Dune by Frank Herbert
Jul. 1st, 2020 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsDune
2/5. A sampling of my stream of consciousness thoughts as I read this book for the first time since I read the whole series as a pre-teen (and wasn't that a choice). Spoilers I guess? I mean it's fuckin' Dune.
Right, the secret order of powerful witch women. So secret that everyone knows about them and their womanly powers (which appear to consist of controlling men and getting pregnant exactly when they want to and never otherwise. …Actually that second one is kind of a big deal).
So it's almost feminist? Except how it's incredibly not?
Right right, his mother is actually a sex slave that his father purchased, but NBD guys, no need to mention that more than the once in passing.
Ah, I see we know the bad guy is evil because he's fat and queer. Queer here being synonymous with pedophile, cool cool cool.
Bored now. Christ, this dinner party is interminable. I hate that thing where an author tries to convince you the characters are powerful and sophisticated because they have this social conversation that is supposed to be layered in political meanings and flashes of brilliance. I've been in my share of smoke-filled rooms and that is not how it works.
Yes! Finally stabbing!
I wonder how much this ecology and landscape inspired Tatooine. Not that Lucas ever really did much with Tatooine – all that beautiful desert ecology stuff is expanded universe. But there really is something strange and beautiful here. Best character in this book is the desert.
How does everyone on this planet not have kidney stones?
Right right, white savior time.
Ugh.
Too much Chosen One, not enough sandworm.
So like….they are all high? All of the time? We're just admitting that straight out? I mean it does explain a lot.
If he uses the phrase "race consciousness" one more time I am going to –
Ugh.
So the contention is that living in a harsh environment imbues an extraordinary skill to beat trained fanatical soldiers? Cool. Northern Canada will be thrilled to hear, I'm sure.
Okay, I'm just going to go read a summary of the rest of the series to satisfy the distant flashes of memory I keep having of some wild batshittery, because this isn't that wild. This is pretty boring. …Whoa. What the fuck? What….the fuck? I'm not reading those sequels but….what?
Is this over yet?
Spoiler: it's not feminist. He's the special man who comes along and masters special female whatever better than women do (aside from the pregnant thing, presumably?) and then gets to tell them how they've all been doing it wrong.
Oh I see, men are oriented to taking and women are oriented to giving, got it, cool, thanks for spelling that out.
Oh thank god, it's over.
Oh no. Do I have the fortitude to read the appendix? Appendices. That's an hour and forty five minutes of record time – I will the fuck not. There is not enough speed control on this device.
2/5. A sampling of my stream of consciousness thoughts as I read this book for the first time since I read the whole series as a pre-teen (and wasn't that a choice). Spoilers I guess? I mean it's fuckin' Dune.
Right, the secret order of powerful witch women. So secret that everyone knows about them and their womanly powers (which appear to consist of controlling men and getting pregnant exactly when they want to and never otherwise. …Actually that second one is kind of a big deal).
So it's almost feminist? Except how it's incredibly not?
Right right, his mother is actually a sex slave that his father purchased, but NBD guys, no need to mention that more than the once in passing.
Ah, I see we know the bad guy is evil because he's fat and queer. Queer here being synonymous with pedophile, cool cool cool.
Bored now. Christ, this dinner party is interminable. I hate that thing where an author tries to convince you the characters are powerful and sophisticated because they have this social conversation that is supposed to be layered in political meanings and flashes of brilliance. I've been in my share of smoke-filled rooms and that is not how it works.
Yes! Finally stabbing!
I wonder how much this ecology and landscape inspired Tatooine. Not that Lucas ever really did much with Tatooine – all that beautiful desert ecology stuff is expanded universe. But there really is something strange and beautiful here. Best character in this book is the desert.
How does everyone on this planet not have kidney stones?
Right right, white savior time.
Ugh.
Too much Chosen One, not enough sandworm.
So like….they are all high? All of the time? We're just admitting that straight out? I mean it does explain a lot.
If he uses the phrase "race consciousness" one more time I am going to –
Ugh.
So the contention is that living in a harsh environment imbues an extraordinary skill to beat trained fanatical soldiers? Cool. Northern Canada will be thrilled to hear, I'm sure.
Okay, I'm just going to go read a summary of the rest of the series to satisfy the distant flashes of memory I keep having of some wild batshittery, because this isn't that wild. This is pretty boring. …Whoa. What the fuck? What….the fuck? I'm not reading those sequels but….what?
Is this over yet?
Spoiler: it's not feminist. He's the special man who comes along and masters special female whatever better than women do (aside from the pregnant thing, presumably?) and then gets to tell them how they've all been doing it wrong.
Oh I see, men are oriented to taking and women are oriented to giving, got it, cool, thanks for spelling that out.
Oh thank god, it's over.
Oh no. Do I have the fortitude to read the appendix? Appendices. That's an hour and forty five minutes of record time – I will the fuck not. There is not enough speed control on this device.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 02:13 am (UTC)I think it was the sandworms? IDK, the last book I read before this was Last Astronaut, which has a giant spaceworm, and by my usual method of free association book selection, here we are.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 06:12 pm (UTC)I think I read the sequels at some point, but I have wholesale repressed them, I'm pretty sure.
I do have a weird memory love of the dual aesthetic of Blade Runner and Dune and the weird steampunky retrofuture they both created that overshadowed so much of SF in the following decades... But it says a lot when the imaginary future is more steeped in the past then the present, doesn't it? [Thinking of an early Harry Potter analysis here that connected the wizarding world to 19th century nostalgia and its correlated ideologies!]
There is not enough speed control on this device. I love that comment. I don't speed up quite as much as you do, but I do come across stories where I just give up beyond they are too slow...even with speed control :)
no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 09:31 pm (UTC)Yeah, I read somewhere that Herbert specifically rejected technology as a big part of his universe (and apparently had some big dumb backstory explanation for no computers) which strikes me as reaching for the same sort of nostalgia.