Star Wars: Jedi Academy

Having already waxed incoherent on the subject of Jedi Outcast, I now turn to the final game in the Dark Forces aka Jedi Knight series. Jedi Academy sees some interesting twists to the established formulae. Most notably, whilst Kyle Katarn plays a major role in events, he is not the player character anymore. Instead, you play Jaden Korr, a would-be student at the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV (that moon the Death Star was trying to blow up in the first Star Wars movie). You can customise Jaden's appearance, deciding on his or her race and gender, before the game starts.


In general, gameplay follows a similar path to that of Jedi Outcast, accept that chunks of the game are non-linear. A Dark Jedi cult called the Disciples of Ragnos have gathered in an attempt to resurrect a former Sith warlord, but their activities are scattered across the galaxy. As the game proceeds you can choose which order to tackle missions in, with a few 'major' missions furthering the storyline and bridging the narrative along the way.

Whilst this is broadly effective and makes for a somewhat larger game than its forebear, it also loosens the narrative tension. Since you always have time to choose which order to tackle missions in and where to go next, there isn't really the feeling of being against the clock to stop the evil Dark Jedi plans, as there was in the previous games in the series. That said, individual missions are frequently inventive, such as a swoop bike chase through the canyons of a remote world or a raging battle with stormtroopers on a platform suspended high above a gas giant.

The game is somewhat tougher than Jedi Outcast as well, with the introduction of new, elite forms of Dark Jedi, heavy battle droids and jetpack-equipped stormtroopers providing significant opposition. This is mainly down to you having Force powers and a lightsabre right from the start of the game, so by the time you reach the end of the game you are significantly tougher than Kyle was at the end of the prior game. This does lead to the occasional ridiculous situation that a lightsabre duel with a random Dark Jedi you meet in a corridor can last longer and be significantly more difficult than the end-of-game boss fight in Jedi Outcast, which leads to moments of annoying frustration. However, given that you can sleepwalk through most modern games without any problems, playing a more challenging game can also be quite satisfying.

Jedi Academy (****) is an entertaining game which is not quite as dramatic or tense as the prior game in the series, but makes up for it with superior lightsabre and Force combat and a superb massive battle at the end of the game which sees a whole load of Jedi and Dark Jedi duking it out. Overall, a very solid and playable game. It is available now on PC (UK, apparently not available in the US any more), Mac (UK, USA) and X-Box (UK, USA).

Need help getting around the Seven Kingdoms?

I've always been vaguely dissatisfied with the maps of Westeros that have appeared in A Song of Ice and Fire so far. The CAD line-drawings in the earlier books were not great, although the new, illustrated one that appeared in A Storm of Swords was nice. The full-colour map in Guardians of Order's 2005 roleplaying game was excellent, but it missed quite a few locations and was therefore incomplete. The map created by Ran over at Westeros.org in the Citadel subsection is excellent and the most up-to-date map out there, but compared to the many excellent maps of Middle-earth, the Discworld and Robert Jordan's 'Randland' out there, Westeros still felt under-represented.


This map (second-to-last on the right), created by Cartographer's Guild member 'Tear', is now probably the finest map of the continent to appear to date. So if you ever wondered where the Dornish prison-island of Ghaston Grey is located or how far Sam travelled in A Feast for Crows, now you know.

New Battlestar Galactica reimagining in the works. Yes, again.

Stop me if this sounds vaguely familiar, but classic 1970s SF show Battlestar Galactica is returning to our screens. The original show ran for 24 episodes in 1978-79.

"Ha! Ha! A reremake? That's a good one."

"Er, we're not making this up."

Oh yes, and there was another TV series that ran for 80 episodes and five fricking years which finished less than five months ago for cryingoutloud and has a spin-off series called Caprica which doesn't even start until January.

The new project is a movie to be directed by Usual Suspects/X-Men/Valkyrie director Bryan Singer. It will stand alone in a new continuity unrelated to the multi-award-winning, highly-critically-praised TV show. Original series producer Glen A. Larson is on board as a consultant, so we may be getting a daggits 'n' lasers production rather than a bullets 'n' nihilism one.

I am not making this up. Honest.

Singer was involved the attempt to relaunch the show in 2001-02, which fell through after 9/11. The Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) relaunched BSG to great applause in late 2003. Glen A. Larson, who retained the movie rights, has let it be known that he is not a fan of the new series at all, and pointblank refused to allow SyFy to even consider making a theatrical movie based on the TV series (whilst simultaneously insisting on getting his name on the credits as a 'consultant', although he and Ronald D. Moore never spoke in five years of production).

