Dune: What you need to know

[00:00:00] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like the show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for the Lorehounds.

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[00:01:03] Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a hardened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book fire and blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:43] Hello, wool shift dustians! We are back to keep your ears entertained and your minds engaged between silo seasons, from sting to Austin Butler and everything before, between and beyond, wool shift dust is doing dune for our season two.

[00:01:58] There will be no spoilers of any kind during this intro episode, and we'll get into exactly what the rest of the season is going to look like in just a moment. But first, Luke, we're back already. How have the London archives been treating you?

[00:02:13] They've been treating me well actually. Been doing a bit of mentatting down in London. And yeah, we're not going to get into the book just yet. That will be our next episode, but I know that you've been rereading.

[00:02:27] Last you updated me, you were at the part where the 2021 film ended. How's the rest of the reread going? I actually finished it over the weekend because I'm sure you've had the same experience. When you start dune, you have to finish it.

[00:02:42] It's not a thing you can go and put down and come back to. It kind of has that quality the ones you start. You have to finish. It almost reads itself. It does. It does. And okay, so this read. Who is your least favorite character? No spoilers.

[00:02:57] Least favorite character? Got to be the Baron Harkinen. I mean, you know, big, truly evil, mustached whirling guy. Yeah, like Herbert goes out of his way to describe him in like physically grotesque terms. Because that's one of the most interesting differences they've been making in most of

[00:03:19] the adaptations is they have because he has these suspenders that help hold him up because of his massive weight. But then the adaptations have him like flying around like a maniac. Well, the worst one is like the David Lynch one where like he's got some kind of like

[00:03:37] uber acne thing going on. Yeah. Like some kind of disease which isn't anywhere in the book. Yeah. David Lynch was like, how could I make this weirder and grosser? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:50] Yeah, so yeah, on the one hand I would want to say Baron Harkinen, but he's also he's like so deliciously evil. Like he's just one of the most loathable characters in all of literature that I almost

[00:04:03] want to say someone else and then I don't know it falls on like the Revan mother, I guess because she's just such a pardon me cunt that I just yeah, she just stands in everyone. She's so annoying. Um, so you say I've been reading it.

[00:04:18] I actually kind of have and kind of haven't. I've been I have read a physical copy of June many years ago. But yeah, because of the nature of what I do for a job, I really don't like I read a lot for work.

[00:04:32] So I don't really I'm not really motivated to read outside of that. So I listened to a lot of audiobooks. No, yeah, to be clear when I say reading, I always include audiobooks in that definition. You're consuming the book because I mean think about for instance, you know,

[00:04:50] visually impaired, you know, readers and just people for whatever reason dyslexia who knows. Yeah, a thousand different reasons you might want to read the audiobook. The version I've got is somewhere between the book and a performance of it because

[00:05:04] what the way the way the audio book is structured. They have different voice actors read from different characters point of view. And they also like have a separate voice actors like the omnipresent narrator where it's no particular character.

[00:05:20] It's not being read from a particular character's point of view and there is music and sound effects. So it is the book, it's the full text. Yeah, it's also an audio play performance and just a straight reading of it. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's that's awesome.

[00:05:37] And I love how like the audio options have gotten so much better in recent years, you know, that it's gone from, you know, my friend was telling me that back in the day a lot of the books weren't even the complete books.

[00:05:50] Like it would be like Dune or Bridged, which come on. Yeah, who wants to listen to an abridged version of anything? Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, I don't know who the Ben and Jeze are at our moving on.

[00:06:03] But yeah, no, I'm so glad that that's gotten better. And it's also it's nice that you bring in that perspective of, you know, having had the audio experience where I do tend to cling to like the word on paper or word on in this case for

[00:06:20] this, I'm rereading it digitally so that I can do like the searching and highlighting and all that stuff to make. Okay. Yeah, because I don't write in my actual book. So does that remind you of reading the OC Bible then?

[00:06:35] Because one of my I think one of my favorite bits of the book is when they're describing the tiny like a holographic OC Bible. Like, because this is this I was going to say this later but I might as well say it now.

[00:06:49] Do not keep eyes of very special niche in my sort of exposure to fantasy and sci-fi because I have no visual imagination. Like I have a very limited visual imagination. So normally I will watch the movie or the TV series first if it's a book because

[00:07:09] if you're telling me it's this massive futuristic city, you know, floating in the clouds of 30,000 feet, I can't picture that. I need somebody else to show it to me or I don't get the effect. Right.

[00:07:21] Dune is one of the very rare books where Herbert's description is so evocative that I actually can picture it in my head. Yeah. And it's also one of the few bits of media I've read before I've seen any adaptation of it. I mean, I've read it. Okay.

[00:07:39] I read it for the first time when I was 15, which I think is the ideal age to read Dune for the first time. I think I was about the same age too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:49] So that's interesting because, okay, so what you're describing is aphantasia and I know it's, for instance, another person who has it is one of my best friends here in Amsterdam who is a, he's an animator, like his job is a visual job.

[00:08:05] But still if you tell him picture yourself on a beach, he's like, I just can't. I can't complete the assignment. I'm sorry. Yeah. And on the other hand, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. I am hyper, I have hyperphantasia, which means it's very vivid imagination.

[00:08:21] And this doesn't just apply to visual things, but also imagining other senses too. Yeah. So yeah, so no, so that's an interesting work. So we're going in with, you know, a couple different perspectives. We've got the written versus audio.

[00:08:37] So I'm looking forward to hearing, you know, if you have anything to throw in as we're going through the book about how certain passages were interpreted by the readers, that would be interesting. And also, yeah, we've got the hyperphantasia versus the aphantasia.

