Hi all,
       I started to read the new DUNE (The BUTLERIAN JIHAD) by
imitation-Herbert and Anderson, and I got to page 38 before I threw it
out the window.

 This is the fourth in the new series of Dune (Done-to-death Dune)
and while the other three were okay (FX: rocking hand either way),
this one is just rubbish... up to page 38, that is. Maybe it gets 
better - or worse. I did not want to see it get worse, so I chucked it.

 It's set 10,000 years before DUNE (which in itself is silly, no
civilisation will last that long) and on Arrakis the tribe has only
just been established. They have not yet ridden a worm, but the strict
laws on water-theft exist and our hero is thrown out of the caves with
the words... wait for it... "the tribe has spoken!"

 ROFL!!

 Someone on Arrakis has been watching Survivor! The tribe has spoken... 
bloody hell. That was when I threw it out the window.

 I'm running out of SF to read. I read the latest Ursula Le Guin last
week, and it was as if two people wrote it. It started great,
interesting characters and good SF, but suddenly she was tying this
book into the others in the series, *every* character got a cap, it
had a cast of thousands all standing around talking, dragons and all,
and she lost it! Lost the plot. Then it ended okay. 

 It left me thinking she had a good idea for a novella and padded the
middle to make a novel... not that I read much of the middle anyway.
My brain uses Microsoft fast-forward for Windows. When they start
padding a story I just scan whole pages for content, and if someone
says "the tribe has spoken" I throw it out the window.

 And its not just Ursula Le Guin and SF. Tom Clancy did it with RED
RABBIT (total rubbish, btw). At one stage, Tom turned a thriller into
a travelogue. I actually finished that one, but it was close to going 
out the window a few times. Must be a bug in the program... or my brain.

Regards,
Bob
  

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5