"What the frak? WHYYYYYYY?"

This is kind of preposterous, but it does make some warped sense. BSG was talked about way, way more than it was watched, especially here in the UK where most casual TV-watchers I speak to have never even heard of it. A movie would likely be seen by many times more people than saw the RDM version of the show.

Still, it just seems really, really weird. A remake of a remake before the remake has technically even finished (TV movie The Plan and spin-off series Caprica are still to come)? Very odd.

Eric by Terry Pratchett

Eric is a demonology hacker who is trying to summon a demon to answer his worldly desires. Unfortunately, due to a slight malfunction, the demon he summons turns out to be a wizard called Rincewind. To Rincewind's own bemusement, he ends up helping Eric achieve his goals, but wasn't reckoning on the side-trips to a remote jungle kingdom, the greatest war in history, the dawn of time and hell...


Eric is a bit of an oddball Discworld novel. Although listed as the ninth book in the overall series, it's not published by Corgi but by Gollancz instead, with a different cover design as well. It's also the shortest book in the series by far, coming in at 150 pages. The explanation is rather straightforward: it was originally a large-format illustrated book written by Pratchett primarily as a vehicle for the late Josh Kirby's artwork. As a result the story had to be streamlined and more of a travelogue of various locations rather than having a deep and complex narrative. In fact, it's reminiscent of the later book, The Last Hero, with the difference that Last Hero has been kept in print as an illustrated book rather than becoming a 'proper' novel.

Shorn of its illustrations, Eric is a rather simplistic and lightweight tale. It does some good stuff, like resolving Rincewind's cliffhanger ending from Sourcery (although leaving him on another one here), and there are a few good laughs, but it's all rather shallow, to be honest. Pratchett's depiction of Hell here seems to be at odds with the rest of the Discworld multiverse and although it becoming a bureaucratic, middle-manager's paradise is a funny idea, he doesn't really have the space or time to go into it in much depth. Essentially the book is an excuse for a bunch of obvious gags and filling in a few more locations on the Discworld not previously seen.


For all that, it raises the odd smile and, more interestingly, I have been informed by Gollancz that they are planning to reprint the fully-illustrated edition in the future, which should be worth checking out.

For now, Eric (***) is a very fast, briefly entertaining diversion from the main Discworld sequence. It is available now in the UK and USA.

Author John C. Wright goes off on an anti-homosexual rant

John C. Wright is an author I'd never heard of until I opened Songs of the Dying Earth last month. His story in the collection is entertaining and vaguely amusing, and when I heard some good things about his Golden Age trilogy of novels I resolved to pick them up at some future point.

After this blog post was brought to my attention (by a rather horrified SF editor), I decided to drop that resolution.

The post starts off with Wright complaining about the problems of tokenism in fiction, the politically-correct demand that every book or TV show has a gay character or some other minority in it. He was skirting around something beginning to be a point there, although it's a dangerous game to be getting into as based on that logic, why bother having any black or Asian characters or smokers? Therefore, QED, having an all-white, all-straight cast should be totally believable, even in a futuristic setting (when demographic logic tells us the overwhelming majority of the world's population will be non-Caucasian). The only problem with that is that reading an SF work set in the future where the entire cast is white would be pretty ludicrous and send up the bullshit flag pretty quickly unless there was some overtly convincing reason why this was so.

Where the blog posts enters a more disturbing arena is where Wright basically outlines his views on homosexuality. In effect, he equates it with bestiality, necrophilia and pederasty and as being considerably worse than incest. He states that it is a sexual-psychological malfunction and is contributing to the 'moral decay' of society. It's nonsensical hate-speak, plain and simple, particularly unwise when espoused by a new author who is trying to build a career and fanbase in a genre which has a lot of LGBT readers.

This does potentially lead down the road of, well, do an author's personal views matter when all you're really concerned about is if their books are any good? And I would say yes, since the buying reader is contributing to their lifestyle and enabling them to go on doing the things they want to do. As such, I am not inclined to give money or publicity to someone who indulges in hate-speak and takes such an obsessive interest in what goes on behind the closed doors of his neighbours (seriously, what is up with that?). In addition, there is way too much good stuff out there to read, so removing his books from my 'to read' list does reduce the pile somewhat as well, which is an acceptable situation.

