Dune

The story of Dune is very hard to adjust to. The writer throws all the characters at you right at the beginning and doesn't even try to fill in any blanks that you are missing. Throughout a good portion of the first third of the book I felt like I was missing aspect of the book. As if I wasn't understanding or comprehending plot. Toward the end of the book everything does try back together and I noticed this is just the writing style. This type of fantasy style does not just deliver you answers on a silver platter, you have to involve yourself to speculate. Like from the beginning when the Reverend Mother tests Paul and thinks that he is going to be the supreme ruler; I knew that Paul would end up being so. I love the reality of Dune's universe; that Melange gives certain groups the power to fold space or to give the Bene Gesserits their power. Even on the concept f the Water of Life and how so many have died trying to drink the water. The universe constructed by Frank Herbert is very stable and well thought out to not be broken like so many universes that explain odd happenings as "its just magic". Every strong force has an opposing negative.

Oh when I originally picked this book I chose it because of my interest in sand dunes. What I find most ironic is that the author was influenced by the Florence Dunes; the same dunes I go ATV riding during the summer with my father. I have lived for several weeks in the dunes that the author was influenced by. I have been stuck alone with a broken-down ATV having to walk over a mile to get help and have experienced firsthand the brutality of the hot desert during the summer. Possibly a biased reason why I enjoyed the book as much as I did. Haha.

Blade Runner

An interesting concept for a movie of it's time. Although the director is Ridley Scott haha. The entire movie questions and keeps bringing forth questions about artificial intelligence and what conscious thought is. They are to bring these machines who turn bad offline but some of them even start to develop emotion. They are forced to evaluate many humans to find the replicants, this is how real the machines are made. This poses many moral questions on us today about making machines with artificial intelligence and just how dangerous of an act that would be. Artificial intelligence scares me on a deep level and this movie kept me in this creepy realm of dystopia where we lose sight of the 'worth' of machines as they integrate with it. What is truly scary is that machines could become so powerful, in intelligence mostly, that they could start to eliminate the human population without us even knowing. Just some things to think about ;)