHAT COMES CHRONOLOGICALLY. “’Dune’ Books in Order: How to Read All 26 Novels Chronologically” at Esquire. I can only agree with Cat’s comment: “Twenty six novels? You’ve got to be fucking kidding, aren’t you?”
So you’re fired up about Dune‘s recent big screen adaptations, and while you’re steel reeling from the shock and awe of Dune: Part Two, you’re wanting to dive into the world of Frank Herbert’s beloved science fiction novels. Congratulations! You’ve got an exciting literary journey ahead. And whether you’ve dabbled in Dune lore before or you’re completely new to the wild world of Arrakis, there’s something for everyone in this Titanic-sized series about power, violence, and fate….
(17) WHEN TO QUIT READING. PZ Myers knows there are a lot of books in the series, because he ends his review of Dune 2 at Pharyngula on FreeThoughtBlogs by reposting this infographic. (I don’t know its original source.) [Click for larger image.]
… There’s talk that there may be a third Dune yet to come, which worries me a bit. There are studio executives dreaming of a franchise now, I’m sure of it, but I have to warn them that that is a path destined to lead them into madness and chaos. The sequels are weird, man. Heed Chani and shun the way towards fanaticism and corporate jihad.
Ooh, just saw this summary of the Dune series. I agree with it. I should have stopped with Dune Messiah, years ago.
(18) GET READY FOR BAIRD’S LATEST. Keith Anthony Baird lives in Cumbria, United Kingdom, on the edge of the Lake District National Park. His SIN:THETICA will be released in May; pre-order now at the Amazon.ca: Kindle Store.
The Sino-Nippon war is over. It is 2113 and Japan is crushed under the might of Chinese-Allied Forces. A former Coalition Corps soldier, US Marine Balaam Hendrix is now a feared bounty hunter known as ‘The Reverend’. In the sprawl of NeuTokyo, on this lawless frontier, he must track down the rogue employee of a notorious crime lord. But, there’s a twist. His target has found protection inside a virtual reality construct and Hendrix must go cyber-side to corner his quarry. The glowing neon signs for SIN:THETICA are everywhere, and promise escape from a dystopian reality. But will it prove the means by which this hunter snares his prey, or will it be the trap he simply can’t survive?
Keith Anthony Baird began writing dark fiction in 2016 as a self-published author. After five years of releasing titles via Amazon and Audible he switched his focus to the traditional publishing route. His dark fantasy novella In the Grimdark Strands of the Spinneret was published via Brigids Gate Press (BGP) in 2022. Two further novellas are to be published in 2024 via BGP: SIN:THETICA (May) and a vampire saga in collaboration with fellow Brit author Beverley Lee, A Light of Little Radiance (November).
(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Video Shows ‘Dune’ Fan Effortlessly Riding Homemade Sandworm at Movie Theater” at Complex.
…As seen below, an unidentified individual at an AMC theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma decked themselves out in full-fledged Fremen garb and proceeded to ride a homemade sandworm through the lobby to the presumed delight of fellow Dune-goers.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Lise Andreasen, Andrew (not Werdna), Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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16/17) Yes, I too can only agree with Cat’s comment. (Although when I do read the books, I go with Option 4 from the big chart.)
(13) Quite some time ago, I read the 1st 3 books and I thought the 1st one was exciting and the 2nd pretty good, while the 3rd one had a lot of uninteresting stuff about training.
@Joe H
Pretty much the same for me, though I think only the first two are “Real Dune”. Brian Herbert’s? Looked at one, and was turned off by all the gore.
So I will note that I have read the first four Dune books, love the first two unreservedly and thought the two next were worm excrement.
6) If anyone can write new Jirel of Joiry stories, it’s Molly Tanzen.
13) Just to let you know, Cat, I totally agree that the Potter books are badly written.
17) In high school, I made a thing of reading old Analogs, and I distinctly remember a reviewer (Spider Robinson?) roasted Dune Messiah, saying something like “it took an atomic bomb to do what Larry, Moe, or Curly could do with two fingers.” I still haven’t read Messiah to this day.
(3) I need one of those wheels! And that hotline. In fact, I think romance discourse needs its own wheel.
(6) This looks promising!
(11) My friend and I may have to get that popcorn bucket.
(14) Is the Peanuts link working for anyone else? For me, it goes to Hi and Lois.
(17) Hmm, I get the impression they don’t like the Dune sequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. 😉 Somebody must like those, but from the responses I’ve seen, certainly not Frank Herbert fans.
