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- [00:00]
A
Today on the show. Oh, dear listener, we were just looking around. Icebergs knocking on them, having fun, you know how people do. And we found, you will not believe it truly a secret compartment. What? In the iceberg. And we cannot wait to share with you what we found.
- [00:41]
B
Welcome to Gom Jabbar, your guide to the iconic world of Dune. We'll be exploring the themes, philosophies and characters found in the sandy depths of this vast universe. From Frank Herbert's groundbreaking novels to the adaptations on film and tv. My name's Abu.
- [00:58]
A
My name is Leo.
- [00:59]
B
And Leo, we've done it again. We've subjected ourselves to yet again another Brian Herbert novel.
- [01:08]
A
That's true.
- [01:09]
B
You and I picked up a copy of the House Harkonnen comic book adaptation. We both read volume one. I, even for today's episode, went so far as to grab a copy, don't ask me where. Of House Harkonnen and skim through many of the chapters and read some of them in preparation for today. And you know what? Here we are today to talk about it. But I think we've tackled our discussion of this book in a more fun way. I think.
- [01:43]
A
Now, before we get into today's topic, some spoiler warnings, some housekeeping. Shout out. Mapes is eyeing us warily because we're talking for too long. Today's episode will contain spoilers for the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Andersons trilogy, House Trilogy, which is a set of prequel novels which includes House Atreides, House Harkonnen and House Corrino, as well as some light here and there references to Frank's original six books. But if you are sensitive to spoilers from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's House trilogy novel, you've been warned. Today we are going to be talking some pretty major things that happen in those books.
- [02:25]
B
That's right. And of course, up top, a huge shout out to our Kwisatz Haderach level patrons, Daniel Dion, Seth Reddin Greer, Brad Hutchins and Kevin Mohanram.
- [02:35]
A
Yeah, folks, hell yeah.
- [02:39]
B
If I had a hidden door in an iceberg, that's where I would invite y' all over to come hang. It's the man cave in my hidden iceberg. It's the man cave. It's the Kwisatz Haderach cave. Specifically.
- [02:53]
A
Hell yeah. We got some brewskis. They're chilling in the iceberg. It's great. It's a great time. Natural, built in refrigeration.
- [03:00]
B
Yeah, I have one of those Coca Cola polar bears. You know, the giant Coca Cola polar Bears from the factory. It's in the iceberg cave.
- [03:07]
A
It's great.
- [03:08]
B
It's a great time. We'll send you the coordinates. There's no address because remember, it's hidden. It's hidden behind a door.
- [03:14]
A
Of course.
- [03:14]
B
We'll send you the longitudinal coordinates and you're welcome to come anytime.
- [03:18]
A
Don't tell the emperor. He'll take the polar bear.
- [03:24]
B
Also, of course, a huge shout out to all of our patrons at every level who truly do help build the foundation upon which our iceberg man cave is built. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And you know what? We'll throw a party in the iceberg at some point and everyone's invited.
- [03:44]
A
Now, if you are listening to us and you are not in a place to be a monthly supporter on Patreon, totally get it. Totally fine. Don't forget, you can still show your appreciation with a one time tip. And of course, there's the good old fashioned free way of supporting us. Tell a friend about your favorite Dune podcast, because ultimately, word of mouth is the best way to grow a show like ours.
- [04:05]
B
Absolutely. Now, folks, housekeeping out of the way. Here's the game plan for today's episode. So like we said earlier, we grabbed a copy of this House Harkonnen comic book. We read the comic book. Our original plan then for. For this episode was actually to just kind of do our usual thing, right? Start with a quick summary of the book, talk about what we liked, talk about what we disliked, the long list of things we disliked, maybe get in like a thematic takeaway there and try to get into some lore or stuff, whatever the Gom Jabbar formula that most folks at this point are quite familiar with. But frankly, as I sat down to start working on that script, I was bored and kind of miserable writing that script. You know, I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to treat this book with the same sort of detail and attention that we give to the Frank books in our book club episodes. Like, it just doesn't deserve that. So rather than subject ourselves to, like, have that whole. That whole conversation, we're going to try something a little different. As the title states, we're gonna be breaking down the seven deadly sins of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and we're gonna be using the House Harkonnen comic book and the House Harkonnen novel itself to basically illustrate our arguments here. To illustrate these seven deadly sins that Brian and Kevin frankly commit in most of their expanded Dune lore novels and Dune stories. And so that's the goal of today's episode, is to sort of, like, cleanly and as respectfully as we can lay out our critiques of these novels and why they just don't, in our opinion, hold a candle to Frank's original six.
- [05:53]
A
Yeah. And I'll just kind of address up top. We have absolutely talked about this before, but I will say we have returning to this topic with now we're talking about Chapter house on our book club series. I have such a deeper appreciation for really what Frank Herbert accomplished and what he was doing as an artist and as a writer and as a person who had strong convictions and then used his fiction as a means of, like, communicating those. I have new appreciation for Frank and thus new kind of perspectives on some of what Brian Herbert does. So we'll talk about it and we will present it in a clean, clinical and hopefully fun way.
- [06:34]
B
That's right. That's the goal today. Okay. So before we get into it, let's take a quick break. Let's prepare ourselves, maybe have a sip of tea. Don't go anywhere. Dear listener, when we come back, we're going to be spilling that tea and talking about the seven deadly sins of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson in their Dune novels. We'll see you in a minute.
- [07:00]
A
Welcome back, everybody. Hope you enjoyed your break. Hope you enjoyed your sip of tea. Let's do it. Let's talk about the seven deadly sins of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson as well. And today we are going to count down these sins from sort of the most broad, maybe like least egregious, least like, crazy offensive to downright unforgivable. That's the spectrum. So we're going to begin very broadly with something you might have heard online before, which is sin number. The writing is bad. And to be clear, we are not talking about plot arcs or payoffs, of twists and different. We're not talking about the characters. We're not talking even about the lore and the world building. We are talking about the words. We are talking about the letters that have been assembled and into what one would hope would be like a pleasant little mm, language, Language presented to me, giving me tales of a faraway. No, they're bad. They're not very good from a technical standpoint. The writing in these books is subpar. Many sentences are just short and direct, saying exactly what is being said. There's very simple uses of things like similes and allusion, metaphorical language, poetry mostly absent. And just broadly, it's all very juvenile. It's like the literary toolbox itself that Brian and Kevin are working with is simple and not good.
