Twelfetide 23:08 Epics with witches

So Tolkien started the idea of a three-volume fantasy series, something that has been much copied since. Over time, as people developed complete universes with a broader range of characters the number of volumes increased and they became addictive. Game of Thrones is an obvious example of this and there the demands of the Television series meant that it got ahead of the author. That broke the rhythm a bit as I was reading the book, listening to the audiobook while watching the unfolding drama. For the last few series that meant some loss in value, but it was still good. I belong to the enlightened minority who liked the last series. It closed off all the story arcs perfectly, the point where Drogon gives Jon permission to kill Daenerys and then destroys the Iron Throne with fire to break the cycle; well it is just perfect. Game of Thrones also made the rare move to become a part of common culture and broke all the rules. Who can forget the Red Wedding? It became a thing rather like Dr Who, a part and parcel of popular culture.

More importantly, it created an interest in adapting similar books into long-running films rather than compressing them into a two-hour motion picture. And that leads me to the two main subjects of today’s post namely Frank Herbert’s Dune and Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. Both are currently in production, the former started with Villeneuve’s majestic film, and we are all eagerly awaiting the second. Lynch’s earlier film was OK with a wonderful performance by Sian Phillips and competent performances by Patrick Stewart and Sting but it was criticised as homophobic and for reducing something profound to simple melodrama. The planned sequels did not materialise in consequence. My feeling at the moment is that Villeneuve has achieved the near impossible with sparse text and brilliant cinematography, not to mention the ornithopters which almost stole the show. So I suspect and hope that the series will progress to Chapter House Dune. And that by the way is where it should stop. The prequel novels by Herbert’s son and Kevin J Anderson are turgid, to say the least.

I wish that J R R Tolkien had accepted the invitation to review Dune which he disliked intensively, but he refused leaving his objections open to conjecture. Dune contains both Islamic and Zen mystical elements and Tolkien, firmly rooted in the myths of Northern Europe and Christianity may have disliked that. Also, the clear preference for benign feudalism that runs through Herbert’s work may have offended. But we will never know. Putting it in context the first novel and the novel sequence, went into far more detail than previous works in the genre such as Asimov’s Foundation series to which it is in part a response. It made storytelling epic again and the ecology of the Sandworms, originally inspired by his studies of the Oregan Dunes, is rigorous and interesting. There are slightly negative elements that link to Starship Troopers with the training of the Sardaukar on a Prison Planet and the harshness of the environment that produces the Fremen. Given that much of the series hinges around the role of Spice, unique to Dune and its Sandworms, essential for navigation, visions and extended life spans, it is not surprising that feudalism is a part and parcel of the political structure. It is a lesson for humanity with the growing scarcity of water, food and inhabitable land that the historical response to has always been a form of patriarchial feudalism. The Mentants are in a way prophetic of where some people think we should go with AI. Remember that in Herbert’s Universe machines that seek to imitate humans are banned along with nuclear weapons. The Mentants are one consequence of that as is the development of human training. The Bene Tleilax makes Chrispr seem amateurish in comparison and questions of trust around the Face Dancers and the Suk doctors raise questions of trust that are all too relevant in the current day.

The Wheel of Time is closer to fantasy with a more significant role played by magic. It is also long, with 14 books in total and the author died while working on volume 12 which was to complete the series. I and others read his blog in those final two years and his focus on the completion of the books was fascinating. He had some year’s notice of his death. His notes for book 12 became three books written by Brandon Sanderson and my view is that one would have been enough. Like Dune he created a highly detailed world with many species and cultural groups. Some, like the Whitecloaks satirise religious extremism, others such as the Ogier and Tinkers portray a very different view of what humanity could be. Overall, if I am, to be honest, the series is too long and loses itself a little in the middle before recovering. It almost feels as if the author was not sure what to do next and needed to explore the options in public with his long-suffering readers. Mind you Dune has much of the same issues with books four and five losing it before a magnificant recovery in Chapter House Dune at the end.

Jordan’s style is closer to Lord of the Rings with younger central characters who mature in the process of telling. The title is drawn from Hinduism and the Wheel of Time has a sense of fate about it and not (in my view) as a contradiction to free will, but rather as an enabling constraint. The book opens with the idea that as the Wheel of Time turns ages come and pass, and memories become legends and then myths. The current Amazon Prime video series has I think correctly understood that the whole thing is too long and has done a good job of making it intelligible, something that will hopefully continue over the third season which will take us almost to the halfway point in the novel sequence.

Now one thing which is common to both books (and to a lesser extent Game of Thrones) is that mystical power is held by female-only sects. In Dune we have the Bene Gessert and their long-term breeding programme to produce the Kwisatz Haderach. Power in the Bene Gesserit is that of knowledge and manipulation and the ability to detect falsehood. In the Dune sequence, we have a second matriarchal group namely the Honored Matres whose power is sexual imprinting to the point where any man becomes addicted to the imprinter. They are also ferocious fighters in their own right.

The Aes Sedai in Wheel of Time is also an all-female institution which gentles any male seen to wield the One Power. They have a beneficial mission but are feared. They also have different houses (Blue, Brown, Grey, Red and White) which have elements of the Harry Potter sorting hat test in their function, There is also a second group the Seanchan who do not allow power to be uncontrolled. Any woman showing evidence of the ability to channel is collared and paired with another woman, known as a sui’dam who controls them. The Amazon Prime series visualises this well with the final scene of series one exemplifying the way that power is controlled and manipulated.

These roles of women are one of the most interesting aspects of both series, which have male authors, and contrast strongly with some of the female authors I mentioned yesterday. Dune has two stereotypes, the submissive but manipulative woman, again to some mediaeval models and in effect a warrior college of succubi who no longer confine themselves to dreams. In Wheel of Time, we have a different portrayal contrasting women who freely use their power, and those confined and controlled to wider purposes of political society. In both books, the women’s goal is to bring on the male saviour…

The mother, the maiden, the healer, the warrior, the witch, the lover, the priestess and the mystic. They are all there and the archetypal characteristics are exaggerated to the point of being a primary identity. There is a wide debate on the role of those archetypes (and there are various versions) in Feminist literature which is overlaid with controversies of Jungianism. I’m not going to elaborate on that, but I commend people to the debate and I’m interested in any readings anyone cares to share.

POSTSCRIPT

This post seems to have triggered a thread on Facebook. Nick Argall commented on my notification of this post and then made that comment a direct post in its own right. That produced a set of responses including one conservative Christian arguing that women are the helpmate of the tale, men are the heroes and that this should be considered as physics. It’s an interesting exchange but it reminded me of something I missed in respect of the film of Dune. That does seem to be creating a role for Chani which goes beyond the book. It will be interesting to see how that develops. Nick also provided an interesting link to a wider discussion of the Movie which also reminded me that Herbert saw the Bene Gesserit as a female version of the Jesuits. He also provided a link to some speculation on the trailer for the second movie.

The banner picture is cropped from an original by Lionello DelPiccolo sourced from Unsplash. The Bene Gesserit fan art is by Christopher Russell and is used under the conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International I also chose it deliberately to reinforce the point about stereotypes.