^ Yeah, so did I. And so did Frank Herbert.

I have a fan-made alternate version by a fellow named Spicediver. His re-edit is such a better story! I can't give you a link because when you Google it, you'll see why.

Here's a snippet from the readme...

Neither of the officially released versions of David Lynch's visually amazing 'Dune' are satisfactory. The Theatrical Version was gutted to the point of incomprehension by executive producer Dino De Laurentiis in his quest to make it a two hour edit. The easier-to-follow Extended Version with restored footage was so incompetently put together by MCA TV that Lynch removed his name from the writing and directing credits.

Broadly, my intention with the Alternative Edition is to improve storytelling and flow by preserving the best elements from both official versions of the film while also integrating some newly available deleted scenes. The Alternative Edition is based more on the Extended Version of 'Dune' than ADigitalMan's "Reconstructed Workprint" fanedit (eg. my version uses the male narrator) which makes mine a significantly different take on the film. I have used the 6th and 7th drafts of Lynch's original script as a guide but have also taken my own liberties with the material.

This film is the first in a series of three films discussing various aspects of shamanism. This first film, Manifesting the Mind, is a broad look at psychedelics in general. Why are psychedelics so brutally suppressed in our culture? What exactly are some of the psychedelic plants and chemicals and how can they benefit us? With philosophy and insight from Denis McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck, Alex Grey, and many others, this film is not to be missed by anyone interested in psychedelics and shamanism.

Interviews include - Robert Bussinger, Mike Crowley, Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, Alex Grey, Clark Heinrich, Nick Herbert, John Major Jenkins, Dennis McKenna, Terence McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck, Dr. Rick Strassman, and others.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this. The list of contributors at the end of the trailer is enough to make your hair stand on end. Rick Strassman's DMT book was truly astonishing. Nick Herbert is a genius. Terence and Dennis need no introduction and Alex Grey's stuff also speaks for itself. I have yet to read any of Daniel Pinchbeck's books but I enjoy his musings over on Reality Sandwich.

It's heartening to see such high quality productions like this starting to appear. Their message is made all the more potent by the sad and sorry state the human race finds itself in these days.

Also-
The Alchemical Dream - the history of alchemy
http://www.sacredmysteries.com/public/147.cfm
(torrents for this are out there!)

OK, My choice is a big obvious Star Wars but here’s why:

1). Star Trek
There has never really been a great Trek movie. I always liked DS9 but I always found trek to be very limiting. There is the clinically dry Asimov type Sci/fi which becomes quite limiting and there is is the Frank Herbert style of Sci/fi/fantacy which leaves room to grow and expand and expand. I found Trek to be in the Asimov category. (I still like it though)

2). Lord of the Rings
Rings delivered greatness, it had to or it would have flopped. The books gave way to a whole new fantasy world and expanded into things like D&D and inspired worlds upon new worlds. The movies however were not inspirational in themselves. Well done and a great watch but the punch was already given to the books.

3). Harry Potter
Again, The books were well done and drew in every kid from around the world. The entire world was recreated by Rowling which sucked you in and put you in that world. The movies are well made and fun to watch but they don’t explore or break any new ground in movie making.

The Matrix
4). Expanded our views and took us on an adventure that was unique and new, It had a premise to be an amazing series and truly it was. The special effects were great but the effects started to become the movies by the last film and overshadowed the storyline. They just didn’t have a clear direction to take the movie into and for some reason felt they needed to conclude the story, although they didn’t.

5). Star Wars – Winner!
Star Wars hit the world with a wake up slap to the face. Maybe you had to be in our generation to have felt the slap. I was in grade 4 or 5 when it came out. It became THE most influential Sci/Fi/Fantacy movie ever, re-defining the entire genre and raising the bar on every other genre. The world could not get enough. From special effects to sounds, musical score, creatures, animatronics and stop motion. Star Wars set the Bar so high that 30 years later, people are still trying to top it.

YES, The prequels didn’t have the punch the original 3 had! But as a Spaghetti Sci-fi it has all the pieces. Not to mention the reach it has into our culture, Quotes from all 6 star wars movies are everywhere, ingrained in our everyday language. The religion, the lessons, the imagination, the books it inspired, the gaming, the slave Leia costume.

"Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent."

SOMETIMES THE TRUTH HURTS. HA HA HA HA HA.

Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent. --T.S.

>> ^blankfist:
I do an unintentionally creepier version of Herbert the elderly pedophile.


Show us!

I do an unintentionally creepier version of Herbert the elderly pedophile.

Dune - Frank Herbert
The Divine Comedy - Dante
Paradise Lost - Milton
1984 - George Orwell
The Little Prince

In no particular order:

1. Memoirs on an Invisible Man - H.F. Saint
2. Travels - Michael Crichton
3. Dune - Frank Herbert
4. Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King
5. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (yeah, yeah, it's really 7 books..)
6. My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George
7. Spunky - Dori Brink
8. The Amityville Horror - Jay Anson
9. D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
10. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Dune - Frank Herbert
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
Live from Golgotha - Gore Vidal
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller


Those are 10 off the top of my head, in no particular order. Some I consider favorites, others made a strong enough impression that they always come to mind when someone asks a question like this.

