[Books] November 2021 Reads

Despite the great progress I made in October and me still being ahead of pace to hit my end-of-year reading goal, I rather fell behind on my reading this November. I didn't quite read the equivalent of one book a day and I can only attribute my delays to things at work and other sources of stress. And in the middle of a pandemic, it's not like we're ever in short supply for things to worry about.

But hey, reading is ultimately an activity meant to help us relax or even escape our troubles for a while. As "competitive" as I can get when it comes to my reading goals, I also don't want to force myself to read just for the sake of " numbers". I love reading for the sake of reading and I know I'll end my reading year pretty well despite all this.

[Spoiler Notes] Dune (2020) - First Trailer

I love Dune. 

From first playing Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, which pretty much kicked off the real-time strategy genre with a bang to eventually reading all of Frank Herbert's books and actually enjoying the 1984 David Lynch movie adaptation, this franchise has been such a big part of my life. 

I've tried to keep some degree of emotional distance from the movie because (1) I really want it to turn out well but (2) I'm also afraid that it won't and so (3) I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much in the interim. And it's difficult to get a truly good sense for a movie based on pre-release movie stills and teaser trailers. In the end, we're going to have to watch the actual movie to determine if it's worth its weight in water.

Tobie and I did a live reaction video when the first full trailer for the new movie came out as a Baduy Pride vlog and a lot of my raw thoughts are there. But I figured it might be fun (and helpful to my sanity) to create a spoiler notes post about it. I'm going to rattle off what I know from the trailer and what I'm feeling so expect book spoilers and book-related speculations and you know the whole drill.

[Movies] Dune (1984)

One random day in my younger years, the family was watching, of all movies, Tremors (on Laserdisc no less!) when a relative of mine mentioned that if the giant worms in that movie seemed scary, then I should out the giant sandworms in Dune. And by this point, I was already playing Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty on the PC, so the thought that there was actually a Dune movie seemed phenomenal to me.

But it wasn't until a few years later that I finally got the chance to watch this David Lynch creation, which was probably a good thing since by then I had also read at least the first three books.

Despite my love for Frank Herbert and the Dune franchise as a whole as early as that time, the movie was a bit of a struggle to get through. And looking at the general consensus on the web whether we're talking about reviews by critics or just random internet users, it's clear that most folks didn't exactly like the movie.

And yet the movie remains highly iconic in terms of its look and feel and one cannot argue against the influence it has had on many other Dune-related incarnations such as some of the Dune-themed video games. Plus we'll never see Sting in quite the same way ever again.

[Books] Chapterhouse: Dune

All good things must come to an end and this always rings most true to me whenever a great author passes. For years they invest so much of their time into creating the most amazing stories, books that bring us to the farthest reaches of the imagination. It hurts even more when the author is the type who writes novels in trilogies or expanded series. Even if they claim their stories are over, their deaths always make it seem like the story has now been cut short and there's no further opportunity to return to those worlds. Sometimes other authors try to revisit these worlds and reinterpret the old stories but the results are never quite as good as the original.

The 6 books that make up the Dune Chronicles are pretty much the most important books in my life. A lot of my beliefs and principles were shaped while reading these books. This is the last Dune book that Frank Herbert ever wrote and it ends on an odd note. While it's still an ending that is relatively decent, but at the same time you can definitely feel the chasm that stands between you as a reader and the rest of the Dune tale that Herbert intended to write about had he lived longer.

While it's not necessarily the greatest book in the series, it's definitely one of the more shocking and startling.

[Books] Heretics of Dune

It's ironic when longtime readers of a particular series of books start to get bored when things are repetitive and thus they demand that the author change things and bring the series into a new direction. The irony lies in when the series does finally take that fateful twist, those same fans end up complaining that too much has changed and the series is no longer quite what it used to be.

For many Dune fans, the shift in the on-going Dune Chronicles that Frank Herbert brought about in this fifth book of the series was very hard to stomach. It was the kind of change that you either loved or hated and not much else in-between. Personally, I really liked where the story went in the next two books especially when it came down to the characters introduced here.

Yeah, Frank Herbert was always amazingly good with creating very strong and inspiring characters.

[Books] God Emperor of Dune

In my continuing series of reviews of my moved favorite series of all time, we're at the halfway mark when things get a little weird and some fans found themselves to continue easily if at all. There are many different opinions of the last three Dune books written by Frank Herbert himself with a larger part of the differences in opinion centering around this one book.

The first three books remained pretty much centered around the core family unit of Paul Muab'Dib. Children of Dune pretty much settled that and marked a shift in the story to the new generation of Atreides.