[00:08:53] So on this reread, who's your most, who's your favorite underrated character or most underrated character for you? Most underrated character. Like for me, it's shout out maips always. I always think like she gets cut out of the interpretation of the. Yeah, that role really gets minimized. Still got.

[00:09:16] Okay. Yeah. Because I think he goes on a read goes on a really interesting journey from the beginning to the end of the book. And I think that's really underplayed in all the adaptations that I've seen.

[00:09:29] And even even like in the text of dude, it's more left up to your imagination how still got from point A to point B. There's that really sad passage close to the end where Paul talks about looking at him and seeing a follower rather than a friend. Right.

[00:09:49] Yeah. And I think that that's a really interesting juxtaposition because it goes to the heart of one of Frank Herbert's themes, which is to be like, uber critical of charismatic leadership. Yeah. So for anyone who's wondering that the character is played by Havére Bardem,

[00:10:08] the leader of the Fremen, obviously no spoilers, we'll get into that. Yeah. No, that's fair. And shout out maips of whom I was speaking is also a fremen actually. So it's interesting we both chose fremen, but she is a housekeeper in the household

[00:10:25] of the main character and ends up playing an important role. Yeah. No, I can't wait to talk about that. And yeah, we're going to be getting into all that in our next episode in two weeks

[00:10:36] where we'll recap and analyze the entire first book this time with both of us having read it. And yeah, so Dune, it was a book given to both of us by our parents when we were fairly young.

[00:10:47] I got it from my mom and you got it from your dad, right? Well, I got it from both of my parents. Okay. I were we were we were visiting my aunt in Australia. So that's like a 24 hour flight from the UK.

[00:11:01] So basically, I got given this by my parents to say, basically, that this will keep you occupied for the length of the plane journey and it did. And yeah, it was just a really formative book because

[00:11:20] like so much of what is in Dune bits and pieces of it feed through into other media. Oh, absolutely. And you know, Dune isn't all the time it's been adapted. It was first released in like 1965.

[00:11:35] So a lot of what we think of as sci-fi trumps get their start in Dune. And also just the I mean, it was really interesting. The first time I read it, the character I identified most with was Paul. Of course. Of course.

[00:11:51] But you read it as you get older and the character I most identified now with is probably Duke Lita. So I wonder whether that's just a function of age or perspective or what? But I just remember being completely blown away by it. Yeah.

[00:12:07] I never read anything quite like it because obviously there's the politics of it, which I think is one of parents thought I'd like it. But there's the mysticism of it and there's just the quality of it that sucks you in

[00:12:22] to this world and these people and just the vast scale of it. You know, all of these people, all of this history, all of this philosophy and just the precision of Herbert's writing. Like I say, even for somebody like me with very limited visual imagination,

[00:12:46] I can picture Duke because the writing and the description is so detailed and so evocative. And also it talks about things that I find easier to imagine. So a lot of it sounds, smell, touch, a lot of it isn't,

[00:13:04] a lot of what you'd be asked to imagine isn't necessarily visual, which I think helps. Yeah. And so the book was your first exposure then before like the Lynch movie or anything else? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I honestly, I don't remember when I first read it.

[00:13:20] I was definitely a teenager. I don't know how many times I've read it. The follow up novels I've only read once all the way through twice for the second and third books. And I haven't read the books by Frank Herbert's son at all that my mom has.

[00:13:33] I plan on changing that after this, I think. But yeah, I don't know. I also agree that it's changed where maybe the first time I read it, I was more looking through Paul's eyes and now I'm more looking through Lady Jessica's eyes.

[00:13:49] Yeah, I think it is something that, I think it is a book that you get more out of if you read it as a teenager for the first time. Because I think there is something,

[00:14:00] it's the first piece of media I ever came across that really subverted the idea of the hero's journey. You know, this journey that Paul is on, but he has no control over it. He doesn't want to go on this particular journey. He doesn't want to be.

[00:14:15] I mean, he embraces it at certain points. He embraces it in the end. Yeah. But yeah, we won't get too much into how, but it subverts the hero's journey trope in ways. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:30] Yeah, and for anyone who doesn't know who Herbert is or doesn't know that Dune was the start of an entire series, much less that it was continued by a son after his death, don't worry. We'll be getting into all that in a moment.

[00:14:41] This episode, which should be shorter by Willshift Us standards anyway, it's all about setting the stage for the whole Dune story. Where did it start and how did it become one of, if not the most famous and influential science fiction stories ever told?

[00:14:57] At least often cited as the best selling science fiction novel of all time. And yeah, as we talk through the timeline today, we'll touch on the topics we'll be covering in future episodes, the Khodorowski adaptation that never was, but was supposed to give you

[00:15:12] the experience of a hallucinogenic, the trippy 1984 Lynch adaptation that actually did happen, and how that spurred the Dune series to real fame and spawned some video games too. And yeah, the underrated sci-fi adaptation from 2000. The only one that includes some of the books most iconic scenes.

[00:15:31] And I know Luke's especially excited, I see him laughing already. And of course, the Villeneuve adaptations past, present and future, not to mention do Messiah the second book on which Villeneuve's third film will be based.

[00:15:45] Luke, of all of these, which are you most excited to talk about and why is it the sci-fi one? Well, I'm just excited for the sci-fi one because I've only watched that once. I only watched that when it came out. I just have very odd memories of it.

[00:16:00] And I want to see if my imagination is filled in gaps or it really was that strange. The one I'm actually looking forward to most is talking about the 84 Lynch adaptation.

