None of these covers shows "the" Dune font, for me. The first edition of Dune had a very stylized calligraphy that looked like arabic. I remember it vividly since my dad had this book in the living room, among others; and when I was learning to read, this was the only cover that I couldn't read at all. (It was a translation, but with the same cover.)
EDIT: The covers of some modern french translations are also incredible. Just the four letters D U N E, which are exactly the same shape but rotated 90 degrees. It's an incredibly simple and effective design.
When I went to my first computer fair as a teenager, I saw the Sun Microsystems booth and was blown away by the fantastic logo. As I had never seen a Unix machine before, I didn’t know what to do with the computers on display, though.
The very first Unix I was exposed to was from Sun; I remember seeing the logo on their servers and thinking that those were the most beautiful computers I had seen (which isn't much because I had hardly seen any servers before that). I still remember that one of those came with a key (forgot whether to turn it on or lock the power button panel?)
SunOS was BSD-ish originally, then around 1994 they shifted to a more SVR4 variant and rebranded to Solaris. I think Solaris 2.x was SVR4 and Solaris 1.x was BSD retronaming of what was SunOS named earlier.
It's been a while so I may not have the numbers quite right.
Anyway, there was some overlap in nomenclature, so a version bump of the SunOS naming (and Solaris numbering) implied a shift from BSD-ish to SVR4-ish, as I recall.
(And I worked for Sun for a while after that, and used Suns a ton around the shift)
"SunOS is the kernel, Solaris is the distribution as a whole" was how I was always told it went. Solaris 1.x used a SunOS 4.x kernel, Solaris 2.x and upwards used SunOS 5.x. Version synchronicity was achieved by jumping from Solaris 2.6/SunOS 5.6 to Solaris 7.x/SunOS 5.7 in 1998 when UltraSPARC support was introduced. Of course Solaris 11.x/SunOS 5.11 was the last version.
There were a lot of "DUNC" jokes about the poster, like that the main character was named "Dunc". (Real Dune heads may have some "well, actually" thoughts about that.)
They went for the right decision there, I wouldn't call it cheating. It's a nice to incorporate the importance/uniqueness of that planet in the dune world.
They could've just went for a horizontal line/pipe and noone wouldve cared.
> EDIT: The covers of some modern french translations are also incredible. Just the four letters D U N E, which are exactly the same shape but rotated 90 degrees. It's an incredibly simple and effective design.
Yes the metal cover with forms changing with the light are great, look almost like holograms, extremely SciFi! The static pictures can't make them justice.
I was wondering where I got that copy. My old one had its binding failed and I purchased this Robert Laffont special edition (an email promo maybe?). Thanks for pointing it out for me.
I liked the original cover because it is the only one with a truly alien landscape. Once the movies started being discussed, Dune became and an earth desert with earth-like sandstone rocks. Look at the rocks in the original cover. They were different enough to clearly not be from earth geology.
I'm old enough to have mainly used cursive in school and I definitely had the thought that it seemed like a vaguely arabic-inspired cursive when I saw it the flourishes on the D.
The flourishes in the D of that cover are exactly how I was taught to write the uppercase D in cursive at school. I remember (as a kid) thinking it was odd that to write a `D` one had to start by writing an `I`, but never questioned it.
But from looking at examples of cursive on google images, it seems like that form is no longer as prominent.
The variations in line thickness are exactly what you’d get with a calligraphy pen (and pens before ball points like fountain pens, quills) and are a function of the consistent direction of the pen and the smoothly varying direction the line is being written. So you will see it in all old pen/quill writing styles.
No, not like this. You'd get a different kind of variation in line thickness. That was the main point of my comment, but apparently I didn't explain it well.
Given the Arakkis language is based on Arabic, I would not be surprised that the typographic design of Dune fonts is supposed to evoke a feeling of Arabic
Contrary to what olduns would have us believe, cursive is NOT [fundamentally] faster than printing. Rather, the people who have trouble 'printing' quickly seem to be those who rarely 'print' their letters.
Also interesting to me that, among people who use cursive, both difficulty producing legible cursive and complaining about being unable to read somebody's cursive (sometimes their own) seems more common.
> Contrary to what olduns would have us believe, cursive is NOT [fundamentally] faster than printing.
Do you have links to back that up? Due to my illegible cursive I often fill all kinds of forms in block letters and definitely _feel_ that it is much slower.
I'd start by saying that illegible writing should be a disqualifier for comparison of speed. Slow down until it's legible!
Some factors affecting which writing method is fastest for you, (while remaining legible to others and your later self, include which one you use the most, and drippiness of the ink. Runny ink (or paint!) can be more prone to blotches, soak-through, and other blemishes, especially when printing, lending itself better to constant movement and cursive.
You may find that a hybrid of semi-joined and unjoined lettering fastest. I do not recommend shorthand if someone else will have to read it; shorthand is notoriously variant between practioners.
Anecdata from people I've talked to or my own experience about writing faster than cursive users in our cohorts won't help anybody much. Nor will my discovery that straight-stroke runes allowed me to keep up when taking notes from a particularly fast-talking history teacher. So, about the request for links… (-:
The link I reached for returned 404, and isn't in Archive.org (one truncated PDF file, which won't open), so I went digging. Wellll… raking, more like. Mostly, I found articles and posts claiming either "cursive is faster" or "no conclusive evidence for any claimed benefits of cursive". Consequently, I turned to:
Of the 7 relevant-seeming papers I've read so far, and another 4 grepped, I'm seeing (1) tiny cohorts with either no significant speed difference or small improvement with cursive, (2) usually turned out to be testing the wrong thing (like how fast a cohort's speed with one method improved, without comparison to any other method; or whether teaching one or another method affected the subjects' ability to read in general), (3) sometimes no attempt to account for legibility.
For me, all the extra loops and curves seem to conspire to make me fit less writing in the same space and use more ink/pencil/whatever.
Thanks for pointing that out, as I had almost forgotten about that first edition.
I was trying to remember where I had heard of Chilton, the publisher of the first edition, and realized it was automotive manuals!
The story of that first edition is interesting and somewhat sad, although maybe edifying and not alone in publishing and other forms of narrative arts.
I remember reading that, because the editor was as you said better know for its technical manuals, a friend of Herbert joked that maybe they thought to publish an Ornithopter maintenance guide.
> Strangely enough, the name of this typeface is barely known even among die-hard fans.
This doesn’t seem strange to me at all. I’m a fan of many books and I don’t know the name of any of the typefaces. I think it’s funny that this author links fandom for fonts to fandom for Dune and thinks people interested in Dune are also interested in typefaces.
I like this article and was curious about the distinctive “dune font.” But not enough to Google it in the past 40 years.
To be honest, the same sentence caught my eye. I can imagine there are some fans of both Dune and Typography. But it's more probable that it's due to some effect I've been observing for a while. Not sure if it has a name, all these pieces of Internet wisdom have a name, like "Gell-Man Amnesia", "Godwin's Law"... maybe I could call it narag's effect?
I mean that any YouTube channel or Instagram account, that has some niche topic as focus, tend to greatly exagerate what is considered a normal engagement with such topic.
As an example, most persons own one watch and one perfume, if any. If you want to buy a new wristwatch or perfume and do your little research, you'll find reviewers that own hundreds of perfumes or dozens of watches, some of them ridiculously expensive. Why? You can create a channel that helps the viewers to choose their one and only cheap purchase, but good luck monetizing that. You need recurring visitors, to improve your watching times. Brand deals also require you are able to send whales to the vendors.
The noble art of Typography and a blog seem a little too sober of a setup to fit that description, but who knows, I'm sure there are pros very passionate about typesetting.
Munroe's Law of Average Familiarity: Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.
The book is fairly well known generally, I think. But speaking only for myself, I've been involved with amateur typesetting for some time, and at this point find myself something of a font geek, and as someone who owned the Putnam paperbacks I was immediately interested in the topic.
I take an interest in typography (have read a few books on the subject), and read the entire "Dune" series, but never learned about the typeface on the covers.
re the advice in that post -- I completely agree but I would say that if you enjoy God Emperor (I do, deeply), between that and Heretics go read _The Dune Encyclopedia_, which is a hard-to-find paperback but an easy-to-find PDF written as an in-universe encyclopedia set after God Emperor. Yes, some things in it are contradicted by the remaining two books, but it adds such a powerful structure to the extant universe in a remarkably satisfying way.
I've read the Frank Herbert Dune books back-to-back several times and love them all, but I've never tried his son's additions to the series because I've read a few people saying they're not worth the time. Do you agree?
I'm not the parent, but I've also read all the original 6 books a great number of times, as well as about 7 or 8 of the B. Herbert/K. Anderson Dune books, and I'd say they aren't worth it.
They largely explain things that, as far as I'm concerned, didn't need explaining. As you probably know, they wrote a 2 book conclusion to the series. These 2 books largely tie the Frank Herbert Dune universe with the B. Herbert/K. Anderson Dune universe. And that seemed quite forced to me and, cynically, felt like an attempt to force you to read their Dune prequel trilogy (because otherwise, you'll be WTF is Erasmus?) I feel like Frank Herbert, being an immensely better writer, would have been able to conclude the series without forcing a prequel trilogy onto readers.
It wasn't until I read some of the more immediate books (universe time-wise) from the duo that I came to appreciate how effortless Frank Herbert's writing is. Gurney Halleck is loyal, he just is. And that loyalty is clearly based on respect for the Duke, being on the side of "good", and a hate for the Harkonnen. We don't need a justification for Halleck's devotion. It's pure and effortless character development. The duo doesn't have that seem ease of writing, so instead we get the back story, torture and rape (lazy themes) that tainted the character/original work.
I totally agree with this. One of the strengths of the original Dune series is how willing Frank Herbert is to leave things unsaid -- it's a complex universe that has lost a lot of knowledge, just like ours! It covers timespans that admit archaeology! The idea that there's an accessible succinct narrative arc that ties the story up in a neat little bow is antithetical to the strengths of the original series, in my opinion.
That may the difference between good world-building and what people think good world-building is.
People think that if the author doesn't know everything about the world, it's not "fleshed out". But if you look to some of the best fiction out there, the world is more suggested than built.
I think a good example of this is George Lucas. He went from good to bad by doing the thing people perceived as good. In the original Star Wars trilogy, things just are. The Clone Wars were a line. A throwaway to explain why Leia was seeking out Obi-Wan never having even seen the man. Han and all of his pre-trilogy relationships are given surface level explanations. You never go deep. What happens between A New Hope and Empire is suggested, alluded to, but never explained. And why should they be explained? All the characters know these things. There's no need to exposit these things again. You're given the impression that there exists a much larger world than the small window you've seen.
Then, in the prequel trilogy, everything is presented as backstory to some other element. Stormtroopers are the successors of the Clone Troopers who are cloned from Jango Fett who had a clone made of himself he named Boba. Of course, Jango is also a bounty hunter. Anakin is from Tatooine. Chewbacca rolled with Yoda back in the day. We know, biologically, exactly what allows people to access the Force. And on and on. Everything is given an explanation. And that, ironically, makes the world feel a lot smaller.
I loved Dune, and while I don't think all the original sequels were as strong, I enjoyed them all and have reread them several times over the years.
I slogged my way through the first couple of his son's work, but I read the first page of Butlerian Jihad and, for the first time in my life, threw the book against the wall and tossed it in the garbage.
Inside his pyramid-shaped vessel, the cymek general
Agamemnon led the attack. Logical thinking machines
did not care about glory or revenge. But Agamemnon
certainly did. Fully alert inside his preservation
cannister, his human brain watched the plans unfold.
If you're a fan of Dune and made it all the way through this paragraph without feeling ill, then you're a stronger person than I.
Sounds like the hackneyed portrayal of Harkonnen as a super villain who has to refer to himself in the third person while exposition dumping his plan to a nephew who already knows who he is.
There are strong indicators that "Jihad" was used not in a sense of armed struggle there, but more akin to a social revolution; "thinking machines" were declared a problem not because they were a physical threat a la Saberhagen's Berserkers, but because their influence on society was deemed overly negative.
Given that, a book that would cover the Jihad would probably be another philosophical treatise in the vein of God-Emperor of Dune.
The Dune Encyclopedia had a couple of articles on the Butlerian Jihad. All of the material was invented for that work -- Frank Herbert's novels only had the barest shred of explanation of what it was -- but their theory was fairly reasonable, and were consistent with the spirit of his writing. (In summary, a hospital's "self-programming computer" terminated a Bene Gesserit woman's pregnancy; her protests ignited existing tensions against computers and high technology.)
This a really strong, and very good breakdown of the problems with the prequels. They essentially take the complex, developed characters of Frank Herbert and turn them into into trite caricatures of themselves.
> These 2 books largely tie the Frank Herbert Dune universe with the B. Herbert/K. Anderson Dune universe. And that seemed quite forced to me and, cynically, felt like an attempt to force you to read their Dune prequel trilogy
I really like the Frank Herbert books. They are on my favorites shelf. The sequel/prequel books were just ok, and felt like they were trying to fill in details that were left to the reader by Frank Herbert. By filling in the details, I'm sure the thought was we are completing the story... but that story was already told.
It's interesting (and perhaps accurate) that you critique the use of lazy themes in backstory, but praise the effortlessness of leaving the backstory out. (I've not read the new stuff myself)
IMHO the Dune Encyclopedia (written in collaboration with Frank Herbert) does a much better job elucidating aspects of the Dune Universe in an interesting way than Brian's books do -- there's a narrative thread that weaves through the last three of Frank's books that is really, really present and which Brian's books set aside for an alternative -- and to my view, much less satisfying -- interpretation of late-stage events in the series.
They're quite bad, and I doubt very much they are based on Frank Herbert's "found notes" in any way. If they are, Brian Herbert should publish those notes, like Christopher Tolkien did.
Lower quality writing, and not thoughtful, and the story arc they take things in seems much cruder than what Frank Herbert would have had in mind.
> So I went home, and received a copy of Robert’s outline and notes, and loved them, and wrote two sample chapters and a proposal and a title (Robert had put down seven possible titles, but even he didn’t like any of them much), and they were all approved by Art Dula, and in the fullness of time the book, to be known as “ROBERT A. HEINLEIN’S VARIABLE STAR by Spider Robinson,” sold to Tor for the proverbial six figures.
> Since then, little dividends of joy keep coming in, like the receding ripples of pleasure that accompany a truly great orgasm--and sometimes, if you’re lucky, signal that it’s about to become a multiple. For example, Art Dula moved me to tears by sending me, out of the blue, Robert’s desk dictionary, heavily used and carefully repaired--Robert Heinlein’s personal box of words. He filled out the package with a pound of authentic Jamaica Blue Mountain. Similarly, sweet Amy sent me a set of her grandfather’s cufflinks to wear as I type VARIABLE STAR, and Jeanne a few pieces of her grandmother’s jewelry to wear for me when I stumble from the typewriter. I feel supported and encouraged by the whole Heinlein family and legacy. That makes me the luckiest writer alive. And one of the luckiest readers.
When writing it, he had the same "these are the words that you are to use while writing as Heinlein."
> This novel should be the example held forth when writers collaborate. Spider has perfectly captured the pacing, feel and stature of a Robert Heinlein story while retaining his own identity. It doesn’t feel like someone trying to “write like Heinlein”, but like someone who’s read every book the man’s written so many times it’s second nature.
> "Completing a book from notes by a dead author is almost always a mistake. But Robert A. Heinlein apparently isn't really dead. He was obviously standing at the side of Spider Robinson as he wrote this book, guiding his hand. Variable Star will delight the fans of the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived, and at the same time, stays true to Spider's passionate themes of optimism, kindness, and humanity's future among the stars." --John Varley, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Persistence of Vision and Steel Beach
This is the way to do continuations - not fan fiction but, for lack of a better word, channeling the spirit of the original author so that you can become them and use the same style rather than imposing your own style on top of their world.
I think Christopher Tolkien pretty much did this. And what was great was the way he edited (with his father's blessing), did a small amount of continuation, as well as published the original notes, so we could all see the authorial process.
However in Tolkien's case, there was an explicit father son work relationship that was grounded in their mutual love and family life, and the fact that both had similar education, etc.
My understanding is Brian Herbert was estranged from his father and they had a bad relationship.
And Brian Herbert brought in an outside writer (Kevin J Anderson) to do a lot (most?) of the actual writing.
The world of Dune fans would have been better served if Herbert had simply published his father's notes, maybe with some annotations or reflections.
Given the above, and as hasn't provided those notes and documents he apparently found, and as the plot veers quite a bit in tone from what Frank Herbert seemed to me to have in mind, I actually have a hard time believing the notes he is apparently working from actually exist.
Further, the published works he has created are really not good.
It’s not that they’re not worth the time, but they’re clearly written by someone else, and try to attach onto a cohesive whole in a way that doesn’t quite feel right.
My personal take (having read the entire series including the tacked-on ending by the son) is:
The first Dune is the result of research and thinking. Great care went into it. Every subsequent book is more and more of "oh, here's a sequel". I can't remember anything after God Emperor which in itself was a slog bordering of abysmally bad.
So:
- Dune. Yes. It's slow, long, but ultimately very good
- Dune Messiah. Maybe
- Children of Dune. Can already be skipped
- Skip the rest of the series, they are not worth it. At all
I really like Dune Messiah. Most of it was written before the original book was published, and supposedly it was going to be part of it but had to be cut or the book would be too long. It's certainly part of Herbert's original creative vision for the story. However I know a lot of people read it and find the apparent inversion of the story arc uncomfortable to the point of dislike, but for me it's an essential piece of the puzzle to understand what Paul is actually going through in the first book, and the extreme lengths he's prepared to go through and sacrifices he's prepared to make to shift the trajectory of events.
The problem is that just like the other characters the in novel, Paul's family, adherents and friends, a lot of readers just want an uncomplicated hero story for him.
God Emperor is a slog, but it's IMHO brilliant in its own way. And along with the two books after it, it creates a whole new philosophical universe than the first three, which were a story about Paul. It's best to kind of treat it almost as two different series with God Emperor the bridge.
God Emperor and beyond are far more cerebral and philosophical, expressing some more far more abstract ideas Herbert had about man vs machine, liberty/freedom vs tyranny, etc. etc.
Unfortunately the second series was not completed. Herbert clearly had a direction he was going after Chapterhouse, but he wasn't able to follow through.
For me the sequels never hit the same highs as Dune, but they’re still better than most sci-fi novels that have been written, and I love how they gradually lean ever further into just being really weird. God Emperor is probably the pinnacle of that. I don’t remember much of Heretics or Chapterhouse, I should probably go back and re-read them at some point.
You might find it interesting re-reading God Emperor and its sequels in the context of today's LLM/ChatGTP etc context. Also automated surveilance.
Herbert's focus on human vs not-human, machine-thinking vs human-thinking, and his focus on "becoming invisible" (to prescience and to machines) as a path to freedom... is very relevant.
I'm someone who stopped after God Emperor because I was under the impression the next books were an arc and it stops in a weird place if you end where Herbert did because of his passing.
It was interesting because I struggled with Dune, made it to the time skip, and stopped. Then the recent movie came out, I decided to read the rest, enjoyed it far more, and kept going. Blasted through Messiah through God Emperor pretty quickly with I think only one pause to get another book in that had just come out.
God Emperor is certainly not for everyone but I enjoyed it a great deal.
I'm in the process of reading the 6 books. Once I got spoiled and saw what the God Emperor was, I just had to know how it came to be. My first attempt at reading the series about 20 years ago died on book 3, which I never finished.
Now I'm on book 3 again. Messiah was difficult. So complicated, little (no?) action, but I do enjoy some political intrigue so I slogged through it. Book 3 is better, with really interesting parts intermixed with slow. I'm forcing myself through all the books this time.
It's just so slow reading for me. Dune 1 was so fantastic and fascinating. The other ones (so far) have such heavy, dense writing and ideas, I am constantly re-reading pages.
The covers are a 1960s minimalist deco design. Abrupt geometric shapes, the sort of stuff that is easily printed/viewed using the tech of the time. The colors are solid and few, which make printing easy. The colors are also not absolutely necessary. The shapes come through equally well in black and white media. And if you want to look good on the low-res TV of the time, you go with big solid shapes. No doubt these factors contributed to the redesign of the original cover.
Contrast the posters and covers of todays media. They like to hide lots of little detail, perhaps to promote the use of higher/brighter media formats. That's why FIFA got rid of the old soccer balls.
I always enjoy seeing the "Dune" font in unexpected places, such as the logo of the Washington Square Mall in the western burbs of Portland (OR), and wonder whether there's a Herbert fan somewhere with a sense of accomplishment for having used it.
That Dune Calendar from 1978 would work for this year too. Wonder if there's high quality scans available?
Edit: Reasonable scan here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/bh17j5/the_dune_calen...
Wow, the artwork is just beautiful. I wish this could get a re-release now that the new movies are introducing Dune to a new audience.
None of these covers shows "the" Dune font, for me. The first edition of Dune had a very stylized calligraphy that looked like arabic. I remember it vividly since my dad had this book in the living room, among others; and when I was learning to read, this was the only cover that I couldn't read at all. (It was a translation, but with the same cover.)
These letters are shown on the wikipedia page about the novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29
EDIT: The covers of some modern french translations are also incredible. Just the four letters D U N E, which are exactly the same shape but rotated 90 degrees. It's an incredibly simple and effective design.
> Just the four letters D U N E, which are exactly the same shape but rotated 90 degrees. It's an incredibly simple and effective design.
For those interested: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/P/B08HPFCMLS.01._SCLZZZZZZ...
See also: Sun Microsystems' logo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sun-Logo.svg
Gosh I've seen that so many times before and yet never really looked at it until now.
When I went to my first computer fair as a teenager, I saw the Sun Microsystems booth and was blown away by the fantastic logo. As I had never seen a Unix machine before, I didn’t know what to do with the computers on display, though.
The very first Unix I was exposed to was from Sun; I remember seeing the logo on their servers and thinking that those were the most beautiful computers I had seen (which isn't much because I had hardly seen any servers before that). I still remember that one of those came with a key (forgot whether to turn it on or lock the power button panel?)
Didn't Sun computers run Irix? Is Irix Unix?
IRIX was SGI, not Sun (and anyways yes, it's a Unix).
Thanks for clarifying. I always thought these other named systems were Unix-like but not Unix but without going all recursive like GNU with the naming
The history of UNIX is complex...
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix)
Suns ran Solaris, of course.
SunOS was BSD-ish originally, then around 1994 they shifted to a more SVR4 variant and rebranded to Solaris. I think Solaris 2.x was SVR4 and Solaris 1.x was BSD retronaming of what was SunOS named earlier.
It's been a while so I may not have the numbers quite right.
Anyway, there was some overlap in nomenclature, so a version bump of the SunOS naming (and Solaris numbering) implied a shift from BSD-ish to SVR4-ish, as I recall.