What a lot of people weren't expecting was that this next generation would last for thousands of years and we'd find ourselves in the far, far future with a radically different Atreides bloodline to follow around.

[Books] Children of Dune

Each book in the Dune series could have been many books given their length. Heck, the main book really was supposed to be several books but they opted to put them together as one. It's not just about length either - it's also about the complexity of the story lines and how much gets resolved within each title.

So it becomes even harder to try and compartmentalize the books into segments that people are most used to like duologies or trilogies or whatever. There's just so much ground that gets covered within Frank Herbert's pages that quite literally entire generations of time pass. But still, the forms must be obeyed.

Traditionally this title is known as the climax of the "original" trilogy and it does present an interesting "end" to things. And yet it's also a very grand beginning.

[Books] Dune Messiah

I can't imagine what it must be like once you've written your first ever best-selling novel. I mean let's face it - years of writing in obscurity and then suddenly BOOM, you're all famous and everyone knows who you are. Everyone reads your book and then comes the expectation of the future - what do you do next? How you do top your previous masterpiece?

Or should you even try? Should you claim to be loyal to the core story that you've written and just focus on that? Should you try to not care about all the fan mail that you get now and just hope that things will revert back to normal and you can just keep writing the stories you want to write and not the stories that the publishers and the fans are now clamoring for you to write?

This is why sequels are always very interesting to me. It's the test of the resolve of the writer whether to stick to what he was doing in the beginning before the fame hit and all that.

[Books] Dune

I was trying to figure out a comic book or book to review today when I realized that there are a large number of books that I had read before I started writing reviews on the Geeky Guide that definitely deserve reviewing.

That oddly pressures me to want to re-read a lot of books just to be sure about my ratings, but then I shouldn't really obsess about it too much, now should I? So to be more confident, I'm first revisiting my "classics" - those books that mean so much to me that no matter how many times I re-read them, they manage to provide new insights on the story and perhaps the world in general.

Thus today's title of choice - my favorite book of all time and my favorite science fiction series of all time. You know it's worth it.

[Birthdays] Happy Birthday Frank Herbert!

Image via Wikipedia

October 8 is many things, but for fans of The Dune Saga, today happens to be the birthday of the creator of this rich and compelling universe, Frank Herbert. He died back in 1986, which many felt was too soon given he left all of us fans on what was essentially a cliffhanger with the end of Chapterhouse: Dune. Still, it was a pretty good ride and the 6 core Dune books remain an amazing gift to he world of science fiction.

The Dune books changed my life and really influenced many different aspects of my personality. My writing style was somewhat influenced by him and my taste in science fiction was also defined by his world-building books. It's a shame he left us so soon.

Happy Birthday, Frank Herbert! You are certainly missed.

[Writing] Authors Serving Different Purposes

Image by Kenn Wilson via FlickrAs of late, I'm finally reading my long ago purchased copy of Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, an anthology of various short stories he's written. Like any other frustrated writer, reading really good stories or novels from authors like Gaiman are certain to trigger a wide variety of possible reactions and thoughts. As I pondered over my own sentiments based on this particular Gaiman creation, the idea for this entry really came to be.

As much as I love and respect a select number of authors, I appreciate them for very different reasons and they make me think or do different things as well. Yes, I know there's nothing special about this and it's a near certainty given the diverse world of writing and who unique we all are as individuals, but still I thought it would be an interesting exercise to think about the authors I like and try to better understand what each one brings to my virtual writing table.

Let's start with the author that triggered this entire line of thought - Neil Gaiman.This master of the fantastic and mystical is one of those rare authors that really strike me in a significant way. Sure, like many other I recognize and respect his talent as a writer and I enjoy reading his various works, but that's not it. For me in particular, Neil Gaiman is the author that inspires me to write. I can constantly battle with the challenge of writer's block on my own as long as I want to but there are few writers that make me want to return to the desk and try again. Gaiman is that kind of an author for me - he just does something for me that makes me want to try writing again and again and again even though I often run out of steam and hit road blocks as I try to develop stories to their logical end.

In contrast, the man I tout as my more favorite author of all - Frank Herbert - does not inspire the same creative drive in me. Instead Herbert is the man I return to in order to find new insights or wisdom to some extent. I've read all of the core Dune Chronicles books and I've re-read all of them countless times already. With every reading I uncover some new gem or marvel, something else that reminds me of just how complex the world out there is and how closely we skirt danger just by being human in a world of average people. I don't necessarily go running back to write down my thoughts after an intimate encounter with Herbert;s stories, but the intellectual exercise is certainly refreshing in its own way and certainly rewarding one way or another.