Note: They certainly didn’t need to use the r-word. (eye roll)
(17) I don’t remember “Dune Messiah” being in Analog. “Dune” was two series, one of five and one of three parts.
(3) Perhaps she should dip into what’s left of usenet…
(6) Damndamndamn. I didn’t know about this… and I have a short story I wrote a few years ago that was an homage to Moore, that’s about Jirel’s great grandniece. One rejection, the editor said it was a classic fantasy short (as though no one read such any more).
Birthdays: jeez, I forgot about the Keltiad. Maybe I should reread it.
(15) sigh Love pre-Raphelite art. It even shows up in one of my two next novels…
17) Obviously, stop after reading Dune. One of the best SF books ever written. Everything afterwards spirals down into deepening crap. I even tried reading a few of his non-Dune books (Dosadi Experiment, Destination Void, The Jesus Incident, etc). I really think he had one great book in him and that’s it. Your mileage may vary (My Opinions Are Usually Not Correct grin).
Troyce says Obviously, stop after reading Dune. One of the best SF books ever written. Everything afterwards spirals down into deepening crap. I even tried reading a few of his non-Dune books (Dosadi Experiment, Destination Void, The Jesus Incident, etc). I really think he had one great book in him and that’s it. Your mileage may vary (My Opinions Are Usually Not Correct grin).
I really think that Dune Messiah is quite excellent and actually neatly wrapped up the story.
Troyce: “Stop after reading Dune” might be the optimum answer. I read the first five books as they came out, waiting for lightning to strike again. I don’t mind at all that I did. I read everything on the sf shelf at the library in those days, so of course I was going to read Herbert’s latest, whatever it was.
@Troyce
“The God Makers” is interesting. It’s told from the POV of the guy who’s their subject, if that’s the right word.
I think “Dune Messiah” ran in Galaxy. Definitely not Analog. I lasted one installment of same and never read any more of the series. Herbert did write one other well-received book: “Under Pressure/ Dragon in the Sea.”
When Chilton fired Sterling Lanier, he was given the gorgeous Schoenherr cover for the book edition of Dune as his severance.
(17) I thought Dune Messiah was okay but didn’t measure up to Dune. I started reading Children of Dune in its Analog serialization but lost interest about halfway through; that was it for me.
@Troyce: I quite liked Herbert’s The Dragon in the Sea, which was his first novel.
Dune is often described as SF where ecology is the science and that’s mostly accurate, although there’s a lot of other stuff going on also. Not much ecology in the following books, just increasingly tedious political machinations.
I will third(?) the recommendation for The Dragon in the Sea by either of its titles. I also like Whipping Star which is batshit crazy in an entertaining way.
PhilRM, I read The Dragon in the Sea when it was entitled Under Pressure and like you, I thought it quite good. Just check ISFDB. My version based on the cover art was the Del Rey edition of fifty years ago.
I tried reading Dune when it came out. I got to page 32 and fell asleep. That never happened before. It was a great cure for insomnia. I tried reading it a second time, and again, I fell asleep on page 32.
What can I say? Frank Herbert’s writing style just wasn’t of interest to me. Ditto for his characters, and the circumstances he puts them in.
Give me Stanislau Lem and his sarcasm, or Roger Zelazny in his Amber series leapfrogging from one realiy to another, and I’m in wholeheartedly. Slverberg, with his great writing style that pulls me in every time.
I agree, Herbert got heavier and heavier into the politics, and I can’t remember where in the series I stopped. Never considered it my favorite. (Well, I am still waiting for Imperial Morticians of Dune, but…)
mark: I am still waiting for Imperial Morticians of Dune
So am I — in the hope that they will finally be able to permanently inter the shameless Cash Grab that is Endless Extruded Dune Product.
@Cat: Mine is the 1970 Avon printing with the stellar John Schoenherr cover.
@Jim Janney: I remember almost nothing about Whipping Star except the general batshit craziness.
(16/17) I recommend reading Dune and Dune Messiah. I did read Children of Dune, and was not delighted with that choice, though i have certainly read worse.
When I saw that the next title was to be God-Emperor of Dune, I concluded that Herbert was not regaining his footing, and swore off permanently.
