2y ago

Foundation vs Dune

229 comments

vs The Expanse: we are headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense but humanity's salvation will come from... Nevermind, we're fucked.
- Just most of us, except Amos. Amos will be fine.
  
  He is that guy
  
  Nothing this guy can't shrug off. Litterally.
  
  He's got the shotgun, you've got the briefcase. All in the game, though.
- [...] humanity's salvation will come from alien technology we haven't discovered yet.
- The expense always looked like almost utopic to me.
  
  Truly ? What aspects of it ?
  I mean they do have universal basic income on earth but apart from that humanity is all kinds of fucked. And it doesn't exactly get better as the story progresses.
  
  You mean dystopic right ... right?

Thing is, the Asimov Foundation universe could actually fit in the "past" of the Dune universe.
- This idea is oddly fascinating. Now we just need a good sci-fi writer to produce the "missing link".
  
  Maybe the robots in Asimov's universe lead to the creation of Erasmus and eventually the Butlerian Jihad.
  
  We do. In some of the set in the same universe novels but not written by Asimov there are references to Brain Fever. A disease that virtually 100% of humans get at least once that makes them dumb for life. All advancement in galactic culture comes from the like 1 out of a million people who were immune.
  That would account for Dune. Dune only makes sense if you assume that everyone is stupid and living in a hazy of drugged religious fantasy. Ffs the main power of their space witches is to use a sexy voice. Which everyone knows about! Just put in earplugs or jerk off prior or get gay guys or use deaf people or get straight women before dealing with one. Thousands of years of eugenics defeated by 30 cents of earplugs. Dune everybody!
- In the non-canon book Psychohistorical Crisis, the Dune universe is part of the past of the Foundation universe. The Fremon are known as the "Frightful People" to historians.
  
  That makes more sense.

I'll let you all guess which one was published in the 50s and which one was published in the 60s.

Both of these are terrible takes on the books.
Spice is not a solution in dune in fact the whole 4th book and the end of the third are centered around forcing humanity to wean itself off spice so that it may evolve.
The central concept is that humanity must not depend on machine or drugs or complicated eugenics and must instead look inwards and improve itself by facing hardship.
In foundation (at least the start) the complicated maths is essentially there to prove that all establishments fail and survival requires constant change. Very differently from dune foundation sees technological superiority as key to this and importantly the ability for society to change in order to support the technological progress.
Even if you don't agree with the above neither book aims to "fight imperialist bullshit" if anything they both quite staunchly support the idea of a benevolent dictator controlling all.
- Or is Dune about the folly of different types of dictatorship; sadistic, benevolent, religious or machiavellian? Taking only the first book (because that's as far as I've read) every leader is thwarted or confined by the consequences or weakness of their own style of leadership.
  
  I read an interview where frank said that his intention was for Dune to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of charismatic leaders (which is to say, the "classic" hero archetype). Which - for the first book - tracks pretty well. The free are basically just used as cannon fodder for Paul to win back his power (and a lot more), then when he wins, he sets them loose on the universe because he can't control them.
  The trouble I have with that though is that he goes on to contradict that point in later books, but I won't get into that because I don't want to spoil anything for you
- It's honestly crazy how many people can read Dune and completely misunderstand the themes of the book.
  Though to be fair, it sometimes feels like Frank himself didn't fully understand what themes he was going for. Books 1-3 were staunchly "Beware of heroes, charismatic leaders will lead you to evil and despair", then in GEoD, we find that literally the only hope for humanity was millenia of oppression by a totalitarian government.
  But either of those two takes is still wildly better than "spice saves the universe" lol
  
  Dune has one of the most complex (and necessarily logical) universe in it. I'm not surprised every reader found different themes more fitting.
  
  It wasn't the qctual only hope, just the only path Paul and Leto could see, and we know they aren't omniscient
- Ok but to be fair they were using spice for like 5000 years?

I think Dune has very many themes, but the biggest one is the dangers of religion (which is not really portrayed in the movie I think)
- The 2022 movie covers the first half of the first book and that theme only really comes into its own in books 2 and 3.
  
