終於看完 Dune (沙丘魔堡)了
應該看了有半年
實在不懂它偉大在哪
不過 Dune 之於科幻好像就如 The Lord of Rings 之於奇幻的樣子
開創作品嘛
我就不要太嚴苛了
我相信如果我去讀什麼武俠的開創性作品
我也不會覺得好看

這本真的很…奇幻
比丘尼比吉斯特還有保羅的能力真的很扯
還可以直接改變分子結構勒
根本魔法
不過什麼想要育種出可以同時深處多個空間的人那邊扯到了多維空間
我還勉強能接受
雖然這部裡面好像沒有那個部分

不過這本應該比基地好…嗎
至少大於等於

然後沙蟲還要香料的部分我真的很不解
那兩個東西到底是啥小
為什麼沙蟲可以長到那麼大
為什麼香料可以使人有預知能力？
去查了維基百科
看樣子二三集也沒有解釋
扯ㄟ
這兩個明明一看就是超大的梗
解釋好的話就會變成真正的神作
雖然好像大家本來就被這麼認為了

這本真的超東方主義
武打劇情根本武俠小說
不用練肌肉 只要會訣竅
就能打趴所有人
女性的部分也是
不過上個世紀的東西不是本來就都這樣
就算是西方的也是一樣吧

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/923824545
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If this is the gold standard against which all science fiction must measure and be judged, let’s just blow our brains out right now and call it a day.

As far as I can tell, Dune largely inspires two points of view. One marvels at its historical importance and world-building (unique, fascinating, complex, rich), and the other dislikes the stilted writing but does so apologetically because Frank Herbert couldn’t help the fact that he wrote science fiction in the 1960s and that Edward Said hadn’t done his thing yet.

Come on , people of the world. Linear models of progress don’t apply to good writing. Frank Herbert can’t write because he’s a shitty writer, not because it was the 1960s. The dialogue is clunky and characters have endless internal monologues (in italics) that serve no purpose but to explain incredibly obvious plot points to the reader. This is an embarrassingly novice mistake.

The plot also lacks any element of surprise. Princess Irulan, oblivious to the concept of spoiler alerts, summarizes all major plot points in her historical vignettes which introduce every single chapter. We can’t wonder about whether and how Jesus Christ Paul will become the messiah of the people because the princess has already told us before we’ve begun the book. We can’t wonder about who the traitor in the Atreides house is because Princess Irulan’s vignette is all like “Yueh! Yueh! A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!”

And then there’s the world-building. It is So. Fucking. Lazy. Half the words are lifted from Arabic and Arab Fremen culture is the result of a scavenger rampage through Islamic concepts, scraps of Buddhism, and Frank Hebert’s Orientalist curiosities all cobbled together into a cringe-inducing whole. The main subject of this book, the sand niggers Fremen, have been in the desert for thousands of years, border on religious fanaticism, and haven’t changed a bit over time. They pray salat, conserve water (because hello, desert), and wait for their white savior Paul to bring them out into the light (or into the shade, as it were). They frequently declare Muslim-sounding things in bastardized Arabic and are very upset because the Imperial forces are preventing them from doing Haj. It’s unclear how the Imperial forces have blocked all outbound flights to Saudi Arabia, but we’ll take it on faith. There was a jihad situation, like, hundreds of years ago but it was apparently a jihad against computers? I don’t know. The ragheads Fremen also do this thing where two men will fight to the death and the winner will take the dead man’s woman as his wife or his servant.

Given the history of the U.S., I think it’s hilarious that a book full of racism, imperialism, and misogyny was considered groundbreaking in the 1960s.

The other thing that makes this book unreadable is Frank Herbert’s I-Tarzan-You-Jane approach to gender:

“There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed … The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives."

Man has the mighty penis. Mighty penis does the thrusting action. Woman has the sacred hole. Sacred hole is warm and open for mighty penis penetration. Thanks for clearing that up, Frank.

Male and female characters in this book align nicely with Frank’s pole-in-hole view of the world. The men do the war because the penis. The women do the manipulation and mind control because the vagina. They are either wives or concubines, and having children is of utmost important. Man and his woman sometimes have tender conversations about all of this. Observe:

“[Paul] began tightening his still suit. “You told me once the words of Kitab al-Ibar,” he said. “You told me: ‘Woman is thy field; go then to thy field and till it.’”

“I am the mother of thy firstborn,” she agreed.”

How romantic.

Anyway, let’s talk some more about Paul, our white messiah. When he’s taking a break from tilling his fields, he’s busy being a cartoon hero. He has no flaws. Like, none. He sees everything, understands everything, knows the future, and every word out of his mouth is prophetic and vaguely Shakespearean. This is the kind of shit he says:

[Re. aforementioned penis/vagina theory]

“And you, my son,” Jessica asked, “are you one who gives or one who takes?”

“I’m at the fulcrum,” he said. “I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without [giving].”

You’re SIXTEEN, bitch. Sit down and shut the fuck up. Nobody cares.

Opposite the cartoon hero is the cartoon villain. He’s really, really evil. He wakes up evil, goes to bed evil, and all the time in the middle, he has evil conversations and evil thoughts. Many of his evil thoughts are in italics so we know EXACTLY where the story is headed because plot twists are also evil and will not be tolerated. Please note, he is also fat as fuck and eats a lot. Also, he’s a big homo. And the homo’s a pedo.

I really have nothing more to say. I AM glad I took the time to wade through this shitstorm of misogyny and orientalism. You can’t read sci-fi and not have read Dune. I always suspected I might hate it, but at least now I have proof.