Huh. I thought Dune Messiah was terrible, but Children of Dune (book 3) was almost good enough to make up for suffering through it! None of the later books were worth reading (I stopped after five or six), but also, none was as bad as Dune Messiah, which remains the worst Dune book I’ve ever read, IMO. I’ve actually re-read it a couple of times because it seemed appropriate to do so before re-reading Children of Dune, which is something I actually wanted to re-read! And re-reading Dune Messiah did not improve my opinion of it!
Dune Messiah is … misnamed. It’s set some time after the first book, and is basically killing off Paul Muad-Dib for Fremen political reasons.
16/17) In this house The Dune Encyclopedia is held to be deuterocanonical. Beavis and Butt-head’s books I would not shred for kitty litter.
@Patrick Morris Miller:
A good friend of mine, the late Wes Ives, wrote some of the articles in there, such as the Timeline of Man (“1945 – First use of atomics. Seat of empire moves to Washington, DC”)
I like God Emperor of Dune. It is bonkers and sufficiently mad as to be unlike Dune in plot but like Dune in the sense of feeling both different and familiar. Everything after that can be safely ignored.
But the pixels we climbed were just shoggoths out of time.
(19) Our director in this article says “As Villeneuve recently explained to Entertainment Weekly, the source material from Herbert does not go into extensive detail about how one might successfully engage in an act of walloping wormery, thus necessitating the Worm Unit.”:
Really? Did he not read the novel? Herbert is quite detailed how Paul mounts, hooks and rides his first worm. I remembered it from memory. An admittedly amazing feat for me most days.
I’d quote it here but it’s too long to do so.
@Jeff Jones: thank you for the next line (and thanks Mike for the Title Credit)
(17) Option 4 for me.
Pixel-Emperor of Scroll-Dune
Robert Thornton ad 17: Almost (in principle), but not quite (in all details). In Analog (June 1970), Dune Messiah was reviewed by P. Schuyler Miller, unmemorably.
Spider Robinson wrote for Galaxy, and when Children of Dune appeared, reportedly billed as “the conclusion of a trilogy, the last book in the enormous Dune cycle”, he included a re-read of the previous two and had this to say on Messiah (September 1976):
Also, it was not really a roast, he praised the book highly.
@Troyce
You might try The White Plague. I found it to be very good.
Separately, I loved Dune, but Dune Messiah bounced off me and was a DNF.
13) TIL….
Growing up in the 70s with the influence of The Doors in the air, I can’t imagine how I missed out on this. Mount Tsundoku grows and grows.
Regards,
Dann
We adore chaos because we love to produce order. – M.C. Escher
I found DUNE MESSIAH better than CHILDREN OF DUNE, to damn with faint praise. After what happened to Leto at the end of Children, I swore off ever reading another Dune book again. Just too batshit crazy. In the old days, Dune would have been given a fitting sendoff with “Abbot and Costello Go to Dune.”
A friend of mine from grad school days had a theory about how Herbert had intended to finish the Dune saga, based on the titles.
For the first four, we have:
1. Dune 2. Dune Messiah 3. Children of Dune 4. God Emperor of Dune.
Note that the number of words in the title matches its position in the sequence. Then, after book four, it reverses, losing one word each time:
5. Heretics of Dune. 6. Chapterhouse: Dune.
So clearly there was going to be a seventh book to cap off the series, and that one was going to be titled: Done.
@PhilRM
If “Dune” were being published for the first time today, I wonder if the publisher would insist on a title like “A Court of Sand and Spice”?
runs and hides
1) Well, if it makes them feel any better they’re not the only awards show to have that problem.
3) There should be a space for whatever goofy-ass tantrum is currently consuming YA publishing on any given day.
6) I’m down to throw a couple of bucks at that on spec, you never know your luck.
8) Like roasting politicians and other self-important parasites, author visits to classrooms are never not a good idea.
11) I’ve seen those buckets and some doofus is absolutely going to get his dick stuck in one. I’m calling it now.
17) I’m an option #3 guy, although I have ambitions towards option #4.
He was the scion of a great noble house, fled to exile! She was the proud daughter of desert nomads! Their forbidden love would rock the galaxy!
Eh, I’m with those who flag Dune Messiah as the worst of the (Herbert-written) series. I’d follow with God Emperor and then Heretics.
Then again, I like me some good political machinations in my stories. Even political activists read SFF.
As for the Keltiad, what sticks in my mind are the horses. The plot…eh, I gave up on the series somewhere around the third book. Now I’m fascinated by the regular fantasy descriptions so I’ll go look them up.
