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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9110521" data-attributes="member: 18">Sure, but I think it's okay for there to be some dispute over what those works are in sci-fi particularly.Dune, you call a foundational work, but it doesn't appear until 1965, and by that point, SF was a very well-established genre that had, even by the more narrow standards, been around for 30+ years (it not much, much longer).Personally I would say Dune wasn't quite foundational, as much as hugely influential on SF, but not even nearly to the point Lord of the Rings is in the fantasy genre. Most of Dune's influence is limited to the first book, and is more about how you think about an SF setting, rather than direct elements influencing people, or the construction of the story influencing people.I mean, I think there's an entire giant swathe of SF, including the vast majority of harder-SF which isn't meaningfully influenced by Dune. Other stuff like, Niven and Pournelle's work is very superficially influenced (Niven likes a good Dune reference and "we'll go back to aristocracy and monarchs in the future" was I think given a big boost by Dune, having fallen from favour). And sure some is profoundly influenced.I don't say this to criticise Dune. It's truly majestic, insane, daring, amazing book that I think every SF fan should read (though I do think the travelogue that influenced it should get a little more credit than it does). It's had significant pop-culture influence even before the recent movie, and I think it's had huge influence particularly on the kind of science-fantasy you appeared to be disparaging (or at least attempting to separate off), Star Wars and so on - I think without Dune (and both Jodowrowsky's failed attempt and Lynch's quasi-successful) a lot of movie science-fantasy looks very different and/or probably wouldn't even exist. Stuff that takes little actual from Dune, like say, the terrible but amusing Jupiter Rising with Channing Tatum, I don't think that movie would exist or like that without Dune. Star Wars would be very different I think too - it probably would be more Flash Gordon and less mystical.But what I'm saying is, despite being solidly weird science-fiction, Dune's biggest direct influence has been on science-fantasy and to a lesser extent, space-opera-y sci-fi (rather than epic SF, like it is). And that's it's a very important SF novel, but not foundational to the entire genre. I mean, I could list dozens of major SF books from the 1980s and 1990s, for example, which I think would be totally the same if Dune had never existed (all of Kim Stanley Robinson's work, for example). I also think that because of it's influence being disproportionately on science fantasy rather than sci-fi, people sometimes see it as science fantasy or "less sci-fi", which is not really fair but understandable.I'm not suggesting you have to agree with me, but do you understand where I'm coming from on this?</blockquote>

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