Wright's mistake here was that the more profitable career-path is to establish yourself as a huge, best-selling author first and then make the crazy ultra-con statements that alienate most of your fans but simultaneously bring in the extremists who'll keep your sales ticking over later on. He went down the bile-rising route way too early (the Internet's current reaction to the controversy: "Who the fuck is John C. Wright?"). Maybe it'll blow over and people will forget about it and he can go on to have a huge successful career, but this is going to be one of those things that's going to keep coming up in the future.

Interesting rebuttal of the original post by Hal Duncan, for those who have an afternoon free to read the whole thing ;-)

And another from Catherynne Valente.

Wertzone Classics: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Captain Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is not a happy man. He has a thankless job, a bunch of incompetent subordinates and he doesn't get no respect or, more accurately, actually gets no respect. The arrival of a fresh, eager-eyed new recruit (a six-foot-tall dwarf named Carrot - long story) whose relaxed and literal approach to policing (such arresting the head of the Thieves' Guild for being a thief) is another headache for Vimes to deal with. At the same time, the Unseen University Librarian is upset over the theft of a book that could be used to summon dragons and, in an almost certainly unrelated incident, people over the city are vanishing, leaving behind only fine traces of ash and scorched brickwork. Yes, things are definitely afoot...


Guards! Guards! is Terry Pratchett's tribute to detective novels and all those hapless extras dressed in chainmail who's only job in films is to run into the grand hall and get cut down by the hero. No-one ever seems to ask them if they want to or not. Oh yeah, and possibly dissatisfied with the imaginary dragons of The Colour of Magic, Pratchett cuts loose here with the real deal, a fire-breathing behemoth of a creature who is permanently in a bad mood. The book's real success is bringing the great city of Ankh-Morpork to life as never before seen in the series, giving the city a real sense of life (and frequent, screaming death) and community. In various polls over the years, Ankh-Morpork usually tops out as the most detailed and convincing fantasy city ever created, and Guards! Guards! is really where the city starts getting its character and identity.

On the cast side of things, a whole slew of major Discworld characters are introduced, most notably the complex Captain Vimes (almost certainly Pratchett's most fully-realised character), Nobby Nobbs (the missing link between man and rat), Sergeant Colon, recruit Carrot, the formidable Lady Ramkin, Detritus the troll and, of course, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of dubious sausage-in-a-bun products to crowds and/or rioters. Established characters like the Patrician also get a lot more screen-time and characterisation than previously established, and the revelation of how the Patrician ensures he can survive any palace coup launched against him is simultaneously hilarious and deeply disturbing. Despite temporal evidence to the contrary, I am convinced Machiavelli was one of the Patrician's students who didn't quite measure up.


Pratchett's writing takes another significant upward swing with this volume, exuding a greater level of confidence than ever before. He's funny when he wants to be, dramatic when he needs to be, even touching when it is required. The story threads are laid out, developed and then resolved with impressive efficiency and maximum impact. The way the last few paragraphs hilariously resolve very minor story points from a hundred pages previously is very clever. Particularly nicely done are Carrot's letters back home. Read them one after the other and you can see how his attitude to the Big City changes over the course of the book in a very well-done manner.

Guards! Guards! (*****) is not the best Discworld book, but it's certainly right up there. Funny, dramatic and just brilliantly entertaining from start to finish. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

Star Wars: Jedi Outcast

In the beating heart of every SF fan of a certain age, there is the burning wish that lightsabres actually existed, and you could actually use one effectively without killing yourself (seriously, self-decapitation must be a bit of a worry with those things and Jedi health insurance must be shocking). Many are the Star Wars games that have promised you the ability to use a lightsabre in battle, but most, frankly, suck.


Among the games that do deliver on the lightsabre destruction angle are the splendid Knights of the Old Republic duology of role-playing games (and their forthcoming quasi-sequel, The Old Republic), but even they have a slight issue in that as role-playing games, you're not really swinging the sabre yourself, the numbers and stats are doing that for you. No, to really get into the art of lightsabre-swinging mayhem, you need to step back a bit further, to the classic Dark Forces series of games.

There are five of these games: Dark Forces (1995), Jedi Knight (1997), Mysteries of the Sith (1998), Jedi Outcast (2001) and Jedi Academy (2003), and my original intention was to replay and review all five. Several hours of swearing at DOSBox and fruitless fiddling with emulators and compatibility modes later, I decided to go with the two that actually work on Windows XP with modern graphics cards.

