by Maxwell Hammer

Created on: August 09, 2007

I might have been as old as 12 when I read Frank Herbert's Dune. I think it was after the movie came out, but I didn't see the movie until years later, when it came out on VHS. It wasn't like today. Now the dvd comes out the same week the movie isn't showing in the theaters, but not then. Even though I hadn't seen the movie I saw the trailers. Sting in that weird winged speedo will always stick in my mind, for some reason....wish I could get that image out.

I read all of the books, except Dune Messiah. I never could find that one so I just skipped it. But I read my copy of that original Dune over and over until it fell apart. Then I bought another one.

When Frank Herbert died I was really disappointed. Not just because a favorite author had died but because the last book in the series, Chapterhouse: Dune ended on a cliffhanger. There was a huge battle and important characters ran off into space...and then you never found out what happened because the author died.

When Frank's son started writing sequels to the novels I was less than thrilled. In general I object to remakes and books that are written after the author has died. Did you know VC Andrews only wrote one novel? There's a whole shelf in the bookstore by her, but only one was written by her before she died. Someone else writes them under her name.

So when Frank's son Brian started writing sequels I figured they would suck. And, well, a lot of them did. I read them, anyway. Because I loved the universe so much. But he could never get the tight plot twists and extremely detailed characters right. The stuff Herbert wrote was like science fiction written by a military historian, a sociologist and someone who did a lot of psychdelic drugs. No one else could live up to that. The son, really, he did his best though.

He started with prequels. Things from the history of Dune that had never been explored in depth. But they were uneven. Some would have great scenes in a horrible book. Others would be well written, but somehow plodding and stagnant. Other things, mostly characters and motivations didn't ring true. Frank Herbert was a first class writer. One of the all time greats. His son...well, he's good. But not that good. It's not his fault, though. It's hard to be the son of a genius.

It turned out he had a good reason for writing the prequels first. In the intro to the most recent book he says that they started with the prequels to sort of get their bearings and at the same time reintroduce the novels to the fan

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