Seth Ben-Ezra wrote:
> Now you know as much as Frank Herbert did. :) The whole concept
rests
> largely on the sci-fi concept of "technobabble", something familiar to
> all of us who have seen more than one episode of Star Trek. I'll bet
> you that Frank Herbert wanted to have a more primitive weapons
> technology (probably due to his primitive political system, which
could
> be compared to the early days of the Roman Empire), but didn't feel
> that he could get away with removing some of the staples of sci-fi.
So
> he came up with a (rather brilliant, IMHO) way of allowing for the
> existence of such weapons but limiting their use. Just speculation,
of
> course.
I totaly agree with you, this idea is brillant. That's with such great
ideas that Herbert build the unique background and atmospere of Dune, so
exotic and still realistic at the same time.
If you want to learn more about Herbert's conception of laser weapons, I
would advise you to read Committe of the Whole, IMHO one of the best
short stories of this author. It is exclusively about laser, but I don't
know which word he uses in the English version, laser or lasgun (I bet
on laser).
If you read French a little there's a short page about Herbert's novels
on my website.
Arnaud Moragues
moragues_at_... Personal Shadow:
http://myweb.worldnet.fr/~moragues/HomePage.shtml
"Pourquoi une citation? Parce que l'on ne peut mettre de visage."
Received on Tue Jan 28 1997 - 19:23:59 UTC