Today I learned from Bill Maher and Jonathan Franzen that you can worship at the altar of literature. Well in that case, I accept the original Dune series as a mystical experience and reject the rest as blasphemy. Seriously, just brushing past it on Wikipedia made me rage; a character named 'Omnius'? That's really all I need to see. Wtf, Brian Herbert. Wtf.
Also, found this quote for the first time:
"As in an Escher lithograph, I involved myself with recurrent themes that turn into paradox. The central paradox concerns the human vision of time. What about Paul's gift of prescience — the Presbyterian fixation? For the Delphic Oracle to perform, it must tangle itself in a web of predestination. Yet predestination negates surprises and, in fact, sets up a mathematically enclosed universe whose limits are always inconsistent, always encountering the unprovable. It's like a kōan, a Zen mind breaker."
Frank Herbert, you summed up in a paragraph what I have been struggling with for like a year and a half.
Why do you have to be gone?
I'm sorry I will never be able to express to you (and so many other authors) my boundless gratitude for your influence on my life, and I promise that if I ever untangle the threads of this time travel story I will endeavor to make it something that would make you (all) proud.
