Has anyone ever reacted to the Dune books the way China Mieville? After seeing Mieville mentioned by Justin Podur in a blog post I got into
Perdido Street Station and worked through other books in that series. On-line articles and interviews told me that his books were a reaction against the fantasy conventions set by J.R.R. Tolkein with the
Lord of the Rings books. In response to all-white, rural, and fuedal settings he decide to write diverse, urban, and polyarchic(?) settings.
The idea for a reversed Dune setting came to mind while reading about
Samid on
Noam Chomsky's
Fateful Triangle. What if the inhabited universe had been overtaken by the non-violent, long-suffering, forbearing ones instead of the mass-killing, Messia-following militaries?
The idea of an anti-Dune, or Dune-reversal, series came to mind again while reading
Madison Smartt Bell's account of a Haitian Vodou ceremony:
The vessel was a curious affair, a pot of white enameled tin fitted into a similar tin plate, like a cup and saucer for a giant. The pot held a large amount of clear, clean, potable-looking water, as much as half a gallon. Clean water, water of any kind, is in scarce supply in Haiti, and this lack is at the bottom of many problems: communicable diseases, environmental deterioration, starvation. For such reasons, the ceremony of jété dlo was a genuine, terrible sacrifice—the unconditional offering of the most valuable thing you possessed. I took the pot and poured water three times on the ground before each portal, and when I had completed the circuit, I poured what was left on the spot of earth where I had previously been sitting. This too was an offering to Legba, and I poured in a counterclockwise circle, drawing the vévé for my journey in water on the ground.
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https://creativenonfiction.org/writing/soul-in-a-bottle/Shehadeh distinguishes three ways of responding to occupation. The first is that of “blind hate,” the second, “mute submission.” To the captive population, the first way is that of the freedom fighter, the second, that of the quisling. To the conqueror, the first way is that of the terrorist, the second, that of the moderate. The paymasters keep to the rhetoric of the conqueror, naturally. What then is “the third way”? That is the way of the Samid, “the steadfast one,” who watches his home turned into a prison. “You, Samid, choose to stay in that prison, because it is your home, and because you fear that if you leave, your jailer will not allow you to return. Living like this, you must constantly resist the twin temptations of either acquiescing in the jailer’s plan in numb despair, or becoming crazed by consuming hatred for your jailer and yourself, the prisoner.” To be Samid...
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Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky#
ChinaMieville #
DuneBooks #
AntiDune #
DuneReversal #
LordOfTheRings #
LordOfTheRIngsReversal #
FantasyBooks #
HatianVodou #
Vodou #
MadisonSmarttBell #
NoamChomsky #
RajaShehadeh #
Samid Soul in a Bottle - Creative Nonfiction
It was normal and usual for a foreigner, a blan, to go through a period of anxiety and fear while planning a trip to Haiti. Perhaps it was even sensible. For Haitians of the diaspora, the risk of visiting their country was much greater, but I had taken to observing certain Haitian practices before I […]
