for the record, like almost all big classic sci-fi, these books (dune) are remarkably bigoted and reductive. i still like space stories and political intrigue tho.
alt text: Trade Offer from Sand Worm Leto Atreides. You receive: 4000 years of planet bound subjugation. Spice, eventually. Famine. Sex ninjas from outer space. Golden Path… I recieve: Like 70 something Duncan Idahos. Gentle Hwi.
Foundation by isaac asimov is pretty solid for its time and mostly holds up today
I liked it but there’s two main issues IMO
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Leans really heavily into the “If you’re smart you should get to do whatever you want”
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A complete lack of women characters which is particularly telling combined with point 1
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Leto II was trying to free humanity from the tyranny of prescience. It took a 4000 year selective breeding program to produce Siona who was invisible to the future. It was the undoing of the Golden Path of Paul Muad’dib.
This book was where the series completely left the rails for me. So fucking bizarre.
Yeah, later books seem like Frank Herbert was way too obsessed with sex. The idea of Honored Maitres as using sex to control humans seemed pretty misogynistic, even at the time (yes, eventually there was a guy, too). Still, I think the whole “put humanity in a pressure cooker so they explode outwards when the lid is gone” concept was pretty thought-provoking. Also the Siona project; if prescience is a real thing in that universe, it can be studied and understood, then weaponized. How do you defend against an enemy that knows where and when you’ll be?
It gets overlooked today, but Barron Harkonnen is a gay stereotype. Overlooked because gay men being hyperviolent is a stereotype that’s long died out, but it was a thing.
Dune starts in a weird place and it gets weirder as it goes.