[00:16:13] My first exposure to Dune was the book, but my dad was the movie and my dad loves that movie. Every time we've changed formats, we've got VHS, we've got DVD, we've got Blu-ray.

[00:16:28] It's like every time I'm home it will either be, do you want to put interstellar on or do you want to put Dune on? It'll be one of those two films. My dad absolutely adores that film, so I've seen that. I've probably seen that in three figures.

[00:16:44] I can quote large sections of that film from memory. Yeah, my mom's a big fan too. Maybe not as to the detriment of all other sci-fi is that, but yeah, there's definitely what's her entryway drug that got her on the books and everything else.

[00:16:59] Now dad, it's either interstellar or Dune. One of the other two, take you bit. Yeah, I'm kind of excited to get into the adaptations that we haven't gotten as much attention, but especially juxtaposing them all together. I think they're all wonderfully weird, but in vastly different ways.

[00:17:19] Each is undeniably adapting the same story, but from a different angle. And the visual creativity these books have inspired is just really fascinating how it goes on all different directions. So I'm especially excited to take a closer look at the different choices each director has made

[00:17:35] in the adaptations, which ones worked, which ones didn't and why. And what can we learn from these that we can use to evaluate other adaptations of other stories? Yeah, we're definitely going to be relishing in all the delightful weirdness too.

[00:17:50] For each episode I'm going to ask Luke and I and listeners at home to rank a top three as they read or watch each entry we're covering. So I'll be gathering that feedback so we can analyze it together and figure out what we're responding to as a community.

[00:18:05] So stay tuned until the end of the episode for the first top three question. And quick housekeeping note, we have of course heard the rumors that Warner Brothers is considering moving the release date of any and all of their upcoming films,

[00:18:19] including Dune Part 2 due to the ongoing writer and actor strikes. We're going to continue as planned for now and if a date change is announced, we'll shift the later episodes of this series accordingly. But I personally think Dune is the film Warner Brothers is least likely to move

[00:18:36] because they've already done so much promotion and it being Dune with that cast, it kind of promotes itself. Mostly I don't think they'll want to move it out of that Prime Awards window sweet spot. As it's expected to be a powerful contender at the Oscars,

[00:18:51] between Dune and Barbie, the WB could have a very good year, even if they moved the color purple and the rest of the slate. So moving this film, yeah, I would also show bad faith that the studios aren't interested in negotiating.

[00:19:04] Not that that's going to necessarily stop anyone, but yeah, on that note, we just want to say that when we get into the new adaptations, we're here to promote the work of the creatives, the actors, the crew involved based on the guidelines provided by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA.

[00:19:18] And we believe it's important to highlight who it is that really makes our entertainment and demonstrate why they deserve to earn a fair wage for what they bring into the world. And why their genius cannot be replicated or replaced by the next studio execs,

[00:19:32] cost-cutting measure, AI or otherwise. Luke, is there anything you want to add to that? No, I agree with all of that. I did want to ask you one question in this introductory episode, Alicia,

[00:19:44] which is do you think any of the adaptations that have been released so far actually live up to the book? Yeah, I was actually discussing kind of discussing this with a friend earlier and I was saying,

[00:19:59] you know, I think this is one of those cases where collectively together they get there. You know, each one has different pieces that they need, you know? And but none of them on their own, no. Yeah, I would agree with that.

[00:20:15] But I'd also say that I think the urge to adapt to it as a movie or as a mini-series is wrong. It needs to be at least a mini-series. Yeah, HBO or Apple need to pick this up and do like a 10 episode, at least a 10 episode adaptation.

[00:20:33] Yeah, the last of two, yeah. Adaptation. The universe. To do it properly in my opinion. No, I agree. I agree. I know that was exactly my feeling with the Villeneuve film. And also, and I did find out like a lot of the things I was upset about them

[00:20:50] cutting apparently were originally in the plan and then they just cut for time because a lot of the coolest things in the novel are those scenes with the subtle politics and, you know, learning about the world and a lot of filmmakers aren't sure how to translate that.

[00:21:07] Because the thing I always compare it to is Viva Vendetta. I don't know if you've ever read the graphic novel for Viva Vendetta. I have not. But there's a lot more stuff in there that built out the world.

[00:21:18] So there's stuff, there's a lot more stuff about Chancellor Sutler's background. There's this whole thing about this artificial intelligence they've created to spy on people. None of that makes it into the movie. But at its heart, Viva Vendetta is actually quite a simple story.

[00:21:35] You can actually prune all of that stuff and keep the bits of the story that really matter. Whereas Dune, I always feel if you take any part out of it, you're weakening the whole. It's like playing Jensen. It's so intricately woven, yeah. Yeah, it's true.

[00:21:53] All right, well, we're going to get into what Dune is, where it came from and who the fuck Frank Herbert is right after this quick commercial break. Receive the wisdom of Princess Irulan's writings. Psst, editorial note for anyone who doesn't know.

[00:22:11] Princess Irulan is the character who will be played by Florence Pugh in Dune part two. We'll talk about her a bit later this episode and a whole lot more in the weeks to come. Okay, back to your regularly scheduled podcasting.

[00:22:25] So, Luke, how much do you know about Herbert and the Dune backstory? I know a little bit about Frank Herbert. I know he was, he did a lot of things. He was a journalist. He was speechwriter for a Republican senator. Yeah.

[00:22:41] He was a hydrographer, which makes a big difference to the story. So this was a guy that went into the desert looking for water, particularly the desert of the Western United States. Yeah, he was as a journalist that he discovered the Oregonian dunes.

