Comments on: They mistake forgotten science for fiction

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 03:42:50 +0000

Even further back, in the 19th century, sodbusting American pioneers faced mental challenges in the plains:

“Prairie madness or prairie fever was an affliction that affected European settlers in the Great Plains during their migration to, and settlement of, the Canadian Prairies and the Western United States in the 19th century. Settlers moving from urbanized or relatively settled areas in the East faced the risk of mental breakdown caused by the harsh living conditions and the extreme levels of isolation on the prairie. Symptoms of prairie madness included depression, withdrawal, changes in character and habit, and violence…”

By: TRX

TRX — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 19:42:14 +0000

“Herbert’s Destination: Void, which has almost no interesting plot or characters…is unreadable today.”

That depends. I liked the 1966 version just fine. However, the one you’re most likely to encounter is the “revised and expanded” 1978 version, which I found hard to follow, even having read the original.

By: Space Nookie

Space Nookie — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 15:38:47 +0000

There are some aspects of the “breeding program” he misses, like how political power is passed patrilinearly and how ancestral memory/prescience works along bloodlines. Admittedly the latter is contrived. but it’s pretty clear that the child of an Atreides daughter-Harkonnen son combination would have enormous political power as heir to two powerful estates, ancestral memory advice from long lines of influential barons and dukes, and foresight from a long line of imperial descendants.

It’s kind of notable that Paul struggles in books 2 and 3 because he’s just not enough of a ruthless bastard, which is presumably a characteristic the planned Kwisatz Haderach could have picked up from his Harkonnen father.

By: Bruce Purcell

Bruce Purcell — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 23:02:17 +0000

Larry Niven once said forgotten sciences go mythical. Theology when the ignorant heathen went back to raging in their blindness, Alchemy when it transcended into chemistry, so forth.