Hairy Ticks of Dune Blog

“Dune” “Blog”: The Ass’s New Book

Sunday, June 29, 2008 - Ashes of Worlds in Bookstores July 1

This one picture says it all:

This is the second post in a row with ZERO DUNE-RELATED CONTENT, so I’m not even going to do the bastard (or the idiots who are letting him post his bragging about his swill books on their site) the favor of linking to the post.

THE “DUNE BLOG” ON DUNE NOVELS DOT COM HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH DUNE.

Remember that, OK?

Paul of Dune Cover News!

Not to be outdone by Harper-Collin’s spectacular “lenticular” cover for the paperback of Kevin’s Last Days of Krympei, TOR has decided to up the ante:

The upcoming Paul of Dune first edition will feature—get this—a scratch-n-sniff cover…but without the scratch.

?!?

Reportedly the cover will feature a new “scenticular” odoriferous finish that will slowly release scent molecules into the air for a period of up to a year. You’ll be able to smell the book from several bookstore aisles away, making it easy to find the little stinker and begin your reading adventure all the more quickly!

Can you imagine the minds that come up with this shit?

Kevin thinks we all want to be him

Q: How important is it in your mind to remain consistent to the established canon of a universe you did not create?

KJA: Immeasurably important. You have to know the other universe inside and out and you have to get everything right — this is especially true because the fans of those universes (Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Files, Dune, etc.) also know the series inside and out and [because *they* all want to write novels there] they are trying to catch you at any mistake.

Hmmm. The Road to…Hell is paved with good intentions.

I think we’ve established with the email interview last year and with the inconsistencies that we’ve found in the books that Kevin has failed miserably.

But at least he can console himself in his denial with the additional thought that we all just wish Brian had chosen us and we’re just jealous of his success and talent.

Talk about delusions….

Paul of Dune galleys now in KJA’s hot little hands

Looks like they’re really dragging their feet on this one, even allowing for the month-later publication date in mid-September.

(Announced by Kevin somewhere online. Wink wink nudge nudge.)

Remember: it was Kevin who sent the final manuscript off to the editor when “they” finished writing it (wink wink).

Who doesn’t think it’s his corrections that are the important ones?

A pair of balls between them: One from the access logs

Blogmic Encounter doesn’t like New Dune:

Apparently, a mere eight Crimes Against Literature aren’t quite enough. Now comes word of yet another Brian/Kevin “collaboration” (read: Anderson actually writes them; Brian Herbert just has the correct last name) due in September: Paul of Dune.

Or, as I prefer to think of it: Jesus Wept.

So that’s eight so-called “Dune” books in the bank — literally — and … God help us … four more that have been announced. These clowns are just shameless; if they had a pair of balls between them, they would just call the next book Cash Registers of Dune.

NICE. Too bad we’re just a “small but vocal minority”.

Small but vocal … and growing. Too bad for them.

A minor prescient of my acquaintance has predicted that this Pail of Dung travesty could be the one that will finally do in New Dune. Let’s hope he’s right.

An Unlimited Special Effects Budget Cover!!!

Warning: Absolutely NO DUNE CONTENT.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - Special Effects for Paperback of “Last Days of Krypton”

HarperCollins will be issuing the paperback of THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON with a special “lenticular” cover — fine prismatic etching that gives the whole book an amazing 3-D look, as if the Superman “S” is leaping toward you. This is the first time in publishing history that this effect has been used for a mass-market book.

WOW, Kevin, that’s so frickin’ NEAT-OH. The FIRST TIME? Dayum…another coup for you!

But…I’m having a little trouble visualizing what you mean….

The new painting is lovely as it is, but the scan can’t give an idea of the lenticular effect.

Hmmm. Well…that didn’t really help me much. Could it be something like this, maybe?

I can’t even begin to fathom the type of mind that can get excited by this shit.

System: ALF CEN B

Been playing around with Celestia a bit over the last few days…. Clicking opens a larger (up to 65 KB) version in a new window.

