gnocchi
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Okay, abit late, but I also finally finished reading the Machine Crusade.
First, some rants:
The sudden ability of Norma Cenva to rebuild her body after torture made no sense to me at all. One of the things that I loved about Frank Herbert’s writings is that most of what he wrote was based on factual, albeit rare, occurrences that exist even today in Earth. For example, there are people who can control their bodies in a way to simulate death by slowing down their heartbeats. It’s not that farfetched to imagine that type of skill could continue to be manifested until a more cellular level is achieved. However, for a mathematician, to suddenly express these massive powers and such finite control with no training because of a shiny gem is something better scripted for the Forgotten Realms than Dune.
Second, I really dislike how the space folding ship suddenly worked without any test runs and without even having been completed. That makes little sense to me, nor do I think does it really reflect the type of patience that Frank Herbert uses in his books to make them believable. For this book, I really started feeling like it was a rushed story meant to thrill rather than delve into the sociology of humanity.
Okay – now the good stuff.
I really loved how the beginnings of the major forces in the Imperium were described. Glibertus and his ability to perform Rainman like mathematics. Iblis Ginjo is a fantastic villain! Those who justify the means through the end are usually the folks who can swing either way in history – I’m glad he retained that portion of the original Dune stories.
I do want to note that there is a VERY interesting correlation in the Machine Crusade with what we’re seeing in Iraq. Note on the world of Poritrin, it is the Zensunni (pacificists) and Zenshiite (radicals) that are in contention on how to deal with the oppresive slave masters.
Isn’t it very strange that we seem that same situation except in reverse between the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq with America being the occupiers / slavemaster?
Freaky!
One thing that hasn’t been fully expressed yet, and I think it’s the religion that the Ginjo hordes will ultimately use as their platform is Navachristianity and the OC bible.
I am going to be interested in how these disparate plotlines will manage to express themselves, but at least we see how the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild lines really came from the same source.
Okay, abit late, but I also finally finished reading the Machine Crusade.
First, some rants:
The sudden ability of Norma Cenva to rebuild her body after torture made no sense to me at all. One of the things that I loved about Frank Herbert’s writings is that most of what he wrote was based on factual, albeit rare, occurrences that exist even today in Earth. For example, there are people who can control their bodies in a way to simulate death by slowing down their heartbeats. It’s not that farfetched to imagine that type of skill could continue to be manifested until a more cellular level is achieved. However, for a mathematician, to suddenly express these massive powers and such finite control with no training because of a shiny gem is something better scripted for the Forgotten Realms than Dune.
Second, I really dislike how the space folding ship suddenly worked without any test runs and without even having been completed. That makes little sense to me, nor do I think does it really reflect the type of patience that Frank Herbert uses in his books to make them believable. For this book, I really started feeling like it was a rushed story meant to thrill rather than delve into the sociology of humanity.
Okay – now the good stuff.
I really loved how the beginnings of the major forces in the Imperium were described. Glibertus and his ability to perform Rainman like mathematics. Iblis Ginjo is a fantastic villain! Those who justify the means through the end are usually the folks who can swing either way in history – I’m glad he retained that portion of the original Dune stories.
I do want to note that there is a VERY interesting correlation in the Machine Crusade with what we’re seeing in Iraq. Note on the world of Poritrin, it is the Zensunni (pacificists) and Zenshiite (radicals) that are in contention on how to deal with the oppresive slave masters.
Isn’t it very strange that we seem that same situation except in reverse between the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq with America being the occupiers / slavemaster?
Freaky!
One thing that hasn’t been fully expressed yet, and I think it’s the religion that the Ginjo hordes will ultimately use as their platform is Navachristianity and the OC bible.
I am going to be interested in how these disparate plotlines will manage to express themselves, but at least we see how the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild lines really came from the same source.
This is mentioned in the Butlerian Jihad (Book 1 of the Pre-prequel trilogy). After Xavier reviews the homeworld, the cymeks use projectile ships to trash the generators and then an Omnius copy is setup right away. The Giedi-Omnius uses the Giedi Prime production facilities to make copies of itself and launches it to uncharted territory.
Giedi Prime is the planet that Serena decides to take a commando team – Star Wars style – in and starts up the 2nd generator. It’s also the conflict where she gets captured and taken to Earth.
The first thing that Omnius does on Geidi Prime is send out innumerable copies of himself to establish beachheads for when humanity discovers these other planets. I wonder if these are fully accounted for.
It certainly seems that Leto’s scattering is not unlike what Omnius did at that very moment through realization that change required a catalyst (also parallel to Erasmus’ spawning of the rebellion cell blocks).
