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Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2003 4:43 pm
Posts: 7258
Location: Sacramento, California, USA
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Hi Luis,
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | | Good point on the light vehicles, Maksim. They would definitely still be around. But we would not see huge superheavies like Baneblades. |
?
Given the little we know based upon the dune background, light, fast, agile vehicles make sense while heavier ones do not.
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | I don't know if I will ever be able to sculpt worth a darn since all of my attempts at using green stuff to date have turned out ugly. ?
I will just sit and dream... |
We all start somewhere...
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | With all our discussion about Dune, I had one other thought about the Fremen.
When I read about the Fremen culture and history I don't see an Arab culture even though Frank Herbert drew so heavily from the Arab language to make the language of the Fremen. |
Herbert was a strange and headstrong man. It doesn't take much of a read of his biography to learn that.
He was raised around Jesuits that didn't treat him well, was very probably abused as a child, treated his own children very poorly (some would say he abused them) and had a world view based at least in part on the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s.
His ideas about the Middle East probably came from media-induced propaganda BS that came from the Arab states after 1967 such as the Khartoum Resolution. Despite the rise of terrorism, many were trying to romanticize Arab culture and pretend that Jihad and other violent ideology didn't exist.
Herbert's strength was in ecology. That's largely what he did for a living... looked at living ecologies and thought about planetary shepherding. He was ahead of his time in this regard.
However, he often pushed eco-minded values so far as to exclude human beings. He probably would have been one of those folks who would kick out human beings from their livelihoods to preserve some rare burrowing tree owl or pond scum rat. That's supposition, of course. I do beleive he did make a number of public statements to that effect, but I don't feel like looking them up or quoting them.
At any rate, like many of the Che Guevara mindset, he had a contempt for organized religion and particularly Christianity. Of course, his mind changed a number of times over his lifetime so who knows what he really thought.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while he borrowed from religious themes, I don't think he intentionally did so with any positive intentions. Dune as a whole has some very strong realpolitik and atheist messages.
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | | Their History really reminds me of the Ancient Hebrews. Especially the theme of escaping slavery and wandering the galaxy until arriving on Dune. |
I can see this to a degree, but I see this as more of a coincidence than an intentional relationship.
*** Why use a name like Fedaykin (derived from Arabic for genocide bomber) if you want to emphacize a relationship to the Biblical Hebrews? ***
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | | Really brings to mind the Exodus Bible story. |
I can see it, but it doesn't work for me.
I see more Ishmael than Israel.
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | | Their prophecy of a Messiah to me strikes a chord closer to Hebrew than Muslim religion. |
Islam, per se, doesn't have the same idea of the Messiah as Christianity or Judaism, but it does exist... to a degree. And many of the offshoot religions of Islam such as the Druze, Bahai, Sufis and others definitely have a Messianic concept. The biggest difference is which coming they call it... second, third, fourth or even a larger numbered coming...
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | | The Fremen are definitely a "desert" culture and their ways are really based on the harshness of their existence on Dune. |
I've always viewed ideas about the harshness of a culture being strongly related to the harshness of their environment as mostly being coincidence.
There are plenty of harsh cultures from lands of plenty and nonviolent generous cultures from harsh lands of privation.
"Desert" cultures or in many ways ordered and hierarchal, but at the same time, those same societies often have rigid customs for hospitality and social interaction.
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | | Although Herbert certainly drew from his views of desert people as inspiration for them, the more I read the more I think that the Fremen are not based on the Arab culture. Few Arabs are truly desert dwellers. |
I don't know about that. The Bedouin are definitely "desert" people. While Arabs are a vast people, they identify with the desert... it's one of the most common kinds of terrain that they encounter even if modern Arabs, like most other peoples on the Earth, live an urban city-based existence.
| Quote (Cuban Commissar @ 27 Jan. 2006 (00:57)) | | *** What to you think? *** |
Except for a few terms such as the "Kwisach Haderach" (directly derived froma Hebrew-language concept), almost every other term for the Fremen is is derived from Arabic and Islamic extract.
In my mind, Herbert was trying to come up with something exotic and so went for inspirational sources outside of the better-known European and English sources.
Some of his other "creations" probably were inspired by East-Indian (Hindu), Aztec (Mesoamerican), early Christian (Jesuit, Holy Roman Empire, Inquisition, etc.), primitive prehistoric tribal, Ancient Greek, Slavic, Germanic and even Asian sources.
Herbert was an amatuer linguist in many regards.
Either my 6mm_miniatures or 6mmSFWG E-groups (maybe both) have a folders full of Dune links. You should look them up. I think you'd like what you find.
There's at least one site that really delves into some of the possible sources of Herbert's sci-fi creation.
Here's a link to a Wikipedia entry about the "Dune" novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
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