  I mean, I feel like manipulating a whole culture's established religious beliefs to place yourself at the highest seat of power and war a holy war in your name is a pretty poignant display of "religion bad, m'kay"
- It was supposed to be a warning against following charismatic leaders
- One of the reasons why the original movie was so good. Stripped out all the religious garbage and kept the worms
  
  The original movie was good for the art direction and fantastic acting by supporting characters.
  That's kinda where it ends though, comparing the two of them, the new Dune features human emotion which is pretty cool; all the main characters were kind of animatronic feeling in the old one imo.
  
  Ok, either the internet can't identify a great joke or... no, I guess the only reasonable explanation is that your comment whooshed over people's heads.
  
  You don´t mean that abomination made by Lynch that shits all over the book do you?!?

OP could at least make the effort to plug the dude's post.
https://mastodon.social/@flargh/110821695878847573
@flargh@mastodon.social

better do both just in case
edit: guys maths is HARD
- I'm sure there are drugs that make math easy. We just need to find them.
  
  From the Wikipedia page for Paul Erdős:
  After his mother's death in 1971 he started taking antidepressants and amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking them for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained that it impacted his performance: "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month."[66] After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his use of Ritalin and Benzedrine.[67]
  
  Melange, I'm sure. Seeing how it enables you to fold space, I'm assuming it also helps with the math involved.
  
  They don't make it easy. They make it better. Source: am mathematician.
- MATH AND DRUGS ARE THE KEYS TO EVERYTHING
  Source: myself, a computer science major
  
  Lmao, good to know CS majors haven't changed.
  I'll see you at FurCon in a few, it's just a matter of time now.
- [Relevant]
  https://youtu.be/NO0cvqT1tAE
- math is fun!
  
  but I took so many drugs 😭
  
  the "moment of relief when the pain recedes" kind of fun. And then you realize you made a trivial mistake in the beginning and all your conclusions were useless.
  
  Masochist!

Don’t the Dune universe have Mentats?
So, maths and drugs
- But the mentats are also on drugs, aren't they?
  
  Not necessarily, being a mentat doesn't require the use of spice. Many use it because it enhances their thought process
  
  Sapho juice.

Iain M. Banks: we're living in an AI-regulated Utopia, but the AI that we totally trust might be doing some light imperialism on the side.
Pratchett / Baxter: we're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, and another one, and another one, and another one, and oops, a blank...
Edit: added the Long Earth one.
- Maybe sometimes there are special circumstances?
- Fuck I love the Culture series. Such a good read.
  
  The Culture is so incredibly fascinating. Banks' death was a loss to science fiction.
- The Culture stuff is great but nothing tops The Algebraist. A near-perfect standalone sf doorstop imo.
  Big ideas, some laughs, a mystery that you can solve if you're paying attention, strong characters, interesting aliens...
  The last one that hit that sweet spot for me was Mother of Storms by John Barnes.
  
  Hadn't read The Algebraist yet, so there's a new one on my list. Thanks! I'll make sure to check out Barnes, too.
- The Culture weren't actually the future of humanity though right? Non-canon stuff has indicated we join eventually in the future but the society formed independent of us and even visit and examine us in one.
  
  Actually, you're right.
  Oh well, a humanity, then, just not ours.

Arthur C. Clarke: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from encountering benevolent alien intelligence we haven't discovered yet.
Ray Bradbury: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from rediscovering the beauty of books and humanity's inherent capacity for empathy in a world we're rapidly forgetting.
Robert A. Heinlein: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from pioneering individualism, libertarianism, and multi-planetary colonies we haven't established yet.
William Gibson: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from navigating and subverting the interplay of high technology and low life in a cybernetic reality we're only beginning to understand.
Ursula K. Le Guin: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from understanding and integrating a spectrum of social, psychological, and cultural perspectives we haven't fully considered yet.
Neal Stephenson: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from unprecedented technological and social innovation, often resulting from deep historical and philosophical introspection, in a future we're yet to engineer.
Octavia Butler: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from embracing and adapting to change through the lens of bio-diversity and sociocultural evolution we haven't fully embraced yet.
- Ayn Rand: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense 😃
  
  Exactly what I thought for Heinlein. All aboard! 🚂
- Liu Cixin: We're headed to being fucked.
- Douglas Adams: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense and humanity will almost completely be erased, but as a matter of fact, there is much more and weirder nonsense out there, which of course makes the previously mentioned nonsense quite nonsensical and thus the destruction of humanity quite unimportant from a galactic point of view. (Where this point is located, has been a debate for aeons.)
- Gene Roddenberry: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from remotely incubating and uplifting improbably humanoid alien species across vast swaths of existence to shore up our defenses against mysterious adversaries that plot our extinction for reasons they've not monologued yet.
  
