Dune and the inner fucking monologue

So, I noticed that I bought this book exactly 15 years ago but have not read it. So I picked it up and started reading. I'm 100 pages into it.

Why does this fucker always provide the fucking inner monologue? Is this supposed to be good writing?

Or is it some sort of reflection of a mind-reading ability that only the Bene Geserit (or Muad-dib?) has? Then why am I reading everyone's mind? Am I one of them? Is the narrator one of them?

Or is it just lazy writing?

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its third person omniscient

Yes.

But that's beside the point; You can make a character say or do things and either of these might imply his/her motives. But if I'm served with each and every character's inner thoughts all the time, what good is this?

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Scifi books are written for sperglords who can't understand humanity, characters, or especially motivation, so it might as well be provided to you. The target audience is the type of person who will think a book is bad because a character acted "illogically".

I mean, I can appreciate the vivid imagination crafting a world for a work of fiction, but when the prose is lacking, what good is a fictional vivid world?

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the characters aren't important. Dune's best characters are religion and Arrakis

Is it actually lacking though? Or do you just not like it? It's a pretty popular book, even among those who are intellectual leagues above this board.

It's influenced by Molly Bloom's soliloquy.

There you go, now you have permission to like it.

If it has to provide every major character's thoughts in italics (and unless this is some bene-gesserit trick that will later be revealed in the book), I say it is lacking.

I like the world-building, but, I mean, WHAT IS THIS:

"For a Mentat, you talk too much, Piter," the Baron said. And he thought: I must do away with that one soon. He has almost outlived his usefulness. The Baron stared across the room at his Mental assassin, seeing the feature about him that most people noticed first: the eyes, the shaded slits of blue within blue, the eyes without any white in them at all.

You have one of these at least on every page. It's almost like "asides" in theatrical plays.

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I don't think that type of writing has anything to do with stream of consciousness.

People read these books for the world, not the story. Pic related is a post from earlier this week in which the OP asked for fantasy books that were better than Lord of the Rings.

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God, I hate that writer. I have to work on his fiction as a part of my job and god, that writing is cringeworthy.

Dune is way, way better than his writing.

>I have to work on his fiction as a part of my job
What kind of job is that?

Sanderson strikes me as a distinctly post-video game writer. Bad is another way of putting it. His work is on par with video game tie-in novels but without the saving grace of an actual game where you can yell abuse at strangers from other countries.

Translator.

And I don't get how he is so popular.Is it the marketing? I can't be _JUST_ marketing, is it? What makes him special? The fact that he's a Mormon? I don't know, I can't understand. It boggles my mind.

>Or is it some sort of reflection of a mind-reading ability that only the Bene Geserit (or Muad-dib?) has? Then why am I reading everyone's mind? Am I one of them? Is the narrator one of them?

Minor spoilers:
They kinda have mind reading abilities, yeah. The Bene Gesserit have been running specific breeding and training progrrames for about 10k years. They train superduper zen buddhist stuff that lets them "calculate minutiae" or something like that. The Bene Gesserit have "truthsayers". Masters of this training that can detect not only spoken lies, but inner intents to deceive among other stuff. The Kwisats Haderach is a messiah-like figure that they have been breeding forth, intending for this messiah to have the ability of prescience (predicting the future) Paul Atreides became this messiah, though they originally planned for it to be a woman iirc.

I get that its unconventional to include so much of the inner lives of characters, but these characters are part of aristocracies and various governing orders (the spacing guild, the CHOAM company) that have near-supernatural abilities that are far removed from the general populace because of milleniums of selective breeding, rigorous training in esoteric philosophies and all sorts of crazy meditative "super awareness" stuff etc. And of course they all use the spice which is a life-extending, mind-enhancing super drug that human society depends on.

The plot of Dune is convoluted and messy, the characters are almost inhuman and very hard to relate to. The prose is brittle and not very beautiful and youre hard pressed to find dialogue that isnt just dry exposition, but I urge you to carry onwards and finish the book with an open mind. Frank wrote some really ambitious shit with these books, and the execution could have been much, much worse. He deals with ideas and themes that really intriguing and thought provoking. The books have vision, scope, scale, imagination and I think also artistic merit. Just try to read a book for something other than prose for once.

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I bought the six books anyway. I'll read all of them regardless, so that I have an opinion on this significant (in scifi/fantasy circles) series.

I read the OG Mistborn trilogy and thought 'Alright, if this is his early work, his new stuff could be pretty good.'
But every Stormlight book is such a fucking drag with horrible, horrible characters. I don't understand how anyone older than 16 can think Sanderson is a great writer.

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I worked on that too. It felt like... anime.

this post is correct

It's a book about galactic, political intrigue: Ploys, within plots, within schemes, within grand machinations. Giving the characters within a means of telling the reader what they're thinking provides valuable substance as to understanding all of the inner intricacies of the empire, the people, and the overall condition; living within the cold, inhuman world of Dune is some tough shit. Could Hubert have simply stated that the Baron mired the mentat with delicate distrust, and altered so with all other inner monologue? Yeah, no doubt about it. But I think that would have ultimately detracted from understanding the world in which Hubert was trying to create. The prose is, unfortunately, disheveled as a result, yes; but if you can get past that, I feel like you can better immerse yourself in the story.

Nice dubs. The first four books are really splendid. Among my favorites. If you dont know whats going on by the third book, thats ok. Just make it to God-Emperor of Dune. It's fantastic. And for what its worth, I also read literary fiction and philosophy, just in case some Veeky Forums spergs wanna call me an autist that only reads genre fiction.

The last two books are so and so. I guess he was paid by the word or something, because they're really drawn out and kinda empty. Still worth the read, though. They do provide somewhat a conclusion. Avoid all of his sons stuff.

I don't watch a lot of anime but I think it's even worse. The fight scenes are like something from DBZ except all the characters can heal any wound instantly.
Why would any capable writer implement something like that if he wanted any sort of tension, it's not like his books can provide much else.

I don't watch it either but couldn't find a better way to describe it. It felt Hollywood-esque?/Anime-like? I don't know. From jumping, flying, to battle scenes, from stupid hollywod humour to characterization...

>anime in bookform
nice, downloaded

Has there ever been a good continuation of a fictional world by someone who wasn't the original author?

Imagine Chris-Chan's Sonichu comics but the guy has a 110 IQ instead of Chris's 93. That is the best way to describe those Cosmere books.

Yeah, even when I read it as a child I remember getting annoyed at the
>character thoughts in italics
thing. It seriously got my goat.

What authors was Herbert following here, or was thoughts-in-italics his own invention? IIRC Faulkner uses italics in Absalom, Absalom!, but not for the same reason.

I think it serves a purpose, only when used sparingly. Not when used on every fucking page twice.

The Aeneid
The Divine Comedy

>Why Inner monologue?
Because it’s used to suggest and idea or viewpoint. It’s hard to catch onto certain types of expression in every medium, but inner monologue has been studied since the Greeks. It’s a good place where you can tell if it’s the character speaking, or the writer. If the character is going over a monologue of the world with exposition or world building, then it’s nothing significant to the story and only useful to the plot. On the other hand, if the character’s speech doesn’t match their in world opinion, then it’s an insight to an idea the author is trying to push across. Also, when monologue isn’t exposition, it can be used to jump from one character or another which links ideas.
>Is monologue good/lazy writing?
I didn’t like Dune, that’s my opinion. I put it down after 40 or so pages in. The important thing you should take away is that it’s a scope into an idea. Judge the idea on it’s merit.