During that time, the troubadour-warrior Gurney Halleck is off stage-making his home, joining a band of smugglers, working with them in small guerilla operations against the hated Harkonnens. Our tale about that, “Blood of the Sardaukar,” is the second story in this book.Īs the seeds of our story after that, a couple of years pass in Dune after Paul falls in among the Fremen and gradually becomes the legendary Muad’Dib. We also wanted to tell, for the first time ever, the background of the fearsome Sardaukar in a story of a young refugee boy inducted into the Sardaukar corps and trained to become a ruthless killer. We wondered about that Sardaukar officer’s connection to Leto, his possible past experience with House Atreides. “My Emperor has charged me to make certain his royal cousin dies cleanly without agony.… I’m to report to my Emperor what I see with my own eyes.” This Sardaukar is quite determined to ensure that the Duke does not suffer any more than necessary. One grim Sardaukar colonel bashar comes to the Baron and insists on the Emperor’s orders that Duke Leto is to be treated with honor. We begin this new collection of stories with “The Edge of a Crysknife.”ĭuring the Battle of Arrakeen, after the Harkonnens have effectively conquered the city, Duke Leto has been captured and the Baron gloats over what he will do to his archenemy. We decided to tell part of her backstory, the origin of this brave Fremen woman and how she resisted Harkonnen rule through both violent and subtle means. Her long and eventful life is only briefly hinted at in her scenes in Dune, before she is murdered. In our numerous rereads of the original novel, we kept finding intriguing side trips, questions that deserved to be answered in individual stories of their own.įor instance: ancient Shadout Mapes, the quiet, observant, and ultimately rebellious housekeeper in the Arrakeen Residency, who endured years and years of Harkonnen rule. What did they think about in their last moments? How did they hold themselves together while their air and water slowly ran out? That story was published in Amazing Stories magazine and is included in the collection Tales of Dune. Our story “A Whisper of Caladan Seas” explores what happened to those doomed soldiers entombed in caves on a desert world far from their beloved oceans. Slowly measured bites of orange glare, showers of rock and dust in the brief illumination-and the Duke’s men were being sealed off to die by starvation, caught like animals in their burrows.” “The guns nibbled at the caves where the Duke’s fighting men had retreated for a last-ditch stand. During the violent overthrow of House Atreides, Baron Harkonnen uses archaic artillery weapons to blast at caves in the Shield Wall, where a group of Atreides soldiers had holed up. The first Dune short story we ever wrote together, in the late 1990s, was inspired by a close reading of a brief account in Dune about the battle of Arrakeen. But they still remain important elements in the Dune universe. The smaller stories are grains of sand, rather than towering dunes. Sometimes we wanted to explore an interesting peripheral character or a loose story thread that would help flesh out the larger epic that now spans more than twenty novels. Over the course of building these complex epics with huge casts of characters, we’ve occasionally been intrigued by smaller ideas, interesting spotlights on tangential events, or vignettes that did not find a place inside the core novels. Anderson novel has also been substantial in length, ranging from 130,000 to 240,000 words. In the quarter century that we have been working together in the Dune universe, each Brian Herbert–Kevin J. He originally published the novel in three separate parts- Book I “Dune,” Book II “Muad’Dib,” and Book III “The Prophet”-and at around two hundred thousand words it was a massive novel for the time, significantly longer than the average SF book, and considered unmarketable by Frank Herbert’s agent and every publisher with the exception of one, Chilton Books.įortunately, that mindset has changed over time. Frank Herbert’s original Dune is one of the first truly epic science fiction novels ever published in scope, theme, cast of characters-and in its sheer length.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |