site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 31, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I read that link you provided, and I definitely wouldn't say Devereaux cares that the Fremen are unrealistic. He cares that people think it's a realistic premise and is arguing against that, not saying that they are bad because they aren't realistic.

https://acoup.blog/2020/02/21/collections-the-fremen-mirage-interlude-ways-of-the-fremen/

There's an additional interlude which delves further into his opinions on how much Dune it's succumbs to the "Fremen Mirage".

Note that I never claimed that Devereaux considered the Fremen "bad", merely unrealistic, and a propagator of bad tropes into even relatively sophisticated audiences. I'm using his arguments to justify my dislike of them, and my primary rebuttal is to your claim that nobody other than me happens to care about the matter. Like I said, I have seen people bring it up as a criticism of Dune organically, hell I could pull up screenshots of a discussion a few days ago on the ACX discord.

Suffice to say that n>1 people care, and at least I have plenty of reason to find Dune not particularly worthy of its current high regard as a work of classic science fiction.