(And I worked for Sun for a while after that, and used Suns a ton around the shift)
"SunOS is the kernel, Solaris is the distribution as a whole" was how I was always told it went. Solaris 1.x used a SunOS 4.x kernel, Solaris 2.x and upwards used SunOS 5.x. Version synchronicity was achieved by jumping from Solaris 2.6/SunOS 5.6 to Solaris 7.x/SunOS 5.7 in 1998 when UltraSPARC support was introduced. Of course Solaris 11.x/SunOS 5.11 was the last version.
Some Unicode variants:
ᑐ ᑌ ᑎ ᑕ
ᑐ ᑌ ᑎ ᕮ
⊃ ∪ ∩ ⊂
Edit to add one more...
⋻ ⋃ ⋂ ⋳
I imagine most people are aware but the second variant you have there is essentially what was used for the most recent movie: http://www.impawards.com/2021/posters/dune_ver16_xlg.jpg
There were a lot of "DUNC" jokes about the poster, like that the main character was named "Dunc". (Real Dune heads may have some "well, actually" thoughts about that.)
I reckon Dune fans find all sorts of deeper meaning in the hit B-52s song "Private Idaho".
Ah, as if raked into the sand. Brilliant.
OMG the DUNC joke predates the new movie.
> Just the four letters D U N E, which are exactly the same shape but rotated 90 degrees.
This is what they went with for the movie posters too: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/Dune_%282021_... ...although, they cheated a bit with the E.
EDIT: Here is a better resolution: https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/2sxSn0jjjQoIIZfZjC6j5GZk... :)
DUNC :D:D
They went for the right decision there, I wouldn't call it cheating. It's a nice to incorporate the importance/uniqueness of that planet in the dune world. They could've just went for a horizontal line/pipe and noone wouldve cared.
It reminds me a bit of a visit to the optician :)
> EDIT: The covers of some modern french translations are also incredible. Just the four letters D U N E, which are exactly the same shape but rotated 90 degrees. It's an incredibly simple and effective design.
Indeed, the Robert Laffont 2020 edition looks great: https://www.noosfere.org/livres/EditionsLivre.asp?numitem=13...
Yes the metal cover with forms changing with the light are great, look almost like holograms, extremely SciFi! The static pictures can't make them justice.
I was wondering where I got that copy. My old one had its binding failed and I purchased this Robert Laffont special edition (an email promo maybe?). Thanks for pointing it out for me.
I liked the original cover because it is the only one with a truly alien landscape. Once the movies started being discussed, Dune became and an earth desert with earth-like sandstone rocks. Look at the rocks in the original cover. They were different enough to clearly not be from earth geology.
That's not arabic, rather just cursive.
But quite clearly designed to draw a connection to the Bedouin-inspired Fremen, and general North African-like setting.
I'm old enough to have mainly used cursive in school and I definitely had the thought that it seemed like a vaguely arabic-inspired cursive when I saw it the flourishes on the D.
The flourishes in the D of that cover are exactly how I was taught to write the uppercase D in cursive at school. I remember (as a kid) thinking it was odd that to write a `D` one had to start by writing an `I`, but never questioned it.
But from looking at examples of cursive on google images, it seems like that form is no longer as prominent.
The flourishes in the D of that cover are exactly how I was taught to write the uppercase D in cursive at school.
We've now established that you went to school in Arab, and this is why you wrote D in Arabic, for at no point did you counter this logic.
(I am using chatgpt reasoning here)
I disagree.
The wide gamut in line thickness and the orientation of it is typical for Arabic fonts, but not for cursive ones.
Personally, this kind of line reminds me of a arab dagger even.
The variations in line thickness are exactly what you’d get with a calligraphy pen (and pens before ball points like fountain pens, quills) and are a function of the consistent direction of the pen and the smoothly varying direction the line is being written. So you will see it in all old pen/quill writing styles.
No, not like this. You'd get a different kind of variation in line thickness. That was the main point of my comment, but apparently I didn't explain it well.
Many children have grown up these days without learning cursive in school, thus every time they see squiggly fonts they think Arabic first.
Given the Arakkis language is based on Arabic, I would not be surprised that the typographic design of Dune fonts is supposed to evoke a feeling of Arabic
My grandmother noticed graffiti tags, which are very ornate generally, and concluded that they were written in arabic.
> Many children have grown up these days without learning cursive in school, thus every time they see squiggly fonts they think Arabic first.
Wait, are you saying that children in US schools write in block letters these days? That must be slow!
Contrary to what olduns would have us believe, cursive is NOT [fundamentally] faster than printing. Rather, the people who have trouble 'printing' quickly seem to be those who rarely 'print' their letters.
Also interesting to me that, among people who use cursive, both difficulty producing legible cursive and complaining about being unable to read somebody's cursive (sometimes their own) seems more common.
> Contrary to what olduns would have us believe, cursive is NOT [fundamentally] faster than printing.
Do you have links to back that up? Due to my illegible cursive I often fill all kinds of forms in block letters and definitely _feel_ that it is much slower.
I'd start by saying that illegible writing should be a disqualifier for comparison of speed. Slow down until it's legible!
Some factors affecting which writing method is fastest for you, (while remaining legible to others and your later self, include which one you use the most, and drippiness of the ink. Runny ink (or paint!) can be more prone to blotches, soak-through, and other blemishes, especially when printing, lending itself better to constant movement and cursive.
You may find that a hybrid of semi-joined and unjoined lettering fastest. I do not recommend shorthand if someone else will have to read it; shorthand is notoriously variant between practioners.
Anecdata from people I've talked to or my own experience about writing faster than cursive users in our cohorts won't help anybody much. Nor will my discovery that straight-stroke runes allowed me to keep up when taking notes from a particularly fast-talking history teacher. So, about the request for links… (-:
The link I reached for returned 404, and isn't in Archive.org (one truncated PDF file, which won't open), so I went digging. Wellll… raking, more like. Mostly, I found articles and posts claiming either "cursive is faster" or "no conclusive evidence for any claimed benefits of cursive". Consequently, I turned to:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cursive
Of the 7 relevant-seeming papers I've read so far, and another 4 grepped, I'm seeing (1) tiny cohorts with either no significant speed difference or small improvement with cursive, (2) usually turned out to be testing the wrong thing (like how fast a cohort's speed with one method improved, without comparison to any other method; or whether teaching one or another method affected the subjects' ability to read in general), (3) sometimes no attempt to account for legibility.
