Book Analysis
Order 1:
The novel entitled “Dune” by can be considered as a science fiction because of its futuristic theme. Accordingly, science fiction has been described by these conventional characteristics: humans with supernatural powers and abilities, alien creatures and space travel and futuristic. In fashioning Dune, it can be said that the novel has these science fiction elements; however, the author has been able to add credibility and depth in the story. In Dune, the author creates a universe giving emphasis to the complexities faced by humans and their society. Although space travel is only limited and has a small detail in a setting of power politics, ancient religions, ecological queries, and human survival techniques, against which is a enthralling cast of characters interlace the story of the novel. The believability of the universe established by the author, the multi-dimensional cast of characters as well as the intensive plot have made the novel a superb experience for readers.
The story started as the royal family of Altreides set up to leave their home world which is called Caladan, and accept the leadership of the desert planet of Arrakis or more commonly known as Dune which is considered to be the most important planet in the universe. It is the only heavenly bodies which are noted to possess the spice of melange. A thing which has the ability to guide ships within the space extends the life of humans and gives prescient awareness. Upon the request of the Emperor, the family leave to Arrakis and replace the royal house (House Harkonmen) which has been their ultimate enemy for thousand years. In the planet, Duke Leto Atreides, her wife Lady Jessica and Paul have faced the risks of attacks from the enemies including the tough and merciless planetary culture. Atreides’ family was betrayed by one of the people in the household and connive with the enemy to arrange the defeat of Atreides. When this happened, Lady Jessica and their son Paul are forced to go to the deep desert. Therein, the two must fight to survive in spite of sandstorms and sandworms huge enough to gulp down large spaceships. The only hope for the survival of the two lies in being connected with the desert people called the Fremen and achieving the acceptance as one of them.
It can be said that the author of this novel has never allowed the tension in the plot to subside. Whether Herbert highlights the thoughts of Lady Jessica, or Paul or the Baron Harkonmen, feelings of doubt and mistrust are extensive in a universe of political conspiracy and all are aware that every hazardous condition they encounter may have “a feint, within a feint, within a feint”. In the novel it is said that the overarching mystery of Dune gradually unfolds: Like where does the spice of melange came from, how the people in the deep desert survive, the alteration of the ecology of Arrakis and many more. Chapter by chapter, the author has been able to provide intriguing revelations which draw the readers to read mode.
The science fiction novel has a plot which induces the reader to continue reading. Moreover, the novel has also created fascinating central character. The elements of science fiction are shown with the thoughts of Paul Atreides who found himself enlightening to prescient awareness at the core of a universe which is on the edge of a massive upheaval.
Superficially, Dune seems like the ultimate power fantasy for
nerdish adolescents. One meets the identification figure as the special
young boy that is one’s own dreamself; follows him through battle,
spiritual adventure, and derring-do; and finally one becomes the transcendent object of worship of all the worlds and crowns oneself Emperor
of Everything.
Technology is also given emphasis in this novel which confirmed its being a science fiction novel. Herbert’s universe is one without much by way of machinery, and with nothing at all by way of thinking machines or computers: these were wiped out in the ‘Butlerian jihad’, ‘the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots’ (Herbert, Dune (1965): 594). Generally speaking, most of the technology in this novel would not be out of place in a shop today.
The inner thoughts of Paul enabled the author to explore the implication of being able to foresee the future and how this can be terrifying, confining, revealing and illuminating. In addition, the novel is considered a fiction because of the supernatural abilities of Paul enough to survive with the challenges he faces. Though he is the protagonist, he is also noted to be a superhuman that has the characteristics of being good and bad. The ambiguity of the existence Paul attributes to different issues in human society like moral, social and philosophical aspects. In the novel, the author has shown the philosophical side of a science fiction novel. It can be said that the author has been able to present a universe, planet and culture and human society. And because of the struggles, survival and other important issues tackled in the story, it can be said that some aspects of the novel can happen in human society where people strive hard to survive and live a quality life. On the other hand, some parts of the novel specifically the fictional side may also occur but with a limitation.
Order 2:
Paul Atreides, the hero, comes to Dune as an outsider; he is born on the Earth-like planet Caladan and arrives on Arrakis (Dune) at the age of 16 with his father Duke Leto. This enables the first part of the book to introduce the world and culture of the desert planet, thus arranging our encounter with the difference through the device of the initiation of the protagonist. At the end of this first part, the evil Baron Harkonnen seizes the planet and murders Paul’s father, forcing Paul to flee. The second part, which takes as its title the name Paul adopts among the Fremen, the desert dwellers, details his Lawrence-of-Arabia-style encounter with the ways of the desert tribes, his acceptance by the Fremen, his adoption of the position of ruler and his taking of a Fremen wife. The third section is where the religious strand takes centre stage; in terms of basic narrative the final third of the book is a return: Paul takes his revenge against Harkonnen and the Emperor and the book comes full circle.
