Interview with Frank Herbert 1969

[Venusian Broon]

This just popped up on my youtube feed. I thought other Dune fans would like to hear the creator talk a bit about it, so I'm sharing it here. He is about to publish Dune Messiah as he is talking.

I found it very interesting.

 

[Toby Frost]

IIRC, the interviewer, Willis McNelly, wrote The Dune Encyclopedia. Herbert doesn't sound like I imagined him - but then I think I imagined him as sounding rather like the Navigator in the David Lynch film!

 

[Venusian Broon]

IIRC, the interviewer, Willis McNelly, wrote The Dune Encyclopedia. Herbert doesn't sound like I imagined him - but then I think I imagined him as sounding rather like the Navigator in the David Lynch film!

They joke in the interview that he's probably 'closest' to the Imperial Ecologist Kynes in his book.

Although he doesn't look like Max Von Sydow either.

 

[Elckerlyc]

Interesting! Just listened to the first 10 minutes or so. The rest will have to wait till tonight.
It does seem clear that ecology is what drove Herbert to write Dune. Imagine, 1968 and him mentioning plastic bottles on what used to be a stretch of pristine beach. "Man is blind on the back," gotta love that remark.
BTW, an interviewer who had never heard of the Kalahari desert?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Yeah, god knows what he would think now, with the pictures of the mass of plastic floating in the oceans today

BTW, an interviewer who had never heard of the Kalahari desert?

I'm not casting aspertions about the US population solely, I'm sure there are similar people all over the globe, but this was broadcast by Jimmy Kimmel in 2018:

I mean, I'm thinking, they are all actors and this is just a skit right?!

 

[Elckerlyc]

It could be...
On the other hand; no actors required. Just edit all the correct answers out and keep all the people (3 or 4) in who confused continents with countries.
Understandably, both words start with 'co.'

 

[Toby Frost]

I find their way of speaking quite interesting. Their accents and diction (to me in the UK) sound very 1950s/60s, although I can't quite explain why. They really sound like lecturers, too: they speak very carefully, even when explaining fairly obvious concepts. Overall, it feels almost exactly how I envisage 1960s SF to have been: intellectual, learned, aware of its own cleverness and very slightly cranky.