Another author I go out of my way to follow is the rather enigmatic Haruki Murakami. I couldn't possibly expect to write stories of the same caliber as he does nor could I claim to fully understand everything he writes about. Oh no, Murakami certainly has a way of testing the very limits of your imagination at times and then effortlessly breaks those definitions apart and forces you to re-think your perspective of the fantastic. Murakami is the author I return to when I want to feel a sense of wonder with the world and to better appreciate the possibility of things beyond our mortal ken. His stories make even the most mundane events become extraordinarily strange given his penchant for blurring the lines between cold reality and surreal fantasy.

Then there's Terry Pratchett who I dare not try to emulate in terms of writing style and who clearly does not inspire one into deep philosophical thinking. Instead I turn to him for humor of a higher order - not your common slapstick or tired cliches but more along the lines of witty and intelligent humor, pointed barbs formed by word craft that really provide an interesting perspective to things and never fail to make me smile. His Discworld novels retain a very special place in my heart (and in my shelving arrangement) given they're the kind of books a pseudo-intellectual geek like myself can always return to when the "real world" gets too overwhelming.

That's just a sampling of how I view the authors I tag as my "favorites" or ones that I like / follow, and you very well know there's a lot more to be said about any one of those authors. I might even take the time to expand this into a full sries of entries with more details and actual citations from their works in order to explain my thinking, who knows right? But of course, these are just my authors of interest.

How about you geeky reader? What authors do you follow? Do you know why you do? Do they inspire you into action or just into deep thought? Do they make you want to follow in their footsteps as writers or do they simply give you something to do when the power's out? Have you ever really taken a long, deep, hard look at the kinds of stories or books that you read and tried to figure out why?

Perhaps it's time you did. There's certainly value in the suggestion.

[World Affairs] The Power of Bhutto as a Symbol

Symbolic Disappointment by funkfaerie.

Perhaps it's because I'm such a big Dune fan that I learned to appreciate some of the finer nuances of politics and manipulating large populations through symbols. You have to admit, Herbert's universe has always been amazingly diverse and complicated with different factions running their own agendas.

I couldn't help but apply this same line of though to the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakisan and democratic advocate. Perhaps it's also because I'm currently reading the last of the three Legends of Dune books, which cover the events of the Butlerian Jihad against the thinking machines. In this particular conflict, there were a lot of symbolic acts and martyrs created just to support the jihad.

It certainly makes you think.

No matter how you look at it, the death of Benazir Bhutto can serve any number of purposes. She's just too high profile a target not to have some impact on the way things flow in any number of ways. Of course the country is now rampant with conspiracy theories with many of them holding some water in terms of their merit or possibility of being true.

Chief suspect these days based on the initial pronouncements of the Pakistan government and supported by some US Intelligence agencies is that this was a terrorist strike from groups like Al-Qaeda or the remnants of the Taliban. Symbolically, Bhuto represents the main thrust of the democratic efforts in Pakistan in the eyes of many of its citizens. It doesn't matter how little she achieved in the past during the two instances where she was Prime Minister of the country but more that she is one of the most visible driving forces in the opposition pushing for a return to democracy. They've publicly claimed credit for the killing across the web and in other venues, but then one can't blame them for taking credit at any time for something this significant.

However, one has to consider that this isn't Al-Qaeda's style when it comes to their own symbolic acts of terrorism. They're more known to strike large crowds and groups, trying to affect as many people as possible. They're not commonly known to practice assassinations in this manner. This is not to discredit Bhutto as a target of Islamic terrorists, just pointing out that this would be a new direction them.

We could go the route of Bhutto's own speculations before her death that the chief suspect would remain to be President Musharraf, current ruler of Pakistan who relies on the military to keep safe his power base. It wouldn't be totally impossible for him to be considered the guilty party given it has remained largely uncertain if the January 8 parliamentary elections will even push through. He had imposed military rule last month in order to re-establish order (and get rid of some pesky lawyers and supreme court justices as well) and the current state of unrest would be another excuse to do this.

While international pressure remains for him to pursue democratic efforts, especially from their chief War on Terror ally, the United States. Still, one cannot deny that the current environment hardly fosters the immediate continuation of the democratic process and any results from a rushed election would definitely be called into question.

However such an overt action would only hurt him and possibly trigger a civil war if the people believe he is the guilty of killing Bhutto and thus removing him from power. That might be what the perpetrators want - a way to remove Musharraf from power, even at the cost of Bhutto's life. Such is the power of symbols in human society and I wouldn't put it past any Machiavellian-inspired patriot to force Bhutto into becoming a martyr. This could also be part of a general destabilization plot by the Islamic terrorist groups who want to stop the democratic process and maintain civil unrest in the country, thus further pushing Musharraf to rely on a strong police and military action to keep the peace.