[00:22:58] He was sent to write a story about someone approaching European crapgrass. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so I didn't realize he'd done that as a journalist. He allegedly enjoyed the occasional dalliance with magic mushrooms, which I think probably pick up in the book in various ways.

[00:23:18] I mean, what's the, what's the spice? Yeah. And I know that the sort of inspiration for Dune is drawn from a lot of places, but one of the, a couple of the key texts are histories of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century. Okay.

[00:23:39] Oh, that's a new one for me. He also leans quite heavily on like various sort of explorer books. I think we read both of them, both were the Lessonges book, which is a travel log about walking through the Arabian desert. Okay.

[00:23:55] And as we did some research, I had at this podcast, obviously there was a lot of Arabic influence in Dune. So Bedouin, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of Arabic language picked up, but there's also, there's also bits of Hebrew, bits of Turkish. Don't achieve it.

[00:24:14] Yeah, bits of Burba. I mean, he really drew from all over the place, but of course, yeah, a lot of it is desert cultures because yeah. Yeah. I mean, people always talk about it being the Arabian desert, but I've always thought of

[00:24:26] it as the Sahel, which is like the southern, the southern rim of the Sahara desert. Basically because in like the Maharshi parts of the Arabian desert, people don't actually live there permanently. People pass through it, but there's not enough water to actually sustain life.

[00:24:44] Whereas the Sahel, always to me strikes as closer to what Iraqis is because actually there are settled communities. You do have to be very careful about water and moisture, but there actually are permanent settled communities in that desert.

[00:25:01] I mean, it's not that the famine don't move around, but yeah. But they're not nomadic people. So yeah, despite the fact that it's based on the dunes from Oregon that Herbert was assigned to write a story about, I haven't been there myself, but I've seen pictures and yeah,

[00:25:20] I have to say that the depictions indeed and my headcanon had the Sam planet, Iraqis looking a lot more like the Sahara for sure. But the story of Dune or the Dune Chronicles, which started with the first book simply called Dune, published in 1965.

[00:25:36] As you said, Luke is a creation of Frank Herbert and he was born in 1920, raised in rural Washington state and moved one state down to live with his aunt and uncle in Oregon at the age of 17.

[00:25:49] He was known for his sharp mind, having become an avid reader at a young age and he was an extrovert making friends easily. But I do have to wonder if this moving in with relatives in high school had any influence on

[00:26:02] the way Paula Treaties, the main character of Dune seems to be more at ease with like uncle-like figures like Duncan Idaho than his own parents in the first half of the book. What do you think? Yeah, maybe I hadn't considered that.

[00:26:15] Although actually I do think, I do think he actually is quite at ease with his mother and father given the sort of social system and the politics of it. Given that they're aristocrats. Yeah, given that they're a rigid social structure.

[00:26:31] I think that has a lot to do with his mother's ease and yeah, we'll get into that obviously next week but yeah. But yeah, but Frank Herbert, he started his writing career at local newspapers,

[00:26:43] married in 1941, had a daughter the next year, Penny who passed away last year at the age of 80 and he got divorced a year later and in between and 42 he served as a navy photographer and came home with a head injury.

[00:26:57] In Oregon, he went back to newspaper work, studied fiction at the University of Washington where in 1946 he met and married fellow writer Beverly Ann Stewart, mother of the younger Bruce who sadly passed away in 1993 and the elder Brian who continued his father's series

[00:27:14] after Frank's death at the age of 65 and yeah, Brian and his co-writer added more than a dozen books to the six millennia hopping opuses published by Frank before his death. At age 76, Brian Herbert is still going strong and plans to release his next do novel this fall.

[00:27:31] Now have you read any of Brian's novels? No I haven't actually. I've only read Doon, Doon Messiah and Children of the Dead. Okay, okay. Well season two of the wool shift dust here on the public feed will cover the first two

[00:27:45] books Doon and eventually in November Doon Heretic and all of the adaptations thereof because in fact these are the only two books in the Doon series anyone has ever attempted to adapt along with the third book Children of Doon which is combined with Doon Heretic for the

[00:28:00] Children of Doon sci-fi series which will be the last thing we cover this season. If you're curious why no one has attempted to adapt beyond that point, just how wild this story gets and it's telling a future humanity through thousands of years of

[00:28:15] intergalactic war and evolution and devolution and back again there will be a book club to keep the story going but that's months away so I'll talk more about that then. For now we're gonna start with a book that started at all the best known bit of the story.

[00:28:30] Luke, you said your dad got into the movie first? Yeah I don't think my dad has ever read the book. Okay. Yeah. Um what about? Yeah now he's a he's an enormous fan of that 1984 Lynch. And what about your mom and brother?

[00:28:44] Um my mom my mom is not into any kind of sci-fi and fantasy and uh Nathan, Nathan will watch it because um when we were teenagers we basically had no choice

[00:28:58] but to watch it at least a couple of times but um yeah I think he was more confused by it than anything else. He hasn't um to my knowledge he hasn't read the book.

[00:29:08] So your parents gave it to you thinking oh this is up your alley but they hadn't read it themselves? No, they'd seen the they'd seen the film and they'd seen sort of the

[00:29:18] the politics and the plotting of it and they knew I liked science fiction so they thought this would be and also I think again because I had a lot of time to kill the fact there was a doorstopper of a book. Yeah.

