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A bit old but still funny in its own way...Volume 2, Issue 5 © 1998, 1999 by Crescent Blues, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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A bit old but still funny in its own way...Volume 2, Issue 5 © 1998, 1999 by Crescent Blues, Inc. All Rights Reserved
I thought it was a robot Agamemnon.Crescent Blues: For folks who've not yet read Dune, does the "Atreides" in the title of House Atreides, the first novel in the Prequel to Dune trilogy, have anything to do the family of Agamemnon, the king who led the Greek forces in the Trojan War?
Kevin J. Anderson: Exactly, that's who Paul, the hero of Dune, is descended from. It's his family's blood heritage -- House Atreides from the line of Agamemnon. In fact, in the third chapter of House Atreides, the characters watch a performance of Agamemnon by Aeschylus.
Weren't they called and told about the safe?After we had already agreed to do it, we plotted some things. We decided to do the prequel instead of the sequel at the moment -- we will eventually do the last one. And after we had already plotted the prequel, that's when Brian, by digging through all the stuff we had on Dune, came upon the key to the safe deposit where he found the [Dune 7] outline.
Wasn't it the other way around, Kevin calling Brian?Ed Kramer, a mutual friend of ours, got us together, and instantly [Brian and I] hit it off. Brian called me up, and my wife likes to say, within two minutes we were talking a completely different language, because I have read everything of Frank Herbert's. I knew it inside and out.
You have a point there, I don't remember wether the slymock Agamemnon was supposed to have its name come from a distant ancestor or that he just picked it from history books...Redstar wrote:I thought it was a robot Agamemnon.Crescent Blues: For folks who've not yet read Dune, does the "Atreides" in the title of House Atreides, the first novel in the Prequel to Dune trilogy, have anything to do the family of Agamemnon, the king who led the Greek forces in the Trojan War?
Kevin J. Anderson: Exactly, that's who Paul, the hero of Dune, is descended from. It's his family's blood heritage -- House Atreides from the line of Agamemnon. In fact, in the third chapter of House Atreides, the characters watch a performance of Agamemnon by Aeschylus.
You do know there was a German king called Barbarossa? He was killed during the third crusade. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_ ... an_Emperor" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; )lotek wrote:You have a point there, I don't remember wether the slymock Agamemnon was supposed to have its name come from a distant ancestor or that he just picked it from history books...Redstar wrote:I thought it was a robot Agamemnon.Crescent Blues: For folks who've not yet read Dune, does the "Atreides" in the title of House Atreides, the first novel in the Prequel to Dune trilogy, have anything to do the family of Agamemnon, the king who led the Greek forces in the Trojan War?
Kevin J. Anderson: Exactly, that's who Paul, the hero of Dune, is descended from. It's his family's blood heritage -- House Atreides from the line of Agamemnon. In fact, in the third chapter of House Atreides, the characters watch a performance of Agamemnon by Aeschylus.
In both instances, applying that line of reasoning to "Barbarossa" would be fun though, do you think the crazy cybErg has a famous pirate in his genetic memories?
And more to the point ... the Titans did not have any form of access to their genetic memories. ???lotek wrote:In both instances, applying that line of reasoning to "Barbarossa" would be fun though, do you think the crazy cybErg has a famous pirate in his genetic memories?
Well I was streching it from the hack's point of view(devil's advocate stuff )SandChigger wrote:And more to the point ... the Titans did not have any form of access to their genetic memories. ???lotek wrote:In both instances, applying that line of reasoning to "Barbarossa" would be fun though, do you think the crazy cybErg has a famous pirate in his genetic memories?
Actually, I can't find any indication at the moment that Andrew Skouros (Titan Agamemnon's birth name) knew or claimed to be a descendant of the ancient Agamemnon. It would be EXTREMELY problematic for him or his family to know such a thing, even as a half-remembered family tradition, WITHOUT access to their genetic memory. (Not the least aspect of which being, where are these people now? )lotek wrote:Because how the fuck did the Titan Agamemnon stumble by chance on an old antiquity king's name that happened to be his distant ancestor?
I mean the odds are pretty overwhelming aren't they?