- [08:44]
B
Yeah, and look, you don't have to take our word for it. We have an example for you from the House Harkonnen novel that we want to share, and this again is one of countless examples across all of the books that Brian and Kevin have written. Consider this passage from the House Harkonnen novel to paint the picture of this scene for you, dear listener. Mohiam is standing next to Jessica on a balcony. They're on Wallach 9, and they're looking down at a young Duke Leto Atreides, who is the Duke of Caladin, and his friend Prince Rambar of I, who's been exiled from IX because of various plot reasons. And the two of them are here on Wallach 9, visiting for various other plot reasons. Here's the I am being groomed for something, prepared for an important assignment. Why had her teacher brought her to this balcony at this precise moment? There was no accident in this, no coincidence. The Bene Gesserit planned everything, thought everything through with utmost care. Mohaim beamed down at her pupil, but her eyes narrowed. That is Duke Leto Atreides, and you are destined for him, Jessica. One day you will be the mother of his children. At that moment, Duke Leto glanced up at Jessica as if sensing her presence in the balcony shadows, and their gazes met. She saw a fire in his gray eyes, a strength and wisdom beyond his years, the result of bearing difficult burdens. She felt herself drawn to him. End quote.
- [10:26]
A
I will immediately say I was blown away that you chose this little section, because I actually think this is some of his broadly better writing. But again, on its face level, that is not great. It's very literal. It's moving one beat to the next in kind of a monotonous way. And then the language is very rudimentary. I wanted to share, actually, a quote from House Atreides, and this is Paulus Atreides speaking to Leto. And you'll notice, dear listener, please, for.
- [10:57]
B
People who don't know, Paulus is the old duke.
- [11:00]
A
He's the father of Leto Atreides. Yes, he is talking to Leto, imparting wisdom, and he references something that is very close to the Litany of Fear. You can see where Bryan got this, but I want to share this. Leto says that he will handle the issues of governing. Paulus responds, quote, I'm sure you will, Leto, but let yourself relax a bit. The people can tell when you're not happy and when their duke is not happy, the population is not happy. Let pressure pass over and through you. That way you can't be harmed by it. Okay, he extended a scolding finger. Have more fun.
- [11:43]
B
Stop.
- [11:45]
A
That way you can't be harmed by it is fascinating. Such a delightful, weird combination of words.
- [11:55]
B
Weird.
- [11:56]
A
And you compare that to the litany. My least favorite quote in Dune. And it's just. It's. That's rough. I mean, again, you compare any of this to the chapters that, especially in the later books of like, oh, Jade teaching tag things. It's like it is night and day. The difference in the way that these two handle language.
- [12:19]
B
Right, right. It's never elevated beyond the rudimentary. You're exactly right. And you know what? Here's the thing. We ranked this as number seven, though this is the seventh sin and the lowest on our rankings here, because here's the reality. Frank Herbert was a legendary writer. And, you know, now, 60 years later, we recognize him as one of the greatest sci fi authors to ever put ink to paper. So as much as we criticize Brian and Kevin on their writing style, the truth is they just don't have the Frank Herbert juice. But the larger truth is that almost no author since Frank has had the Frank Herbert juice. Right. Like, it can come off as a little unfair to criticize them for not being as great as the most legendary sci fi. One of the most legendary sci fi authors ever. And so that's an impossibly high bar to reach. But I think our criticisms are still valid in that. Like, it doesn't even come close to that bar. Like, we're not even reaching for the bar in much of this writing.
- [13:22]
A
Yeah, it's tough.
- [13:23]
B
It's tough. Okay, let's move on from the writing. Let's talk about our next sin.
- [13:27]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [13:29]
B
This next sin is painful. It does some iconic characters in the Dune universe. So. So dirty sin number six is that the characters in Bryant Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Dune novels completely lack depth.
- [13:46]
A
Totally. Yeah.
- [13:47]
B
And this doesn't just apply to the characters that they're coming up with for their own stories out of their own imaginations. They've gone so far as to flatten the wonderfully dynamic characters that Frank was writing about in the original six books. Duke Leto himself is one example. He's a fairly nuanced and complicated character. In the first Dune book. We know that he's an honorable duke, but we also know that he uses propaganda. He participates in politics. He does all the dirty deeds of someone in charge while still maintaining loyalty. He becomes, in all of these prequel stories of him as a youngin, this, like, very one dimensional goody two shoes can never do no wrong character who is just incredibly dull to read about because you just know what his reaction will be to every situation. He'll just be honorable and good every time.
- [14:47]
A
Yeah, it's particularly grating because I think that, like, especially as we've gotten some distance from reading that first book, Duke Leto, the paradigm of goodness in that book, too good for this corruptible universe. He wants to do things the right way, but it's a universe of prescribed backstabbing and betrayals and poisoning and traps. And he tries to do the right thing, but he also guides his entire house into a slaughter. And there is bad in the good, and we see how much it wears him down. And that's why he's such a sympathetic, such a remarkable character. But also in the tail end, I remember us talking to him. Who was it? Was it Patrice Vermette who said Baron Harkonnen was like one of his favorite characters now? And I think that, like, yeah, I think there's also an element of, like, Baron Harkonnen in Frank's books is doing things the prescribed way, is trying to, like, move his house upward and outward. He's trying to. There is bad in the good and good in the bad, always in all of Frank's characters. And that's completely abandoned in Brian's books where just Beast, Rabban is terrible, Baron Vladimir is terrible. Duke Leto's so good, so great, so good.
- [16:06]
B
You wouldn't believe it.
- [16:07]
A
You wouldn't fucking believe how good this guy is. Yeah. Taking that depth away from known characters is also very galling. It's really hard to swallow.
- [16:18]
B
It is. And, you know, since we're talking about the House Harkonnen comic and book today, I wanted to actually touch on Baron and Rabban. These two characters are a significant part of this novel. And I wanted to share examples of how this flattening effect, like, really takes away from these characters that we know and quote, unquote, love from the original Dune novels. Bryan and Kevin's version of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is painfully boring. He is just like a cackling villain in these books. He's motivated primarily by greed and his anger and hatred. And in this novel, in particular, in House Harkonnen, he's pissed off at the Bene Gesserit. And the backstory here we're like, summarizing very quickly but the backstory is that during this awful sexual assault scene in the previous book, in House, Atreides and Mohim had used a special Bene Gesserit ability to implant a disease within the Baron. And this disease makes him grossly fat. It has a weakening effect on his body. And so in this book, in House Harkonnen, he's mad about that, and now he wants revenge against the Bene Gesserit. And what's really sad is, like, as kind of, like, icky as a setup as that is, you could run with it, and you could take that to an interesting place where you set up a conflict between House Harkonnen and the Bene Gesserit. But all of the interesting politics and all of the Baron's intelligence and scheming is really just sanded away. And he spends most of this book just acting like a petulant child who's throwing a tantrum and hates the Bene Gesserit and wants to destroy them. And him and Piter come up with a quote, unquote genius plan to accuse the Bene Gesserit of using a biological weapon against another human being, which, according to the great Convention, is not allowed. They're gonna get him with a technicality, Leo.
- [18:23]
A
Yeah, exactly where House Harkonnen belongs. In the courtroom.
- [18:27]
B
In the courtroom. That's the best thing that Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, one of the most deadly political operatives in the Imperium, is able to come up with against the Bene Gesserit.