[00:29:30] Probably played some role in the choice. Yeah uh yeah my mom definitely fell in love with the Lynch film first um it got her to run out and read all the books and yeah push the books on everyone she knew like like I did with Silo

[00:29:45] so that included my dad and later when I was a teenager me and I don't remember whether I watched the Lynch film or read the book or played the computer game first. Oh I spent so many hours playing that computer game.

[00:29:58] I mean yeah there's actually a few but I think both of us are probably talking about the 92 adventure strategy game. Yes, so many hours. Yeah I was into all three very much in the 90s yeah and I don't remember which came first. They were all interwoven together.

[00:30:12] Um yeah I think what I personally responded to in this book when I first read it is a world building so this is a world made by a man who knows many things in detail

[00:30:21] and can combine them in fantastical new ways to create a framework to think about human psychology, ecology, religion, politics, the meaning and structure of power. Yeah Herbert never graduated from university but he was what we would call an auto-didact

[00:30:38] meaning he was like self-taught in all these areas through his reading and yeah I'm not a libertarian like Herbert was but we are both idealists and the subversive way that he approached his science fiction world like taking the natives perspective rather than the colonial perspective.

[00:30:55] I think that's one of the things that really sets him apart from the classic science fiction authors before him and it definitely heavily influenced the authors who came after him. Yeah I mean I'm sort of similar but I also I like the I like the idea of

[00:31:11] like the inevitability of it or I think Dune says something quite profound about how history is actually made in that human beings don't actually make history they are they are trapped by the choices that came before them and they will trap

[00:31:29] cards on the wheel yeah yeah and they will trap people who came after them and I think Dune gets that across beautifully because like Dune makes it clear that its characters all of its characters even the lead character even the character

[00:31:47] with quasi-superpowers only has very limited choices that he can make he's trapped by what came before him and what comes after him and I just I don't know whether it was just because as a somewhat do a teenager that kind of that kind of appealed to me

[00:32:08] this idea it's the sort of the line from Battlestar Galactic all of this has happened before and will happen again. Right and I just I just thought that was really interesting and I love the way

[00:32:22] it subverted your expectations of what a hero is supposed to be and who a hero is and like you say Herbert is a libertarian he has a very dim view of any kind of power structure right

[00:32:35] but also I think he has quite a dim view of human nature in general in some ways it is quite a do a depressing book and that nobody really comes out of it that well yeah we're coming off the back

[00:32:48] of silo so you know whatever yeah um yeah I mean but for all that it's also just a story about heartbreak and revenge and falling in love and leading a people and yeah war yeah it's all of

[00:33:02] that stuff that really appeals to you when you're 15 well yeah it's it's like the essence of humanity and like when you read it as an older person you find stuff in there that you miss

[00:33:12] this new layers yeah yeah there's new layers too yeah well yeah Herbert started researching Dune which was his third novel in 1959 just in time for him to turn 40 and he'd apparently been assigned to write an article about those Oregonian sand dunes the article is never published but that

[00:33:29] research became something much bigger with Herbert going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole researching desert cultures before there was even a Wikipedia and yeah there may or may not have been magic mushrooms involved yeah um and after his wife returned to work in advertising the next year

[00:33:45] she supported him as he devoted himself full time to the novel and in 1963 and 1965 the novel was published in two parts serialized into eight installments each in analog science fiction magazine and uh when he tried to get the entire novel published traditionally though it was rejected

[00:34:06] no fewer than 20 times for one thing it was extremely long for a science fiction novel in the 60s and then yeah Wikipedia summarizes next in a single tidy paragraph quite nicely what happens

[00:34:20] after that so to quote the frank Herbert article there Sterling E. Lanier an editor of a Kilton book company no mainly for its auto repair manuals had read Dune serials and offered a $7,500 advanced plus future royalties for the rights to publish them as a hardcover book

[00:34:40] Herbert rewrote much of his text Dune was soon a critical success it won the nebula award for best novel in 1965 and share the Hugo award in 1966 with and call me Conrad by Roger Zalesny

[00:34:55] for anyone who doesn't know the Hugo and Nebula they're like the Oscars and Golden Globes of the science fiction writing world and Zalesny is one of like the greatest science fiction writers

[00:35:04] of all time so yeah Luke did any of that surprise you um no I I sort of done my own research to the podcast so I think you picked up on all the stuff um that I did um yeah and then after

[00:35:17] publication Dune was a respectable size success helping Herbert at least get other work in journalism education photography and he even worked in Vietnam and Pakistan as a social and ecological consultant for a while but by the end of 73 his novel Dune the 1969 sequel Dune Messiah and

[00:35:37] his other work had earned him enough to not only become a full-time author but also buy a second home in Hawaii and he did also write a bunch of non-dune science fiction folks by the way most were best

[00:35:49] sellers but I haven't read any of them yet I might have to change that what about you Luke no I haven't read anything that's not you were like at home front but yeah he's of course most

[00:35:59] famously uh associated with Dune and he published the third novel Children of Dune in 1976 during the 70s a cult filmmaker named Hodorowski tried to develop an adaptation to the first novel with art from Mobius and Geiger or Giger the latter of which would most iconically go on

[00:36:19] to be used in the alien films and yeah this adaptation was going to be 14 hours long and star his own son plus Orson Welles Salvador Dali yes he of the melting clock paintings

[00:36:32] a young Mick Jagger and so many more and yeah the whole production was just going to be too big and what they had Pink Floyd was supposed to do the soundtrack yeah this this production kind of

[00:36:46] lost all touch with reality basically so no surprise it got cancelled but yeah you can bet we're dedicating an entire episode to this one with the jaw-dropping documentary that covers

