Word: dune
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LIKE A DYNASTIC line that weakens with every succeeding generation, Frank Herbert's latest work, The Dosadi Experiment, owes its prominence more to its ancestry than any distinguishing strength of its own. Dune, with its meticulously laid-out setting and equally convincing set of characters, proved that Herbert is the ultimate practitioner of the fantasy-science fiction art. As the best fantasy sci-fi should, it ensnarls its readers; entrapping the unsuspecting alien in a coherent, make-believe world that he can escape only when the author permits it, with his final page...
After reading Dune, sci-fi fans were convinced Herbert could do no wrong--sadly, though, he fails to maintain such heights in his following books. Perhaps Dune reached heights no author could reclimb. Sensing a mesmerized readership, Herbert continued with Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, well-crafted books but not quite on the same level as their forebearer. Dosadi uses many of Dune's conventions and provides some entertainment, but the reader no longer believes he is holding the ancient, jewel-encrusted dagger in his hand and is chanting the mystical incantations...
...like Gowachins and the death-dancing wreaves--with their Kung-fu-like movements and poisoned mandibles. Jorj X. McKie, a red-haired man of Polynesian descent, is the only human accepted as a Legum in the Gowachin legal system. Herbert fails to give the legal cult the depth of Dune's Bene Gesserit witches but he still shows traces of his creative genius...
Dunn eventually settled on a wilderness of weatherbeaten dune overlooking Great Peconic Bay and laid out the first 18-hole gold course in America. Dunn hired a crew of 150 Shinnecock Indians from the nearby reservation and began construction on Shinnecock Hills in the summer...
...science fiction fans may not buy, and in sci-fi terms Star Wars is strictly softcore. Lucas, a fan himself, has evoked images from some of the best-known writers in the field. Tatooine, for example, is much like the arid planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's famed Dune trilogy; that resemblance carries even to the skeleton of one of Herbert's giant sand snakes in the background of a Tatooine scene. The barroom sequence, with its remarkable array of extraterrestrial freaks, is reminiscent of scenes written by Robert Heinlein and Samuel Delaney. But as Lucas and Producer...