Everyone knows Dune (you do, don't you? If not, why are you here?), and if you’ve even given this blog a cursory glance, you know that lately I’ve been obsessing about Dune more than a little.

I happened to chance onto a book called The Road to Dune in a local second-hand book store. Within this book, along with deleted or early draft scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah, was a novella called Spice World.

Brian Herbert detailed in the introduction that this story came form his father’s notes - a detailed chapter by chapter breakdown of the story. But Frank had abandoned this story, making a new start and creating Dune.  READ ON

1966 was a time of rebellion in America: The Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the Free Love movement, were all on the rise. People were pissed — at the government, at the establishment, at each other, and at the ‘other.’

Along came a TV show called Star Trek (now referred to as The Original Series, or just ToS). In the show, we had gotten past our differences, we had gotten past greed, we’d molded the establishment. We were out to make the known world a better place for everyone, and we were actively seeking out new members. It was a very positive, stabilizing message.

Fast forward to today.

READ MORE
(Spoilers for Stark Trek: Discovery episodes 1&2; The Orville episodes 1-3)

Real time translation is great. It even mostly works, some of the time. Facebook has gotten pretty good at it, from what I see. Friends’ posts in Korean or Japanese translate pretty well. When Arabic friends write in Arabic the translation seems pretty accurate - when they use a western keyboard an a phoneticized short hand, Facebook usually fails. But I don’t hold that against Facebook. They’re trying and doing a pretty good job.

Twitter, on the other hand…

Yeah, not so much.

READ ON

Let’s talk about Martin Caidin

Martin who?

You know, Michael Crichton’s contemporary, the other big name writer of adventure stories grounded in science in the 1970s and 80s.

Martin who?

Have you never heard of The Six Million Dollar Man?

Oh, yeah. OK. Martin who?

READ ON!

Hey, if you haven’t already read Frank Herbert’s Dune, then a) Shame on you. And b) I’m going to spoil the crap out of it for you.

Go read it now.

Then come back here.

I believe that there are at least four ways that you can interpret Dune as you read it (I have a fifth, but it’s kind of trite).

READ ON!