Dune & good literatures written badly

I finally bothered to start reading Dune, hopefully finishing it before the movie releases.

Having got through 10% of Dune, I get why they say it's a tough read.

Novels from that era tend to be dressed in too much visuals, and this one peppered with flowery language that gets in the way. https://t.co/aissXKkQfJ

— ykgoon.com (@ykgoon) March 18, 2021

I've briefly read it as teenager, partly inspired by the real-time strategy PC game. It didn't register at all.

Overtime I gathered from word of mouth that it's a tough read but the substance is profound.

This coincided with the release of Snyder Cut Justice League. And I also learned this morning of such a thing as the Command & Conquered Remastered game series.

Which got me thinking: there exist a long list of seminal science fiction literatures that are badly written. Asimov's Foundation series is chief among them in my mind.

In particular novels from that era tried too hard to paint visuals for the readers when they add no value. They came from a time when screens were poor and resorted to using texts to draw epic visuals in the mind of readers.

But we have HBO and Netflix now, that approach is passe. Texts should need to play to their strength and address things that can't be visualized: ideas and thoughts.

There's only a small amount of people who are willing to overlook these shortcomings and hang on to the big ideas in those book.

If movies get to be remade, modernized, reimagined, why not books?

But somehow it's not a thing. You either read the outdated original text written in an outdated approach or watch the screen adaptation that distorts the spirit.

The closest parallel to my idea are transations, typically of classic texts. The process of translation is itself a creative act to capture original meanings on a granular level.

On a less granular level though works like movie adaptions of novels. Events are re-arranged, noises are taken out, events re-emphasized.