1. The two big sci-fi epics of this fall are Dune & Foundation, which spring from the same source: John W. Campbell's Astounding magazine (remained Analog in 1960). Which also gave the world Starship Troopers, the Thing, and, oh, yes, various religions, including Scientology.
-
-
4. Lately there has been a lot of controversy about Campbell in science fiction circles because of his pretty brutal racism (his name was taken off a big award). Frank Herbert's Dune itself shows Campbell's ambiguous legacy was sometimes use against him.
Show this thread -
5. Campbell's Analog was the top-paying sci fi magazine in its time & lots of writers cynically tailored their stories to fit Campbell's various obsessions: ESP, genetic supermen, human conquest of universe, eugenics etc. Frank Herbert put all that in Dune: but with a twist
Show this thread -
6. One way to read Dune is that Herbert took all the things that made Campbell excited (ESP, superman, galactic imperial conquest, eugenics) but showed the downsides: he inverted Campbell's universe (mostly in later books not serialized in Analog).
Show this thread -
7. Lots more going on in Dune: a prescient critique of resource extraction imperialism & US foreign policy, the myth of Lawrence of Arabia, Catholicism, Islam, Indigenous cultures (particularly the Quileute).
@DavidKlion & I talk about this & more here:https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/dune-bugs?r=bh54&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source= …Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
He also unfortunately wrote an absolute banger:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Goes_There%3F …
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
turns out it's a bad thing to let your entire vibrant subgenre get bottlenecked by a single racist mark
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
You've surely read it, but I commend to your followers this terrific Campbell/Heinlein/Asimov/Hubbard biography by
@nevalalee:https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780062571953/astounding/ …Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
There's a lovely little filk song about this, first sung at the 1959 Worldcon. https://www.tor.com/2018/12/17/rereading-the-vorkosigan-saga-captain-vorpatrils-alliance-chapters-16-19/comment-page-1/#comment-781221 … https://fanac.org/Fan_Histories/filkhist.html …
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
He gets skewered briefly and viciously in Malzberg's very funny and nasty, Herovit's World.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.