- [18:39]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [18:40]
B
And you know that that plot line, like, wraps up in kind of, like, the dumbest way possible. The Sisterhood, like, very easily outmaneuvers the Baron and Piter. And this whole, like, dumbass plot wraps up with the Baron, like, running away with his tail between his legs. So that is just one example from this book to illustrate, like, the Baron, who came up with the Arrakis plot, who was a deadly operator within the Imperium, was able to reign in Feyd Rautha, his fucking na. Baron, who kept trying to assassinate him in this book just, like, throws tantrums and makes ridiculous attacks against the Bene Gesserit. It's just unsatisfying. Right? It takes away from the Baron we knew from the original stories.
- [19:27]
A
Yeah. He's also very. It's very inconsistent. Cause there's, like, moments where he goes, we have to do this subtly. No one can know. And then there are moments when he marches into the Bene Gesserit homeschool with, like, guards and an army, and it's like, there's another thing that kind of strikes me here, and this kind of goes to the lack of character depth, is none of the characters necessarily feel unique. The good characters all could be kind of the good characters. You could just substitute out one. You know, a Beast Rabban chapter could be a Baron Harkonnen chapter, and you wouldn't really notice because they both kind of act the same. And that's such a missed opportunity. One of the things that happens, Beast Rabban basically gets, like, captured by the Bene Gesserit. He fucks up. Of course, he doesn't anticipate that. They're literally psychic wizards. They're all Professor Xavier from X Men. His bad that he didn't know they had those abilities. But as punishment for that, he gets banished to Lankaveil for two years while he's on Lankevel. We get the origin of how he earns the title Beast. Beast Rabban. Okay, now in another world, and I want to give you full credit for this bullet point because it is so spot on. The fact is, we could have had a really fascinating character of Rabban, who is simplified to Beast by other people, when in fact, he is a much more nuanced and introspective character. And wouldn't that be fucking fascinating if he had a much more sympathetic side? But then everyone sees him from the outside and goes, oh, this fucking guy. He's a beast. You know, that would have been so cool.
- [21:09]
B
Give him layers, give him depth. That, you know, frankly, did it right.
- [21:13]
A
Frank just died off page.
- [21:14]
B
He was kind of like a C list character and died off page. Frank didn't give Rabban a lot to work with here. And there's actually a very strong opportunity for a writer to come in and give us, like, the Beast Rabban backstory. So that when we go back and reread Dune, we're like, holy shit. Our appreciation for the original Rabban in the story could be enhanced.
- [21:38]
A
Imagine if Rabban had, like, deep set fears that his death would be unremarkable or unwitnessed. And, like, what if that was, like, a thing, you know, like an uncle of his died and no one saw it and, like, gave poetic depth and meaning to the fact that Frank decided to have his death happen off page. And people, it's just an afterthought. Anything we're spitballing, that little thing would be like, I know we're spitballing. And this is already better than what Brian did. Because what Brian did Was he made Beast Rabban a one dimensional. He's a meathead. Violent. Just murder and direct assault is always the solution. He's constantly rushing into fights, he's bloodthirsty and he's constantly trying to prove himself to his uncle the Baron. And it's like, that's it. And that's such a wasted opportunity.
- [22:31]
B
By the way, how does he earn the name Beast? Leo, do you want to fill us in on that? Is it fascinating at least? Did we get a cool origin?
- [22:39]
A
He strangles his dad. I think that's it, yeah.
- [22:43]
B
Oh, right. Because he's villainous and bloodthirsty and angry. An angry meathead all the time.
- [22:49]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He also like kills some fur whales and he's like, I killed some whales. And they were like, oh no, you asshole. It's really subtle stuff. It's great.
- [23:01]
B
Real subtle stuff. So those are two examples of characters that are utterly flattened or utterly wasted in these novels by Brian and Kevin. It's a bummer.
- [23:12]
A
Yeah, it's disappointing. And speaking of subtlety, sin number five, here we go. That these stories have none of it. They don't have any subtlety or nuance.
- [23:26]
B
No.
- [23:27]
A
As we've kind of been talking about, the good guys are the good guys, the bad guys are the bad guys. Unlike Frank's books where there are gray areas where we are able to have a conversation like our recent episode about are the Bene Gesserit the villains of Dune. We were able to have a really compelling two sided conversation about that idea. Totally not possible in this. We couldn't have a sit down conversation and go, is Beast Rabban actually a meathead or is he playing 5D chat? There's just no leg to stand on for the counter argument. There's just no subtlety. But I think we've pulled some examples, haven't we?
- [24:05]
B
Yes. There's a couple of short examples we want to share again to just sort of illustrate this sin. These are just two examples. There's a hundred more we could have picked from this book. First passage that I wanted to share is once again about the Baron. And he of course is struggling with that disease that Moheim implanted him with. Quote, the Baron sighed. It was so difficult to medicate himself when there weren't any good doctors around. How many had he killed now for their incompetence? He'd lost count. End quote.
- [24:42]
A
Yeah.
- [24:44]
B
Do you get it, Leo?
- [24:45]
A
Baron is bad because he's killed a lot of his doctors because they're not good.
- [24:49]
B
Right.
- [24:49]
A
Or he didn't.
- [24:50]
B
Okay. I'm glad you picked up on that nuance. I'm glad you got that.
- [24:54]
A
Yeah. Here's another example. This is Rabban's response to his father scolding him for killing the whales. As I mentioned a couple minutes ago, because this is going to hurt the kind of whale fur ecosystem. Why do you care about these people so much? He looked at the servants behind his parents, the men and women who'd been born on Lankaveil with no noble blood and no prospects. Just villagers. Just workers. They're nothing special. You rule them. If times are hard, they'll put up with it. That's the fact of their lives. End quote. He just explained caste systems to us. It's like, wow, I didn't know that. Some people.
- [25:38]
B
I don't think it's even that deep. I don't think fucking Rabban knows what a caste system is. This passage just told us, like, this guy's bad. Don't forget, he doesn't care about other people. Remember?
- [25:51]
A
Yeah.
- [25:52]
B
And it's just no nuance. Right? None of this exists. And these are examples of the Harkonnens, because we're talking about the House Harkonnen book. But the inverse examples exist as well. Right? Leto just being good all the time and always responding calmly to things. There's actually an example of this later in the book where Leto has this kid with this concubine, Kaylie. It's like a whole thing. And she has been manipulated to turn against him. And she kind of confronts him and she's like, why don't you marry me? And really, like, hurls insults at him. And because he's Duke Leto, he doesn't rise to the bait at all. He just very calmly takes it and tells her that he's hurt by her words and that he wishes she would reconsider.
- [26:43]
A
Yeah. So subtle. So good guy. Answers like a good guy.
- [26:49]
B
Yeah, answers like a good guy. Clearly been to therapy or some shit. Like, doesn't rise to the bait. Are you kidding me? There was a great example to have Leto go off his rocker and show us a darker side of Leto. What happens when he's confronted by somebody he loves and insulted by somebody he loves?
