Word: dunes
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Powered by short-stroke engines, "off-road vehicles" ride on bloated tires or whirling treads that enable them to go almost anywhere at average speeds of 30 m.p.h. Proliferating from Maine to California, they now include 200,000 dune buggies, 2,000,000 trail bikes, 1,100,000 snowmobiles and, newest of all, 25,000 all-terrain vehicles (ATVs...
...people who live and work in remote, roadless areasfarmers, ranchers, Eskimos, trappers, rural doctors and utility repair crews. To other users, the raffish vehicles offer instant fun at relatively little cost: $200 for the smallest trail bike, $1,000 for an average snowmobile, $1,200 for a dune buggy...
...reasons were always pathetically simple. A commercial spot on a weekend morning costs a sponsor an average $7,500. For that kind of money he wants lots of zeros behind the sales figures. Nothing could be harder than the sell for G.I. Joe with his own flamethrower; for Dune Buggy Wheelies ("Man, they're out of sight . . . get your friends up tight"); for seven bendable, flexible outer spacemen. For those sponsors, the action is in canned-laughter series or manic cartoon shows that are allowed up to 16 minutes of commercials per hourdouble the usual rate allowed...
...Galactic Empire lives again in Dune Messiah. But changed, changed utterly: Sci-fi's excursion into psychological explication (and Herbert wrote a psy-fi book, The Dragon in the Sea, a seriously flawed story of catatonic shock on the ocean floor) taught Herbert that nothing can be understood or explained. The new Empire shimmers with terrible beauty-haunting, unforgettable...
Everybody should read Dune. Everybody should read Dune Messiah. We owe Herbert a lot-he may be the only man writing, in sci-fi or out of it, who can think like a planet. And St. Gildas knows we need to think that way. Life right now is a plausible fantasy-and not a very pleasant one. Read Dune Messiah and touch something real...