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Dune (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • He took a plane to Florence, Oregon, where the USDA was sponsoring a lengthy series of experiments in using poverty grasses to stabilize and slow down the damaging sand dunes, which could "swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways."[5] Herbert's article on the dunes, "They Stopped the Moving Sands," was never completed (and only published decades later in an incomplete form in The Road to Dune), but it sparked Herbert's interest in the general subject of ecology and related matters.
  • The CHOAM corporation is the major underpinning of the Imperial economy, with shares and directorships determining each House's income and financial leverage.
  • Melange is crucial as it enables space travel, which in turn is monopolized by the Spacing Guild; its Navigators use the spice to safely plot a course for the Guild's Heighliner ships via prescience using "foldspace" technology, which allows instantaneous travel to anywhere in the galaxy.
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  • Dune responded in 1965 with its complex descriptions of Arrakis life, from giant sandworms (for whom water is deadly) to smaller, mouse-like life forms adapted to live with limited water. The inhabitants of the planet, the Fremen, must compromise with the ecosystem they live in—sacrificing some of their desire for a water-laden planet in order to preserve the sandworms which are so important to their culture. In this way, Dune foreshadowed the struggle the world would have following Carson's book in balancing human and animal life.
  • Environmentalists have pointed out that Dune's popularity as a novel depicting a planet as a complex—almost living—thing, in combination with the first images of earth from space during the same time period being published, was instrumental in environmental movements such as the creation of Earth Day in many nations worldwide.[11]
  • The Fremen also are more capable of self-sacrifice, putting the community before themselves in every instance, while the world outside wallows in personal comfort at the expense of others. In all these characteristics, Dune is not alone in drawing from Gibbon's work, as Isaac Asimov creates a similarly declining empire in his Foundation series, as does Arthur C. Clarke in his The City and the Stars.[12]
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Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: Isaac Asimov (Toronto Star) - 0 views

  • Dr. Asimov, 65, is a severe critic of Star Wars. "I'm against it, not because I'm a science-fiction writer, and therefore have special knowledge, but because I like to think I'm a sane human being." He believes Star Wars is a dangerous waste of money. "They're talking about spending $33 billion on research related to Star Wars. We're going to withdraw money from needed aspects of developing knowledge in order to set up something that probably won't work and even if it does work, won't do us any good."
  • Part of the problem with Star Wars is that it will take years to develop. "If I were the Soviet Union, I would have spent all this time trying to work up methods to penetrate the shield," said Asimov, who was born in Russia but grew up in New York. "I have a strong suspicion it would be cheaper to penetrate the shield than to set it up. "And if we're in real danger of a nuclear war now, trying to set up something for the middle of the 21st century isn't going to do us any good. In fact, by filling us full of false confidence, we're not going to make a strong enough effort to prevent war now."
  • "There are science-fiction writers, notably myself and Arthur C. Clarke, who were anti-Vietnam and are anti-Star Wars," said Asimov. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, was born in England and lives in Sri Lanka. "Clarke was howled down once by someone saying as a non-American citizen he had no right to make comments about Star Wars. That's an extremely stupid remark. "If you have no right to decry the policy of a country unless you are a citizen of that country, why the hell is Reagan always yelling about the Soviet Union? Is he a Soviet citizen?"
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  • "I'm convinced nuclear winter is actually something that will happen," said Asimov. "Unless we're completely insane, we don't dare take the chance. So what the hell good is this whole damned thing?"
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