The five games broadly follow a story arc centred on the mercenary and all-round scoundrel Kyle Katarn (although he doesn't stay that way, which is probably not a huge spoiler). In Dark Forces - a blatant Doom clone - Katarn is drawn into helping the Rebel Alliance and is actually revealed as one of the guys who stole the plans to the Death Star. According to Star Wars lore, there are actually about 25 people who stole the plans and got them to Princess Leia's ship and because of the Lucasfilm command that all computer games, novels and probably commemorative tablemats are canon, there are fairly convoluted hoops to jump through to explain how they all did so simultaneously. Suffice to say the Death Star plans are basically like a relay baton handed from various character to character until they get into Princess Leia's hands.

"VROM! VROM! KRASH!"
"Can you please stop doing that, the sound effects are done for you, it's very distracting!"
"Oh, sorry."

Anyway, Katarn, somewhat stiffly and with a strangely limited field of vision, blasted his way through various missions for the Rebels, eventually defeating a project by the Empire to build some badass new robot stormtroopers, who, unlike their human counterparts, actually could hit a barn door if they were standing right in front of it. In Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, the power of a new, proper 3D engine and mouse-driven control system means that Kyle can suddenly wield a lightsabre and also the power of the Force (sort of, in a 'Press F1 to push someone a bit' way)! In terms of level design and, possibly more importantly, corny FMV acting, Jedi Knight is the best game in the series, although the actual graphics and the range of lightsabre moves and Force powers are a bit crappy in comparison. Its expansion, Mysteries of the Sith, is also quite decent, although the number of irritating button-pushing puzzles is quite annoying. There is also a nice bit of variety in that the game allows you play the role of iconic Expanded Universe character Mara Jade (who later marries Luke Skywalker and has his son, Ben) for a while.

Anyway, to Star Wars: Dark Forces III: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Aside from hideous crimes against colon use (erm), the game uses the swanky Quake III: Team Arena graphics engine, which means that eight years after release it still looks great. There are a few clunky moments, with the lack of a proper physics engine meaning that grenades tend to fly all over the shop and stormtroopers go through an elaborate falling to their knees going "Arrgh!" death routine like third-rate extras hamming it up, but aside from that the game still looks very nice indeed, and even the most modest modern laptop should be able to run it with less effort than it takes to fire up Minesweeper.

The plot has Kyle Katarn rejecting the ways of the Jedi after the events of the last game and, thanks to the game ending at the powerful Valley of the Jedi, he has voluntarily given up his connection to the Force. Various character and story-based reasons are given to justify this, but really it's so you start the game with no lightsabre, no Force skills and just a blaster for company. This is an idea of mixed success, since it does make the opening levels more challenging but they also get a bit tedious. The first mission, to a remote Imperial Remnant outpost, is actually quite dull. The base is badly-laid-out and you end up running in confusing circles for a bit pushing buttons until you eventually move on. Around the third mission you get in over your head, your co-pilot is killed by the evil Dark Jedi Desaan (who comically looks like a purple dinosaur, slightly reducing his threat value) and you end up re-embracing the ways of the Force to kick his sauroid ass across the Galaxy, although not until a scarily dead-eyed Luke Skywalker runs you through his Jedi Assault Course to test out your powers, which takes about three minutes (I was a bit hazy on the logic behind this part, but okay).

"Er, Luke, I'm over here. And has your head always had that many angles in it?"

Of course, once you get a lightsabre the shit gets real. Enemies' arms fly off at the merest contact with your blade, and there's some cool moments when you can send whole groups of stormtroopers plunging to their screaming deaths with Force Push, thanks to the perennial Star Wars universe problem of having lots of pointless tiny bridges across vast chasms with no handrails: I'm guessing the Emperor really fecking hated Health & Safety inspections of his facilities. The game sees you pursuing the reptilian Desaan and his Dark Jedi minions across the Galaxy in an effort to destroy him, taking in some traditional Star Wars locations like Nar Shaddaa (the Hutt crime moon) and Cloud City along the way. You also have to storm a colossal Imperial starbase and then single-handedly wipe-out the entire crew of a gargantuan Imperial warship many times bigger than a Star Destroyer, which is all in a day's work for a Jedi. At the end of the game you have to defend the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV from attack, which involves commandeering an AT-ST (those chicken-legged scout walker things that resist blaster bolts but curiously can be destroyed by Ewok-propelled logs) and then fighting Jurassic Darth in a classic duel to the death which you win by skill, or possibly judicious use of quick-save and quick-load.