- [27:06]
A
Young guy trying to figure out politics. He's like, I don't fucking know what I'm doing, Kaylee. I'm like, my dad died too early. I'm trying to. Like, I think this is important, but I'm just trying, like, I'm trying to do the right thing. Oh, what A great moment that would be. Instead, he turns to camera and goes, this response has been brought to you by Betterhelp. Betterhelp, find your perfect fucking therapist today. And Kaylee's like, who are you? Where's the camera? What's happening? Happening?
- [27:37]
B
Use my code Atreides for 20%.
- [27:41]
A
Get 20% of your Solaris off when you subscribe using Code Atreides. That's Code Atreides at checkout.
- [27:48]
B
Yeah, yeah. Gosh, it's. It's just no subtlety at all. You. You actually. Oh, gosh, this is great. You have another good example here as well.
- [27:57]
A
This fucking killed me.
- [27:59]
B
I could not believe what I was reading.
- [28:00]
A
Funny. So another example, dear listener. So Conley, right? In Frank's stories, Feyd Rautha declares Conley. It's a ceremonial one v. One ritual way of settling disputes. Right. Okay. Keep that subtlety in mind. We are at Fenring's dinner party. Hasimir Fenring's throwing a dinner party. And Margot Fenring says, hey, Ambassador from House Moritani, and Ambassador from House Ecas. I know you've got a lot of disputes going on. I'm glad you're able to set that. That stuff aside for the purpose of this dinner. And for some reason, they're sitting next to each other. The guy from Watani goes insane. Who's. We're. We're doing our seating charts for our wedding right now. Fucking diabolical.
- [28:50]
B
You gotta put the rivals next to each other.
- [28:51]
A
You need to each other. You have to. So the. The House Ekaz ambassador goes, you fucking Moritani folk poisoned our crops, and now we have food shortages. The Moritani ambassador responds, I declare Conley against you. And then shoots him four times with a gun. Goes Conley, Bitch. Guy hits the ground. Dead meat off the dinner table onto the dinner table. And we get a single panel of just the House more than I guy going, I have committed no crimes, Conley. I have diplomatic immunity. End quote. And I have to wonder if it's that fucking simple in the Dune universe that any small dispute could be settled just by screaming Con Lee. Before shooting someone. Why doesn't it happen all the time? And the answer is, of course, it's not that simple. This is just a guy who wanted to murder a guy and then pretends to use Dune terminology to get away with it, but then is allowed to. Because it really doesn't seem like Brian is thinking too deeply about these things. Very fun. Very silly. I was laughing about that. Also, they reused the panel of him unloading his gun into the guy again later in the book. And I'm like, I'm glad you're reminding us of that. Brilliant moment. So good, so excellent. 10 out of 10 bad writing.
- [30:30]
B
Oh my goodness. Okay, so that again, to illustrate our sin here. That is the level of nuance that we are working with here, folks. Zero. Yeah, subtlety died at the grave of these novels. Good gravy, good gravy. Okay, let's move on to our next sin. Continuing our countdown. This is sin number four. And this one kind of nicely wraps up all of the previous sins for us because all of the previous sins, I think, can be summed up in sin number four. Brian and Kevin Stu novels are just full of bad and boring storytelling. And I think this even extends beyond the like mind numbingly simple plots and characters. Right. Like that stuff is bad. We've been talking about that for the past like 30 minutes now. I think what's almost even more egregious is that the world building is just stale and unimaginative. I can't think of a single thing that Brian or Kevin add to the Dune universe that is even a fraction as surprising as what Frank is cooking up in the original six books. Yeah, it's a lot of borrowed ideas. It's a lot of take the word Conley and do whatever the fuck we want with it. It's a lot of, oh, the Bene Gesserit have like powers and stuff, Right? Cool. That just gives us a blank check to give them whatever dumbass power we need to make the plot move forward.
- [32:10]
A
Right.
- [32:11]
B
None of it is coherent within the universe and none of it truly is magical in the way that like Frank's books, you, you read a new Frank Herbert book. Like you finish Children of Dune, you pick up God Emperor and you're like, what the fuck am I reading? It's just chock full of new world building. And across these like dozen books that Brian and Kevin write in their Dune universe, it's just the same old sci fi shtick that anyone who's picked up a sci fi book in the last 50 years has been reading.
- [32:44]
A
Yeah.
- [32:45]
B
Which is just incredibly disappointing given the rich fabric of the universe that Frank left us with in those six books.
- [32:52]
A
Yeah, totally. It really feels like a return to the pop sci fi, like the very like soap opera, very broad brush. And it's like, yeah, fine, but again, you are adding to this legacy and I just don't know why more care isn't taken to that.
- [33:11]
B
Yeah.
- [33:13]
A
Now a lot of the plots of these books have these kind of critical events and big twists happen simply because they have to happen, because you have to get from page to page. There's just so many deus ex machina moments that are so unjustified, so unearned. Just like. And then this happened. And you go, but why? And the reality is, because it had to. Because then the next chapter is about to happen and you need to set that up. And it really feels like a kid telling you their story. You know, like if you've ever had like a, I don't know, kid of a friend or whatever. And they're going, and then I saw a dog. And then I, like, then there was like a tree. And then there was a car.
- [34:01]
B
Okay, Jimmy.
- [34:02]
A
And the car was blue. The car was blue, sure.
- [34:05]
B
I mean, Jimmy, this is narratively kind of simple, but I'm following.
- [34:09]
A
And then I saw another dog and the dog screamed kindly and then shot the first dog four times. You're like, whoa, Jimmy, bury the lead a bit. What the fuck? That tone was bizarre. And we have a couple of examples. I'm so glad you pulled these examples from House Harkonnen on Lankevel. Abelard Harkonnen is out whale fur hunting. He goes, hey, I'm going to go check on something. Kind of for no super good reason, but I'm going to go check on something. He's out by himself on an iceberg and he discovers, like a metal plate on the iceberg. Like a white plate. Door. Like a door on the iceberg.
- [34:58]
B
Like a hidden door.
- [34:59]
A
Yeah, it's a fake iceberg where Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is stashing his illegal spice. He's hiding spice away. He's been cutting the supply that he's giving to the Emperor while he's in charge of Arrakis. And this is where he's keeping it.
- [35:18]
B
And to be clear, Abelard just stumbles on this. And, like, we're not simplifying. We're not, like, trying to quickly rush through a more complex chapter and summarize it for you. Dear listener, he literally just accidentally stumbles upon the fake iceberg while he's out whale for fishing. There is no reason for him to suspect anything. He just, like, sees it. Consider the odds of that randomly happening. I mean, how many icebergs are out there on the fucking ocean?
- [35:53]
A
So many. It's like the polar region of Lankavelt. Lankavel is an icy planet. Well, at least. Thank goodness, a little heavy handed. Sure. At least. That's the only time that happens in House Harkonnen. Right?
- [36:06]
B
Absolutely not.
- [36:06]
A
Here we go, folks.
