Word: dune
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most disturbing thing about the book is its lack of compassion. The charm of Dune lies in showing how an emperor can remain human despite the demands his work places on him. In Children of Dune the protagonist, Paul Atreides' son, takes the road his father would not, and following the visions shown by the spice, forsakes his humanity completely. For some science fiction writers this device has worked admirably: the hero who loses everything to save the race, notably in Cordwainer Smith's "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdahl," but it falls singularly flat here. It seems that...
...Dune was written in 1965, won the Hugo and Nebula awards as best science fiction novel of the year, and rapidly became an underground cult classic. In 1969, a sequel appeared, Dune Messiah, the further adventures of Paul Atreides, Muad'Dib, and Emperor of the Fremen. Now Herbert has presented us with another, final tale of Arrakis, the Dune planet--a sort of a sequel to a sequel. Like most sequels, Children of Dune recalls the worst things about the first two books...
...years before when science fiction broke away from Buck Rogers--Flash Gordon space opera. On the crest of the wave--which demanded that science fiction be less technically oriented and more an examination of what human life and relationships would be like in the future--was Herbert's Dune. Dune is a swashbuckler of a novel built around the desperate plight of the imperial family, the Atrides, on Arrakis, and their attempt to win the emperor's throne. With this novel, Herbert created a masterful pastiche of Fremen, the inhabitants of Arrakis and the best fighters in the universe, Mentats...
Herbert followed his blockbuster with trite, undistinguished science fiction hack work before turning to the second Dune book in 1969. Dune Messiah was a less entertaining book than Dune, but something more important than mere entertainment value was missing--it seemed an element of humaneness had gone out of Herbert's writing...
...sins of the fathers weight heavily on Children of Dune. The worst faults of the first two books are abundant in the present volume--clumsily crafted writing, intellectual pretentiousness--which the achievement of a writer creating his own universe and abiding by its rules does not offset...