For me, all the extra loops and curves seem to conspire to make me fit less writing in the same space and use more ink/pencil/whatever.
Thanks for pointing that out, as I had almost forgotten about that first edition.
I was trying to remember where I had heard of Chilton, the publisher of the first edition, and realized it was automotive manuals!
The story of that first edition is interesting and somewhat sad, although maybe edifying and not alone in publishing and other forms of narrative arts.
I remember reading that, because the editor was as you said better know for its technical manuals, a friend of Herbert joked that maybe they thought to publish an Ornithopter maintenance guide.
That makes sense given Herbert borrowed heavily from Middle Eastern, Islamic mythology
> Strangely enough, the name of this typeface is barely known even among die-hard fans.
This doesn’t seem strange to me at all. I’m a fan of many books and I don’t know the name of any of the typefaces. I think it’s funny that this author links fandom for fonts to fandom for Dune and thinks people interested in Dune are also interested in typefaces.
I like this article and was curious about the distinctive “dune font.” But not enough to Google it in the past 40 years.
Maybe he meant typography die-hard fans.
Perhaps. The context made me think it was Dune fans.
I would think most typography fans wouldn’t even be aware of Dune.
To be honest, the same sentence caught my eye. I can imagine there are some fans of both Dune and Typography. But it's more probable that it's due to some effect I've been observing for a while. Not sure if it has a name, all these pieces of Internet wisdom have a name, like "Gell-Man Amnesia", "Godwin's Law"... maybe I could call it narag's effect?
I mean that any YouTube channel or Instagram account, that has some niche topic as focus, tend to greatly exagerate what is considered a normal engagement with such topic.
As an example, most persons own one watch and one perfume, if any. If you want to buy a new wristwatch or perfume and do your little research, you'll find reviewers that own hundreds of perfumes or dozens of watches, some of them ridiculously expensive. Why? You can create a channel that helps the viewers to choose their one and only cheap purchase, but good luck monetizing that. You need recurring visitors, to improve your watching times. Brand deals also require you are able to send whales to the vendors.
The noble art of Typography and a blog seem a little too sober of a setup to fit that description, but who knows, I'm sure there are pros very passionate about typesetting.
https://www.quotes.net/mquote/907087
https://xkcd.com/2501/
Munroe's Law of Average Familiarity: Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.
LOL, of course... where else?
The book is fairly well known generally, I think. But speaking only for myself, I've been involved with amateur typesetting for some time, and at this point find myself something of a font geek, and as someone who owned the Putnam paperbacks I was immediately interested in the topic.
I take an interest in typography (have read a few books on the subject), and read the entire "Dune" series, but never learned about the typeface on the covers.
There are 18 pages of subsequent editions listed on Goodreads, with all manner of designs and aesthetics.
Someone who bought one of these very early editions when they first appeared will be in their late 60s or early 70s now.
I'm a fan of Dune and typography and I had no idea they existed.
I have nothing to add to the font aspect but here's fellow HNer's advice how to approach these books: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20859569
re the advice in that post -- I completely agree but I would say that if you enjoy God Emperor (I do, deeply), between that and Heretics go read _The Dune Encyclopedia_, which is a hard-to-find paperback but an easy-to-find PDF written as an in-universe encyclopedia set after God Emperor. Yes, some things in it are contradicted by the remaining two books, but it adds such a powerful structure to the extant universe in a remarkably satisfying way.
I've read the Frank Herbert Dune books back-to-back several times and love them all, but I've never tried his son's additions to the series because I've read a few people saying they're not worth the time. Do you agree?
I'm not the parent, but I've also read all the original 6 books a great number of times, as well as about 7 or 8 of the B. Herbert/K. Anderson Dune books, and I'd say they aren't worth it.
They largely explain things that, as far as I'm concerned, didn't need explaining. As you probably know, they wrote a 2 book conclusion to the series. These 2 books largely tie the Frank Herbert Dune universe with the B. Herbert/K. Anderson Dune universe. And that seemed quite forced to me and, cynically, felt like an attempt to force you to read their Dune prequel trilogy (because otherwise, you'll be WTF is Erasmus?) I feel like Frank Herbert, being an immensely better writer, would have been able to conclude the series without forcing a prequel trilogy onto readers.
It wasn't until I read some of the more immediate books (universe time-wise) from the duo that I came to appreciate how effortless Frank Herbert's writing is. Gurney Halleck is loyal, he just is. And that loyalty is clearly based on respect for the Duke, being on the side of "good", and a hate for the Harkonnen. We don't need a justification for Halleck's devotion. It's pure and effortless character development. The duo doesn't have that seem ease of writing, so instead we get the back story, torture and rape (lazy themes) that tainted the character/original work.
I totally agree with this. One of the strengths of the original Dune series is how willing Frank Herbert is to leave things unsaid -- it's a complex universe that has lost a lot of knowledge, just like ours! It covers timespans that admit archaeology! The idea that there's an accessible succinct narrative arc that ties the story up in a neat little bow is antithetical to the strengths of the original series, in my opinion.
That may the difference between good world-building and what people think good world-building is.
People think that if the author doesn't know everything about the world, it's not "fleshed out". But if you look to some of the best fiction out there, the world is more suggested than built.
I think a good example of this is George Lucas. He went from good to bad by doing the thing people perceived as good. In the original Star Wars trilogy, things just are. The Clone Wars were a line. A throwaway to explain why Leia was seeking out Obi-Wan never having even seen the man. Han and all of his pre-trilogy relationships are given surface level explanations. You never go deep. What happens between A New Hope and Empire is suggested, alluded to, but never explained. And why should they be explained? All the characters know these things. There's no need to exposit these things again. You're given the impression that there exists a much larger world than the small window you've seen.