Paul Atreides in Dune gets his real power from reaching out beyond logic to vision through his subconscious, emulating and connecting with his mother and sister. Paul Atreides, the overtly transcendent hero of Frank Herbert’s
Dune sage, prescient superman that he is, wrestles with this final task of the true hero and ultimately fails, to his own sorrow.
Paul is the hunted, exiled, rightful heir to the dukedom of Arrakis. He undergoes a whole seizes of initiation mysteries under many spiritual masters and mistresses as he rises up the Fremen into the People’s Army, which will free the planet from the evil Harkonnens. Paul is destined by breeding to become the Kwizatz Haderach, a being of such godlike prescient power that he will be worshipped as a god in whose name jihad will sweep the worlds of men. At the triumphant end of Dune, he not only destroys the Harkonnens but stands fully revealed as the avatar of the godhead and quite literally crowns himself Emperor of Everything.
An early chapter sees Paul being trained in knife-fighting by the Atreides weapons-master Gurney Halleck. As with Star Wars (a film which, as several critics have noted, owes a great deal to Dune), a fascination with the toy-like ingenuity of machine technology is ultimately undercut by a deeper sense of satisfaction at a retro-defined sense of chivalric conflict.
This happens on a personal level, so that the battles in Dune are fought by individuals with knives and swords; this includes two crucial scenes, Paul’s fight with the Freman Jamis that establishes his place in the Sietch, and his climactic knife-fight with the evil Feyd-Rautha. But it also happens on a larger one: Paul eventually defeats the Emperor and captures the planet by resorting to antique weaponry, namely atomic bombs, that had been long outlawed. with the Freman Jamis that establishes his place in the Sietch, and his climactic knife-fight with the evil Feyd-Rautha. But it also happens on a larger one: Paul eventually defeats the Emperor and captures the planet by resorting to antique weaponry, namely atomic bombs, that had been long outlawed.
The drug melange has made Paul prescient, so that quite early on he
envisions the jihad that he is destined to bring. And he abhors it.
Everything he does, at least on a certain level of self-deception, is
designed to prevent it, but everything he does ends up leading him back
along the timeline to the inevitable. At the end of Dune, he can only
surrender to his unavoidable destiny, assume the godhead, crown
himself emperor, and become the icon of the jihad.
For my topic I would the proposed topics includes the following:
1. Analysis of the character of Lady Jessica?
2. Assessment of the cultural aspects of the novel “Dune”.
3. Investigation of the technological context of the “Dune”.
Order 3
In the written novel of entitled “Neuromancer”, there are two settings described: the external setting and the cyberspace. The external environment or setting presented in the Neuromancer refers to the environment in which everything is not affected by the real world. This environment is known to be outside the so called cyberspace.
According to cyberspace is a consensual hallucination experienced by billions of legitimate operators in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concept. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data like what he described in the Neuromance about the city lights ().
Cyberspace, at the broadest conceptual level, is the global village, the Internet, the Information Highway, and the World Wide Web. It is humanity connected by electronic information. It is also a much narrower literary construct and metaphor. At its most basic level, within novels like Neuromancer, it is a mnemonic device, that is, a visual construct of the world of electrons and information that flows around us, but that people cannot see or experience directly.
In this context, cyberspace is a word that is more reminiscent of a pre-Gutenberg and medieval world than of a modem or typographic culture. In Gibson’s novels, artificial intelligences take on a life of their own in the matrix. Magic is rediscovered and made possible in cyberspace. It is filled with more than just data. There are ghosts and spirits in cyberspace. People are brought back from the dead (like the McCoy in Neuromancer).
Cyberspace in novel is a nontextual and closed world— what he described as “an infinite cage” ( 1989, p. 49). It is a world of visual images, of corporate fiefdoms, and of samurai, his many respects, it is a medieval and feudal world—a brilliant act of literary imagination.