[00:36:58] it all all the crazy details have you seen the doc yet Luke no but it's one of those I'm really there's one of the reasons I'm glad we're doing this podcast because it will finally give me the

[00:37:07] nudge I need to dig that documentary out because it's been on my to watch list forever yeah because yeah the story of the Hodorowski adaptation just sounds so nuts everything I've

[00:37:20] heard about it I just I can't I can't wait to get into that yeah I mean the doc is a good movie in and of itself in its own right I'm excited to revisit it because I definitely am

[00:37:31] forgetting some of the details and it's also Hodorowski you know he's he's interviewed himself and he's such a character Spanish guy and oh it's just yeah it's a good film it's gonna be a fun

[00:37:41] one to talk about and just to go back to just to go back to hands ready Giga apparently because there's a really good alien documentary on the making of alien that I watched a little

[00:37:51] while back apparently Giga actually showed the storyboards that he'd written that he'd drawn for Dune to Ridley Scott and that was part of yeah well Ridley Scott was going to uh he was going to

[00:38:06] do his own adaptation and ended up doing um Blade Runner instead yeah I'd actually really like to see a Ridley Scott adaptation in June because he'd certainly get the visual methi-a of it

[00:38:22] so yeah so then um Herbert's fourth Dune novel God Emperor of Dune aka the book where things really start to get wild was released in 1981 uh Heretics of Dune in 84 the same year Lynch's movie came out

[00:38:37] and also the year Herbert's wife passed away after a long illness so it was one hell of a roller coaster year for him uh the movie it was a critical and commercial success in Europe

[00:38:46] in Asia the less warmly received in the US at first but obviously there were a lot of Americans who felt the way my mom and your dad did about it because even before this podcast series I'm gonna

[00:38:58] bet that pretty much everyone listening has at least heard of this 40 year old movie if not already seen it yourself um so I think that's a pretty good mark of success if you haven't go and watch

[00:39:08] it because you'll enjoy it it may not be you may not enjoy it for the most high brow of reasons but it's it's a trip it's a fun it's a fun ride yeah yeah we'll we'll be watching it together

[00:39:19] in a few weeks yeah um and yeah Frank Herbert's final Dune book was chapter house dune published a year later in 1985 which is the same year he remarried to a former publisher and he'd planned

[00:39:32] a seventh and final novel for the series but he passed away in 1986 before he could complete it from complications related to a surgery for pancreatic cancer more than a decade later his son Brian with the help of writer Kevin J. Anderson would pick the series back up with

[00:39:48] amongst others two final books to complete the original series based on the his father's notes for that planned seventh novel uh those were hundreds of dune and sandworms of doom published in 2006 and 2007 but Brian had several thousand pages of his father's notes to pull from so they've

[00:40:07] written a bunch more dune books besides that set during the original series just before it and 10 000 years earlier during the Butler in jihad um now these books are still being published to this day um just talking about Frank Herbert's life change anything about how you interpret the novel

[00:40:24] Luke I do think Herbert's politics are interesting because like in researching for this episode I came across like several articles arguing that dune is a problematic book in that it's you could say

[00:40:41] oriental you can make an argument that orientalizes the Fremen you know it treats them as like exotic exotic others that are waiting for a savior from outside I mean but I disagree because

[00:40:52] you look through their eyes more than any other culture in the books yeah I just and also I think there's the um there's a couple of scenes that are deliberately written to make you think about

[00:41:04] how everybody from outside dune is is complicit in what is going on I think the I think the interesting thing is dune is very open to interpretation and its politics um I think Herbert had a very

[00:41:18] clear sense of what he wanted to communicate but I think a lot of other people have picked up other themes that maybe Herbert wasn't keen on stressing or didn't fully consciously realize

[00:41:30] we're in there or it's kind of death of the author type situation it's one of those texts that's really dense and you can read a lot into it and I think it is one of those books that you

[00:41:41] you take out what you bring to it in a lot of ways in terms of your own prejudices and your own worldview I mean yeah I think that that can be said about a lot of things

[00:41:51] you can interpret it your own way um we'll definitely be talking about some of the more controversial aspects of the novel and also what frank Herbert has stated or what we can infer

[00:42:03] based on what he has said was his original intention with different aspects of it um but it is also one of those ones where you can tell he wrote the first book and then he had some

[00:42:17] thoughts about it and the second book kind of answers to the first book so I look forward to we're not going to get to that until after we cover the first Villeneuve actually the first

[00:42:26] two Villeneuve movies because the third movie is going to be based on that second book but it just yeah it's interesting the more books he added the more layers he adds to yeah and I mean

[00:42:36] I haven't read God Emperor of Doom because I've read like synopses of it and I've just read the synopses and thought no it's wild no I am not ready to handle that well yeah we won't be

[00:42:47] doing that one in the public podcast but uh in a dune book club um and it's gonna be it's gonna be a fun one but that's a while away um but yeah but even the first couple books which are by far the most

[00:43:01] contained and accessible they've been deemed quote unquote unfilmable uh though yeah at least CGI is helping with the sandworms so just wait until you see what the sandworms looks like in the 2000 adaptation um but yeah there is a huge cast of characters a number of interconnected

[00:43:18] subplots entire ecosystems and cultures being brought to life and yeah hence all the different takes in the adaptations uh I would say variety is a spice of life but in dune the spice melange

[00:43:30] is a spice of life and precognition and space trap and also that there's one there's one particular character that is very difficult to adapt and that is the the princess erilon because she's not actually in the book but she provides these little these little epigraph to all the

