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Peter Cohen

One of the enduring problems I have with Dune - not the movies, not the first book, but the entire series of books penned by Herbert and his successors - is how central the three dominant Abrahamic faiths figure into the storylines. More than 20,000 years from now.

I think it was fundamentally unimaginative of Frank Herbert, but then again this is the guy who gave us a Macguffin of divination through psychedelic worm poop.

@flargh

I remember the revelation of Dune being not that it was something Sandworms produce (such as poop) but the worms themselves (not that far removed)

But I expect you were mostly being more figurative than literal there.

@Chancerubbage IIRC spice was the fungal byproduct of sandtrout shit and water. Sandtrouts are the larval worms (the "little maker" in Chakobsa).

@flargh I suppose I got my shorthand notion from the Lynch Film.

This is a lot to, um, digest:

“a Macguffin of divination through psychedelic worm poop”
@flargh

mastodon.social/@flargh/112218

@flargh “divination through psychedelic worm poop” is a phrase I need to use more often. Possibly print on a T-shirt.

@flargh Frank Herbert’s ghola would say “I gave you drug mutated precog FTL pilots, a millennial-long secret plan by space nuns with mind control and their own kung fu to save humanity, and humans who can calculate possibilities quicker than AWS, but I lack imagination for thinking God has some legs? Excuse me while my original body rolls in its grave quicker than a sandworm with a maker hook in its segments”