In the Neuromancer, the author gives focus In the world of cyberspace, and the so called cyberpunk. Broad terms, cyberpunk dealt with the impact of technology, particularly networks of computers, virtual reality (VR) and biotechnology, on the nature of human existence. It dealt with the nature and essence of humanity in a future in which the use of VR and the ability to extensively change and modify one’s own body allowed individuals to constantly re-invent themselves and to avoid dealing with the ‘real’ world if they did not want to. In Neuromancer, a largely urbanized world exists in physical space while its information flows and data are reproduced in cyberspace ()—a VR representation of a vast city which is perhaps best described as a totally immersive version of the Internet. Individuals can exist solely in this space, and even continue to exist after their physical death as what Gibson referred to as ‘constructs’. Computer code can itself take on an agent -like form and act as an intelligent, self-reliant entity. The barriers between human, software representation and reconstruction of human and humanlike machine are undermined in Gibson’s world. On the other hand, in Dune, the environment is set in a technological and futuristic setting with supernatural objects which makes it fictional. Moreover, the plot of the story turns to be about artificial intelligence and corporate power.
Order 4
In the novel Neuromancer, the Gibsonian universe presents a world where humans battle to survive in an urban jungle; but the most dangerous predators in this jungle are the machines. At times Gibson eerily captures exactly the unease with which we can regard the familiar technological props of our own lives, such as phones, TVs and microwaves—the way in which they seem almost to have a life of their own. His character Case’s first encounter with Wintermute, the Artificial Intelligence or ‘AI’ that is arguably the novel’s chief protagonist, manages this tone of technology-paranoid sensibility perfectly.
The characters of Gibson’s Neuromancer — Wintermute, Neuromancer, McCoy Pauley, Case, the Finn, are all entities who live to one degree or another in the machine, in cyberspace, or to use Gibson’s formulation, in the matrix of human knowledge “from the banks of every computer in the human system. They are all, to put into play another of his frequently used words, “personalities.” Most of the characters are constructed from reproductions, digital representations (or manifestations), textual narrations of someone who was already alive, already human, and in that sense, already someone who thinks.
Characters such as McCoy Pauley, a “ROM personality matrix” who exists as a construct of a human within a computer in Gibson’s most widely read novel, Neuromancer, figure the uneasy perception that there is no boundary between our selves and our encompassing computing environments; that we are, though sentient, “merely” machines. That they are, though machines, sentient.
For instance, Pauley, known by the characters in Gibson’s “Sprawl” novels as the “Flatliner” for surviving “braindeath behind [the] black ice” defenses of an AI that he was buzzing in Rio, comes back after his physical death (by heart attack) as a “recording” on a cassette. More often than not the novel denies that these digital copies of people, ghosts in the machines, are real like we’re real. Or rather, the narrative denies that they are cognitive like we are cognitive.
Neuromancer equivocally decides that representations of humans, “a hardwired ROM cassette replicating a dead man’s skills, obsessions, knee-jerk responses”, is not sentient, not quite human, not quite the ghost that it seems to be. The Flatliner compares himself to another type of entity, however, that is sentient, analogous to the ways humans are sentient: Artificial Intelligences. When Case, the protagonist of Neuromancer, asks Pauley what possible motive the AI Wintermute could have for carrying out the detailed plot that drives the novel, the program answers that he can’t answer.
Pauley’s inhuman laugh, or rather “ugly laughter sensation,” signals his inhuman state. Human, by the construct’s figuration, is to have a psychology that is directed in some determinate, intentional, teleological sense. It’s to have a discernible “motive,” a tendency to move to action and a source for that action, which allows others to “get a handle on it.” But Pauley also claims that he is “human” in just this directed way, in contrast to the AI: he responds like a human. Neuromancer makes much out of the science of predicting human response. Psychology and psychological profiles are presented again and again as the way the matrix knows what Case, Molly, and the rest of the cast of human and once-human characters will do. The other word besides “personality” that marks this particular definition of psychology and intelligence is “profile.” A profile is a “detailed model” of a subject’s psychology Case, for example, is the personification of a “case”: “You’re suicidal, Case. The model gives you a month on the outside’“ claims Armitage / Corto when they first meet. Molly herself wonders aloud to Case, leveraging her knowledge of his psychology and motivation against his own self-knowledge. Introducing Peter Riviera as a certified psychopath.
