{"id":164,"date":"2011-06-09T08:26:34","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T06:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/?p=164"},"modified":"2011-06-09T08:26:34","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T06:26:34","slug":"frank-herbert-the-great-dune-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/2011\/06\/09\/frank-herbert-the-great-dune-trilogy\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Herbert: The Great Dune Trilogy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51MmX6DXWyL._SL500_AA300_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/>So, apparently this Sci-Fi summer, although I&#8217;m getting a bit bored already.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0575070706\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=frequentlyask-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217153&amp;creative=399349&amp;creativeASIN=0575070706\">The Great Dune Trilogy<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr ryodrdwntyeskajgjltr\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0575070706&amp;camp=217153&amp;creative=399349\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> is of course a real sci-fi classic, and deservedly so. The story itself is not the greatest aspect of these books, at least for me the interesting part is the role religion and politics, and to a degree, ecology plays in Herbert&#8217;s universe. Politically, it is a treatment of non-democratic ways of rule that is neither demonizing nor glorifying, and therefore illuminating.<\/p>\n<p>The religion-part is kind of complicated, because by and large the text works with a double approach, with the elite basically using religion in a completely cynical and pragmatical way (that, most of the main characters) while the &#8221;masses&#8221; actually believe its true. The idea that with time all religions converge is slightly irritation, an outdated theory IMO. But there are some hints of a more sofisticated approach too, where religious and non-religious views of the universe are placed side by side on more equal terms. But mostly there is a clear secular bias. The actual religions portrayed, a mix of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism is interesting, because symptomatically it is fairly clear that while Islam and Buddhism contributes a lot of &#8221;wisdom&#8221; and flavour, it is Christianity that brings the structure to the whole thing, particularly the messianic structure (a very Christian type of messianism, I think). Of course, only scholars of comparative religion get exited by finding &#8221;messiah type character&#8221; in popular fiction, but here the theme is very explicit &#8211; the second book is called &#8221;Dune Messiah&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>An odd feature of the books is that you get to know the &#8221;thoughts&#8221; of all characters in the story, that is Herbert does not chose one or two persons&#8217; perspecective to tell the story. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, all characters mostly feel a bit distant, and thus a bit shallow at times, although some characters develop in very interesting ways.<\/p>\n<p>The first and third book are the best, I think, the last one interesting enough for me to want to read the remaining parts. They seem to be out of print though, so I will see. Next: Ursula K LeGuin: Feminism in space!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, apparently this Sci-Fi summer, although I&#8217;m getting a bit bored already. The Great Dune Trilogy is of course a real sci-fi classic, and deservedly so. The story itself is not the greatest aspect of these books, at least for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/2011\/06\/09\/frank-herbert-the-great-dune-trilogy\/\">Forts\u00e4tt l\u00e4sa <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-read"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/phagman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}