SF Tidbits for 5/23/08
By John DeNardo |
Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at
12:22 am
- More Dune novels are on the way from Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson: Jessica of Dune, Irulan of Dune and Leto of Dune. I stopped reading Dune after the 2nd sequel. Does anyone have any thoughts on these Herbert/Anderson volumes?
- September 23 will see the release of the 10th anniversary edition of Harry Potter, which features exclusive bonus material from J.K. Rowling and new cover art.
- SF Scope interviews Interview with James and Kathryn Morrow, editors of The SFWA European Hall of Fame.
- The Sci-Fi Genre Review interviews Jim C. Hines (Goblin War).
- At SciFi Wire, John Joseph Adams profiles David J. Schwartz, author of Superpowers, and Ted Chiang, whose story “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” won this year’s Nebula Award for best novelette.
- Free audio fiction: Escape Pod podcasts “Elites” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
- Free preview: Bantam Dell has posted the first three chapters of Mind the Gap by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon for free.
- Free Non-Fiction: The Secret History of Star Wars is a new full-length e-book exploring the writing and creation of the Star Wars saga. [via The Website at the End of the Universe]
- At his blog, Auxiliary Memory, James Wallace Harris offers a nice primer for obtaining free science fiction.
- The June meeting of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series, hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, features Terri Windling and Howard Gayton.
- Catherine Asaro joins Beyond Reality‘s June discussion to talk about her book Schism
- George Takei joins the SyFy Radio In July.
- Over at SciFi Scanner, John Scalzi tells us How to Make a (Good!) Science Fiction Movie (for Cheap!)
Related posts:
- SF Tidbits Part XVII
- SF Tidbits for 8/24/06
- SF Tidbits for 6/22/07
- SF Tidbits for 6/7/07
- SF Tidbits for 3/2/08
Filed under: Tidbits
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Does “cookie-cutter cash-in crap” count as a thought?
I’m sure there are fans of this extruded Dune product the way there are fans of endless Star Wars and Star Trek novels. At least with the Trek franchise, the holders of the rights don’t allow the authors to completely disregard the concept of continuity the way that Messrs. Herbert and Anderson have done. I read the first two sequels and skimmed the third just to see what happens. I have no plans to any of the other installments.
Ouch!
The first prequel trilogy was banal, but passable. But The Butlerian Jihad was so bad I almost shit myself.
The “new Dune” (Brian’s stuff) was second-rate at best, and the Butlerian Jihad was third-rate. He should quit while he’s behind.
Although, in his defense, in his father’s writings, the farther he got away from the first Dune, the less interesting the stories were.
I have to agree the first sequel trilogy was not that bad. The second was horrendous.
I don’t think the authors proof read the final constructions of the books. I know Mr. Anderson records his work and has someone transcribe it. Reading them it looked like some one just assembled bits here and there. We had events happening in this chapter. Not having had happened two chapters later, and the happening again a few more chapters one. And I got tired of being told the same thing over and over again. I’m reading the book, I remember what’s going one.
I have not read “Hunters” or “Sanworms” yet, I probably will, and I probably will read these at some point (not high on my list). I have no plans to buy them though (I’ll save my money and spend them on good books!).
The first trilogy started okay and had its high points, but they were already into major continuity violations before the first book was over. Probably the best part of that series was finding out exactly how the Baron ends up with custody of Feyd-Rautha. This was not good enough to make up for the rest of the series.
I couldn’t even get half-way through the first book in the Butlerian Jihad trilogy. I literally threw it across the room on page 32.
It took me several re-reads of the original Frank Herbert novels, but by the time I got through my fourth reading of Heretics and Chapterhouse, I was beginning to suspect that I knew where Frank had been heading with everything. I picked up Sandworms just to see if my guesses were correct, since Hunters and Sandworms were allegedly based on a lucky find of Frank’s outline and notes for his seventh Dune book.
I’m happy to say, that if you pay attention to Frank’s works, you can see where he’s going; Sandworms went where I thought it would, albeit far more crudely and clumsily than Frank ever would have done.
It’s a pity that Kevin and Brian took 8 books to tell a fraction of the story Frank could have done in one.
I read, I think, two of the books set after the Dune series by KJA and BH. The ones set in the far future of the Dune series after the Leto-worm has died (his name was Leto, right?). They weren’t bad. They weren’t great either. Just average SF books that happen to be about somewhat familiar characters in an already established universe.