From one vantage, then, Pauley the ROM personality matrix is only motivation, all profile, the ultimate “case”: he’s a program that is algorithmic in his response to the world and its stimuli. He claims that what ultimately marks him as not human (ironically, ontologically, bearing out W. K. Wimsatt Jr.’s claim about the intentional fallacy, Pauley being all intention) is the likelihood that he wouldn’t write poetry. AIS, on the other hand, are likely to be creative with culture; they have tendencies to be demonstrative, to articulate expression and action outside of predicted paths; they’re likely to write poetry. “Your AI, it just might,” even if the Flatliner wouldn’t; or rather, Pauley can’t move or gesture outside the psychological boundaries of his own read-only memory. Case, however, if not quite “poetic” is paradigmatically human throughout the novel, and goes outside his own psychological profile in just this creative, novelistic way. The novel shows how constructive a cyberspace is and how it influences the minds of the humans.
In Neuromancer, psychology has played an important role to describe the attitudes of the characters. Psychological aspects enable the reader to understand each character and to be more attached with them just like how I view the people around me. On the other hand, the technological context helps each character to be introduced in a cybernetic manner. It enables the reader to understand better the term coined by Gibson which is cyberspace. In this generation, it can be observed the technological factors help humans to deeply understand information and how it can be used to different human aspects.
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Neuromancer’s plot is generally as follows: the protagonist Case, who is a former cyberspace cowboy, is working as a robber for his boss, who is considered as wealthier thieves. These are his employers who provided the unusual and mysterious software needed to enter the bright walls of corporate systems and has the ability to open windows into rich fields of information and data. In this event, Case has been nerve-damaged by these bosses he stole from, making him powerless to jack into the world of cyberspace. Eventually, Case was recruited and healed by Corto. In return, Corto wants him to take a digital copy of his teacher, McCoy Pauley, and with his help, break into the corporate computer matrix of Tessier-Ashpool. Corto, who was formerly a military officer named Armitage, is controlled by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) named Wintermute. Wintermute wants to merge with his other half, an AI represented in Tessier-Ashpool’s systems as a young, beautiful boy, Neuromancer. Case, his bodyguard Molly, the sexual psychopath Peter Riviera, and Armitage / Corto eventually succeed in releasing Wintermute and Neuromancer from the hardwired constraints that keep them from melding and evolving into a higher form of sentience and intelligence.
Neuromancer draws on Chandleresque visions of social corruption, with characters trying to preserve their humanity and integrity in an inhumane and corrupt world. Like pulp noir fiction, the plot includes elements of romance punctuated by deception, high-tech gangsters ranging from corporate criminals, to low-life street hustlers, gun molls and deceptive women, punk and oppositional subcultures, intricate corporate structures, an incestuous family drama, and science fiction fantasy characters such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) constructs trying to take over the world and computer constructs achieving “reality” in the cyberspace of computers. The story has themes of betrayal love and trust. In the story it shows how Case loved Linda. The underlying emotion in the novel is the fear of who is loyal and trustworthy.
In the first half of the story, Case, the protagonist is trying to know the reasons why a drug lord is looking after him and what will be their purpose. In the novel, Case receives a drug shipment and he has not paid Wage. After the incident he went to see his friend Julius for help, eventually Case becomes the leader for Tessier-Ashpool sabotage.
As the story goes, Jules reveals that he killed Linda Lee, the love of Case and makes Case upset of what was told him. Another issue of test of loyalty is when Armitage was able to capture Case to join the force to run on Straylight. When the protagonist accepted the offer, Armitage agreed to give Case a new liver and pancreas. When Armitage has been able to provide Case the organs, he places packs of myotoxins surrounding the liver and pancreas to ensure that Case will not be able to feel the side effects of the drugs and to make sure that the former will not leave their group. At one point, the test of loyalty has also become an issue when Linda betrays Case by stealing the device called RAM. With this, Case felt upset because of his feeling towards her. Throughout the whole incident that Linda is playing on Case, he already knew what is in the mind of Linda. However, since Case really loves Linda, he understands the purpose of Linda for stealing the device.
Along with the notion that Case would let his love manipulate him and that Linda was murdered by Case’s boss leads the latter to a life of lost love. As mentioned the boss killed Linda so as to make Case angry and motivate him to complete his mission. With these incidents of losing Linda (his loved) and Jules (close friend), Case was torn within himself since the two people whom he trusted were gone. Consequently, when Molly came to the life of Case, their relationship is described purely as sexual relationship. This kind of relations is considered to have no emotional satisfaction. In the end, Case was again tormented because Molly left him. In the novel, the protagonist is searching or love to fill his needs but he was never able to find such person. The major character that signifies the emotion and love in the novel is Neuromancer. The characters try to drag Case over his side by using the love of Case to Linda and using her image to manipulate Case.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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