Word: fi
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...must remember that he is a former science fiction writer. His effort to legitimize his teachings by alluding to "scientific research" is typical of his whole approach: in this age of technology, people will automatically accept authoritative statements, supplemented by an extensive vocabulary of terms with a sci-fi flavor. There is even a Scientology abridged dictionary...
...couples loose to the overture of Rossini's Semiramide. Arpino's brilliant passages of dance invention and his dancers' great innovative skills leave the music behind. The ballet becomes a mere gymnastic feat. Solarwind is different-not a confection gone slickly sour but a modish sci-fi convention pursued without rhyme or reason. In a cosmic mood, Arpino sends his dancers blasting around the stage to assorted flatulent noises-pings, creaks and suckings. The score, by Avant-Garde Composer Jacob Druckman, is entitled Animus III for Tape and Clarinet...
...rotten as most of them were, Galactic Empire stories were still better than this new wave. Psy-fi writers abandoned suspense and action for epiphany and explanation. Their characters descended slowly, slowly into themselves and then emerged, slimy with some new knowledge, in the last chapter. And in that last chapter they would explain. You see... this makes it all so clear! It wasn't important that the rocketship got to Alpha Centauri after all; what really matters is that we now understand the superego. Or the sex drive. Or our place on the evolutionary ladder. Or whatever...
...Galactic Empire lives again in Dune Messiah. But changed, changed utterly: Sci-fi's excursion into psychological explication (and Herbert wrote a psy-fi book, The Dragon in the Sea, a seriously flawed story of catatonic shock on the ocean floor) taught Herbert that nothing can be understood or explained. The new Empire shimmers with terrible beauty-haunting, unforgettable...
Everybody should read Dune. Everybody should read Dune Messiah. We owe Herbert a lot-he may be the only man writing, in sci-fi or out of it, who can think like a planet. And St. Gildas knows we need to think that way. Life right now is a plausible fantasy-and not a very pleasant one. Read Dune Messiah and touch something real...