Alpha Centauri B System

Newton

Einstein

Hawking

Ockels

Ockels vs. Terra

Well before the first generation ship arrived in system late in the 26th century, the four planets had already been named after famous physicists: Newton, Einstein, Hawking and Ockels. (You remember Ockels, right? The drive theory guy.) While bases and industrial complexes were also eventually established on Einstein and Hawking, it was terrestrial Ockels with its biosphere blessed with botanical wonders (lacquer tree, strangle vine, barrier root, pleniscenta…and of course, fogwood) that became the focus of colonization activities….

Come on…you didn’t think it was always called Ecaz, did you?

(Images created using Macromedia Fireworks from screenshots of Celestia 1.5.1 running my in-progress Duniverse add-on. Current planet textures borrowed from the RS Rigel Kentaurus B System version 3 add-on of Rob Sanders and Ao Lai add-on of Steve Bowers. System parameters adapted from an online version of Guedes et al. (2008), “Formation and Detectability of Terrestrial Planets around α Centauri B”.)

“But it’s not a sequel.”

Poor Byron. He’s really been digging himself in deeper and deeper into the shite lately, huh?

I mean, what is this?

The sequel to Dune will always be Dune Messiah. Paul of Dune simply fills in the gaps between the two. Chronologically, Paul of Dune will come after Dune and before Messiah. But it’s not a sequel. Messiah is and always will be.

Obviously, he doesn’t speak the same English as the rest of us:

sequel. n. a published, broadcast, or recorded work that continues the story or develops the theme of an earlier one.

If Paul of Dune “come[s] after Dune” and “fills in the gaps” [how does that not mean “continues the story or develops the theme of”] between Dune and Dune Messiah, how does it not meet the definition of a sequel?

Isn’t it amazing the mental hoops this guy is willing to jump through for two hacks that won’t even let him play in the sandbox, too?

Words beyond words

Last night as I prepared to head up to flop myself down on the futon, I knew that for yet another night I was in no mood to face the 60-some remaining pages of Brian’s Sidney’s Comet. So I grabbed my paperback of Kevin’s Hidden Empire and trod stair.

I flipped around again for a while in the beginning “chapters”, revisting scenes already marked by what will no doubt grow into a “worldforest” of mini-PostIts, and finally foraged on into new territory. Halfway down page 69 (the first page of “14 * Cesca Peroni”), I read this paragraph:

Beside her the sinewy old woman, Jhy Okiah, stared through the windowport, as if she found every single star worth looking at. “Patience, patience.” The ancient Speaker had vast reserves of inner calm and an intelligence that she never flaunted when speaking to others.

I stopped and read that again. And then I just lay there on my stomach for a while and stared at the page, feeling more and more uncomfortable and…just plain bad about it.

We spend so much time villifying Kevin—and, to a lesser extent, Brian—but I guess I was touched by the sudden realization that there’s a real person out there who conceived those ideas and formed them into words and thought both the ideas and words good enough to show them to the world. And that, more than anything else that has happened over the last two (or ten?) years, made me very sad.

Because that’s obviously not good. If it was just that one paragraph, you could chalk it up to Homer nodding while the monkey fell from the tree.* But it’s not…the whole damned book is like that as far as I can tell at the moment. Bad writing, bad science, bad integration of ideas pinched from others. Bad, bad, bad…the beginning of the Litany of St. Mallory.

* Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus, Horace, “Sometimes even good Homer nods”; saru demo ki kara ochiru, Japanese proverb, “Even monkeys fall from trees.”

ALIENS ABDUCTED ME…AND INSERTED McDUNE INTO MY ANUS!!!

Well…OK, not really.

But it COULD happen, you know. In a world where two virtually talentless hacks can dictate and/or pencil-scribble repeated bestsellers…ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!

Actually, I was watching another of an amusing series of UFO abduction debunking shows on Discovery last night and the title of this post suddenly popped into my head.

And unfortunately, just like Kevin and Brian put down on paper (sort of) every fool idea that pops into their comb-over and fuzzy heads, I decided to share this with you. (Don’t that make you feel spatial now?)

Remember people: WATCH YOUR BUTTS.