I remember really liking Dune when I first read it when I was around 12 or 13. My mom loaned me her copy. My brother and i both enjoyed it and also liked Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. When someone gave my brother the hardcover, just released, God Emperor of Dune for his birthday, he really didn’t like it and stopped reading the series. My mom kept going and got as far as Heretics of Dune, which she damned with the faint praise of “it wasn’t as bad as God Emperor of Dune.” Based on their opinions, I sopped reading after Children of Dune.
I see they’re handing out replica miniature chocolate cover manholes at the breakfast bar in The Con That Never Ends. They come in milk chocolate and dark chocolate. Very tasty and crunchy as well.
I read Dune when I was a teenager, and in my thirties slowly ambled through the rest of Herbert’s sequels. (I acquired used copies whenever the universe tossed them in my path, and I’d’ve watched the Sy-Fy miniseries by then.) I was well aware of their wheels-coming-off reputation and they did not disappoint.
I did find Dune Messiah interesting because it read so much like the original prompt had been “do a space opera as a play with one or two interior sets.”
(13) In Oliver Stone’s movie about Jim Morrison The Doors, Kennealy was played by Kathleen Quinlan. Quinlan also played Marilyn Lovell in Apollo 13, who was a Scroll item last September when she passed away.
I can’t image that there are many actors who have played two separate people who have been scrolled about here.
@Troyce – Dune is “Outsider-hero comes to world and saves all the things….” Dune Messiah is “…and then promptly screws up everything so bad that literally billions die.” It’s a great takedown of the outsider-hero trope.
God Emperor is “all my choices are horrific but at least I can take the least horrific one and maybe free humanity from these goddamn prescient rulers like me.” Alas, you have to wade through Children and like a book with lots of talking and little action, and I get completely why people choose to ignore it.
But really, Messiah’s worth it, if only to tear down the idea that Paul Atreides was a hero and please autocarrot stop saying Paul Arteries.
Well, the whole series does seem to suffer from a metaphorical hardening of the Atreides. For what it’s worth, my reading is more that Paul was desperately trying to avoid the jihad but was trapped by historical inevitability. The more he succeeds, the less agency he has over anything. Which doesn’t make for exciting stories.
The White Plague was certainly depressing, particularly if one is female, but I’ll give it credit for a good bioweapon distribution device–putting the stuff on dollar bills and making cash contributions to various charities. Though it probably wouldn’t work nearly as well today, in the age of plastic.
Jim Janney: Paul certainly feels hemmed in but we already know that he’s not omniscient, on small scales and large. A less self-convinced person might ask themselves just how deep and wide those valleys in the landscape of the future are and what else they might be missing. I like God-Emperor despite the massive pieces that should be pruned off for landing on the reality that Paul could not inspire the creation of any lasting good, only ever be an obstacle and destroyer.
I finished Dune in 2023. (I think I started it in 2020 or earlier).
My big frustration with it was being told it involved clever machinations and politics and being presented with a lot of Really Obvious Plotting. Which, let’s be fair, a lot of powerful people aren’t at all subtle in the real world, either, and at least they were powerful. But it wasn’t what i hoped for.
It still definitely had something going for it on a lot of other levels (I liked Jessica a lot), but I feel disinclined to read the sequels enough to opine on which of the next 3 is the worst of the still readable books.
And it’s pretty clear in book one that Paul is not actually the long term saviour, and even he knows he isn’t; that there’s a whole fate he tries to dodge because he knows it will end badly and yet he fails. I don’t think I need to read Dune Messiah to get the nitty gritty details how.
My husband was enough of a fan, and determined enough, to read several of the attempted Brian Herbert KJA sequels. And yet even he stopped after about 4.
RedWombat: I don’t know what the percentage is now, but 15 or so years ago, most $20 (I think) bills circulating in the US that were not just printed had traces of cocaine.
God Emperor of Dune is the very first book I did not finish. It was a library copy, or it would have met the fate of Dorothy Parker’s aphorism: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
I’d never given myself permission to not finish a book I’d started before. It was freeing….
Mark says I don’t know what the percentage is now, but 15 or so years ago, most $20 (I think) bills circulating in the US that were not just printed had traces of cocaine.
The only reliable number I could find online was from the Journal of Analytical Toxicology which says eighty percent of our currency a trace of cocaine. But they note that the level of cocaine is so low that it poses absolutely no risk to anyone even though one of the myths is that it sheds cocaine dust as it goes through the ATM machines causing in bank staff.