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Dune House Atreides / Comments on Dune: House Atreides / Lasguns?

Fred Nevets User ID: 9189423	Jun 19th 8:34 PM One of the most interesting aspects of the original Dune to me, was the absence of your typical, sci fi, laser weapons. Sure lasguns were around, but it was made clear that they were not used, because of the explosive effects when a lasgun beam hits a shield. Witness the shock in Dune when the Duke's men capture a shipment of smuggled lasguns. Thus, 10,000 years in the future, battles were fought using shields and swords. A nice touch on Frank Herbert's part. Then along come Brian and Kevin who decide, nah, that won't do. Battles in the Dune universe are fought just like in Star Wars, fighter ships, and lasers everywhere. Remember that part in HA, where the Harkonnens are chasing Duncan through the fortress, blasting lasbeams everywhere? When they were handing out those weapons did the Harkonnen quartermaster say "Oh, by the way boys, careful not to fire one of these into a shield, lest you destroy the entire city and everyone in it. That's a good lad, thanks." Boy, the Baron sure must have had a lot of trust in his troops, to allow them to tromp around his fortress with lasguns. Absolute loyalty and trust in your troops, that's a Harkonnen trademark right? Just another sloppy, inconsistent, poorly thought out detail in a sloppy, inconsistent poorly thought out novel. Anyone wanna buy a paperback copy of Dune:House Atreides, cheap?
Robin H. User ID: 7608433	Sep 2nd 8:25 AM Another thing that came to my mind: Weren´t the original lasguns meant as very destructive and cutting anything ? For example a complete bridge in God Emperor. In HA there are several situations, in which a lasgun is fired in confined surroundings and doesn´t do the collateral damage it should, according to the real DUNE-novels.
Margo User ID: 1397584	Sep 2nd 8:52 AM Exactly. It seems as though the HA lasguns are just "laser guns" like, I don't know, the ones that stormtroopers in SW use. Though maybe somewhat bigger. These guns (in the "real" Dune books BTW) were an elegant weapon, powerful and yet with an air of mystery, like the effect the scene of the bridge being cut through in GEOD had on me. How about that, mr Anderson?!
Ending Dream 23 User ID: 0345364	Sep 2nd 4:11 PM Lasguns come in all shapes sizes and power ranges. Can I interest you in the homemaker model?
Margo User ID: 1397584	Sep 18th 5:50 AM What?
atreides User ID: 0471064	Mar 27th 7:26 PM ending dream 23 lol atreides
LMan User ID: 1042384	Apr 3rd 7:16 AM In Heretics of Dune, Miles Teg got one of those ancient Harkonnen Lasguns. He can set the power range from small precise blasts to full wide-spread havoc. As far as I remember there's no definitive measurement of the sheild/lasgun blast. I think it's said somewhere that it's unpredictable, and can range from blasting a house to a blast compareable to atomics (in an unlike worst case) Anyhow, the original Chronicles make clear that the Harkonnens make heavy use of lasguns, not sure if that's an inconsistence in the prequels.
dogsolitude_uk User ID: 1320554	Apr 5th 5:45 AM Shame they didn't make more use of the more elegant weaponary: hunter-seekers, slow-pellet stunners, ummm... someone help me out here! In Heretics, FH seems to have the right idea that a beam-weapon would manifest as long 'pole' of energy that can be swept through trees, face-dancers, hammerships and so on. Preferable to the somewhat dodgy starwars idea of little blobs of light travelling at bullet-speed. Just a thought. I agree with Margo about the air of mystery. KJA and BH tend to go into far too much detail about Tleilax and the axolotl tanks, for example. Having said that, I find it stretches credibility to assume that technology of the Dune era would be so readily recognisable to us in ours. I don't need to know how Mohiam's pain-box worked, the pseudo-physics behind foldspace etc. The saying 'less is more' would be quite apt here, I think! Dog ;)
Moneo User ID: 7852033	Apr 6th 11:46 AM Quite right about "less is more". But I didn't read anything about the Axlotl tanks in the prequels I didn't know already from the chronicles :) Moneo (formerly Lman)
dogsolitude_uk User ID: 1502094	Apr 8th 6:53 AM Yeah, that's a cool point, actually. I think I was just a bit miffed that I'd read through FH's works a couple of years back, and there was a sense of morbid discovery about their nature which won't be there for folks that started with the prequels. Oh well ;) Good to see you back on the ol' boards!
cookie	Sep 14th 2:36 PM just want to correct a thing: they dont use lasers in star wars but blasters that shoot with superheated gas or something likely but they are NO lasers, lasers are the weapons on the imperial battle cruisers i mean the huge weapons and to the thing with the harkonnens using lasers: most of the time harkonnen guards were beating up slaves and such and i dont think the risk of a harkonnen underling or slave having an holtzmann-shield was very big
Mahdi User ID: 1348824	Jul 22nd 6:10 PM I just want to comment Fred Nevets first comment about Lasguns and the Idaho hunt.. I dont belive for a sec that the baron would buy for children that expected to be a nice hunt
Kevin User ID: 9272753	Oct 17th 6:31 PM OK?...Just kidding if you read (and I mean actually read) It says that even the littlest kids and slave knew that when you fire a lasgun into a shield that it make a atomic effect THNX for letting me prove you wrong on at least one point

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