In the end, we can't help but look back at Bhutto herself, an amazing and brave woman who returned to her country knowing full well the power her death held as a symbol. She was a willing martyr in many ways given she knew she was bound to be the target of many enemies and still she returned to face them all, just in the name of democracy. While I doubt this is the path to democracy she envisioned, I can't help but feel that ultimately, her death may serve to bring democracy back to Pakistan far better than any of her efforts in life. Such is the irony of sweeping philosophical and political change, at times.

I feel bad for her 19 year old son Bilawal Bhutto, who is being eyed as a potential successor to her previous mantle as party leader for life for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). While he is terribly inexperienced as a politician, this action as well serves more as a symbol of the continuation of her legacy. He's no longer an individual faced with a difficult choice - he too has become a symbol in his own right, a representative of the family name and a reminder of her legacy.

[Books] Dune: The Machine Crusade (Legends of Dune - Book 2)

The Machine Crusade is the second book in Brian Herbert's and Kevin J. Anderson's second series of Dune prequel novels called the Legends of Dune, which aim to chronicle the events of the Butlerian Jihad and explain the origins of many of the key factions in the later books such as the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood and the Fremen.

This second book was somewhat better than the first, perhaps because the characters have already been established so more of the time could be devoted to plot development and fairly interesting twists. I certainly liked it better than the first book.

The novel takes place a few decades after the first novel with the Butlerian Jihad, the great war against the thinking machines, pretty much in full swing. Little advances have been made on either side but already many lives have been lost in the name of freedom. Norma Cenva is still working on developing the equations that will lead to interstellar travel by folding space and of course the Vorian Atreides and Xavier Harkonnen continue to fight together in the war.

Admittedly, the geek in me found the Norma Cenva storyline to be one of the most interesting, if only to see how she came about creating the technology that would firmly establish the Spacing Guild, which ultimately became such an integral part of the Dune Universe later on. She's a fascinating character, although at times horribly one-dimensional.

This time around Brian and Kevin appear to be getting more comfortable with their writing and the chapters seem a lot more fleshed out as compared to the last book, although in general I still find their chapters a tad short, as if they believe that they constantly need to change the scenery in order to stimulate interest.

At times some of the book's "revelations" feel a tad corny given they seem to be playing up to the fans without really understanding the implications of their actions in the greater scheme of the Dune Universe. It's as if they just want to provide an answer to most of the classic fan questions and do so in a manner which is sometimes haphazard and clumsy.

Still, the book is a decent read and certainly helpful in providing some sort of idea of what happened so many years before. The main thing which keeps readers like me following the series is the hope of catching even a glimpse of Frank Herbert's original ideas for this period of time somehow hidden amidst the plot twists and threads presented by Brian and Kevin. It's like how the spirit of the story many be accurate based on Herbert's original vision but of course the actual implementation leaves something to be desired.

[Books] The Butlerian Jihad (Legends of Dune - Book 1)

The Butlerian Jihad is the first of a trilogy of prequel novels written by Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's son, and Kevin J. Anderson of Star Wars novels fame set far in the past of the Dune Universe. In the Legends of Dune trilogy, the pair decided to try their hand at fleshing out the backstory of the Dune Universe in order to explain how things came to be as they were by the time of the core 6 books of the Dune Chronicles written by Frank Herbert himself.

I'm no big fan of the extended Dune universe that Brian and Kevin have been establishing beyond Frank Herbert's death, but in the interests of perhaps catching even a glimmer of the original notes and plans for such "historical" accounts, I picked the books up. Besides, it was important in order to understand the last two books in the overall series that Brian and Kevin have been releasing, which clearly have very strong ties to this prequel.

The Butlerian Jihad takes place more than 10,000 years before the events documented in the first novel, Dune and thus it's a tad easier to judge Brian and Kevin's writing apart from the main universe since most of the recognizeable elements are gone. It feels almost like an entirely different line of books since this is the time before such core elements like the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood and the Spacing Guild and even before the Fremen.

Despite this somewhat greater freedom as compared to working well within Frank's established universe, the book still felt odd to me, perhaps a bit too far off or too foreign as compared to the rest of the series. You don't feel quite the same level on intelligence and careful thought put into the crafting of the story as you felt with Frank Herbert's original books, which at time felt loaded with philosophical and perhaps even theological arguments and complications. This book, like the others written by Brian and Kevin, still felt overly simplistic at points with their short chapters and somewhat stereotypical typecasting and caricaturist characterization.

