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Josh
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Jan 10, 2016 02:28PM
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No I have never read the book or started it.. I'm still debating to read it or not to read it..
I'm listening to the audiobook of "Dune" from Audible. I got 25 minutes into chapter two today (I don't know if the audiobook chapters are the same as the book chapters or not). Paul just had an intense sparring match with Gurney?, just before Paul and his family are supposed to go to the planet Arrakis. So far, the story is interesting enough to keep me listening, but I am finding it a little odd overall. Right now, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's because I'm just not used to reading sci-fi.
The parts of the story I like best are the parts where Paul and/or his mother are present. Those parts seem to be the easiest for me to follow.
In some of the other parts, however, I'm not sure I even understand what was being talked about, but I don't know if I should blame the manner in which the story was written, or my own attention span while listening to audiobooks. For example, there was one part in chapter one where the "fat man"...Baron Harkonnen?...seemed to keep talking FOR-EV-ER, and by the time he was finished, I really wasn't sure I had understood much of what he had been saying. I just generally got the impression that he's probably the villain of the story and something about a "spice" called melange.
Then there are these little interludes by "Princess" somebody, which are short enough that I know I'm paying attention to them, but I have no idea what the woman is saying, why she's saying it, or what the relevance of these interludes are to the story.
I think I'm just going to have to supplement my listening with information from "SparkNotes" and see if that helps.
P.S. Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks of "Dale 'The Whale' Biederbeck", one of the villains from the TV show "Monk" when I hear the description of Baron Harkonnen. It sounds just like him and I'm going to have trouble not picturing him as the same person now. :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
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The Audiobook is broken up in a very unusual manner. Its "chapters" are not the same as the chapters in the book. The interludes by Princess Irulan indicate the start of a new book chapter, if that helps for parsing things out. Irulan is the daughter of the Emperor Shaddam IV, and her role in this whole saga doesn't really come into play until the very end of the book. But when it does, you'll start to understand why she's written all of these books about Muad'Dib. I would even argue that Irulan is something of a tragic character in this, but that doesn't really come into play until the later books. The best context for the interludes is that they all come from books that Irulan wrote after the events in this story, so they're looking back on everything with a bit of historical context.
As for the Harkonnens, I'll try to outline their setup as best I can. The scene with the Baron is there primarily to outline his plan for destroying House Atreides. Now the plan is pretty complex, so I'll do my best to outline it.
The galaxy is set up in a sort of interstellar feudal system, and the Houses Harkonnen and Atreides are two of the major Houses in them. They have a feud that goes back centuries, and for the purposes of this story, you just need to know that the feud exists and is deeply rooted.
House Harkonnen has been granted the governorship of Arakkis for the last 80 years, which puts them in control of the mining of spice. Arakkis is the only planet where spice can be found, and it's the most important commodity in the galaxy. So that gives the Harkonnens a lot of power and influence. But they don't have a lot of respect. House Atreides, on the other hand, commands a great deal of respect. So much so, that the Emperor feels threatened by them. So the Emperor and Baron Harkonnen have devised a plan to get rid of House Atreides while keeping their hands clean of any wrongdoing. This involves exploiting the feud between the Harkonnen and the Atreides. Since the Emperor controls mining contracts, he's commanded Duke Leto Atreides to take over all mining operations on Arakkis, removing the Harkonnens. This will give Duke Leto a huge amount of power and influence that he won't be able to refuse. Once he's established himself as the new controlling power on Arakkis, Baron Harkonnen, supported clandestinely by the Emperor's powerful Sardaukar military, will retake Arakkis by force, destroying House Atreides. That will give the Harkonnens even more power and influence, end the feud in their favor, and remove the threat that the Emperor perceives. Also, with the Emperor supporting this takeover, the Baron Harkonnen will now be in debt to the Emperor, assuring his loyalty. It's a major power play.
