Very annoying. I'm going to have my hard disks scanned soon with my TuneUp Utilities 2008.
Dune is overhyped. When it was first published, it was probably the best thing that ever happened, but today, it's overhyped.
I know, I know. It's so detailed it's amazing. All those worlds, cultures and etc described so vividly that it reminds me of Tolkien. But the plot follows the same formula that everyone else uses - the boy who discovers supernatural abilities in himself and saves the world/galaxy/universe/etc.
So wow he's got prescience! Also has extremely high intelligence and the best training in several fields.
It just doesn't have the impact I'd felt from reading other books like The Dosadi Experiment. Found the super-competitive humans bred on Dosadi more interesting than a human computer/fortune-teller.
Maybe it's the way the story is told, the way the characters seem to be able to predict the future. In a sense, the book is filled with spoilers because everyone is telling the reader what is going to happen, leaving only a few unknown factors as "plot twists".
It doesn't work well. Right from the start, we're given a rough skeleton of the plot when the villain tells his advisor about his plans. Very rough, but when pieced together by the predictions of certain experts during the course of the events that follow, I seem to be able to tell what's going to happen in the next half of the book.
Plus I find that a few parts of the book were a little disjointed. Like when they were preparing to leave Caladan and get to Arrakis, few details of the journey were described. It was like, one moment we're on Arrakis talking about leaving, and in the next moment, we're unpacking on Arrakis. I know nothing in between happened, but making something happen would have been nice, like the wonder of a boy on his first space-flight and maybe a vain attempt to see a real Guildsman.
The book basically killed itself by using prescience and fantastic computational and analytical abilities in its cast. It did not have the necessary impacts/surprises to offset all the spoilers.
Talking about supernatural abilities, I've just started on Heroes, the TV series. Now I'm at the 9th episode, where Hiro accidentally travels to 6 months before the present instead of yesterday. It ended with himself being invited to join in the birthday party of the girl he was trying to save.
The series is as good as Lost, if not better. I always judge the series I watch and books I read by the desire in me for OMFGMOAR!!!!!!!!
Both in Heroes and Lost, the desire was almost unbearable while for 24, I was able to make myself stop watching halfway through an episode. I'm not saying 24 is bad; it makes for a good mealtime entertainment show.
For Lost, it was my first time watching a good TV series, so I succumbed to temptation and watched several episodes at one go, several times. Now I'm able hold it in and turn away from the screen when the credits roll. Still reluctant to close the Media Player but I could still do it.
On the far side of the scale is Naruto Shippuden. It used to be that watching 10+ episodes was as close to multiple orgasms as animes could get. Now I find that I can do other things while watching the latest episodes. Too many details and too many things I'm really not interested in.
The worst in the new episodes were the stuff at the end. For one episode, they stated which of the villains were still alive and who were dead or incapacitated. Like. I. Care.
Please, everyone who watches the show knows all that. At least learn a little from Bleach and show something funny or tell us something we don't know after the credits. Details on the status of anyone in the show are redundant and can put me off.
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