  That sounds more like post-post-post-Roddenberry Trek.
  Gene Roddenberry: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but don't worry, it'll get better.
- Every fantasy author (except Tolkien): We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from an individual or small group who will save the world through the judicious application of violence.
- Do Gene Wolfe
  
  Gene Wolfe: We're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense, but humanity's salvation will come from traversing complex, labyrinthine narratives and deciphering symbolic, metaphysical riddles we haven't begun to understand yet.

vs Hyperion:
Dan Simmons: We’re headed for some bleak imperialism nonsense but humanity’s salvation will come from serving AIs we haven’t discovered yet.
- Don't we eventually find out the AIs are oppressing the humans and siphoning off their life-force/brain-power through the use of the portal system and that humanity's actual salvation comes from deeply believing in the power of love to the point of developing the ability to teleport to beloved places and people?
  
  yeah IIRC that power of love thing was the way our fleshbag brains could deal with the same stuff that the AIs interacted with directly
- I really did not like Hyperion as much as I wanted to. Too many r/thisisdeep moments.

Asimov: weird mutants capable of overthrowing the universe should be put down with prejudice.
Frank Herbert: weird mutants capable of overthrowing the universe should be made emperor.
- the mule did nothing wrong!
- If you read Foundation til the end (Foundation and Earth), you'd see that it's the other way around.

Neither of the stories present salvation, merely survival.

Warhammer 40k: ~~we're headed for some bleak imperial nonsense but~~ BY THE GOD EMPEROR SUCH HERESY IS INTOLERABLE.
- Bringing Warhammer 40k mythos into this isn't fair. That is like bringing a gun to a kid's thumb war.
  
  They shoulda brought a gun
  
  One two three four I declare EXTERMINATUS
  
  It's kids' problem now.
  
  But guns are inferior to melee combat in the 40k universe so the kids would win.

Image Transcription: Mastodon Post
Peter Cohen, @flargh@mastodons...
"Foundation" vs "Dune"
Isaac Asimov: we're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense but humanity's salvation will come from using math we haven't discovered yet
Frank Herbert: we're headed for some bleak imperialist nonsense but humanity's salvation will come from tripping on drugs we haven't discovered yet
I am a human who transcribes posts to improve accessibility on Lemmy. Transcriptions help people who use screen readers or other assistive technology to use the site. For more information, see here.

Please provide a link in addition to a screenshot when you are referring to a post in the fediverse. You can easily link to a mastodon post from Lemmy since both are federated, and if you do it, your post will magically appear as a response to the original mastodon post.
- https://mastodon.social/@flargh/110821695878847573
  Too late but here it is

In Dune, the imperialist "nonsense" was the path to salvation. Genocide by machines was what we were saved from.
- yeah, they went well past the Asimov case.
  Also the spice is never deemed a path to salvation. it is merely an integral ressource that is stabilizing the human order by mutual dependence. In the later books the problem is explored what happens when the ressource becomes less integral/more abundant, removing the mutual dependence.
  
  I don't really agree that the spice wasn't put forward as a way to salvation. I think it clearly was key to finding the golden path.
  The spice enabled the Bene Gesserit to see what was needed in their breeding program, and they were trying to breed Kwisatz Haderach who would lead humanity through a dangerous time, avoiding the destruction of the race. (Also the scene in the sietch that I won't go into detail about, becuase spoilers)
  Leto II uses the spice to see the golden path and forge humanity into what it needs to be to survive. (Also the other thing which I haven't mentioned due to major spoilers of a cool moment).
  The spice is pretty clearly necessary for the path taken to salvation.
  While the spice may not have been necessary to avoid the destruction of the human race had another path been found, in the story as it was told it was absolutely central.

I started reading Foundation (the first one) just yesterday. So far I love it!
- Lucky you, I wish I could experience it fresh again!
  
  Just wait 50 years like I did to reread the trilogy and it will almost seem like you've never read it before.