Considering what little is known of earth and human heritage, the Titans knowing even the name of any of the the originals they took their name from seems unlikely. Computers were obviously still in place by the time of the BJ, but I seriously doubt anything relevant prior to the 5,000 years or so before that time would still be recorded.SandChigger wrote:Actually, I can't find any indication at the moment that Andrew Skouros (Titan Agamemnon's birth name) knew or claimed to be a descendant of the ancient Agamemnon. It would be EXTREMELY problematic for him or his family to know such a thing, even as a half-remembered family tradition, WITHOUT access to their genetic memory. (Not the least aspect of which being, where are these people now? )lotek wrote:Because how the fuck did the Titan Agamemnon stumble by chance on an old antiquity king's name that happened to be his distant ancestor?
I mean the odds are pretty overwhelming aren't they?
In the original books, with the interest shown in the Atreides line, it's possible the Bene Gesserit verified the authenticity of the bloodline and told the Atreides who they were.
Evasive maneuvers engaged!Basically a lot of different people have the goods on each other under the table, and that's how it all works. It's this big complicated system.
Like you are!But there are also thousands of pages of his own character notes, background notes, his cogitations on the Bene Gesserit and how they formed, some back-history on the Butlerian Jihad… and I know I'm speaking a totally different language to someone who's not familiar with the books.
So there is a key to a safe deposit with the outline, and a Xerox box with notes on ???We decided to do the prequel instead of the sequel at the moment -- we will eventually do the last one. And after we had already plotted the prequel, that's when Brian, by digging through all the stuff we had on Dune, came upon the key to the safe deposit where he found the [Dune 7] outline.
Then Brian was trying to turn his garage into an office. Inside there, in a back corner, he found a Xerox (tm) box with thousands of pages of Frank Herbert's handwritten notes. It had all been put away at his father's death. Nothing was happening to them. It was like discovering this lost treasure or going into the C.I.A. warehouse and finding the Ark of the Covenant somewhere.
Except that in the crap, "Andrew Skouros" grew up on Earth and researched history, where he learned of the Titans of Greek myth, etc..Redstar wrote:Considering what little is known of earth and human heritage, the Titans knowing even the name of any of the the originals they took their name from seems unlikely. Computers were obviously still in place by the time of the BJ, but I seriously doubt anything relevant prior to the 5,000 years or so before that time would still be recorded.
BoBo makes no mention of the boxes of thousands of notes, but Kevin, in his part of the same afterword, does:... At the time of my father's untimely death in 1986, he was beginning to think about a novel that carried the working title DUNE 7, a project he had sold to Berkley Books, but on which there were no known notes or outlines. Dad and I had spoken in general terms about collaborating on a Dune novel one day in the future, but we'd set no date, had established no specific details or direction. It would be sometime after he completed DUNE 7 and other projects.
In ensuing years I thought about my late father's uncompleted series, especially after I concluded a five-year project writing DREAMER OF DUNE, a biography of this complex, enigmatic man—a biography which required that I analyze the origins and themes of the Dune series. After long consideration it seemed to me that it would be fascinating to write a book based upon the events he had described so tantalizingly in the Appendix to DUNE, a new novel in which I would go back ten thousand years to the time of the Butlerian Jihad, the legendary Great Revolt against thinking machines. That had been a mythical time in a mythical universe, a time when most of the Great Schools had been formed, including the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, and the Swordmasters.
Upon learning of my interest, prominent writers approached me with offers of collaboration. But in tossing ideas around with them I couldn't visualize the project coming to fruition. They were excellent writers, but in combination with them I didn't feel the necessary synergy for such a monumental task. So I kept turning to other projects, avoiding the big one. Besides, while Dad had sprinkled many provocative loose ends in the fifth and sixth books of the series, he had written an afterword for CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE that was a marvelous dedication to my late mother, Beverly Herbert—his wife of nearly four decades. They had been a writing team in which she edited his work and acted as a sounding board for his overflow of ideas...so with both of them gone it seemed a fitting conclusion to leave the project untouched.
The trouble was, a fellow named Ed Kramer kept after me. An accomplished editor and sponsor of science fiction/fantasy conventions, he wanted to put together an anthology of short stories set in the Dune universe—stories by different, well-known authors. He convinced me that it would be an interesting, significant project, and we talked about coediting it. All the details weren't finalized, since the project had a number of complexities, both legal and artistic. In the midst of this, Ed told me he had received a letter from best-selling author Kevin J. Anderson, who had been invited to contribute to the proposed anthology. He suggested what he called a "shot in the dark," asking about the possibility of working at novel length, preferably on a sequel to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE.