Still, the book addresses a void in the universe and history of Dune - how the machine war came to be and why did the Known Universe seem almost feudal and primitive despite being so far in the future. It presents us with the war against Omnius, ruler of the Synchronized Worlds and his machine empire. It speaks of the precursors to the tripod of power that we came to appreciate and respect in the latter books and of course before the Atreides-Harkonnen blood feud.

If you're interested in learning more about what could have been the worlds of Dune's past, then feel free to pick up this book. Don't expect it to beat any of the core 6 books of the Chronicles anytime soon, but still it's something to appreciate and enjoy for what it is, with a fair amount of salt on-hand, I suppose.

[Books] Hunters of Dune

The death of Frank Herbert in 1986 also marked a premature end to the epic Dune universe with the sixth book in the series, Chapterhouse: Dune.

In recent years, his son Brian Herbert along with Kevin J. Anderson have teamed up to flesh out the rest of the Dune universe based on Frank Herbert's old notes. This resulted in two prequel trilogies dealing with the time leading up to the core six books of the Dune Chronicles, which have been greeted with mixed opinions. Personally I don't think the books really helped the universe all that much.

In the course of their research they came across a safety deposit box with a draft and accompanying notes for Dune 7, which has become the basis for this book Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune.

For the most part, Hunters remains to be an interesting read, although not a terribly gripping or compelling one. While I have to admit that Brian and Kevin have gotten more of a feel for the series after writing 7 other books and are closer in terms of Frank Herbert's original tone and writing style, it still feels fairly distinct from the rest of the series. On another point, the chapters seem strangely short, as if the two can't seem to manage sticking to a single line of development for two long and thus forcing the reader to constantly switch between plot lines whether they be about the New Sisterhood formed by the merging of the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres, the refugees aboard the Ithaca including Duncan Idaho and Sheeana or the pseudo villains of the series whether they are the old couple behind the tachyon net or the Face Dancers.

You almost get this feeling that the two writers divided the book between them and thus depending on the plot thread, you get a different writing style and feel for things. I feel that the New Sisterhood storyline was fairly in-step with how they were originally meant to progress while the Ithaca storyline seems a bit forced and sloppy, as if the writer(s) wasn't quite sure where to go. Certainly the notes only go so far and a lot of the story resulted in guesswork and speculation, some of it being somewhat wild and not what everyone was expecting out of the unverse. It's really hard to say if this impression is valid or not.

With so many plot lines to maintain, I felt that the writers weren't able to keep tabs on character development in the same way Frank Herbert had in the original books. Despite how complicated the story became, he never lost sight of how things should go and every character fulfilled their role completely. In this book I felt that several characters were introduced then largely discarded most of the time, chief among them the Tleilaxu Master Scytale, who served as little more than window dressing most of the time.

I'm not sure if I appreciated the ending - it's not that it's bad it's just that in these days it seems overdone and given the two trilogies they had worked on, the ending in this one seemed like a natural conclusion. Just think about what they decided to devote energies to first before getting to Dune 7 and you'll understand what I mean.

I'm bound to pick up Sandworms despite this book getting barely passing marks in my opinion. I'm too much of a Dune fan and just the thought that even a glimmer of all this remains directly inspired by Frank Herbert's original vision for the series has me wanting to see if I can figure out how much came from how and how much was added in by his son and Kevin J. Anderson.

[Metro] New Worlds: Transformed - Day 6

This is a Tri-Blog entry that will appear on all three of my blogs The Geeky Guide to Nearly Everything, Beyond Dinobot Island and Moonbase 8.

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These pictures are also available on Multiply.

I would have posted this sooner had I not been without sleep for more than 24 hours, haha. Darn, there goes my perfect posting record for LJ, hehe.

I finally got the chance to attend the New Worlds: Transformed event over at the Power Plant Mall at Rockwell, Makati yesterday and it was a blast! It was my first time to attend a seriously large science fiction / fantasy event and the geeky fanboy in me clearly jumped for joy upon entering the exhibit area.

Saturday was a great day to go since everyone was really getting into the spirit of things by coming in costume. You won't believe the number of times friends were asking me why I wasn't in costume only to realize a few moments afterward that I didn't have any...at least not yet. =P

My thanks to everyone for being so nice and putting their best foot forward for the event. It kinda blows my mind to think that this isn't even the full, official convention the group is supposed to have yearly! I can't wait!

Thus this ultimately begs the question...any Dune fans out there? =D