- [36:07]
B
Buckle up on Arrakis in a later chapter. Young Liet Kynes, who we. We have also kind of been sort of following throughout this book, is visiting one of the polar regions of Arrakis, where apparently the smuggler bases are, where a lot of smuggler operations take place, according to Brian and Kevin. And while he's there, Liet and his one friend. Literally. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar to you. They literally stumble upon a secret hiding place in a fake iceberg. There's a fake door, There's a hiding place in a fake iceberg. They have no reason whatsoever to just randomly find it. But they do. They just see a thing and they're like, that's funny. Do those look like tracks to you? Where do they go? Oh, my God, a fake door. What's behind it? And what's behind it is Dominic Vernius of ix, who's been exiled from his planet for those aforementioned random ass plot reasons that I mentioned earlier. There's a whole thing going on Ix, that like, doesn't really even matter. This shtick of a fake iceberg door and a character randomly finding it happens twice in the same book.
- [37:22]
A
I mean, it doesn't make sense until you realize that Wayfair had a crazy deal on fake icebergs. Like in the year 10,000 clearance deal, you know, 500. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was like 80% off fake icebergs. So everyone got one. So there's. There's a lot more. Probably fake icebergs to go.
- [37:44]
B
Yeah, it was for their climate crisis event. You know, they had all these icebergs on sale.
- [37:49]
A
I love when Wayfair gets ecological.
- [37:54]
B
Oh, my God, this is painful, folks. The same shtick used twice in the same fucking book. And truly this, if you'll recall, Leo, this same shit happens. It's not iceberg related in Sisterhood. Dune. Sisterhood, but the same thing where a character just stumbles on a major plot point walking randomly, also happens in Sisterhood of Dune. And this is like a. This is a continu. This is a pattern. This is a thing that Brian and Kevin rely on constantly to just have characters stumble on the next plot point so that the next chapter, the next arc can start and take place, or the next point of conflict can happen with no buildup, no logical reasoning of how we got there or why this would happen outside of very simple, like, well, you know, they're there and they saw some tracks, so wouldn't you go investigate and stuff and like, don't think too hard about the odds of actually discovering this. It just happened. And so, like, this is the. This is the level of storytelling that we're working with in these books. It truly starts to read like parody at some point where you're like, this can't be real. But, alas, it is.
- [39:12]
A
Alas, it is. Well, we are going to finish off this list with our top three sins. But before we do, we're going to take a quick break. Dear listener, please take a few breaths, check your nearest iceberg, see if they have drugs inside of them. And we are going to be right back in just a minute.
- [39:36]
B
Welcome back, folks. Let's continue working our way through the seven Deadly Sins of Brian Herbert. We're down to our top three. These sins are on the podium, and they are certainly some of the most egregious in our opinion. So starting with number three, and this, I think, is a critique you and I both have sort of developed as we work our way through Frank Herbert's writing and sort of follow his evolution as a writer in the original six books. Yeah, it's becoming more and more clear to us that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson don't appear to have anything to say in their novels. Frank Herbert had strong opinions about a number of things. Politics, religion, society, history, ecology. And he expressed those opinions in the original six books. When you pick up a Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson book, what are you being told? What part of the human condition is being explored further? It seems like the answer is none. Brian himself acknowledges this about his father's work in an introduction to Dune Messiah. Quote, among my father's most important messages were that governments lie to protect themselves and they make incredibly stupid decisions. End quote. I mean, sure, that's an oversimplification of what Frank was saying in those original books, but, yeah, you got the idea. Good job.
- [41:16]
A
Yeah.
- [41:17]
B
So Brian acknowledges that, like, the original books are about something, that Frank Herbert is expressing his views on the world and on humanity. But Brian fails to do the same with his own stories. It doesn't seem like he has much to say about anything.
- [41:35]
A
I also, I would throw in that, like a warning about that governments lie. Like that is among the messages from Frank's books, among his most important messages. Feels like that is about as subtle as a slap to the face in Frank's books. That is very surface level, I think, as we've continued to discuss this. And this is also why. This is something that I have new thoughts on now that I didn't have three years ago. Where it is clear to me that among Frank's many messages, he's talking about, yes, populism and charismatic leaders. Yes, of course he's talking about ecology and protecting the environment. He was so passionate about that. Stagnation. What a fucking warning about stagnation. Interpersonal personal stagnation, societal stagnation, every type of stagnation. We should strive to be ready to meet the great mysteries of tomorrow. Always ready to learn, grow, evolve.
- [42:37]
B
Right?
- [42:37]
A
Also, the power of the human mind. We see multiple factions explore that core theme of Dune. What can humans accomplish? But then finally, and I think this ultimately becomes one of the most prominent themes of Dune is human connection and love, noble purpose. What is the point of living? Is survival enough? Or should you have a noble purpose in mind? And that interpersonal human connection? The Cottages by Vincent Van Gogh, why is that a centerpiece in one of the later books? If not for the kind of, like, raw presence of living and life? And isn't, I feel like that's way more central than, like, oh, governments lie to you sometimes, but, like, that's fine. And then we turn our attention to Brian's books, and it's like, what personal philosophies is he presenting? What heartfelt summons is he delivering to course correct, to better ourselves, to better the lives of the people around us? And at the best of times, when there is some sort of warning, implicit, it's like a kind of crude imitation of what Frank had already written, right? Like, technology has implicit dangers and power corrupts people and things like that. And in doing research for this episode, I tried Googling, like, hey, broader Internet. What are the kind of central messages for Google? You know, what are Brian's messages? What are his personal philosophies that he's imbuing into these pages? And even Google was like, I don't fucking know, man. Don't ask me. So I don't know that there's a good, satisfying answer to this, like, what are Brian's calls to action? And I think the reality is, if we are struggling this much to get them, after reading now four books by him, I think they're not there. And that's hard because what an opportunity. When we talked about Dune and AI recently, it's like, you have. You have the fucking benefit of being at the head of the Herbert estate in a time where AI development is at its most perilous. What a chance to write a book that really explores that subtle. The cost analysis of, where does technology take us from here? And you can use Dune's universe to kind of explore that. Write a book that takes place 100 years from now, you know, 35,000 years before Dune. Why not? And instead you're spending time on like Terminator wars, you know, again, kicking sci fi back to pop. It's like, it's just so disappointing.