Kevin's enthusiasm for the Dune universe fairly jumped off the pages of his letter. Still, I delayed answering him for around a month, not certain how to respond. Despite his proven skills, I was hesitant. This was a big decision. By now I knew I wanted to be involved closely in the project, and that I needed to participate to such a degree in order to ensure the production of a novel of integrity, one that would be faithful to the original series. Along with J.R.R. Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS and a handful of other works, DUNE stood as one of the greatest creative achievements of all time, and arguably the greatest example of science fiction world-building in the history of literature. For the sake of my father's legacy, I couldn't select the wrong person. I read everything I could get my hands on that Kevin had written, and did more checking on him. It soon became clear to me that he was a brilliant writer, and that his reputation was sterling. I decided to give him a telephone call.
We hit it off immediately, both on a personal and professional level. Aside from the fact that I genuinely liked him, I felt an energy between us, a remarkable flow of ideas that would benefit the series. After obtaining the concurrence of my family, Kevin and I decided to write a prequel—but not one set in the ancient times, long before DUNE. Instead we would go to events only thirty or forty years before the beginning of DUNE, to the love story of Paul's parents, to the Planetologist Pardot Kynes being dispatched to Arrakis, to the reasons for the terrible, destructive enmity between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, and much more.
Before writing a detailed outline, we set to work rereading all six Dune books my father had written, and I took it upon myself to begin assembling a massive DUNE CONCORDANCE—an encyclopedia of all the characters, places, and wonders of the Dune universe. Of primary concern to us, we needed to determine where Dad had been heading with the conclusion of the series. It was clear that he was building up to something momentous in DUNE 7, and without intending to do so he had left us with a mystery. There were no known notes or other clues, only my memory that Dad had been using a yellow highlighter on paperback copies of HERETICS OF DUNE and CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE shortly before his death—books that no one could locate after he was gone.
In early May 1997, when I finally met Kevin J. Anderson and his wife, the author Rebecca Moesta, new story ideas fairly exploded from our minds. In a frenzy the three of us either scribbled them down or recorded them on tape. From these notes, scenes began to unfold, but still we wondered and debated where Dad had been going with the series.
In the last two books, HERETICS OF DUNE and CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE, he had introduced a new threat—the reviled Honored Matres—who proceeded to lay waste to much of the galaxy. By the end of CHAPTERHOUSE, the characters had been driven into a corner, utterly beaten...and then the reader learned that the Honored Matres themselves were running from an even greater mysterious threat...a peril that was drawing close to the protagonists of the story, most of whom were Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers.
A scant two weeks after our meeting, I received a telephone call from an estate lawyer who had handled matters involving my mother and father. He informed me that two safety-deposit boxes belonging to Frank Herbert had turned up in a suburb of Seattle, boxes that none of us knew existed. I made an appointment to meet with the bank authorities, and in an increasing air of excitement the safety-deposit boxes were opened. Inside were papers and old-style floppy computer disks that included comprehensive notes from an unpublished DUNE 7—the long-awaited sequel to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE! Now Kevin and I knew for certain where Frank Herbert had been headed, and we could weave the events of our prequel into a future grand finale for the series.
We turned with new enthusiasm to the task of putting together a book proposal that could be shown to publishers. That summer I had a trip to Europe scheduled, an anniversary celebration that my wife Jan and I had been planning for a long time. I took along a new laptop computer and a featherweight printer, and Kevin and I exchanged FedEx packages all summer long. By the time I returned at the end of the summer, we had a massive 141-page trilogy proposal—the largest that either of us had ever seen. My allied DUNE CONCORDANCE project, the encyclopedia of all the marvelous treasures of the Dune universe, was a little over half-completed, with months of intensive work remaining before it would be finished.
As we waited to see if a publisher would be interested, I remembered the many writing sessions I had enjoyed with my father, and my early novels in the 1980s that had received his loving, attentive suggestions for improvement. Everything I had learned from him—and more—would be needed for this huge prequel project.
