this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
217 points (93.9% liked)

Movies

7528 readers
298 users here now

Lemmy

Welcome to Movies, a community for discussing movies, film news, box office, and more! We want this to be a place for members to feel safe to discuss and share everything they love about movies and movie related things. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow!


Related Communities:

[email protected] - Discussing books and book-related things.

[email protected] - A place to discuss comic books of all types.

[email protected] - LW's home for all things MCU.


While posting and commenting in this community, you must abide by the Lemmy.World Terms of Service: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

  1. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.

  2. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.

  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed

  4. Shitposts and memes are allowed until they prove to be a problem.

    Regarding spoilers; Please put "(Spoilers)" in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers, as we do not currently have a spoiler tag available. If your post contains an image that could be considered a spoiler, please mark the thread as NSFW so the image gets blurred. As far as how long to wait until the post is no longer a spoiler, please just use your best judgement. Everyone has a different idea on this, so we don't want to make any hard limits.

    Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread. Most of the Lemmy clients don't support this but we want to get into the habit as clients will be supporting in the future.

Failure to follow these guidelines will result in your post/comment being removed and/or more severe actions. All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. We ask that the users report any comment or post that violates the rules, and to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] c0mbatbag3l 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

As if Herbert didn't rip off half his ideas from Heinlein.

[–] NoSpiritAnimal 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Wow you don't understand Herbert or Heinlein.

If Heinlein wrote Dune, Paul would've been a real savior and also wouldn't have hesitated to use the family atomics by the morning of the night Leto died.

[–] c0mbatbag3l 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Just because Herbet ripped off Heinlein's ideas doesn't mean he used the same format or character work. You're taking me to mean "Herbert copied Heinlein in every respect" which I didn't say.

Heinlein was writing about meta humans with psychic based abilities for decades before Herbert wrote about the KH in Dune. Clairvoyance and neutron dampening/excitement, eidetic memory, inherent mathematical ability (mentats, anyone?), control over human physiology, twins having quantum mental bonds which work outside of light speed limitations, the ABILITY TO ASTROGATE AND LITERALLY CAUSE MATTER/ANTIMATTER REACTORS TO FUNCTION WITH YOUR MIND.

Pretty much all of Herbert's ideas about human evolution and the people that make society possible without thinking machines were based in Heinlein's prior novels and short stories.

[–] NoSpiritAnimal 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Heinlein, inventor of the concept of being good at math.

All of those concepts predate Heinlein. You credit him with things Victorians were fantasizing about. The Oracles might take issue with your claims on clairvoyance, and and in some tellings of Ajax, Teucer only shows up to help because he has a premonition of his brother's peril. That's from 500BC.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't think that's entirely fair, because Heinlein didn't invent those ideas either. There's a whole library of pulp sci-fi out there that he stole from, not just one person!

It's honestly why I don't care for Dune, he drops these pseudo-technical terms with no context for a reader because his context was a Flash Gordon or whatever comic he read and he just assumes the reader did too, and if they didn't it was 1965 so every book came with a glossary in the back that said things like Personal Shield: A personal shield

Like, yeah, that's great writing, making the reader stop to look something up in the fuckin glossary that still doesn't explain anything.

[–] c0mbatbag3l 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well sure, but that specific focus I believe was pioneered by Heinlein in the same way that when you think of Asimov you think "AI and the three laws of robotics." Along with his obsession with free love meta human abilties were his biggest returning concept.

[–] NoSpiritAnimal 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Heinlein's biggest returning concept is that he is completely inconsistent ideologically and based his opinions on whoever he was married to at the time.

He took his big ideas early on from HG Wells, and later Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.

The man began his career as an anti-war leftist barred from Naval service, and ended it writing fiction about how we'd all be better off if Nuclear Testing were still allowed.

He praised Rand, said both political parties had moved too far left, and lived his entire life on disability checks provided by tax-payers.

Heinlein was a turd of a man. His literature is so maleable and devoid of obvious truth that anyone can claim he supports their politcal views.

Even Asmiov turned against him in the end.

[–] c0mbatbag3l -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's almost like an author can write about different societies and not just one that they specifically agree with, but I guess that makes them "ideologically inconsistent."

[–] NoSpiritAnimal 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Furthermore, although a flaming liberal during the war, Heinlein became a rock-ribbed far right conservative immediately afterward. This happened at just the time he changed wives from a liberal woman, Leslyn, to a rock-ribbed far-right conservative woman, Virginia.

He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.

  • Isaac Asimov

That you could read The Space Cadet and Starship Troopers and think they have a consistent message is disheartening to say the least.

His later work was a serious rendition of everything his earlier work mocked.

[–] Dkarma 1 points 9 months ago

Something something long enough to become the villain

[–] Blue_Morpho 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

If Heinlein wrote Dune

Then that same argument works for Lucas copying Dune. If Herbert wrote Star Wars, Luke would have taken the title of Duke of the Sith and then negotiated with the Emperor to marry the Emperor's daughter to secure his power.

Lucas's writing was pulp sci-fi with bad dialog fixed by others. But anyone picking out Dune Easter Eggs from StarWars to claim it's a copy of Dune is crazy. Herbert should have reserved his bitterness for the public who picked StarWars over Dune. Herbert was like a classical music composer angry at the Beatles.