- [45:20]
B
It is, it's incredibly disappointing. And look, these, you know, these house books came out I think around like 2000, 2001, but then there's been numerous books since then. It's not like world events haven't been happening and it's not like there aren't things to talk about, right? Politics, corruption, the rise of nationalism, the rise of rebel forces, the rise of insurgent forces outdoing huge armies, the way that war has been reshaped. There are big ideas in the world, man, that are already seeped deeply into the soil of the universe that Frank Herbert created and planted. You just have to water them and let those ideas grow. And we don't ever, in any of these Brian Herbert books, which, again, just as a Dune fan, is just personally so disappointing. When you come off of reading the six original Frank Herbert books where he very clearly is making comments on the world around him and is inspired by the political events and the fact that he grew up during the Cold War and what that era meant, all of that, like, nuanced commentary on the real world is just absent. Which naturally, like, leads us to thinking that Brian Herbert didn't have anything to say in these books. Yeah, let's move on to sin number two. This one takes the silver medal, honestly, because we're a Dune lore podcast and folks, you all knew this was coming. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Dune novels have such disregard, and I would go so far as to say such disdain for the original lore established in the six Frank Herbert novels. This is probably the thing we've talked most at length about over the course of this podcast, right? Every time we revisit a Brian Herbert story, we harp on the lore stuff, how it just breaks the lore in ways that in some cases, yeah, you can hand wave away and say, you know, prequels are tough to write. This is just a prequel problem. It is what it is. It's not the most damaging thing. Whatever, let him have this one. That's maybe the best case scenario in these books because the worst case scenario is like truly unforgivable lore breaking universe breaking decisions that go so far as to invalidate Frank's own books or the characters or plots in Frank's own books, which is maybe your number One goal, as someone writing a prequel, is to do your best to not invalidate entirely the thing you're writing a prequel to.
- [48:16]
A
Right. Yeah.
- [48:18]
B
Brian and Kevan, time and time again, continue to do this. And, you know, to add to our massive laundry list of lore issues in these books, we have a couple that we pulled from House Harkonnen in particular to share today.
- [48:32]
A
Yeah. Because again, for someone who is very quick to litigate what is and isn't canon, if we treated some of these details from House Harkonnen as canon, it would create plot holes in the six books by Frank Herbert. Plot holes so unbelievably large, you could pilot two or three highliners abreast through them. Hello. And not even fucking check the edges. No navigator, I could do. I could fucking. No prescience. Just get me behind the. Give me the accelerator and the steering wheel, and I'll get through that plot hole. Easy, easy. So here are some examples. First up.
- [49:15]
B
Oh, my God, this one makes my skin crawl.
- [49:18]
A
So first up, there's a Gnoship. So this is thousands of years before the. We watched the ixians, during Leto II's reign, invent Gnoroom technology from scratch. And in fact, the Daris Ballat is like a prototype gnorom. It's like one of the first ever made. And thousands of years before that, a Richesian scientist has somehow fucking knocked it out of the park and done it. Okay, and you're saying that no one in the. Yeah, he was killed. That's the explanation. They killed the one guy who knew how to do it. You're saying no other person in thousands of years made the same discoveries that one guy did. Why no one else could do that. It's so weird. So that already is very frustrating and weird. Like, okay, a no ship thousands of years before they should even begin to exist. This technology should not even be.
- [50:12]
B
Before the technology is even feasible.
- [50:15]
A
Yeah, again, or use a different word that isn't no ship, because then it's super fucking confusing. If you just said a ship with visibility, like scanning blockers. Sure. That would also kind of solve this problem. But the problem is it is referred to multiple times as a no ship. And in this comic. In the House Harkening comic Beast Rabban pilots the no ship to the Bene Gesserit school and the Bene Gesserit, all in unison, turn up and look at it, because they can see it. And they. Hundreds of meters away, mind control beast Rabban again, Professor Xavier in the Cerebral Machine, going like. And they mind control beast Rabban into crashing the ship. I What? I mean, beyond. Okay, there's the no ship issue, but then there's the Bene Gesserit seeing no ships, which is kind of like a key piece of Books five and six. Yeah, there's a whole plot around the first person to be able to detect and see no ships is going to win this galactic chess match, and that's thousands and thousands of years later. And you're saying the Bene Gesserit can see them? What do you mean?
- [51:41]
B
A group of random Bene Gesserit? Not someone super special, whoever is on.
- [51:45]
A
The ground at that moment, just fucking Sarah and Jennifer and just whoever happened to be in the courtyard at that moment. And they can mind control him from a distance. What does juyu mean by that? Why don't they do that more often? Because even.
- [52:06]
B
Why don't they do that against the honored madres in Heretics and Chapterhouse or fucking anyone?
- [52:13]
A
Anyone in which. Like the fish speakers during Leto's reign, You know, there are so many instances, even the fucking first book, Baron Harkonnen's like, we gotta sew our guards ears shut because we have no way to protect against the voice. This was not oral. This was not a thing they said. Or. This was just mind control.
- [52:38]
B
Oh, my God. Right? And look again. You could, like, grasp at straws here and say, well, the original designer of the. No ship killed. Nobody knows how to make one now. The prototype Rabban crashed it, so I guess it's gone. Nobody knows how to make one now. But in this fucking scene, the Bene Gesserit keep the Roship. They keep the wreckage.
- [53:07]
A
Oh, that's not good. I didn't even get to that point. I missed that battle.
- [53:12]
B
Yeah, if you keep reading, like in the later half of the. Like, the Baron is like, you have my nephew. Give him back. How dare you. And they're like, we'll give you your nephew back, but we're keeping the ship.
- [53:25]
A
Fascinating, because they don't even know that that's possible until thousands of years later. Yeah, Right? And the Bene Gesserit famously don't forget fucking anything, so famously. Yeah. That's kind of one of their whole thing.
- [53:41]
B
So, again, like, this is a prime, prime example of making a creative decision in your prequel that utterly invalidates the original stories. Right? Heretics and Chapter House simply can't take place if this is true. If the Bene Gesserit know how to see no ships, it completely invalidates Heretics and Chapter House and the Whole war against the Honored Madre. If they have a prototype, no ship, it invalidates God, Emperor, Heretics and Chapter House. They would have this technology and they would have thousands of years to iterate on it and learn from it, and they don't. Ugh. This one hurt me so much, personally, especially. Again, we're working our way through Heretics and Chapter House on the book clubs, and this just invalidates those stories entirely. And part of me now wonders, did Brian Herbert read Heretics and Chapterhouse?
- [54:50]
A
It's hard to know. It's really hard to know.
- [54:52]
B
It's hard to know. Okay, sticking with the Bene Gesserit, couple more examples we want to rattle off here right before this whole fucking Rabban incident.
- [55:02]
A
Yeah.
- [55:05]
B
The Baron and his crew actually come down to Wallach 9 to, like, bully the Bene Gesserit and whatever, because, remember, he's mad at them for the disease. And they come down to the planet, they come down to the school and they're like, bene Gesserit, where are you? Get out here. We're here to fuck you up.
- [55:26]
A
Yeah.
- [55:26]
B
And the Bene Gesserit who are in the room.
- [55:29]
A
Yeah.
- [55:30]
B
In the school still decide to use mass hypnosis on the Harkonnens who have.
- [55:36]
A
Walked in, by the way. No verbal cue, nothing. Someone goes around the corner. Mass hypnosis activated. Somehow we're not sure how. Somehow it's not explained.
- [55:46]
B
And what does this mass hypnosis do, Leo? It makes the Bene Gesserit who are in the room still in the room.
- [55:52]
A
Yeah.