But, since there is a centuries-old feud at the heart of this, the Baron Harkonnen wants to give it the poetic and theatrical ending it deserves. He wants Duke Leto to know who beat him. He plans to do this by first staging a few minor uprisings on Arakkis that Leto will be able to put down, giving him a false sense of security. He also has a traitor in Leto's inner circle who will play a key role in the eventual attack. But to add even more intrigue to it, he will stage an assassination attempt on Leto's son, Paul. This has a two-fold purpose: to show Leto how vulnerable he really is, and to also leave enough clues behind to point suspicion of treachery on Leto's concubine, the Lady Jessica. That way, everybody is looking in the wrong direction when the actual traitor makes his move. Yes, the Baron does identify the real traitor in this scene, but I always felt that it worked so much better if the audience didn't know ahead of time. Both the movie and miniseries adaptations opted to withhold that information until the big reveal during the attack, so I'm going to do the same here.
It's a pretty intricate and complicated plan. And the Baron's mentat assistant, Piter, points out that it might just be easier to hire an assassin to take out Duke Leto directly. But the Baron wants to utterly destroy House Atreides and also to let Duke Leto know who it was who beat him. He also knows that the Emperor is using him for his own purposes, and will likely turn on him once he's outlived his usefulness. So he's hoping to shore up his own position by putting in a dictatorial governor with Piter who can then later be replaced by his nephew Feyd as a bringer of peace, justice and freedom. And this will give him a great deal of influence and goodwill that the Emperor won't be able to easily brush aside. As the Baron describes it, it's "plans within plans within plans."
Yeah, I know that's a lot to front-load into a story. I have a feeling it will all make more sense as it plays out.
As for Paul and Jessica, their scenes are the ones that you definitely should be paying attention to, because what they talk about in the beginning is going to have a huge influence on events throughout the book.
I admit I never really watched 'Monk', but that picture of "The Whale" definitely looks like an interpretation of the Baron Harkonnen. If you do a Google image search for any of the characters, you'll likely find a great deal of artwork representing them. 'Dune' has nearly as much fan art as LOTR.
That's very interesting Josh, my curiosity has peaked a little.
Thank you for the framework of the story here. I am on page 90 and loving it so far!
Thanks Josh, that helps a lot! :)Wow, that's quite a plan Baron Harkonnen has going there. It makes sense in a really convoluted, sneaky, evil villain kind of way. Also, none of it came as a surprise, so I guess I must be picking up the information better than I thought I was, but it's still really nice to see it all spelled out in one place.
I think I got to the assassination attempt on Paul when I was listening last night. I'm miffed to hear they would try to frame Lady Jessica for it, though. IMHO, she seems to genuinely love her son, and I just couldn't believe she would hurt him. :(
I just picked up my copy of Dune from the library. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish it by the end of the month, but I'll do my best! I'm quite excited to read this. Growing up, my cousin was a huge Dune fan and she was always going on about it, but I never ended up reading it, because it just didn't sound like something I would be into. I'm really looking forward to this new reading experience.
*sigh* I don't know if I'm going to be able to get myself to finish Dune. The audiobook is divided up into three sections of six chapters each and each chapter seems to be 1hr 13minutes long. I just finished the first six-chapter section, so I have at least a good 14+ hours of listening left and I just don't know if I can do it. I don't dislike the story as a whole, but I don't love it either. Some parts I find exciting and some parts bore me. Other parts, particularly those that feature Baron Harkonnen and the evil people who work for him I outright dislike because nasty, evil people. At the current moment, I'm also rather miffed that (view spoiler) I knew it was coming because I had read a full, spoiler-laden, synopsis of the story, but I still wasn't happy when it happened. I had kind of liked that character, him seeming like a respectable individual and all, and I just... I'm not happy. ._.
The thought of 14+ more hours of listening is somewhat intimidating to say the least, and honestly, if I had been reading the physical copy of the book rather than listening to it, I don't think I would have made it even this far. I may listen a little more, but if I continue to feel "meh" about the whole thing, I don't think I'm going to try that hard to finish it. *sigh again*
Wow, I just got my copy of the book and I was thinking the same thing, am I going to finish it on time before bookclub next week? I'm thinking no. Lol!E.F.B.. I'm sorry your having a tough time listening to the audio version of the book, I know that feeling. If you can't finish, we understand.
Wow, I just got my copy of the book and I was thinking the same thing, am I going to finish it on time before bookclub next week? I'm thinking no. Lol!E.F.B.. I'm sorry your having a tough time listening to the audio version of the book, I know that feeling. If you can't finish, we understand.
Mod
While I can understand your feeling "meh" about it - especially with the villains and their unbelievably complex machinations - I would encourage you not to give up just yet. You said earlier that you really liked Paul and Jessica, and judging from where you are in the story, they're about to become the main focus for a very large portion of it.
Of course, if you're really not feeling it, don't feel obligated to push yourself. As I say a lot, tastes vary. What may be completely enthralling to one person may be utterly boring to another. That doesn't make either one of them wrong.
Regardless of what you decide, I look forward to what you'll have to say during the live show. :)
Thanks for the understanding, Heather and Josh. I listened to a couple more chapters yesterday, and the story has regained my interest. It helps a lot that Paul and Jessica are the focus again.
I should have plenty of time to listen, too, since I'm currently getting snowed in for the weekend. Listening to the audiobook while I crochet should be just the thing to pass the time. :)
I'm glad to hear that your interest has peaked again, also what a great idea.
I am about half way through and enjoying it. I do really like Jessica and Paul's characters, but the Baron is pretty upsetting and just plain gross. But he is the bad guy, so thats what makes him the bad guy. I don't know if I will finish by the 31st, but am going to keep moving forward until then, and then finish in the next couple weeks.
Eru, hope you get some good listening in this weekend and stay warm out there!
Eeva and Heather, however far you get, I think you will enjoy reading!
Thank you Lady, I'll try...
I read the book a long time ago, like more than a decade. I was really into it, and played the games even. Might pick it up again to refresh
Do other readers of Dune try to associate an Ancient Greek like battle of different city states on Aracas? From anc. Gr tales there were always many different tribes or city states involved in a complex war of obtaining resources. Atreides is a Greek name, so maybe the author has been influenced by these ancient tales? Any other hints?
Since this is my first time reading Dune, no. I never thought about it that way. Hopefully someone else will chime in Alex.
Alex I do find it can mirror Greek archetypes and family issues. The classic feudal battles, royal lineage and ultimately, the struggle for power over the world, or in this case, the universe. I think that Dune has influence from many cultures, Bedouin for the desert Fremen, Persian and Greek for the language and family lineage conflicts, and British as well as far as wars and conflicts.
Lady wrote: "Alex I do find it can mirror Greek archetypes and family issues. The classic feudal battles, royal lineage and ultimately, the struggle for power over the world, or in this case, the universe. I th..."It's funny how that era of Ancient Greece lingers/resonates till this day. As if those lives were so important that we still read up on similar situations. I have not been able to associate the spice and navigator effect with anything else. The first thing that comes to my mind is a spiritual and cosmological connection through atrophy of the body, which is like the hermit lifestyle. For me that is interesting because it always made me wonder if that isolated life has any effect on the world we live in.
I began reading the Dune series while traveling in India in 1985. No bottled water available, so could empathize with situation on Arakkis! Finished the entire series last year. Felt a little sad: well, that is that. This ranks up with Carlos Castenada's Don Juan series for depth, nuance, weaving threads that may have seemed insignificant in earlier books later being crucial. As long as one can stay on top of it and remember details, it is simply loads of fun and wonderful commentary on life, ambition, etc etc.
As pointed out elsewhere, the influence on everything since then in fantasy is vast. And I thought son and friend did a credible job keeping the story going. Loved it
