MirrorMask didn’t make any money and Doctor Who scripts are great but they don’t mean much when budgets are creeping up to $100 million.

This. I loved the last two Frank Herbert books (many of my favourite characters of the series are in them and a whole new universe to explore). I wanted to know about the two old people at the end so I got suckered into reading Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books and I’m still regretting it. Awful drivel streched out…

Yes, and the last few novels suffer because his normal process was to write the story, then go back through and fill in the sub-plots and commentary later. After he couldn’t physically do the editing this became very difficult and moderately obvious when reading. I first really noticed it in Unseen Academicals. On…

I appreciate his vision. I also appreciate that by that point, he was a horny old man seemingly obsessed with sex. (Same thing happened to Asimov and - reportedly, have only read one of his books - Heinlein.)

You’re right. It’s sad. He was narrating them, you know? And trying to edit them by having them read back to him. It was noble of him to keep working, but that’s a not a good method-of-work. I officially stopped with THUD! and have made peace with that. I’ve read the rest, but... I stopped with THUD!, as far as…

Actually, I found Dune Chapterhouse to be freaking amazing. It brought back some of the political machinations and social commentary that was the backbone of Dune, and dispensed with the silly philosophical self-examinations that made God Emperor of Dune so boring.

The thing about the Dune series is that you have to read all of the books (that Herbert himself wrote) to understand that it isn’t about Arrakis or the Atreides but about the Bene Gesserit and the long view. If you read Heretics and Chapterhouse, you’ll appreciate what a massive vision Herbert had.

In your defense, the last few novels were pretty lackluster. Particularly Raising Steam and Snuff. I haven’t had the heart to read The Shepard’s Crown yet. (Sob!)

Loved Dune. Dune Messiah- meh. Children of Dune caught my interest again. Then God Emperor of Dune sank its hooks in me. I don’t remember Heretics of Dune, so it must have been okay. Chapterhouse Dune broke my heart because, after reading the afterword, I realized that it was Herbert’s last love letter to his wife.

I kindly disagree on the top image. The dune series by FRank Herbert was amazing in its totality. The “dune”-drivel his son published can hardly be considered to take place in the same universe. It takes place in some weird parallel universe where everybodies IQ is somehow 30 points lower and where history doesn’t…

Dammit... I like it all!

Aww, I kind of liked the Leto Worm. Would have made a great plushie. If you stopped before the Honored Matres, you really missed some f’ed up sexual stuff.

Completely agree! Alas, “Terrestrial Botanists Almost Murder Space Flowers Until Valiant Astronauts Take Over to Save Them” is a clunky headline. ;)

“So I suppose this is the beginning of the end of being able to drive your own car, where you want, when you want.”

I actually work in Safety Engineering for my state DOT and can tell you that most of them are; speed limits are set within parameters of the design for designed roads, which are pretty much all roads constructed nowadays. Older, undesigned road have, for the most part, had their speed limit adjusted after speed…

Dear Ruiners of Worktime Playtime (and io9 staff)

Well, you have at least one fallacy being accepting as true in your article. You quote, “Economist Noah Smith wrote for Bloomberg this week that if machines were on the brink of total domination, we’d be seeing a robot investment boom.”

To be fair, people screamed and hollered that Heath Ledger would be horrible during that period when all we knew was that Ledger would be cast for the roll. The minute photos came out showing Ledger dressed as the Joker, some of those people started to say “Wait a minute, that actually looks really good.....”.

Not really. It makes sense. You see the film, then at some point you see Loki in a sequence and you think “Oh, is HE behind all this? It was his staff they took the stone from after all. Huh. He’s behind everything it seems.”

Phoned it in? No way. Yes, Old Flynn was acting like a weird sad old man in a daze because he *was* a sad old man in a daze. I don’t think it’s ever overtly stated in the movie but other sources state that time is percieved differently on the Grid; he’d been there for what must have felt like centuries. His memories…