Dune: my verdict
Mar. 3rd, 2016 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo last night I finished reading Dune. Actually at around 0800 this morning. And then the post person woke me at about 1200.
*sigh*
The thing is, Dune is an ambitious work, confidently drawing a 'verse with scope and grandeur, and doing interesting things with the idea that psychology and ecology are closely linked.
And yet it strikes me as so thoroughly wrong headed I don't know where to begin.
It's not just that roles for women are even more restricted than they have been historically on Earth. No female fighters?* No way. And it's not just that characters are only women if they have to be, if it is something to do with being a Reverend Mother or just plain mother. That's tedious and annoying and I'm used to filtering for that.
It's more basic than that.
I think it boils down to the idea it bases everything on, that a hell planet is the best place to grow strong people, because there only the strongest survive.
It reminds me of that Hydra guy going on at Sam until he told him to shut the hell up.
Because no. It doesn't work that way. Suffering doesn't make you stronger, it just hurts.
Even within the 'verse it brings up contradictions. Like, the Fremen of the desert complain about the necessity of movement, avoiding speed whenever possible, because it uses up water. So how do they get to be faster than anyone else? Sandworm riding apparently requires good reflexes, but is the local equivalent of catching the bus really going to require such good training? Except they're training to fight each other to the death, because reasons. ... because water? ... because only the stabbiest person can lead the tribe? Book has no respect for age, replaces them with the teenager. But I just don't see a world where they're all building technology to catch water being one where stabbing someone for their bodily water really works out well for the tribe. I mean, that's one less well builder. I don't know, they just seemed to assume that men work that way, with the stabbing and trying to be boss, and that's part of the wrong.
If you want strong people, athletic people, good fighters, people that can survive in many circumstances? You want people with surplus resources. And okay, maybe an entirely post scarcity economy leads to a shortage of soldiers cause they all stay home of not seeing the point, that's plausible. But people living on the margins of survival just get ground down by their daily requirements. Maybe only the strongest survive, but those people aren't as strong as they would have been if they'd had enough to eat and drink and grow and thrive. And there's far less of them. And that doesn't make the survivors stronger, it just means they all have to do all kinds of work to get by, even stuff they're less good at, and with no margin for error they die of even more things.
Dune assumes strength is built entirely of aversives, stress, pain, oppression, marginally survivable environments, being hunted.
And that's bullshit. That's a recipe for being worn down before you even start.
And if you reject that then the entire 'verse falls apart and looks like teenage boy strut.
Also it reminded me of Ender's Game in that way that there's a guy raised in a military environment who is secretly Best and who is so sad and woeful at the idea of having a huge great war and yet oops look has a huge great war. Except obviously worse because Paul is fully aware that there's real people involved, he just talks about Terrible Purpose a lot and does things anyway. Like, being sad about it doesn't excuse you? Saying it's secretly everyone else who wants to have a war is just the author playing silly buggers. Setting up the book as a historical inevitability is just suck. Giving him no one else to talk to who understaaaaaands is just suck. People don't work that way.
People don't work that way, survival of the fittest doesn't work that way, and as far as I can see the 'verse shouldn't work.
It's preaching poison and I'm not having it.
... sorry to people who find things beautiful and valuable that outweigh the books flaws, have fun with it, I just don't.
So, that's like half a shelf of books going to charity. Yaay.
ETA: * I know all the women can fight, they've got awesome martial arts skillz and are super stabby, but their cultural role is distinct from the fighters. They're not soldiers, martial artists, gladiators. They're women, and it's somehow shameful to be beaten by a woman, and the idea that they might get killed by a woman on the way to Muad'Dib is meant to be extra offputting. They don't exist within this ordered hierarchy of power by duelling. Even though they have the same, or better, skills. It's idiotic. In both directions. Idiotic that the duels exist, idiotic that women don't do them.
*sigh*
The thing is, Dune is an ambitious work, confidently drawing a 'verse with scope and grandeur, and doing interesting things with the idea that psychology and ecology are closely linked.
And yet it strikes me as so thoroughly wrong headed I don't know where to begin.
It's not just that roles for women are even more restricted than they have been historically on Earth. No female fighters?* No way. And it's not just that characters are only women if they have to be, if it is something to do with being a Reverend Mother or just plain mother. That's tedious and annoying and I'm used to filtering for that.
It's more basic than that.
I think it boils down to the idea it bases everything on, that a hell planet is the best place to grow strong people, because there only the strongest survive.
It reminds me of that Hydra guy going on at Sam until he told him to shut the hell up.
Because no. It doesn't work that way. Suffering doesn't make you stronger, it just hurts.
Even within the 'verse it brings up contradictions. Like, the Fremen of the desert complain about the necessity of movement, avoiding speed whenever possible, because it uses up water. So how do they get to be faster than anyone else? Sandworm riding apparently requires good reflexes, but is the local equivalent of catching the bus really going to require such good training? Except they're training to fight each other to the death, because reasons. ... because water? ... because only the stabbiest person can lead the tribe? Book has no respect for age, replaces them with the teenager. But I just don't see a world where they're all building technology to catch water being one where stabbing someone for their bodily water really works out well for the tribe. I mean, that's one less well builder. I don't know, they just seemed to assume that men work that way, with the stabbing and trying to be boss, and that's part of the wrong.
If you want strong people, athletic people, good fighters, people that can survive in many circumstances? You want people with surplus resources. And okay, maybe an entirely post scarcity economy leads to a shortage of soldiers cause they all stay home of not seeing the point, that's plausible. But people living on the margins of survival just get ground down by their daily requirements. Maybe only the strongest survive, but those people aren't as strong as they would have been if they'd had enough to eat and drink and grow and thrive. And there's far less of them. And that doesn't make the survivors stronger, it just means they all have to do all kinds of work to get by, even stuff they're less good at, and with no margin for error they die of even more things.
Dune assumes strength is built entirely of aversives, stress, pain, oppression, marginally survivable environments, being hunted.
And that's bullshit. That's a recipe for being worn down before you even start.
And if you reject that then the entire 'verse falls apart and looks like teenage boy strut.
Also it reminded me of Ender's Game in that way that there's a guy raised in a military environment who is secretly Best and who is so sad and woeful at the idea of having a huge great war and yet oops look has a huge great war. Except obviously worse because Paul is fully aware that there's real people involved, he just talks about Terrible Purpose a lot and does things anyway. Like, being sad about it doesn't excuse you? Saying it's secretly everyone else who wants to have a war is just the author playing silly buggers. Setting up the book as a historical inevitability is just suck. Giving him no one else to talk to who understaaaaaands is just suck. People don't work that way.
People don't work that way, survival of the fittest doesn't work that way, and as far as I can see the 'verse shouldn't work.
It's preaching poison and I'm not having it.
... sorry to people who find things beautiful and valuable that outweigh the books flaws, have fun with it, I just don't.
So, that's like half a shelf of books going to charity. Yaay.
ETA: * I know all the women can fight, they've got awesome martial arts skillz and are super stabby, but their cultural role is distinct from the fighters. They're not soldiers, martial artists, gladiators. They're women, and it's somehow shameful to be beaten by a woman, and the idea that they might get killed by a woman on the way to Muad'Dib is meant to be extra offputting. They don't exist within this ordered hierarchy of power by duelling. Even though they have the same, or better, skills. It's idiotic. In both directions. Idiotic that the duels exist, idiotic that women don't do them.