First of all, congratulations to Freakzilla and Omphalos for this great board, and to all the Ichwan Bedwine who continue to fly the flag of Orthodox Herbertarianism. While I never had the honour of being banned from DN (I managed to mostly avoid the place and its idiot moderator), I definitely felt adrift in the online Duniverse until I found this fantastic board. I posted regularly on the old Dreamers of Dune forum back in the day, and ducked into Arrakeen whenever I could, but a combination of real-life distractions and my growing frustration at the stupidity of DN saw me leave the online Dune community for quite a while.
It's great to be back!
I first read Dune when I was 11 and no other book has ever captured my imagination more before or since. It's no exaggeration to say that Dune completely changed the way I looked at the world. Because of Dune I read things I might never have picked up otherwise: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Koran, Taoist and Buddhist teachings, books on ecology, politics, economics, genetics, human potential. It opened up endless horizons for me and continues to do so. I'm now 29 and have read all six the Dune novels every year or two since that first eye-opening experience, usually one after the other in a single long spice-soaked orgy of Dune-ness. They remain my favourite works of fiction in any genre.
My (mercifully) brief and (mercilessly) painful expereince with nuDune was limited to attempting to read House Atreides and, a couple of years later, attempting to read The Butlerian Jihad. I say "attempting" because I didn't manage to read either cover-to-cover. I later picked up Hunters of Dune out of some morbid fascination with trainwrecks, but only ever flipped through it, reading bits at random to reassure myself that Brainless Herbert and KJ Anderhack were as godawful writers as I remembered.
I've wasted far too much time and energy over the years ranting about those two and the abomination they continue to perpertuate in the name of Dune, so I won't preach to the choir. Dehydrate them both, I say. Theirs is water that no man would touch.
I am also a fan of most of Frank's non-Dune books, particularly DV and the Ship/Pandora series, The Godmakers, Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment. I think the books he co-authored with Ransom are probably the best sceince fiction he wrote outside of the Duniverse.
Anyway, that's enough rambling from me for now. I look forward to being a part of the Sietch, getting to know you all, and continuing to honour the work of one of the great minds of the 20th century.
Ya hya chouhada!