[00:43:49] to all the characters it's gonna be an interesting one to see how they different it's interesting to see how the different adaptations uh handle that you know for instance in the villain of

[00:43:58] how they had instead uh chani do those opening you know analog so so we'll definitely talk because she does become um much she becomes an important character we won't spoil anything but she's important yeah yeah and yeah a hodorowski's dune was by the way actually the second attempt

[00:44:17] to adapt the novel and uh after that the baton passed ridley scott as I said who abandoned the project for a blade runner at which point dune landed in lynch's lap for what might be

[00:44:29] the most memorable and at least and maybe least faithful of the adaptations made to the screen uh aside from games the sci-fi adaptation was the next one to tackle the series with dune

[00:44:40] in 2000 and children of dune in 2003 uh they are the least known of the adaptations but two of sci-fi's biggest releases from that heyday era that included farscape and battlestar galactica correct me if

[00:44:54] i'm wrong but children of dune has baby james macaboy doesn't yeah it has baby james macaboy it's i mean it's not a bad thing like the you know the costumes are funny the

[00:45:06] special effects are even funnier but we'll get there we'll get there um yeah and after that there was a failed attempt to for paramount to adapt a movie between 2008 and 2011 and yeah brian herbert and writing partner kevin j anderson were signed on as advisors and then finally

[00:45:26] the adaptation that frankly brings us here today villanou's three-part take on the first two novels in herbert's series now later in the series we'll revisit the film from 2021 which roughly covers the first half of the novel a film many dune fans including myself have ambivalent feelings about

[00:45:45] but yeah man does it personally for me at least nail the look of the universe yeah i i i'd say i'm ambivalent about it i'm gonna wait to pass judgment till i've seen the second

[00:45:56] film because it kind of feels unfair to judge it at the halfway point yeah i just know what i'm missing from the first half and then i hear that a lot of these scenes actually were planned and then

[00:46:05] we're taken out and i'm like ah but there's a lot of things that it did exceptionally well better than all the other adaptations so yeah i have to say one thing i do like about villanou's dune

[00:46:18] is the casting because like oscar isaac as jubilee tor tradies and um josh brolin particularly as gurney hallock they just are those characters i think those two in particular are really good

[00:46:33] bits of casting as is timid as is timid yeah no i think over i think all of the casting has been good um i not all of the characterization landed for me 100 percent um yeah oh we'll get into it

[00:46:45] um we'll get into it so i recently did um an episode of properly howard which is a podcast one of the affiliates in the laurhounds network like us we did a dune episode on the 2021 so i ended up

[00:47:01] watching the 84 and the 20 21 preparation for that and also just thinking prepping for this series that we're doing now and i was surprised that the 84 movie also cut some things that i had for some reason convinced myself it hadn't although i know that there is also a longer

[00:47:20] version so i'm definitely going to be um diving into and comparing the two versions when we get to that one yeah i mean david lynch was not happy with was famously not happy with the final cut right he

[00:47:33] wouldn't even use his own name i mean david lynch yeah david lynch actually wanted his name taken off of the film because he was so unhappy with the way it was cut and it's it's weird

[00:47:44] like you changed the whole trajectory of david lynch's career because he's never done a big budget movie since never wanted to do a big budget movie i can't blame him since and he's talked about this

[00:47:55] at length he didn't like the amount of control that the studio with that kind of budget he didn't like the amount of control that the studio insisted on exercising um so it completely changed the trajectory of his career yeah we're going to be going through all these adaptations

[00:48:10] leading up to the new film and a week before the currently scheduled release for part two we're going to look at the trailers and recap what we can expect from the second film and we'll be back

[00:48:21] a week after the release to talk through that new film with you too and then finally we'll wrap up this season of dune coverage with the second book dune messiah and the children of dune sci-fi

[00:48:32] adaptation to look ahead at what to expect from villanove's dune part three assuming it gets the green light are you ready to become a dune expert luke or a dune spurt should we say

[00:48:45] a dune spurt no like i said i prefer to think of it as becoming a menta if a menta or possibly possibly in your case a benny jesuit sister i mean i see no gender boundaries becoming a

[00:48:55] menta but no i'd rather be a benny jesuit it's like the for wheel of fit time fans it's like the iso die yeah they get the cooler outfit and um one of the things i'm most looking forward to

[00:49:08] talking about is uh yeah just how much everyone's gonna see dune everywhere after this like star wars wheel of time avatar etc i don't think everybody realizes how much stuff we love today has

[00:49:20] indirectly come from this book it's everywhere when you when you actually start to think about it it's genuinely frightening how influential this book has been and some people get what dune is about

[00:49:34] and take stuff from that some people i think are wildly misinterpreted um dune and what it was what it was really about i'm looking at you star wars i'm looking at you george Lucas

[00:49:46] yeah um so yeah it's just an incredibly influential book and like you say when you realize how influential it's been you see it everywhere yeah no i agree um yeah and for everyone at home

[00:50:00] who's following along um i definitely obviously recommend reading i'm gonna be doing my reread this time rather quickly myself uh but yeah it's the best way to get the full picture and immerse

[00:50:12] yourself in that world but for those of you who don't have the time or desire don't worry we'll be breaking the whole book down all the major characters settings themes and plot points

[00:50:21] so that you can understand the bones of the story and feel fully planted in this world and then we'll tackle the adaptations and look at how well they brought that world and story to life

[00:50:31] for those of you who have read or are reading along my first top three question for you is when you're reading the first book or thinking about the first book what are your three favorite

