/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4927263]

Is this book supposed to be a joke or something?

It's easily one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. I mean it's literally about a Worm giving a lecture. That's the Fucking book.

Every other character in the book just exists for this worm to spew his nonsense to. Nobody else has any characterization of any value.

Yes. Thanks for that.

By the way, what exactly did the worm "save us from"?

[Anonymous No.4927289]

the spice must flow

[Anonymous No.4927302]

>>4927263
>reading any Dune novel aside from the first 2
that's your problem

[Anonymous No.4927306]

>>4927263
Have you finished the book?

The worm saved humanity from the self replicating machines the Ixians would have eventually created, plus his breeding program created humans who were invisible to prescience, ensuring that nobody could oppress the universe using perfect prescience like he and his father Paul did.

[Anonymous No.4927343]

>>4927263

Kind of, it is the joke Herbert played on those of his readers who were too into the myth of Paul as this all-knowing, all-seeing, all-wise overman hero who fucks all the bitches, kills all the bads, and is never wrong - who fancied themselves Fedaykin basically. The whole book is therefore a tedious exposition by an ACTUAL all-knowing, all-seeing, all-wise overman hero as to why it's basically completely retarded to treat a regular human like he is that awesome (in case you hadn't paid much attention to the first three books, it's because the systems of power either imprison the powerful and make them powerless, or empower them to a point to which nobody can be trusted to be empowered), sprinkled with bits of fantastic self-parody like the Fish Speakers (Nayla's orgasm!!), Hwi's entire character, and the only two properly human Atreides in the story being an timid henchman to the evil emperor and a boneheaded fuck-you-dad type who rises in useless revolt against said emperor - Leto and Paul writ large. I think the crime the book commits is not so much being boring because that's the point, it is literally a lecture on the God-Emperor even within the diegesis, but rather preaching to the choir: was there anybody who read the first three Dune books and DIDN'T already get that absolute power = bad, and everything that goes with it? They're not exactly subtle. Still, God-Emperor is a thousand times more enjoyable to me than the books that follow it.

>>4927306
Equally important I think is that the memory of Leto's rule will bias future humanity against ever again centralizing power over the entire species.

[Anonymous No.4927356]

>>4927343
>was there anybody who read the first three Dune books and DIDN'T already get that absolute power = bad, and everything that goes with it? They're not exactly subtle.

hopefully most people figured it out around the part where Paul literally compares himself to Hitler

I liked Chapterhouse and Heretics, I think people would look at them differently if Herbert had lasted long enough to resolve all the cliffhangers.