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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Being the Messiah is a curse.

The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy 
   
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Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

My summary;

"Gosh the Fremen and like so cool and handsome and they're the best at everything and they never lose or look at explosions....<breathless praise continues>"

That's not to say I didn't like it, but the author really wants you to like his precious Fremen XD
   
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Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

It's kind of stated that they're cannibals and use the skin of dead corpses to make their drums, so I'm not sure he was quite as praiseworthy of them as you remember.


 
   
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Pragmatic Primus Commanding Cult Forces






Southeastern PA, USA

The author portrays qualities of theirs that include religious zealotry, closed-mindedness, murderous nature when slighted, more scheming than you'd think, and a generally absolute uncompromising outlook forged by extreme conditions. So yeah, that comment makes no sense to me. Herbert shows them to be a product of their environment...not really 'good' or 'bad'.

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Fixture of Dakka







The Fremen, and their equivalents, the Sardaukar very much are the founding templates for quite a lot of the specifics of 40k Space Marine lore
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

On paper the Fremen should be really cool, I don't know why they came off as the unbearable authors pets they did to me throughout the book.
I was literally cheering for the Imperial Sardaukar by the end, I was so sick of bloomin' Fremen!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/13 22:36:00


 
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

Perhaps the whole “they survive in hell with nothing and that makes them badass” thing is frustratingly close to “Kids today are so spoiled/what’s wrong with hitting kids, it gives them character” memes we see too often?

   
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Japan

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
It's kind of stated that they're cannibals


I have no recollection of this. Could you elaborate?

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AngryAngel80 wrote:
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 Eonfuzz wrote:


I would much rather everyone have a half ass than no ass.


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Palmerston North

 JoshInJapan wrote:
 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
It's kind of stated that they're cannibals


I have no recollection of this. Could you elaborate?


The recycle the water.
   
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Leicester

I think it’s mainly in book 3; Kynes actually civilised them quite a bit and in book 3 there’s a sect / tribe that have broken away and “returned to the old ways”, which are pretty brutal.

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 Zed wrote:
*All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
 
   
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Japan

StygianBeach wrote:
 JoshInJapan wrote:
 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
It's kind of stated that they're cannibals


I have no recollection of this. Could you elaborate?


The recycle the water.


I never interpreted that as cannibalism.

Jadenim wrote:I think it’s mainly in book 3; Kynes actually civilised them quite a bit and in book 3 there’s a sect / tribe that have broken away and “returned to the old ways”, which are pretty brutal.


AH, that may be the problem-- I barely remember anything after the first book.

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Leader of the Sept







 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Perhaps the whole “they survive in hell with nothing and that makes them badass” thing is frustratingly close to “Kids today are so spoiled/what’s wrong with hitting kids, it gives them character” memes we see too often?


Maybe, but there is still something uplifting in the triumph against adversity theme of the fremen. You know the old saying, when life gives you nothing but endless toil against a harsh planet, make yourself into all
Conquering special forces soldiers and
Take over
The galaxy.

It loses something in translation from the original Klingon...

Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

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Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

 StygianBeach wrote:
 JoshInJapan wrote:
 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
It's kind of stated that they're cannibals


I have no recollection of this. Could you elaborate?


The recycle the water.


I'm going off of memories from 2+ decades ago so I might be off but there's something about how when they die the water is returned to the tribe which I saw as them eating the corpse, or at least drinking its blood.

Later they play their skin drums and there's a comment to the effect of everyone was too polite to ask what animal on Arakis is large enough to provide skin for those drums.

 
   
Made in au
Anti-Armour Swiss Guard






Newcastle, OZ

No, they render the corpse down for its water and that water goes into the sietch cistern (unless they died in personal combat, where the victor gets their water "value" ).
They don't eat the flesh.

The cannibals part was a smuggler tale, never verified. They never had good relations with most of the fremen, who saw them as little different from their other off-world despoilers.

I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.

That is not dead which can eternal lie ...

... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
 
   
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Fixture of Dakka







I suppose, in a way, you could call it composting rather than cannibalism...
   
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Brigadier General






Chicago

In addition to my earlier positive comments, I'd add a couple things. First, it's the writing in Dune really elevates it. It's just a better written book. It might seem dense or strange, but that's what happens when you move away from pulp sci-fi or "hard" sci-fi and write a Science-Fiction-Fantasy novel that rises to the level of "literature". Put another way, it's more Tolkien than Asimov.

Also, I can't say for sure that it hadn't been done earlier, but it seems to have really broken barriers as Sci-Fi written with Arab and Islamic influences in the culture and language. Even beyond that it is an incorporation of a variety of religious influences unlike what had come before. Really a break from earlier sci-fi that tended to often come from either a Christian-influenced or deliberately-secular point of view.

It isn't free of sci-fi tropes. It unsurprisingly features a solitary european-male figure embracing a mystic destiny and saving the universe. Still, it's breaks away so sharply from what came before that it's originality can't be underestimated.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/15 12:55:38


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 Eilif wrote:
It isn't free of sci-fi tropes. It unsurprisingly features a solitary european-male figure embracing a mystic destiny and saving the universe. Still, it's breaks away so sharply from what came before that it's originality can't be underestimated.

Well... for some values of "saving", taking into account that according to Herbert one of the main themes is "Beware of heroes. Much better [to] rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes", and that in many aspects it is a deconstruction of the classical hero journey. Plus all tht thing about being someone capable of seeing the future but not of breaking free from it.
   
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 Albertorius wrote:
 Eilif wrote:
It isn't free of sci-fi tropes. It unsurprisingly features a solitary european-male figure embracing a mystic destiny and saving the universe. Still, it's breaks away so sharply from what came before that it's originality can't be underestimated.

Well... for some values of "saving", taking into account that according to Herbert one of the main themes is "Beware of heroes. Much better [to] rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes", and that in many aspects it is a deconstruction of the classical hero journey. Plus all tht thing about being someone capable of seeing the future but not of breaking free from it.


The former is a hard sell, because it never shows anything but the heroes' viewpoint. (well, and villain or two, very briefly; and Leto II, who is both or neither depending on how you want to take that).
Normal average people may as well not exist in Dune, except briefly (very late in the series) when Miles Teg wanders into a bar.

Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
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Voss wrote:
 Albertorius wrote:
 Eilif wrote:
It isn't free of sci-fi tropes. It unsurprisingly features a solitary european-male figure embracing a mystic destiny and saving the universe. Still, it's breaks away so sharply from what came before that it's originality can't be underestimated.

Well... for some values of "saving", taking into account that according to Herbert one of the main themes is "Beware of heroes. Much better [to] rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes", and that in many aspects it is a deconstruction of the classical hero journey. Plus all tht thing about being someone capable of seeing the future but not of breaking free from it.


The former is a hard sell, because it never shows anything but the heroes' viewpoint. (well, and villain or two, very briefly; and Leto II, who is both or neither depending on how you want to take that).
Normal average people may as well not exist in Dune, except briefly (very late in the series) when Miles Teg wanders into a bar.

Well, for the former we see a galaxy wrecked by a holy war with billions of dead (I think they say about 60 billions in the book) and the complete obliteration of the fremen way of life, so...
   
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North Wales

One thing that I really realised about the writing is that whilst it focuses on the heroes with not much mention of the little people, it also doesn't zoom out particularly.

Having just got to the end of Heretics, I realized that the big events happen offscreen and you only find out about them when a character mentions them after the event.

It's like the books can do Infinity scale, but Epic 40k is a no go.
   
 
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