vs The Expanse: we are headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense but humanity's salvation will come from... Nevermind, we're fucked.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Thing is, the Asimov Foundation universe could actually fit in the "past" of the Dune universe.
In the non-canon book Psychohistorical Crisis, the Dune universe is part of the past of the Foundation universe. The Fremon are known as the "Frightful People" to historians.
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I'll let you all guess which one was published in the 50s and which one was published in the 60s.
Both of these are terrible takes on the books.
Spice is not a solution in dune in fact the whole 4th book and the end of the third are centered around forcing humanity to wean itself off spice so that it may evolve.
The central concept is that humanity must not depend on machine or drugs or complicated eugenics and must instead look inwards and improve itself by facing hardship.
In foundation (at least the start) the complicated maths is essentially there to prove that all establishments fail and survival requires constant change. Very differently from dune foundation sees technological superiority as key to this and importantly the ability for society to change in order to support the technological progress.
Even if you don't agree with the above neither book aims to "fight imperialist bullshit" if anything they both quite staunchly support the idea of a benevolent dictator controlling all.
Or is Dune about the folly of different types of dictatorship; sadistic, benevolent, religious or machiavellian? Taking only the first book (because that's as far as I've read) every leader is thwarted or confined by the consequences or weakness of their own style of leadership.
I read an interview where frank said that his intention was for Dune to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of charismatic leaders (which is to say, the "classic" hero archetype). Which - for the first book - tracks pretty well. The free are basically just used as cannon fodder for Paul to win back his power (and a lot more), then when he wins, he sets them loose on the universe because he can't control them.
The trouble I have with that though is that he goes on to contradict that point in later books, but I won't get into that because I don't want to spoil anything for you
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It's honestly crazy how many people can read Dune and completely misunderstand the themes of the book.
Though to be fair, it sometimes feels like Frank himself didn't fully understand what themes he was going for. Books 1-3 were staunchly "Beware of heroes, charismatic leaders will lead you to evil and despair", then in GEoD, we find that literally the only hope for humanity was millenia of oppression by a totalitarian government.
But either of those two takes is still wildly better than "spice saves the universe" lol
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I think Dune has very many themes, but the biggest one is the dangers of religion (which is not really portrayed in the movie I think)
The 2022 movie covers the first half of the first book and that theme only really comes into its own in books 2 and 3.
I mean, I feel like manipulating a whole culture's established religious beliefs to place themself at the highest seat of power and war a holy war in their name is a pretty poignant display of "religion bad, m'kay"
Yeah but if you don't know about the books it doesn't necessarily look like manipulation. That's only made overt when you read the latter books
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OP could at least make the effort to plug the dude's post.
better do both just in case
edit: guys maths is HARD
I'm sure there are drugs that make math easy. We just need to find them.
From the Wikipedia page for Paul Erdős:
After his mother's death in 1971 he started taking antidepressants and amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking them for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained that it impacted his performance: "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month."[66] After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his use of Ritalin and Benzedrine.[67]
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Melange, I'm sure. Seeing how it enables you to fold space, I'm assuming it also helps with the math involved.
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MATH AND DRUGS ARE THE KEYS TO EVERYTHING
Source: myself, a computer science major
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Don’t the Dune universe have Mentats?
So, maths and drugs
Iain M. Banks: we're living in an AI-regulated Utopia, but the AI that we totally trust might be doing some light imperialism on the side.
Pratchett / Baxter: we're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, and another one, and another one, and another one, and oops, a blank...
Edit: added the Long Earth one.
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Arthur C. Clarke: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from encountering benevolent alien intelligence we haven't discovered yet.
Ray Bradbury: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from rediscovering the beauty of books and humanity's inherent capacity for empathy in a world we're rapidly forgetting.
Robert A. Heinlein: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from pioneering individualism, libertarianism, and multi-planetary colonies we haven't established yet.
William Gibson: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from navigating and subverting the interplay of high technology and low life in a cybernetic reality we're only beginning to understand.
Ursula K. Le Guin: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from understanding and integrating a spectrum of social, psychological, and cultural perspectives we haven't fully considered yet.
Neal Stephenson: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from unprecedented technological and social innovation, often resulting from deep historical and philosophical introspection, in a future we're yet to engineer.
Octavia Butler: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from embracing and adapting to change through the lens of bio-diversity and sociocultural evolution we haven't fully embraced yet.
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Asimov: weird mutants capable of overthrowing the universe should be put down with prejudice.
Frank Herbert: weird mutants capable of overthrowing the universe should be made emperor.
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Neither of the stories present salvation, merely survival.
vs Hyperion:
Dan Simmons: We’re headed for some bleak imperialism nonsense but humanity’s salvation will come from serving AIs we haven’t discovered yet.
Don't we eventually find out the AIs are oppressing the humans and siphoning off their life-force/brain-power through the use of the portal system and that humanity's actual salvation comes from deeply believing in the power of love to the point of developing the ability to teleport to beloved places and people?
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Warhammer 40k: ~~we're headed for some bleak imperial nonsense but~~ BY THE GOD EMPEROR SUCH HERESY IS INTOLERABLE.
Bringing Warhammer 40k mythos into this isn't fair. That is like bringing a gun to a kid's thumb war.
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Image Transcription: Mastodon Post
Peter Cohen, @[email protected]...
"Foundation" vs "Dune"
Isaac Asimov: we're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense but humanity's salvation will come from using math we haven't discovered yet
Frank Herbert: we're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense but humanity's salvation will come from tripping on drugs we haven't discovered yet
I am a human who transcribes posts to improve accessibility on Lemmy. Transcriptions help people who use screen readers or other assistive technology to use the site. For more information, see here.
Please provide a link in addition to a screenshot when you are referring to a post in the fediverse. You can easily link to a mastodon post from Lemmy since both are federated, and if you do it, your post will magically appear as a response to the original mastodon post.
In Dune, the imperialist "nonsense" was the path to salvation. Genocide by machines was what we were saved from.
yeah, they went well past the Asimov case.
Also the spice is never deemed a path to salvation. it is merely an integral ressource that is stabilizing the human order by mutual dependence. In the later books the problem is explored what happens when the ressource becomes less integral/more abundant, removing the mutual dependence.
I don't really agree that the spice wasn't put forward as a way to salvation. I think it clearly was key to finding the golden path.
The spice enabled the Bene Gesserit to see what was needed in their breeding program, and they were trying to breed Kwisatz Haderach who would lead humanity through a dangerous time, avoiding the destruction of the race. (Also the scene in the sietch that I won't go into detail about, becuase spoilers)
Leto II uses the spice to see the golden path and forge humanity into what it needs to be to survive. (Also the other thing which I haven't mentioned due to major spoilers of a cool moment).
The spice is pretty clearly necessary for the path taken to salvation.
While the spice may not have been necessary to avoid the destruction of the human race had another path been found, in the story as it was told it was absolutely central.
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I started reading Foundation (the first one) just yesterday. So far I love it!
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Not totally true, like Asimov's math wanted to reinstate the Imperium, so is kinda the other way arround.
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