20210806 - Review: Dune

Master of the spice\ power over destruction\ ancestral spirit

#HAIKUPRAJNA - Review: Dune

Frank Herbert's "Dune" is a great example of what science-fantasy fiction can achieve as literature. "Dune" explores the metaphysics of mind through characters like the human-computer mentats and Bene Gesserit witches. With the plot device of time-become-space, every being is represented as an idea of their totality, which the various factions manipulate through cultural eugenics in order to influence (or produce mortal incarnations of) their ancestral spirits. These ideas are the best part of the book; the story and narrative are fine, too, where politics and religion are central. This science-fantasy's lack of focus on technology allows Dune's grounded philosophy to withstand the test of time. 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2489740162

These Goodreads poems will be collected in a future edition of the HaikuPrajna Collection. More can be found on my Book Reviews page: https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/goodreads-book-reviews.html

Edit 20240425:

This poem is part of the HaikuPrajna Challenge; submit and learn more at https://aprilandallen.square.site/roadmaps

"Escape Perennial City" eBook, paperback and hardcover are now available through Amazon and on Kindle apps and devices, read with Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B099C5LJ6W

More bite-sized insights into this metaphysical superhero novel can be found in the link at the top of the page, including excerpts straight from the book: https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/escape-perennial-city.html

Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Allen W. McLean

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20210804 - Doublethink (Review: 1984 Annual)

Control of the past/ memory-only-ideas/ the means-and-the-ends 

#HAIKUPRAJNA - Doublethink (Review: 1984 Annual)

Last year's HaikuPrajna review for George Orwell's "1984" focused on the interchangeability of the Party and the Brotherhood,  while this time I wanted to write about how the police states, dystopian politics, totalitarianism and secret revolutions are all means to an end, which is power through the weaponization of love.

What I think Orwell means by love is the memories one holds of an idea, form or object that they cherish where one's memories are located in the past. Big Brother has convinced the population that the party controls the past with how they make any such form accessible only through memory by literal ritual sacrifice such as via the memory-holes. The party rightly acknowledges how a shared belief in the same memories creates the construct of what is believed to be “the past”, and how this “transcendence” of forms into memory-only-ideas is achieved through things like love, books and malleable logic, which is why the party changes people’s memories and any information being destroyed--so that only their idea is being turned into memories. 

When one loves something, love can be both cause and effect for anything, and, according to O’Brien, the party's means and ends is power, which they gain through shutting off others’ options of coping, thus restricting their freedom and making unorthodoxy apparent through uncontrollable habits; the cause and the effect, by being Big Brother, makes the thought-police an inevitability. 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2449830201

These Goodreads poems will be collected in a future edition of the HaikuPrajna Collection.

"Escape Perennial City" eBook, paperback and hardcover are now available through Amazon and on Kindle apps and devices, read with Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B099C5LJ6W

More bite-sized insights into this metaphysical superhero novel can be found in the link at the top of the page, including excerpts straight from the book!

Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Allen W. McLean

For more bite-sized insights from HaikuPrajna and Electric Armchair, including free reading promotions on books, please subscribe by email or follow on social media!

We're on Goodreads, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and more.