Lightsabre-less opening missions aside, Jedi Outcast remains a damn fine game. Graphically, it still looks great as I mentioned earlier, although the fact you can't illuminate dark areas with your lightsabre and have to use awkward-to-select night-vision goggles instead was a bit stupid even in 2001. In all other respects, graphics and sound are great. Gameplay is also very strong. Mouse-driven lightsabre combat is where it is at, with the player able to pull off a range of moves, attacks, blocks and combs that is very impressive. A lot of the moves are situational, depending on the location of the nearest enemy, whether they're a normal enemy or if they have a lightsabre as well and so on, which means that to the untrained person watching over your shoulder, you actually look like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan (picking the best lightsabre fight from the six films) going ape on Darth Maul's backside, when in fact all you're doing is pointing in the enemy's vague direction, clicking madly and hoping for the best. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty cool and defeating an enemy in a fierce lightsabre duel with a sweet finishing move may result in the player (not this one, obviously) inadvertently yelling "Yeah, bitch! Who is the Yoda? WHO IS THE YODA!" at the screen, which depending on home circumstances may not be advisable.

"I AM THE YODA!"

The story is decent, although so Star Wars by the numbers it hurts. Dark Jedi, ancient powerful weapon blah blah. It's basically just a set-up so you can run into various situations and kill lots of people and solve various puzzles (although an awful lot of these puzzles fall into the 'push crate over here' and 'this door is unlocked by a button three floors up on the other side of the base, go press it'). It's pretty good. Kyle Katarn also makes for an engaging protagonist, with his struggles with the Force being quite interesting, if again nothing new. In fact, the only disappointment with the story is the single ending. Jedi Knight and Jedi Academy both have 'light side' and 'dark side' endings, but this game only has the one.

Jedi Outcast (****), if you can track down a copy, remains a very enjoyable slice of Star Wars action. It's a fun game which recreates the simple coolness of wielding a lightsabre and cutting a swathe through vast numbers of foes. The game is/was available on PC (UK, USA), Macintosh (UK, USA), X-Box (UK, USA) and GameCube (UK, USA). I seriously recommend getting the PC or Mac versions, however, as the gamepad-controlled versions are not as strong.

Updates from Sanderson, Martin, Williams & Lynch

At Worldcon, Brandon Sanderson answered some questions at a signing and Q&A where he spoke at length on the writing of the final three Wheel of Time books and how the books have been split and arranged. He also revealed that Robert Jordan's notes for the series are colossal, and are actually longer than the series itself. Sanderson also confirmed that Tor Books want the sequel/'outrigger' trilogy (which is, at least in part, the story of Mat and Tuon on the Seanchan home continent) to be written, but, although Jordan created more detailed notes of Seanchan than have appeared in the books, he didn't create an outline for the books. Sanderson's inclination is to leave the Wheel of Time universe alone after A Memory of Light.

Also at Worldcon, GRRM was relatively close-lipped with new revelations about A Song of Ice and Fire or the HBO series, but he did re-confirm recent statements that he has over 1,000 manuscript pages finished and ready to go, with a some more chapters in varying stages of completion. I note that he didn't mention any completion date as he has done recently. More news will likely come out of GRRM's reading today, where he is apparently reading a new, never before-heard chapter, likely to be the last unveiled before ADWD is finished. He also let slip one of the tidbits hinted in his recent blog, that Jaime Lannister has been cast for the TV series but he couldn't say who's got the role until HBO officially announce it.

Tad Williams has confirmed to the Suvudu blog that Shadowrise has come in at 1,300 manuscript pages with another 200 or so pages to come, hence the reason for it being split. The two resulting volumes will be about 750 MS pages long each, or slightly shorter than Shadowmarch and Shadowplay by themselves.

After a long Internet absence, Scott Lynch has returned to the web in force, restarting his Livejournal and creating a new Twitter account. He has recently Tweeted about some of his progress on Republic of Thieves, but no completion announcement yet.

The Winds of Dune...or should that be hot air?

