/lit/ - Literature

I just began reading Dune. Paul seems to be a Mary Sue, its a little annoying, but given the popularity of this series I’m willing to bet there is more to it. What am I in for? Will it grow on me?

>>8661024
Gird thy loins, seigneur.

It depends on how highly you rate Herbert as a thinker-artist. The fact that the writings of one man gave us both 40K and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (granted, not in the same book, but whatever) makes me think he was on to something. 12 million neckbeards later it's hard to argue with that.

I find the later Dune novels tedious, to be honest. But that's how it is. If you want to see how a person's mind works, read everything of them. Or as much as you can handle. Good philosophical speculation doesn't always translate into good philosophical speculative fiction. So Tolkien is a big deal and we like seeing movies based on it. Herbert is a big deal but his themes are imho much more dark, which is why they're harder to adapt.

Herbert's stories are more *overtly* religious while Tolkien wrote epic fantasy, which is only tacitly so. Also LOTR ended, or had the sense of an ending. The important parts of Dune end with the Paul Atreides saga but continue after because Herbert was still thinking about ideas that because they were about the political nature of myths could not be wrapped up within a myth themselves.