Hey, since you're into checking out stuff that other people have to copy and paste because no one wants to google, here's a quiz:

1. According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, President George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. President Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush in a
a)will
b)blind trust
c)custodial account

2. Throughout the Bush family's decades of public life, the American press has gone out of its way to overlook one historical fact – that through Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Prescott Bush, and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, along with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, financed Hitler
a) before WWII
b) during WWII
c) before and during WWII

3. A classified Dutch intelligence file which was leaked by a courageous Dutch intelligence officer, along with newly surfaced information from U.S. government archives, "confirms absolutely," John Loftus says, the direct links between Bush, Thyssen and genocide profits from
a) Auschwitz
b) Belsen
c) Dachau
d) Buchenwald

4. In 1988, then Texas governor George Bush Jr., reportedly telephoned Rodolfo Terragno, Argentina's Public Works Minister, to ask him to award this company a contract to build a pipeline from Chile to Argentina.
a) Halliburton
b) Carlyle
c) Enron
d) Harken Energy

Get back to us on those please.

1 - The Stand - Stephen King : In my opinion, one of the best fiction books ever penned.

2 - The Dark Tower (series) - Stephen King : The sheer richness of his created worlds just blow my mind. Dynamic characters absolutely litter the plot. His incorporation of various different stories from history and from his own works make for great fantasy.

3 - The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - Stephen R. Donaldson : This serious is just mind-bogglingly good. I love a hero I can hate, pity, and admire at the same time.
3b - The Pearlsong Refounding - Michael D. Warden : This is an odd sort of clone of Thomas Covenant, with a Christian sort of background. I actually like this story even more than Donaldson's, but since it's not quite original, I only put it as a side note.

4 - The Christ Clone Trilogy - James BeauSigneur : Terrible title, great series. Take the Left Behind style end of the world story and give it to someone who can actually write well and this is what you get. It certainly starts out slow, but picks up to be a unique perspective on the Christian end of the world scenario. It's by no means a "best book" but I really enjoyed its perspective. There are two printings of this series. If you're interested, get the first one! They totally nerfed the second printing, cut out a lot of the violence and basically a lot of the reality.

5 - Return to Earth (series) - Orsen Scott Card : Card might be the best living fantasy/sci-fi writer we still have living. This is only number 5 on my list rather than higher due to the fact that it sort of pitters out at the end like most Card novels. It's essentially loosely based on Card's Mormon theology. If you liked Dune, you'll probably like this one too. It deals very much with social issues involved with maintaining power and control... plus any book that takes place 11 million years into the future has got to be fun.

Honorable mentions:
The Inferno - Dante (The other two in this series however, meh)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Colridge
This Present Darkness - Frank Peretti
Paradise Lost - Milton (Paradise Regained however, meh)
Dune - Frank Herbert

BTW, I did enjoy the Chronicles of Amber (@ whoever recommended it to me a while back). Thanks.

1. Dune - Frank Herbert
The best exploration of power and control I have read.

2. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
A manual for revolutionary action.

3. Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein
Exploration of militaristic society and fascism.

4. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Don't panic.

5. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
I found this magical when young.

Special mention: Guards Guards Guards by Terry Prachett, Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke and probably more I cannot recall now.

This list is flexible and totally depended on my largely failing memory of what I read, there was a thread like this before and my answers could be different. My most recent read list has been composed mainly of non fiction dealing with war on terror and the US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

1. Dune - Frank Herbert
Dune remains amoung my favourite book I've read and the only one I've read multiple times. While I was disappointed by the rest of the series, the first book is a tremendous read and very enjoyable.

2. Deadhouse Gates - Steven Erikson (Book 2 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series)
The Malazan Empire series by Steven Erikson is one of the hardest to read fantasy books I've ever encountered. The author has a complex web of relations and events going on while writing with a fairly high level of english. The second book stands out for its section call "The Chain of Dogs" which details a group of refugees fleeing to safety under the guidance of a powerful leader.

3. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
A great blend of comedy and science fiction. I still remember the first time I read the passage about the two missles screaming toward the Heart of Gold. I burst out laughing as the petunias came into being.

4. The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
The fantasy version of Douglas Adams. Equally enjoyable and both love to use footnotes* for off the wall observations.

5. Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks
While probably not the best written book and it is clearly Tolkien inspired, it is in my top 5 simply because it was the first real book I ever read. Previously I only read a few kids books, this one was a beefy amount of pages that took my 12 year old mind nearly a year to get through.

*Attaching notes to one foot does seem an odd, and potentially painful way (if you use a tac) to do things.