Heinlein and Drake were always my faves. I could at least undersrand where they were coming from and what they were driving at.
Herbert’s first three books of the Dune saga were as far as I got. I’ve enjoyed them to that point.
Original Series Star Trek is my first thought when I think of Trek at all. Next Generation was hit-and-miss for me. Anything afterwards felt like more of the same and didn’t hold my attention.
My tastes for either begin somewhere in the 1920’s and end, for the most part, in the 1980’s.
My first contact w/scifi was all the way back to the “Barnhouse Effect” (or, Report there on, by the up and comer Kurt Whatsisname), my creds are well known all the way to Titan, so I can tell you, with absolute certainty, to date, there has not been a single person found who has read any installment of the DUNE Saga beyond the third. Nobody knows who buys them. Of those who have read the second and third books all that any reader could recall was the word “WORM”...(THEY THOUGHT).
WHAT A SHAME. WHAT A UNIVERSE DUNE CREATED! WE DROOLED FOR THE NEXT CHAPTERS...AND THEY NEVER CAME. THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE DISSOLVED INTO INCOHERENT MADNESS. HERBERT’S ENTIRE CAREER WAS FOUNDED ON THE SINGLE WORD AND UNFULFILLED HOPE OF “DUNE”.
Only the first novel existed, “DUNE”, full of promises and chess pieces, and we all wanted to see MORE!
In the end it was nothing more than Errol Flynn’s “Robin Hood”, with the promise of more to come, that never did.
Too Bad. He should have consumed MORE, or LESS, ACID
Then came “CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR”...AGAIN, the FIRST, A HIT WITH GREAT PROMISE, THEN TWO DUMB DUDS, AND GONE.
THEN THERE’S R.U.R. Read it first when I was about 15, then again after 9-11. Same book (play), different worlds, different readers, different take-aways.
I suppose that’s why Jews read the Torah year after year.
Same book, same words every year, but always new, always different, because every year the reader is always different.
THANKS FOR THE STIMULANT.
G-D BLESS YOU AND YOURS IN THE NEW YEAR.