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Comment by brandonmenc | Hacker News Reader

Has the author even read Dune? Like, really read it?

One caption reads:

> This looks like a future computer, I’m pretty sure.

Obviously suggesting it's not science-fictioney enough, but there are no computers in Dune - everything doing data storage and retrieval in that universe is understood to be a very complicated mechanical machine.

Dune is more steampunk than laser beams, and Lynch brilliantly captured that aesthetic.

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1. The writer just finished doing an entire reread of the first book in the series before writing this review of Lynch's movie.

2. My take on the caption is that the set piece just looks weird. Both in a world that doesn't have electronic computers and just in general as it doesn't seem to have much purpose except to look "cool" in a 1980s kind of way.

3. The article was mostly supportive of the rest of Lynch's set pieces and design and one of the biggest complaints was that the lighting was so dark that you can't actually see any of this cool stuff.

I can't remember if this is established in Frank's books or instead retconned by his son, that all AI and computerization was banned after the Butlerian Jihad.

My recollection - and I admit it's been a while - is that the events of the Jihad were expanded on in some of the Brian Herbert / Kevin J Anderson works, but that the basic notion (electronic computation forbidden, and why) was well established in the very first book.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind" is cited by Paul from the OC Bible in Dune.

There are countless passages in the original series where people recoil in horror at even the slightest thought of things like computers and artificial insemination.

Yes, I remember that, but don't remember if they explain why.

AI was banned, but I don't think computerization was. They had mentats to do what we'd use a neural network for today.

The jihad and it's repercussions in the form of outlawing all but the simplest computing devices is discussed in Dune.

It's established in the original books, not talked about much, but established. That's why there are Mentants.

That was in the movie. It's the whole point of the Mentats.

I'm thinking particularly of Dune the book.

The books don't rule out computers altogether do they? They ban "thinking machines", but it looks like calculators are fine.

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