Word: dune
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...EMPEROR OF DUNE by Frank Herbert; Putnam; 411 pages...
Herbert, a former West Coast newspaperman, set the science-fiction world on its antenna in 1965 with the publication of Dune, an involved and resonant adventure saga of how human civilization was reborn in a desert. Set on the waterless planet of Arrakis, or Dune, the book introduced a hero whose ancestry went back to the legendary Greek House of Atreus. Paul Atreides had something for everyone. He was part Odysseus, part Jesus and part Muhammad. His followers were a desert people forced by circumstances into a mystical and practical awareness of their ecosystem...
With its space messiah hero, its understanding of ecology and its references to mind-expanding drugs, Dune found a large and appreciative audience during the mid-'60s. It was a book the young readers made, largely through word of mouth-"far out," "mind blowing," etc. Dune won both a Hugo and a Nebula, science fiction's most coveted annual awards. Sales eventually hit nearly 2 million copies. But Dune was only the beginning of a long-running drama, the first part of which is now being filmed in North Africa. In 1969 Herbert published Dune Messiah, which...
...harbors a cynical view of politics. Some musings from the worm who would be god: "Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat." Some of Leto's decrees are variations on the Old Testament. Dune's religion, for example, outlaws computers as graven im ages of the mind. Throughout, his observations toll a somber truth: "Government is a shared myth. When the myth dies, the government dies...
Once Klaussen was caught in a large avalanche while skiing at Squaw Valley. He was wrapped around a tree and covered by a snow dune. It then became one of his pastimes to create small avalanches, catch them, and ski through them. Possibly, Klaussen's attraction for the slopes may bring him back to those same California snow fields to initiate avalanche surfing as a sport. ABC Wide World of Sports...