Between 1965 and 1986, American science fiction author Frank Herbert wrote six novels depicting a vast, complex universe centred on a remote desert world, source of the most valuable substance in existence. Dune (1965) went on to become the biggest-selling individual science fiction novel of all time, and its sequels continued the story across some five thousand years of human history. In the books, the ossified human Imperium is laid low by by the coming of Paul Atreides, a super-being created by selective breeding by the Bene Gesserit sisterhood across millennia. Paul becomes humanity's messiah, but later rejects his own place in history and tries to tear down the empire he has created. His son succeeds him, merging with a race of creatures indigenous to the desert world of Arrakis (Dune) to become the God-Emperor of humanity, ruling for thousands of years until he orchestrates his own assassination. In the final two Dune novels, the Imperium is laid waste by the arrival of the Honoured Matres, a sect of powerful women opposed to the Bene Gesserit, but it is then revealed that they are running from an even more powerful threat. Chapterhouse: Dune (1986) ends with many characters dead, Arrakis itself reduced to a burning cinder in space and most of the surviving characters on the run in an experimental spacecraft.

The real deal.

Frank Herbert sadly died in 1986, apparently leaving behind no notes on where he was planning to take the Dune series in the next volume (he'd already signed a contract for a seventh Dune novel). He'd also been speaking to his son Brian, who'd published several SF novels himself, about a possible collaboration on a story about the Butlerian Jihad, the war between humanity and 'thinking machines' that took place ten thousand years before the events of Dune. Herbert had dropped many hints as to the nature of this war, setting it up to be a crusade launched by humans against robots and AIs and their own human allies in a religious fervour, but the full story had not been told.

Herbert's death seemed to shut the door on any further additions to the series, but the Dune name did not entirely die. Although lambasted for being incomprehensible to people who hadn't read the books, David Lynch's 1984 Dune movie became something of a cult classic in following years, and the Dune universe became a popular choice of setting for computer games, with 1992's adventure game Dune being a major success. Its prequel of a year later, Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis, was even more successful, creating an entire genre (the RTS or real-time strategy genre) which went on to great success in following years and introduced the Dune universe to a whole new audience. With the six existing novels continuing to sell quite well, it was clear that this was one SF universe that was not going to die.

The new DUNE book, by the inventor of the Sun Crusher, which even hardcore Star Wars fans think sucked donkey balls.

The notion of creating new Dune fiction had come up several times, with Brian Herbert expected to pick up the legacy of his father's work, but he resisted every offer that was made, feeling that his father's testimonial to his late mother in Chapterhouse: Dune made it a fitting career capstone. In addition, Herbert was unwilling to create new Dune material from scratch, and with no information on where Frank Herbert was taking the story in the seventh novel available, it seemed like the mystery would remain unsolved.

This changed in the late 1990s, when an editor suggsted to Brian Herbert that a tribute anthology could be written about the Dune universe, with many major modern SF authors contributing to a collection of stories about the setting. Herbert was not convinced, but agreed to get in contact with one of the authors most enthusiastic about the project, Kevin J. Anderson.

In which it turns out absolutely every single organisation, ethnic group, race and ethos in the DUNE books was created by a small group of people, many of whom knew one another, in the space of about twenty years and then remained completely stagnant for ten thousand years. Who'd have thought?

Anderson had first emerged in SF circles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a number of okay, mid-level SF novels like Resurrection, Inc. He hit the jackpot with media tie-ins, penning the Jedi Academy trilogy of Star Wars novels in 1994 (the first big series in the new Star Wars book line after Timothy Zahn's legendary opening trilogy) followed by three books based on The X-Files. A big fan of Dune, he was keen to find out what happened next in the series, "even if I had to make it up myself". He contacted Brian Herbert in relation to the anthology, but revealed he was keener to work at novel-length.

Whilst the two authors were discussing the project, some of Frank Herbert's possessions fortuitously showed up in a safety deposit box. Miraculously, among the possessions a number of outlines and notes for 'Dune 7' were discovered. The timing seemed like an omen from the gods or something, and Brian Herbert and Anderson set to work on a series of new Dune books. Frank Herbert's notes showed them where he was planning to go in 'Dune 7', but they felt that the story twists and turns in that volume needed to be better set-up ahead of time by other elements, elements that would take six books (as many Dune novels as those that already existed) to depict.

After some consideration, Steven Spielberg had to reject Kevin J. Anderson's proposed script for a Jaws remake.

Back in the late 1990s, as a Dune fan it was exciting to hear that some new material was on the way and, superbly, it was all 100% canon material created and outlined by Frank Herbert himself. True, other writers would be doing the actual writing, but that was obviously unavoidable under the circumstances, but at least we would know where Herbert was going with the events of the last two Dune novels and we would get a canonical resolution to that cruel cliffhanger that we were left on in 1986.