Then, in the prequel trilogy, everything is presented as backstory to some other element. Stormtroopers are the successors of the Clone Troopers who are cloned from Jango Fett who had a clone made of himself he named Boba. Of course, Jango is also a bounty hunter. Anakin is from Tatooine. Chewbacca rolled with Yoda back in the day. We know, biologically, exactly what allows people to access the Force. And on and on. Everything is given an explanation. And that, ironically, makes the world feel a lot smaller.
I loved Dune, and while I don't think all the original sequels were as strong, I enjoyed them all and have reread them several times over the years.
I slogged my way through the first couple of his son's work, but I read the first page of Butlerian Jihad and, for the first time in my life, threw the book against the wall and tossed it in the garbage.
If you're a fan of Dune and made it all the way through this paragraph without feeling ill, then you're a stronger person than I.Sounds like the hackneyed portrayal of Harkonnen as a super villain who has to refer to himself in the third person while exposition dumping his plan to a nephew who already knows who he is.
I so wanted the Bulterian Jihad story to be good, or at least decent, because it was always the most intriguing part of the prehistory to me. Oh well.
There are strong indicators that "Jihad" was used not in a sense of armed struggle there, but more akin to a social revolution; "thinking machines" were declared a problem not because they were a physical threat a la Saberhagen's Berserkers, but because their influence on society was deemed overly negative.
Given that, a book that would cover the Jihad would probably be another philosophical treatise in the vein of God-Emperor of Dune.
The Dune Encyclopedia had a couple of articles on the Butlerian Jihad. All of the material was invented for that work -- Frank Herbert's novels only had the barest shred of explanation of what it was -- but their theory was fairly reasonable, and were consistent with the spirit of his writing. (In summary, a hospital's "self-programming computer" terminated a Bene Gesserit woman's pregnancy; her protests ignited existing tensions against computers and high technology.)
This a really strong, and very good breakdown of the problems with the prequels. They essentially take the complex, developed characters of Frank Herbert and turn them into into trite caricatures of themselves.
> These 2 books largely tie the Frank Herbert Dune universe with the B. Herbert/K. Anderson Dune universe. And that seemed quite forced to me and, cynically, felt like an attempt to force you to read their Dune prequel trilogy
I really like the Frank Herbert books. They are on my favorites shelf. The sequel/prequel books were just ok, and felt like they were trying to fill in details that were left to the reader by Frank Herbert. By filling in the details, I'm sure the thought was we are completing the story... but that story was already told.
It's interesting (and perhaps accurate) that you critique the use of lazy themes in backstory, but praise the effortlessness of leaving the backstory out. (I've not read the new stuff myself)
IMHO the Dune Encyclopedia (written in collaboration with Frank Herbert) does a much better job elucidating aspects of the Dune Universe in an interesting way than Brian's books do -- there's a narrative thread that weaves through the last three of Frank's books that is really, really present and which Brian's books set aside for an alternative -- and to my view, much less satisfying -- interpretation of late-stage events in the series.
They're quite bad, and I doubt very much they are based on Frank Herbert's "found notes" in any way. If they are, Brian Herbert should publish those notes, like Christopher Tolkien did.
Lower quality writing, and not thoughtful, and the story arc they take things in seems much cruder than what Frank Herbert would have had in mind.
The trick in following from notes is that you need to become the author.
Consider Variable Star by Spider Robinson which is based on 7 surviving pages of 8 pages of notes written in 1955 by Robert A. Heinlein.
http://www.spiderrobinson.com/reilly.html
> So I went home, and received a copy of Robert’s outline and notes, and loved them, and wrote two sample chapters and a proposal and a title (Robert had put down seven possible titles, but even he didn’t like any of them much), and they were all approved by Art Dula, and in the fullness of time the book, to be known as “ROBERT A. HEINLEIN’S VARIABLE STAR by Spider Robinson,” sold to Tor for the proverbial six figures.
> Since then, little dividends of joy keep coming in, like the receding ripples of pleasure that accompany a truly great orgasm--and sometimes, if you’re lucky, signal that it’s about to become a multiple. For example, Art Dula moved me to tears by sending me, out of the blue, Robert’s desk dictionary, heavily used and carefully repaired--Robert Heinlein’s personal box of words. He filled out the package with a pound of authentic Jamaica Blue Mountain. Similarly, sweet Amy sent me a set of her grandfather’s cufflinks to wear as I type VARIABLE STAR, and Jeanne a few pieces of her grandmother’s jewelry to wear for me when I stumble from the typewriter. I feel supported and encouraged by the whole Heinlein family and legacy. That makes me the luckiest writer alive. And one of the luckiest readers.
When writing it, he had the same "these are the words that you are to use while writing as Heinlein."
One of the reviews http://www.spiderrobinson.com/variablefans.html
> This novel should be the example held forth when writers collaborate. Spider has perfectly captured the pacing, feel and stature of a Robert Heinlein story while retaining his own identity. It doesn’t feel like someone trying to “write like Heinlein”, but like someone who’s read every book the man’s written so many times it’s second nature.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/variable-star-robert-a-heinlein...
> "Completing a book from notes by a dead author is almost always a mistake. But Robert A. Heinlein apparently isn't really dead. He was obviously standing at the side of Spider Robinson as he wrote this book, guiding his hand. Variable Star will delight the fans of the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived, and at the same time, stays true to Spider's passionate themes of optimism, kindness, and humanity's future among the stars." --John Varley, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Persistence of Vision and Steel Beach
This is the way to do continuations - not fan fiction but, for lack of a better word, channeling the spirit of the original author so that you can become them and use the same style rather than imposing your own style on top of their world.
I think Christopher Tolkien pretty much did this. And what was great was the way he edited (with his father's blessing), did a small amount of continuation, as well as published the original notes, so we could all see the authorial process.
