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Last week I went to see ‘DUNE’, the movie.

It’s the second big-screen attempt to make a movie of the book, if you don’t count the first ‘Star Wars’, that borrows shamelessly from Frank Herbert’s Si-Fi classic.

At one stage Frank Herbert (Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. 1920 –1986) was a favourite author of mine. I still have several of his books on my Si-Fi shelf. One of these, ‘The Godmakers’, is marked as purchased in New York in 1978. And the others are a bit older. So, I must have read them all around the time that my daughter, Emily, was born.

Dune was Herbert’s first successful novel, published in 1965, after six years development and many publisher rejections. With Dune’s slowly growing success (it’s now widely regarded as one of the best, and is certainly one of the best-selling, science fiction books of all time), he was able to continue to write and became quite prolific, writing five sequels: Dune Messiah (1969); Children of Dune (1976); God Emperor of Dune (1981); Heretics of Dune (1984); and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985); in addition to half a dozen other novels, curtailed by his early death.

After the first three Star Wars movies, I looked forward to David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune. I saw it with a friend who’d not read the book and found it incomprehensible, repetitive, boring and gratuitously violent. I thought it covered the terrain but was a poorly cast sketch of the book. I found myself apologising for suggesting it.

I realised that Herbert’s imaginative themes and subtleties are hard to represent on screen. So, this time I was more cautious. Would Wendy similarly abuse me if I twisted her arm to see it? I went alone.

It turned out to be OK. But would I go and see it again, with Wendy this time?

Not unless, because of its accolades (DUNE has been nominated for many critical awards including: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Cinematography; Best Production Design; Best Editing; Best Costume Design; Best Hair and Makeup; Best Visual Effects; and Best Score), she suddenly wants to see it.

Compared to the David Lynch travesty, the story-telling is a lot better. And the characters are better cast and more accurately represented with: Josh Brolin; Javier Bardem; and Charlotte Rampling in supporting roles (no Sting this time).

Liet/ Keynes the planetologist has changed sex (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) but she’s suitably amazonian, so it works.

Before seeing the movie, I’d begun to read the book again and was surprised to recognise several passages used verbatim. Yet, as the story develops, the book becomes more and more internal, with long passages giving us the thoughts of the key protagonists; particularly Paul and his mother, Jessica. As a result, as it goes on, the movie begins to simplify and combine elements.

So, if you want the full story: drugs, sex and rolling sandworms, I’d advise reading the book - as is ever the case with movie adaptations.

Yet, you need only read the first half. Because that’s where the film ends. Paul and Jessica have just escaped to the desert.

David Lynch’s ultimate battle between good (the Atreides – Fremen) and evil (the Harkonnens) is in the distant future.

Wait for part two. Then Five sequels to go.

As critics complained, Lynch distilling the story to a fight between good and evil was already overly simplistic in 1978 (USA v USSR?). His writing makes it clear that Herbert was highly sceptical that he was living in the best of all possible worlds.

In the Dune universe, ‘good’ is a highly ambiguous concept. His characters are driven by a struggle for power and survival at all costs.

Can a movie, or two, (or more, in this franchise) ever capture the complexities of this tale?

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Travel

Malta

 

 

Almost everyone in Australia knows someone who hailed directly from Malta or is the child of Maltese parents. There are about a quarter as many Maltese Australians as there are Maltese Maltese so it is an interesting place to visit; where almost every cab driver or waiter announces that he or she has relatives in Sydney or Melbourne.

Read more: Malta

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

 

Introduction:

The other day, my regular interlocutors at our local shopping centre regaled me with a new question: "What is AI?" And that turned into a discussion about ChatGPT.

I had to confess that I'd never used it. So, I thought I would 'kill two birds with one stone' and ask ChatGPT, for material for an article for my website.

Since watching the movie Oppenheimer, reviewed elsewhere on this website, I've found myself, from time-to-time, musing about the development of the atomic bomb and it's profound impact on the modern world. 

Nuclear energy has provided a backdrop to my entire life. The first "atomic bombs" were dropped on Japan the month before I was born. Thus, the potential of nuclear energy was first revealed in an horrendous demonstration of mankind's greatest power since the harnessing of fire.

Very soon the atomic reactors, that had been necessary to accumulate sufficient plutonium for the first bombs, were adapted to peaceful use.  Yet, they forever carried the stigma of over a hundred thousand of innocent lives lost, many of them young children, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The fear of world devastation followed, as the US and USSR faced-off with ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction.

The stigma and fear has been unfortunate, because, had we more enthusiastically embraced our new scientific knowledge and capabilities to harness this alternative to fire, the threat to the atmosphere now posed by an orgy of burning might have been mitigated.

Method:

So, for this article on the 'atomic bomb', I asked ChatGPT six questions about:

  1. The Manhattan Project; 
  2. Leo Szilard (the father of the nuclear chain reaction);
  3. Tube Alloys (the British bomb project);
  4. the Hanford site (plutonium production);
  5. uranium enrichment (diffusion and centrifugal); and
  6. the Soviet bomb project.

As ChatGPT takes around 20 seconds to write 1000 words and gives a remarkably different result each time, I asked it each question several times and chose selectively from the results.

This is what ChatGPT told me about 'the bomb':

Read more: The Atomic Bomb according to ChatGPT

Opinions and Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

 

 

 

Bertrand Russell (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)) has been a major influence on my life.  I asked for and was given a copy of his collected Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell for my 21st birthday and although I never agreed entirely with every one of his opinions I have always respected them.

In 1950 Russell won the Nobel Prize in literature but remained a controversial figure.  He was responsible for the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955. The signatories included Albert Einstein, just before his death, and ten other eminent intellectuals and scientists. They warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons and called on governments to find alternative ways of resolving conflict.   Russell went on to become the first president of the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) and subsequently organised opposition to the Vietnam War. He could be seen in 50's news-reels at the head of CND demonstrations with his long divorced second wife Dora, for which he was jailed again at the age of 89.  

In 1958 Gerald Holtom, created a logo for the movement by stylising, superimposing and circling the semaphore letters ND.

Some four years earlier I'd gained my semaphore badge in the Cubs, so like many children of my vintage, I already knew that:  = N(uclear)   = D(isarmament)

The logo soon became ubiquitous, graphitied onto walls and pavements, and widely used as a peace symbol in the 60s and 70s, particularly in hippie communes and crudely painted on VW camper-vans.

 

 (otherwise known as the phallic Mercedes).

 

Read more: Bertrand Russell

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