Not totally true, like Asimov's math wanted to reinstate the Imperium, so is kinda the other way arround.
- Yes, it was The Mule that introduced the anomaly.
  
  Hey, for spoilers do:
  
  \ ::: spoiler [visible text]] [spoiler text] ::

vs. Children of Time: Fuck humans, spiders are way cooler.
- Not comparable works.

Let's just find a drugged out mathematician in the future and our destiny as a race is secured.
- Paul Erdos has entered the chat.

As a physicist psychonaut, I like both ideas. Not Paul's genocide tho or Leto's worm imperium (I'm on God Emperor). Still reading foundation and it's amazing
- While good books in general, I always hated how whiny about the future Paul was when all he could do is say "fuck the people thousands of years in the future, I'm not gonna go on with a genocide."
  
  But wasn't it that he saw the future showing he we embark on a jihad, and he worried that his trying to prevent that would still cause it to happen? I'd say it shows Paul as more complex and far thinking than you'd expect from a 14 year old kid. A kid sees that and says "I just won't do that." Paul said "I need to prevent this, but I'm not sure how, so I must be constantly vigilant of my actions to ensure it doesn't happen."

Oddly enough, both involve predicting the future.
- And the threat of artificial intelligence
  
  Thou shalt not make a machine in the image of a man.

Using drugs to solve the problem of institutional memory is my favourite Frank Herbert invention.

Instead of tripping on drugs, he could have gotten the same effect by changing only a single letter
Switching from "a" to "e"
Not entirely accurate, but gets the point across and has a better punchline
- Humenity’s selvation will come from tripping on drugs?
  
  Foundetion?
  Edit: took me a second. Math -> Meth. Let's hope the field of Methmatics can save us.

Saberhagen's Berserker: The machines will visit some bleak imperialist nonsense on you a hundred fold before wiping your entire fucking species out.
- Just putting this out there for future reference, I am pro Basilisk.
  You hear that future A.I. singularity overlord?
  
  Oh fuck don't remind of this

Peter Watts: We're already deep in some bleak dystopian hellhole which isn't even imperialist. We tried to bring salvation via transhumanism and utilitarianism, but that shit backfired like nothing else ever has. All humans died and vampires (that humans created because why the hell not?) took over.
Oh, there are some alien eldritch horrors lurking in the fringes of the solar system. They present a threat even for the vamps.
Pellegrino & Zebrowski: The story, taking place in some deep dystopian hellhole trying to bring salvation, begins with alien eldritch horrors wiping out 99.99% of humans with r-bombs.
And then it gets worse.
- The Killing Star? I don't think I've ever met another person that read that book.
  
  Yup, The Killing Star🙃

Dan Simmons: … but humanity‘s salvation will come from the pedophilia love we always had.
- Heinlein: that, but pedophilia and incest.

Gimme some Super God Math
- Sorry, we only have God Emperor ~~Spice~~ Meth.

Why not both?
- Why not try three fold? Alien A.I technology, psychedelic drugs, and high level mathematical systems all incorporated into painting a potentially very complex future of humanity lol 😉

And that's why Dune rules.

"from using meth we haven't discovered yet."
- Foundation: Space Math Dune: Space Meth
  
  Snow Crash: VR Molly
- Spice is more LSD than meth.

I've tried to read Dune a few times and quit I have read all of foundation however. Not saying foundation is better but Dune is probably just not for me.

¿Por que no los dos?

Pretty sure Hunter S. Thompson said that first (unquoted)

Yes I can

Blockchain and endorphins save us!

Dune: “salvation? sure, buddy, sure”

Did that guy even read the books? Sounds very much like he did not. I will explain on the example of foundation, naturally this contains severe spoilers:
- Ackshually... this is a drastic oversimplification for the sake of delivering a joke.
  
  Seriously? I always thought jokes were supposed to be ... you know ... funny?!
- Also, Dune is not about salvation. It's about a horrible monarchic system being overthrown and replaced with a horrible monarchic system because drugs let some kid see the future.
  
  I always read it as like, radical Islamic Star wars.
  You have the whole rebellion and the chosen one and the mystical powers and everything but instead of it being a blonde haired blue-eyed white boy it's a dark haired man incorporated into a desert tribe

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