However in Tolkien's case, there was an explicit father son work relationship that was grounded in their mutual love and family life, and the fact that both had similar education, etc.
My understanding is Brian Herbert was estranged from his father and they had a bad relationship.
And Brian Herbert brought in an outside writer (Kevin J Anderson) to do a lot (most?) of the actual writing.
The world of Dune fans would have been better served if Herbert had simply published his father's notes, maybe with some annotations or reflections.
Given the above, and as hasn't provided those notes and documents he apparently found, and as the plot veers quite a bit in tone from what Frank Herbert seemed to me to have in mind, I actually have a hard time believing the notes he is apparently working from actually exist.
Further, the published works he has created are really not good.
It's just Dune fan fiction...
It's just a model!
It’s not that they’re not worth the time, but they’re clearly written by someone else, and try to attach onto a cohesive whole in a way that doesn’t quite feel right.
I tried reading the first and couldn't get through it.
> Yes, some things in it are contradicted by the remaining two books
At a surface level, yes.
At a deeper level, the authors of the Encyclopedia themselves exist as researchers in the Dune universe, and can be mistaken about their findings. :)
I started reading the PDF last year after failing to find a hardcopy, but the pervasive OCR-induced typos stopped me cold.
My personal take (having read the entire series including the tacked-on ending by the son) is:
The first Dune is the result of research and thinking. Great care went into it. Every subsequent book is more and more of "oh, here's a sequel". I can't remember anything after God Emperor which in itself was a slog bordering of abysmally bad.
So:
- Dune. Yes. It's slow, long, but ultimately very good
- Dune Messiah. Maybe
- Children of Dune. Can already be skipped
- Skip the rest of the series, they are not worth it. At all
YMMV :)
I really like Dune Messiah. Most of it was written before the original book was published, and supposedly it was going to be part of it but had to be cut or the book would be too long. It's certainly part of Herbert's original creative vision for the story. However I know a lot of people read it and find the apparent inversion of the story arc uncomfortable to the point of dislike, but for me it's an essential piece of the puzzle to understand what Paul is actually going through in the first book, and the extreme lengths he's prepared to go through and sacrifices he's prepared to make to shift the trajectory of events.
The problem is that just like the other characters the in novel, Paul's family, adherents and friends, a lot of readers just want an uncomplicated hero story for him.
God Emperor is a slog, but it's IMHO brilliant in its own way. And along with the two books after it, it creates a whole new philosophical universe than the first three, which were a story about Paul. It's best to kind of treat it almost as two different series with God Emperor the bridge.
God Emperor and beyond are far more cerebral and philosophical, expressing some more far more abstract ideas Herbert had about man vs machine, liberty/freedom vs tyranny, etc. etc.
Unfortunately the second series was not completed. Herbert clearly had a direction he was going after Chapterhouse, but he wasn't able to follow through.
For me the sequels never hit the same highs as Dune, but they’re still better than most sci-fi novels that have been written, and I love how they gradually lean ever further into just being really weird. God Emperor is probably the pinnacle of that. I don’t remember much of Heretics or Chapterhouse, I should probably go back and re-read them at some point.
You might find it interesting re-reading God Emperor and its sequels in the context of today's LLM/ChatGTP etc context. Also automated surveilance.
Herbert's focus on human vs not-human, machine-thinking vs human-thinking, and his focus on "becoming invisible" (to prescience and to machines) as a path to freedom... is very relevant.
I'm someone who stopped after God Emperor because I was under the impression the next books were an arc and it stops in a weird place if you end where Herbert did because of his passing.
It was interesting because I struggled with Dune, made it to the time skip, and stopped. Then the recent movie came out, I decided to read the rest, enjoyed it far more, and kept going. Blasted through Messiah through God Emperor pretty quickly with I think only one pause to get another book in that had just come out.
God Emperor is certainly not for everyone but I enjoyed it a great deal.
I'm in the process of reading the 6 books. Once I got spoiled and saw what the God Emperor was, I just had to know how it came to be. My first attempt at reading the series about 20 years ago died on book 3, which I never finished.
Now I'm on book 3 again. Messiah was difficult. So complicated, little (no?) action, but I do enjoy some political intrigue so I slogged through it. Book 3 is better, with really interesting parts intermixed with slow. I'm forcing myself through all the books this time.
It's just so slow reading for me. Dune 1 was so fantastic and fascinating. The other ones (so far) have such heavy, dense writing and ideas, I am constantly re-reading pages.
Ah, shame. I was hoping to find my own comment on the subject linked:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961291
Basically the same advice, but in a more condensed form.
Is there a name for the art style depicted on these covers? They're beautifully done
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco
The covers are a 1960s minimalist deco design. Abrupt geometric shapes, the sort of stuff that is easily printed/viewed using the tech of the time. The colors are solid and few, which make printing easy. The colors are also not absolutely necessary. The shapes come through equally well in black and white media. And if you want to look good on the low-res TV of the time, you go with big solid shapes. No doubt these factors contributed to the redesign of the original cover.
Contrast the posters and covers of todays media. They like to hide lots of little detail, perhaps to promote the use of higher/brighter media formats. That's why FIFA got rid of the old soccer balls.
Sorry, are we looking at the same covers? There is no 1960s minimalism in the original covers, they are fairly detailed 1970's scifi surrealism.
I normally see Art Deco in reference to buildings, furniture, and cars. Guess I never actually looked at Art Deco paintings/images before.
I always enjoy seeing the "Dune" font in unexpected places, such as the logo of the Washington Square Mall in the western burbs of Portland (OR), and wonder whether there's a Herbert fan somewhere with a sense of accomplishment for having used it.
Reminds me of https://typesetinthefuture.com/
This one was my introduction to the site: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/
Since you've mentioned FONTS and SCIFI, you must now read: https://typesetinthefuture.com/ the blog, and the book!
The original "the power of failing" font is lost.