Against Cynicism: Tolkien v. Herbert

I found an interesting video by a channel called "Jess of the Shire" and I watched one of her videos, "Tolkien's Problem with Dune." The video above is partly my reaction to her video, including a few points where I think her assessment is dead-on, as well as a few points of disagreement. Plus, I add in some of my thoughts about cynicism in science-fiction and futurism, as well.

Intricate Characters, Unique Worldbuilding, but so darn Depressing: Dune Review!

Before I start, I want to tell a little story. Back in the day when Borders had bookstores all over the place, I would often go to see what was on the shelves with friends. My friend Justin and I came up with a fun game to play with the later Dune sequels (the ones from after Frank Herbert died). We called it the "Dune check," and what we'd do was grab a Dune book off of a shelf, open it to a random page, and see if there was anything on that page that was written so weirdly that it was funny. I don't think we ever found a pair of pages that wasn't funny.

So, I was a bit skeptical going into Dune, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, while the writing is a bit clunky in places, it wasn't nearly as laughable as the later Brian Herbert books. As I've been leaning more into classic sci-fi, I thought it was worth giving Dune a real chance.