Spyke

I know some people say they don't read speculative fiction because it's "not realistic" well guess what πŸ˜œπŸ˜‚

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lemmy.world

in dune all space travel relies on spice which is only found on a desert planet inhabited by fremen who start a holy war.

how far away from that are we?

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hayvanreply
piefed.world

And the underdog gains the upper hand by threatening to cut off the space oil supply.

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lemmy.world

Frank Herbert totally invented all of this stuff out of thin air and didn't have any historical precedent to work with at all.

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I mean, obviously the holy war and spice was based on the Middle East and oil, but getting "fat orange pedophile god-king" right is a pretty incredible coincidence. And would be Lynch's prediction, not Herbert's (at least the orange part).

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The story is more critical than just that. Paul, the hero figure of Dune, is treated as the Messiah, and the people put total faith in him. This leads to a holy war across the universe, because people trust charismatic leaders too much. It's a lesson that, no matter how much you like a leader, they always need to be questioned.

Luckily, for the Dune universe, this all happens because Paul actually is good (maybe, if what we hear about it is true, though I believe we're supposed to question this too). He sees that the people are too trusting of charismatic leaders, so he must use this and cause massive damage, in order to teach humans to question their leaders and to think for themselves. Paul actually can't give up his last bit of humanity to do this though, as he actually is too good of a person, and his son has to do it instead.

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lemmy.world

Wait I just found out that guy is called Baron V. Harkonnen, where the V stands for Vladimir. Borderline prophecy the Dune books if you ask me, and it's frightening. :D

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@NickEast_IndieWriter @bookstodon @books @worldbuilding @[email protected] @[email protected] @aiop
Actually most popular fiction isn't very realistic:
Romance
Detective / Mystery
Spy
Thrillers / Adventure
Westerns (not popular now).
Non SF & F horror.
Robinsonades

A novel need not be one genre, that's a publisher/marketing thing.

There is a spectrum between SF - fantasy - paranormal etc.
Dune and especially the early Pern novels are far more Fantasy than SF.

Even a lot of autobiographies are fiction or fantasy!

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