Still, it seemed a bit strange (understatement) that Herbert and Anderson weren't writing that story first but were instead writing a prequel trilogy set forty-odd years before Dune, and were talking about doing the Butlerian Jihad after that. They claimed that additional material was needed to set up 'Dune 7', but was that really the case? Wasn't Frank Herbert just planning on writing 'Dune 7' (which was written on the lable of those floppy disks) and that was it, with maybe some idle talk of other books a lot further down the road? It was a bit of a head-scratcher, but the writers seemed adamant they needed to tell these stories first, so the fans let them do their thing.

House Atreides was published in late 1999 and it was...meh. Not utter drek, and a vast improvement on Anderson's horrendous Star Wars novels, but still uninspiring. It also felt a bit weird, and definitely not in keeping with the other Dune books. We were told in the main series that the machine world of Ix was treated with suspicion over its skirting of the proclamation against thinking machines, but now it was revealed that the ruling House Vernius of Ix was closely allied with the Atreides and its ruler and Duke Leto were extremely close friends. The Vernius also notably failed to come to Leto's aid against the Harkonnens in Dune, which seemed a bit strange given the lengths the Atreides went to in order to aid their allies in the prequel trilogy. But at the end of House Atreides there is a note from the authors, explaining how the prequel trilogy was necessary for a further understanding of the Dune universe and everything was derived from Frank Herbert's notes, so fair enough.

The Legends of Dune trilogy was published in 2002-04 and depicted the events of the Butlerian Jihad. At this point a lot more suspicion was falling on the prequel project that things weren't right. The hideous writing (Legends' prose quality is astonishingly bad) aside, there were many differences between the depiction of the war in the trilogy and the references to it in the main books. In the main books it seems that the war was a first strike launched by a religious cult against machines allied with another sect of humans. At no point did the original books suggest that the machines themselves were ruling over all of humanity as a slave/vassal species, an idea that seemed to be more in line with The Matrix than with Frank Hebert's vision. In addition, basic logic also seemed lacking: the preponderance of resources on the AI side in Legends of Dune is so insane that it is impossible they simply wouldn't have annihilated humanity with ease. The notion presented in the original novels of the war being launched by the humans on outgunned, unsuspecting machines seems to be far more convincing.

In interviews for the writing of the Legends of Dune series the authors stated that Omnius and Erasmus - the primary antagonists of the series and the two principal AI characters - were their creations. In this interview the two authors reveal their thought-processes in creating Erasmus, for example.

After the completion of Legends, the authors announced that they would be - finally - writing 'Dune 7', based on Frank Herbert's outline and notes. It had somehow become two new books rather than one, entitled Sandworms of Dune and Hunters of Dune, but fans seemed happy. At long last, they were getting the real deal.

"We shall hunt...DUNE."
"It's the most famous planet in the Galaxy, everyone knows where it is."
"Our work here is done! Now we shall hunt...PIE!"

The books finally came out, and revealed in exciting detail, and clearly based on Frank Herbert's outline, how the 'great enemy' who had driven the Honoured Matres into the Imperium's space and laid waste to most of the Galaxy were the defeated AIs, led by Erasmus and Omnius, still going strong after 15,000 years! Who'd have thought!

Needless to say, this revelation seemed a little suspect. Something was not smelling right. The reader suspected that the other one, if pulled, would have bells on.

You see, it turns out the primary bad guys or antagonists of Frank Herbert's last two Dune novels would be characters who didn't even exist at that time, and were instead created by two other guys fifteen-odd years after his death. Or to put it another way, Frank Hebert's amazingly-detailed notes, bequeathed to Anderson and Herbert Jnr. on the slopes of Mount Sinai (or something), apparently didn't even mention who the bad guy of the final book was, a factor that I naively assumed would have been a reasonably major plot point.

Some Dune fans (okay, me) felt just slightly pissed off and annoyed. They had spent money on books that weren't very good because they'd been promised it was all based on Herbert's original notes and outlines. Fair enough, the delivery method of the story wasn't great, but the actual, core events were designed by Frank Herbert himself and were legit, or so we were told. And it was now revealed that this was not the case.