—Brian Herbert
Note also the mention of the proposed anthology here; I'd forgotten about that being in this book.We hope you have enjoyed revisiting the Dune universe through our eyes. It has been an immense honor to sift through thousands of pages of Frank Herbert's original notes, so that we might re-create some of the vivid realms that sprang from his research, his imagination, and his life. I still find DUNE as exciting and thought-provoking as I did when I first encountered it many years ago.
—Kevin J. Anderson
I don't guess I've ever read this piece in whole, just excerpts posted here. I didn't knowBrian Herbert wrote:In early May 1997, when I finally met Kevin J. Anderson and his wife, the author Rebecca Moesta, new story ideas fairly exploded from our minds. In a frenzy the three of us either scribbled them down or recorded them on tape.
The smoking gun for Keith's "Brian found a key" bullshit.Brian Herbert wrote:A scant two weeks after our meeting, I received a telephone call from an estate lawyer who had handled matters involving my mother and father. He informed me that two safety-deposit boxes belonging to Frank Herbert had turned up in a suburb of Seattle, boxes that none of us knew existed. I made an appointment to meet with the bank authorities, and in an increasing air of excitement the safety-deposit boxes were opened. Inside were papers and old-style floppy computer disks that included comprehensive notes from an unpublished DUNE 7—the long-awaited sequel to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE! Now Kevin and I knew for certain where Frank Herbert had been headed, and we could weave the events of our prequel into a future grand finale for the series.
Take it back to Children, at least:SandRider wrote:I don't think Frank came up the idea of
descent from Agamemnon until God-Emperor. And then, only Leto II would
have had the capability to look back thru the lines and say for certain ....
And later, in a conversation between Ghanima & Irulan:FH in CoD, about Alia having a fit, wrote: But the voice persisted: "It might work, if you had help."
"No...no," she whispered.
Other voices wove around her mind: "I, Agamemnon, your ancestor, demand audience!"
"No...no. "She pressed her hands against her ears until the flesh answered her with pain.
An insane cackle within her head asked: "What has become of Ovid? Simple. He's John Bartlett's ibid!"
"Very well! I'll keep trying to dissuade you. This course is madness." And Irulan wondered why she let Ghanima become so irritating. A Bene Gesserit didn't need to be irritated at anything. She said: "I'm concerned by the extreme danger to you. You know that. Ghani, Ghani...you're Paul's daughter. How can you —"
"Because I'm his daughter," Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon and we know what's in our blood. Never forget that, childless wife of my father. We Atreides have a bloody history and we're not through with the blood."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"
Got it:now, not having actually read Keith's silly-books, is there a statement
in the prequels that the pre-Paul Atreides knew they were descended
from Agamemnon ?
If so, this is just another careless, thoughtless "inconsistency" ...
Note that they got the dates fucked up: should be something like "more than twenty-two thousand years". (And "dishonorable incidents" ... is that a hint, even from the very beginning in HA, of things to come in the Legends books? Just how much planning DID they do?)Hack(s) in House Atreides wrote:House Atreides claimed to trace its roots more than twelve thousand years, back to the ancient sons of Atreus on Old Terra. Now the family embraced its long history, despite the numerous tragic and dishonorable incidents it contained. The Dukes had made an annual tradition of performing the classic tragedy of Agamemnon, the most famous son of Atreus and one of the generals who had conquered Troy.
Earth still existed, and was destroyed, by that time? Did they have to make every significant event in the Duniverse happen in the same 30-year period?.SandChigger wrote:Sorry, just one little point re the crap:
Except that in the crap, "Andrew Skouros" grew up on Earth and researched history, where he learned of the Titans of Greek myth, etc..Redstar wrote:Considering what little is known of earth and human heritage, the Titans knowing even the name of any of the the originals they took their name from seems unlikely. Computers were obviously still in place by the time of the BJ, but I seriously doubt anything relevant prior to the 5,000 years or so before that time would still be recorded.
I'd have to check the timeline, but the Titans take over and then lose control to Omnius something like more than 1,000 years BEFORE the Legends books events. Time for Omnius Prime to set up on Earth, blah blah blah. Earth isn't nuked until the beginning of the Butlerian Jihad.Redstar wrote:Earth still existed, and was destroyed, by that time? Did they have to make every significant event in the Duniverse happen in the same 30-year period?.