- [55:52]
B
Invisible to the Baron and his guards and all of the Harkonnens that walked in. It's insane that this ability exists. And again, at this point, we're beating the dead horse. But why the fuck would they never use this again? If you have a capability that is this overpowered as the Bene Gesserit, there are countless situations that a sister could and would have used this ability in Frank's original books that they simply don't. It's mind boggling.
- [56:27]
A
Yeah. I also, I want to get ahead of you might be thinking, dear Listener, if you haven't read this book, that, like, oh, yeah, these are Bene Gesserit who don't make an appearance in the book. And thus they might not know this stuff because the Bene Gesserit's very, like, need to know. So maybe this is like an elite skill. And then we don't really encounter those people. And then thousands of years later is when we sure, Jessica's in the room. Jessica's One of the invisible is one of the invisible. She's a child and she doesn't know how to do it herself, so it's not something that she's doing, but she is invisible and she benefits from invisibility. And I cannot describe to you how often that ability would be so useful. It's so bizarre. Okay, another example. Suk doctors. Suk doctors are described by Piter, by the way. Actually, really positive thing to say about this. I love Piter's design. The, like, round glasses, the wild hair. He's a fun character. Yeah.
- [57:22]
B
The art in the comic.
- [57:23]
A
The art. He's great. I love him. He's weird. I like him. I like him a lot. I like him. So, good thing about this, but anyway, Piter describes sook doctors as, quote, hard to come by, end quote. I didn't know that that was not true, but it feels not true. Especially for the great houses, among which. Is House Harkonnen. A great house.
- [57:42]
B
Correct.
- [57:43]
A
So they might be hard to come by. They for sure have one, at least. Luckily, Piter recalls that House Richees has a SUC doctor, so we're going to get him because they're not sure what's happening with Baron they haven't yet identified. It's an STI that Moheim gave him. Hard cut to a cyborg biological integration Facility.
- [58:03]
B
Oh, my God.
- [58:04]
A
Where? Hey, listener. Name a souk doctor. You got it right. It's Dr. Yuey. Dr. Yui's there and his boss goes, hey, Yui, you're reassigned. You're gonna help House Harkonnen. He goes, quote, is he contributing funds to my cyborg research?
- [58:27]
B
What are you talking about?
- [58:30]
A
Which leaves us with a million and a half questions. What? What? Yui. Dr. Yui. Wellington Huey was doing cyborg research, huh? And two pages later, he's given Baron his diagnosis. He has an incurable degenerative sti. And ads. Ads, quote, records show. That kills me that the. Me, too. That the Bene Gesserit are known to use such a virus. End quote. My guy. What? What records are you talking about?
- [59:08]
B
What records?
- [59:10]
A
This happens all the time in Brian books.
- [59:12]
B
All the time. This is another crutch that you picked up on that Brian and Kevin constantly.
- [59:18]
A
Use in their books in, like, Sisterhood of Dune all the time. It's like I found a photo in an archive of what that person looked like and where they currently live, and that's how I knew to find them. What do you mean, there are no computers? What are you talking about?
- [59:33]
B
What records?
- [59:35]
A
It's Chaos again. Because Baron's going, well, I don't know who to direct my anger toward. And Yui goes, oh, well, there are records. It's the Benny Jose, it's Moheim. And that's just what has to happen.
- [59:49]
B
And I mean, this is just like, at this point, neither here nor there. We've made our point. But what Bene Gesserit records are you fucking talking about? Can you FOIA request the Bene Gesserit and just get them to give you records? Why would their secret abilities be out there in this way? It just makes no fucking sense. Especially because this ability is then never again used in any instance, ever, in the entire history of the Dune universe. So this is literally just a one off plot device that for some reason, Brian and Kevin decided they needed to explain why the Baron is big. Okay, yeah, one more example. We kind of touched on this one earlier. But there's this whole fucking plot in this book where Leto Atreides has a child named Victor Atreides with one of his childhood friends who becomes his concubine. She's named Kaylie. She's from ix. And all of this on the timeline happens before Jessica. All of this happens before Jessica comes into his life and Kaylie is slowly turned against Leto Atreides by a Harkonnen spy. Piter's like, hey, I heard Leto as a kid. He's gonna need a nanny. What if we supply one of our secret agents as a nanny? And the Baron's like, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, make that happen. And so Kaylie is, like, slowly, you know, quote, unquote poisoned. The poisoning itself, to be clear to your Listener, is like, the dumbest shit ever. Whatever. There's no logical way. There's no logical reason Kaylie turns this aggressively against Leto, but she does because the plot needs it to happen and because we need her to, like, go away so that Jessica can then come into the picture. And that's frankly what happens, basically, right? Like, she turns against Leto so much that she actually attempts to take his life and ends up actually killing their son Victor. And when she learns of this, she's so heartbroken and betrayed that she kills the Harkonnen spy and then kills herself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because again, we got to just erase her from the picture to reset back to the status quo of what Frank wrote, because, again, we've now written ourselves into a fucking corner and we gotta get out of it in the most simplistic way possible.
- [62:16]
A
Now, all of that is pretty hard to swallow because this is seriously traumatic. Shit. But then this is where things get really crazy. And this is also where I'm like, maybe Brian has this desire to own more properly his father's work than his father ever did. Because this is. So. Jessica has entered the picture at this point as just an assigned Bene Gesserit concubine. But she's, like, pretty frequently, like, oh, he won't even give me the light of day. He won't even look at me. But Jessica kind of falls in love with Leto and then decides, when she finally is pregnant, to have a boy for Leto. Now, that is a very well explored concept in Frank's original six books. It is something she made because of love, because of who Leto is to her. It's this kind of pure decision. And ultimately, that is one of the most key moments for Jessica as a character yet here in House Corrino, Brian has decided that it is, in fact, the death of Victor that motivated Jessica. Here is the quote. Jessica thought of Leto and of his anguish following the death of Victor, caused by the treachery of his concubine Kaylee. I did it for him, exclamation point, end quote. Also, great writing. Again, just sentence after sentence of exposition, of reminders, of reminders. It's insane.
- [63:48]
B
I did it for him.
- [63:51]
A
Like, whatever subtle bullshit Frank had in mind. Fuck that. It's because Leto's first son that he loved was killed in an act of treachery by the woman he loved who then killed herself. And all of that motivated Jessica to do this thing as a favor to him. It's like, none. Oh, it's unwriting stuff that Frank already basically explored.
- [64:16]
B
Yeah. At this point, it's, like, deliberate, right? It's not even accidentally like, whoops, I wrote myself into a shitty plot hole and I need to work my way out of it. This is a deliberate choice to change something that is well established in the six original books.
- [64:33]
A
It's rough. I mean, again, do we need this kind of convoluted story, or couldn't it just be that? Again, love is kind of a central theme to Dune and can be its own motivating factor. Well, no, it can't be something so simple. It has to be murder, suicide, and an attempted assassination plot that failed and put him in the infirmary for many months. And it's all so fucking heavy handed and annoying anyway.