The new Dune books were revealed to be what, in fairness, a lot of less-invested SF commentators had been saying for years: a cynical cash-grab designed to exploit a respected intellectual property and turn it into a franchise. Because the authors knew that this would go down like a lead balloon with the fans, the importance of these 'notes' and 'outlines' had been inflated many times until they became some kind of oracular vision, Frank Herbert guiding their writing hands from beyond the grave. The truth of the matter is that if these notes didn't even tell them who the bad guys were, the notes could not have been very comprehensive at all. Oh sure, I think they exist - the stuff with loads of past Dune characters being resurrected as gholas (so they can re-examine their lives and the impact of their decisions five thousand years on) does actually sound like a Frank Herbert idea - but I think we're possibly talking about some very rough, "What if?" brainstorming ideas, certainly nothing to hang a dozen more novels on.

The exciting new chapter in the saga: Hot Air of Dune. Remember to come back next year for the magnificent continuation, Flatulence of Dune.

Since these events, some critical commentary of the new Dune books has sprung up across the Internet. New blog Keeping the Door has charted some of these activities in a recent post, whilst Penny Arcade have a somewhat more robust and succinct view of events. Naturally, none of it matters. The new Dune books keep rolling off the production line, all shiny and new and bereft of anything that can be called tangible writing ability or artistic legitimacy, and keep hitting the bestseller lists. The authors themselves seem to be happy with the situation. Never mind that they once said that:

"You don't do the grand finale and then add a few more books".

Screw that! There's green to be made! So, after the completion of the 'Dune 7' project more books have appeared, filling in the gaps with stories that were so vitally important Frank Herbert completely ignored them. There's also a nice line in Soviet revisionism creeping in, with The Winds of Dune boasting the legend, "The epic sequel to Frank Herbert's Dune", although I have a clear recollection - might be wrong - that such a book already exists under the title Dune Messiah, published in 1969. We're also in line for more books, about the sword masters and the Bene Gesserit and probably a full trilogy on the life-cycle of a Caladanian mollusc before we are done.

What's happened to the Dune universe is nothing less than a shocking fiasco, and I was disappointed to see many of my fellow bloggers happily plugging away this week with giveaways for the new Dune book. C'mon guys, this thing is going to shift bucketloads of copies regardless, you don't need to help them out with this one as well.

The worst part of all of this is that when I went to reread the original Dune itself a couple of years back, I found myself completely unable to get into it. The sound of Frank Herbert spinning in his grave made it impossible to concentrate on the text.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

Young Prince Teppic is sent forth by his father, the ruler of the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi, who sends him to Ankh-Morpork to join the Assassin's Guild. Teppic is successful in his studies there, but, seven years later, the death of his father sees him recalled to take up the mantle of pharoah.


Unfortunately for all concerned, Teppic comes home with some strange notions about plumbing and the benefits of feather mattresses, which is not good news to the head priest, Dios, who prides himself on how things are run in the kingdom precisely as they were seven thousand years ago. New ideas are not welcome in the Old Kingdom...

Pyramids (subtitled 'The Book of Going Forth'), the seventh Discworld book, is one of several 'sleeper' hits in the series. Much more attention is lavished on the book preceding it, Wyrd Sisters, for introducing the popular characters of the Witches, whilst the succeeding volume, Guards! Guards!, gets a lot of props for introducing the City Watch and also for being one of the best books in the series. Pyramids by contrast tends to slip beneath the radar, which is a shame as it is a very good book indeed.

It's a stand-alone with not too many continuing story elements, but it works well for that. Rather than simply doing a story about someone with new, radical ideas turning up that the priesthood gets annoyed by, Pratchett throws in some excellent mickey-taking of philosophers and also some nice commentary about SF. Around the time Pyramids came out a lot of 'approachable' SF had been discarded in favour of brain-expanding stories about time travel and non-linear space or something, and Pratchett's constant use of "It's probably quantum!" to explain every single possible plot hole in the novel is a nice bit of satire.


Teppic makes for an engaging protagonist, although he's one of Pratchett's more familiar archetypes (a general do-gooder whose attempts to do good go wrong but he sorts it all out in the end). Dios is one of the series' more interesting protagonists, and the various pyramid-builders and embalmers make for an amusing secondary cast as well. On the minus side, the book's humour is a little bit too obvious in places (there's a few obvious Cleopatra jokes and the employment of mummies for comedic purposes), but there's still a few good belly-laughs in there as well. The theme of the book also seems a bit vague, except that ossification should be avoided by embracing new ideas, which is a bit of a no-brainer.

Pyramids (****) is a solid entry to the Discworld series, funny and entertaining throughout. The book is available now in the UK and USA.