[00:50:41] scenes from this book and why it can be the most memorable scenes the scenes that move do the most or surprise do the most or just the three book scenes that stick out to you in whatever

[00:50:51] way i'll throw up a post on twitter yes i'm still calling it twitter now and forever and you can also hop onto the wool shift dust channel of the lorhounds discord to share your takes there

[00:51:02] or you can also email them to us at woolshift dust podcast at gmail.com and uh luke and i will of course share our top three's live in the next episode if people are interested by the way

[00:51:15] there are i know there are several audio versions of it the one i've been listening to is the one that is available on audible and it is the one that has the list simon vent

[00:51:27] as the narrator obviously there's a full cast but it's the one that lists simon vent as the main narrator okay and that you knew heartily recommend it i do it's a really good production

[00:51:38] yeah and also um looking ahead a few episodes i'd love to hear from people who have played the dune video games from the 90s and beyond so yeah please tell me what you can remember i'd

[00:51:49] especially love some voice memos on this topic you can email them to me at woolshift dust podcast at gmail.com again uh that email address in the notes and meanwhile the silo book club is

[00:52:01] heating up on patreon you'll find both part two of my hu howie interview there as well as the full breakdown of the first book in the silo series of wool so yes we're giving away all

[00:52:10] the spoilers about what's going to happen next in the story with sam of silo tv fans fame this time to protect luke's show only innocence um you can find the book club at patreon.com slash wool shift dust

[00:52:24] and i want to personally thank the new silo zins who have joined the book club since we aired our silo awards episode paul kent merciless fur stew samar shan dan g melly b cliff j tom s lisa

[00:52:40] fancher aka lady walker fan matthew m james n dyin d laura e redhead shannon natalie l oraleo josh w fazale m salsa kim shong aka the lone token or that chick who plays bass

[00:53:00] nanonates great christ c rangabee page c and nancy m sam and i love having you all reading listening and discussing with us and there's still time to get in shift feedback before this weekend if you want in on that discussion too and this podcast was published

[00:53:17] by the lower hounds podcast community dedicated to deep dives and hot takes just like this i'm one of the co-hosts of the mcu universe series on the lower hounds feet where we're just wrapping up our coverage of secret invasion the show isn't everything we

[00:53:31] hoped it would be but there's a lot to analyze from the interesting seeds for future storytelling to what exactly went wrong with the realization of it all i'm gonna say as

[00:53:41] a listener i think you guys have gone out of your way to be fair and balanced um on that show because it would be so it would be it would be so easy to rip it limb from limb and you didn't i mean

[00:53:54] this show has its fans too there are people who genuinely enjoyed it so i mean we tried to be fair and if we're gonna we talked about that there are things it's not a complete

[00:54:03] dumpster fire we talked about the things that we liked about it and if we're going to criticize it you know we try to be fair and i think you guys did a really good job of trying to highlight

[00:54:15] both the good and the bad um in the show um i think it would have been really it would have been really easy to just point and laugh and go dumpster fire and yeah in true lower hounds

[00:54:28] you guys didn't do that um yeah i mean and we it's a really good podcast if i do say so myself thank you we try to pull out the easter eggs and things you'll still want to know whether or not

[00:54:39] you enjoyed the show yourself because it's still part of uh it's still part of the mcu universe and i'm not someone who's going to cry mcu fatigue i love the mcu and also if you haven't

[00:54:50] listened to a podcast he's done so far john has just the best voice for radio yeah it's just fantastic deep in velvety yeah um yeah and i'll also be popping up with john uh and john who are two

[00:55:05] different people uh we're in a one shot to talk about good omens the second season of the neil gayman adaptation um and there will also be episodes coming out soon from the lower hounds without me

[00:55:18] including a primer for osoka season two continuing their coverage of foundation which is perfect for dune fans as well as one piece the earth sea series of books tokens silmarillion and a bunch of other

[00:55:30] stuff and starting at september i'll be guesting on their wheel of time coverage too um and new to the lower hounds network is the podcast properly howard i mentioned earlier where steven anthony

[00:55:41] tackle movies won a reverent take at a time their new season starting this month is all about remakes from white man can't jump to the wicker man and yeah including that episode about the 2021

[00:55:53] dune film that i guess it on which will be coming out toward the end of this month if you want a preview on my thoughts on that film uh and luke where can people find more of you so they

[00:56:03] can find me at luke middip on twitter yes it is twitter it will always be twitter and i also do another podcast with a couple of friends from uni it could be said or one word we look at politics

[00:56:17] international relations and sport and yeah i'm also on twitter and other social media as at alicia cb and you can always find me on the lower hounds discord too talk to you again in a couple weeks one

[00:56:30] will make sure you know your mentats from your spacing guild see the subtle difference between the quizats hot rock and the maw deep and understand why is the benny jeserit oh

[00:56:41] la la okay david this is where we're supposed to choose a side green or black john my soul is as black as night your turn i am black for life so we're not fighting i thought this is where hbo

[00:57:28] wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff don't worry i'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod but we seem to agree on one thing we both really like the show the politics

[00:57:38] the drama the lore it was made for the lower hounds and since we just finished recapping season one we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the dance of the dragons and with the

[00:57:49] season pass option in supercast listeners can get early ad free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections see you in the lower hounds podcast feed each week for our dragon fire hot but probably positive

[00:58:05] takes the lower hounds house of the dragon covers is also safe for team green consumption side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore a hardened conflict with itself and an

[00:58:12] inescapable urge to read the book fire and blood by george r r martin dragon seeds may experience burning