- [64:59]
B
It's awful. Okay, that's some lore stuff. Again, we've harped on this many times on this podcast as a Dune lore podcast. This is one of the biggest sins that Brian, Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson commit in their novels? The list is frankly infinite. These are just, what, three or four examples that we pulled from one book. You could do this with every book they've ever written, and there would be just countless examples of this. Let's wrap up with our number one most egregious sin, in our opinion, that Brian and Kevin have committed when it comes to Dune. Ultimately, I think everything we've talked about, the six sins that we've talked about so far in today's conversation, Leo, I think it can all just kind of be summed up as why. And that's sin number one. Why do any of these stories need to be told? Did we need to get some convoluted gurney backstory, which we didn't even talk about today, which is a huge part of this book? Did we need to learn so much about Duncan's Ginaz training? None of it. None of these things that we're adding and filling in and coloring in into this universe give any new meaning or any new subtlety to the characters and the worlds and the original stories that Frank wrote about. And the question that you and I have kind of been asking ever since we started talking about Brian Herbert's stories on this show is, are there not other stories to tell in this universe? This is a massive universe that Frank created. Why, then, are Brian and Kevin constantly returning to and kind of circling the drain of the same cast of characters, the same great houses, the same organizations, the Guild, the Tleilaxu, the Ixians? We're constantly just revisiting these things, and we're fucking. Every book that they write fucks more and more with the timeline and the character development and the lore as we've laid out in these six previous sins. And that just leaves me wondering, like, there are so many good stories to tell in this universe. Why not tell one of those?
- [67:19]
A
Yeah. Or, yeah, sure, you're going to talk about the familiar characters, but, like, what can you do to heighten and improve what Frank already has set? And that's. That's a tall order. But one of the things you can do is you can look at characters who don't really get a lot of time in the sun, characters who are mentioned and named, perhaps, but don't have a lot of backstory to them, and then give some of that backstory in a way that heightens and develops the themes of the original books. You can still play with the sandbox that Frank established, but you can also do it in the hopes of deepening and improving this already Dense and deep world. It's just. It is such a. You know, ironically, this is how you write in a stagnant manner. You are keeping it at the quality of Dune or worse. And that's it. You're never making anything better. It's just. Yeah, it's all. It's really a missed opportunity on a cosmic scenario.
- [68:18]
B
It's a huge missed opportunity. I think ultimately to wrap up, I actually want to change an opinion that I've been very vocal about on this podcast for years now. I really thought about this.
- [68:34]
A
Do you love Brian Herbert's writing?
- [68:36]
B
I am all in on Brian Herbert.
- [68:41]
A
Breaking news.
- [68:41]
B
Breaking news.
- [68:42]
A
Show me your Brian Herbert tattoo right now.
- [68:46]
B
I can't. It's in a very salacious place.
- [68:49]
A
Oh, my God.
- [68:50]
B
I know. So I wanted to wrap up on just kind of sharing where I'm currently at when it comes to the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson books. An opinion that I will say is ever evolving and continues to evolve as we dive deeper and deeper into this universe that you and I love so much. I've said in the past that at the end of the day, as a Dune fan, I'm just happy with more Dune. And something we've said in many previous episodes is, you know what? More Dune is best Dune at the end of the day, that's fine. Just put more Dune out there. Let's get more people introduced to this universe. My feeling now is that Villeneuve knocked it out of the park so well and Dune is back in the consciousness in a way where now I want good Dune, more Dune. If it's bad, Dune is no longer good enough. For me personally, if there are going to be additions to the large fabric of Frank Herbert's legacy and the Dune universe, I want them to be additive, I want them to be poignant, I want them to be good, I want them to be enjoyable. I want them to matter. And so I've had a bit of a change of heart. I don't think more Dune is good Dune anymore.
- [70:15]
A
Is this the moment that the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson written straw is breaking the camel's back. You are now a broken man. Your all consuming love and lust for Dune has been satiated. Derogatory.
- [70:33]
B
Yeah.
- [70:34]
A
Wow.
- [70:35]
B
So I don't know. And again, that's my opinion. As of now, it might change, but that's how I'm feeling.
- [70:43]
A
Yeah, again, we've been very vocal about. It would be great to see some other great authors work in the space. And yeah, I'm all for that, but it's hard when it's just another prequel book that's written by Brian and Frank Kevin. And it just seems to like, again, I don't want to be too cynical and say it's all for just their pockets and just, like, lining their pockets with, like, squeezing as much money as they can out of this force. But, like, it does kind of feel like that at a certain point.
- [71:13]
B
Yeah.
- [71:13]
A
Well, anyway, well, you heard it here first, folks. Abu has been broken by this exposure to another Brian Herbert story. It's finally happened. I personally, I think it was the cyborg biological integration facility.
- [71:33]
B
Dr. Yui loves cyborgs.
- [71:36]
A
I love cyborgs. I'm not going to mention my passion for cyborgs during Dune.
- [71:43]
B
All right, folks, there you go. There's maybe an hour and a half of us venting our feelings and trying to do our best to really break down our thoughts on these Brian Herbert novels and kind of lay them out in a format that hopefully makes sense. But that's it.
- [72:02]
A
That's it.
- [72:02]
B
In our opinion, what we think are seven of the most deadly sins that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson commit in their Dune novels. And a big reason why we're so.
- [72:12]
A
Critical of them indeed. Now, before we let you go, we do want to remind you of some ways to support the show and keep in touch with us. And of course, the two best ways to support what we do here at GOM Jabbar is one, to become a patron. Patreon.com gomjabbar as little as $5 a month, you can get a bunch of cool benefits. We also have a merch store. Gom jabbarshop.com those links are in the show notes. Check them out again. Every little bit of support really makes a difference for us and we really appreciate it.
- [72:42]
B
That's right. And of course, we'd love to hear from you. We have just shared two opinions here, but we'd love to hear your opinion as well. Email us gom jabbar podcast gmail.com Send us your thoughts on Brian and Kevin's books. Send us your questions, send us pictures of your cute pets. Those are always appreciated. Gamjabarpodcastmail.com that's the best place to get in touch with us.
- [73:06]
A
Indeed. Tell us if you see any deals on fake icebergs from Wayfair.com, we're really open. Yeah, you know, recording studios are not cheap. So if we could get like, a fake iceberg or something to make our, like, podcast studio cool, that would be very cold. Cold. It'd be freezing.
- [73:24]
B
Yeah.
- [73:25]
A
Hand warmers. Hand warmers in every pocket. Well friends, there is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the recording. But this podcast is always one step beyond logic. So help spread the word of Muad'dib and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And be sure to check out the other shows on the Lore Party podcast network on loreparty.com youm can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram Loraparty. We're also on YouTube. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, whoever controls the podcast controls the universe. We'll see you on the Golan path. And Doug Limu and I always tell.
- [74:14]
B
You to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music. Limu. Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We see that may have been too much feeling.
- [74:32]
A
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. Affiliates excludes Massachusetts Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.
- [74:51]
B
Oh, come on.
- [74:53]
A
They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of the trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool. Whatever. You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.