Sure, the sandworm is key to the Dune storyline, but the sarlacc pit in Star Wars is just as sandy, just as wormy-though a bit less teeth-y. We can see similar beginnings as the films all include a shot of the big spaceships over a planet: (Lucasfilm Ltd.) (Warner Bros Pictures) But when does joy in tropes cross the line into just recycling the imagery from the canonically foundational stories? If Dune and Star Wars use and repeat imagery, is it an ode? Or is it just commercially easy to resell what has already sold and has been guaranteed to create a positive reaction? There is quick glee at the sudden appearance of the two-characters-one-bed “forced proximity” trope, or comfort in the hard-bread-and-cheese-meal on the road scene. Speculative fiction is known for tropes-it’s not uncommon to get a fuzzy feeling when what we expect to happen, happens. I am all for reuse, reduce and recycle-but when does an ode to Star Wars cross the line into becoming just recycled images? When does ‘respect for the genre’ become just the reuse of dialogue that hasn’t been updated since the 80’s? And when does the repeated adaptation of the same male authors and their ‘classic’ works become just a reduction of every bright and new female-written novel that has the same (if not more) capacity for world-building and audience-awing that these worn-out tales have?ĭune is one of my favorite classic science fiction novels of all time, but my question in this piece is simple: When will we start to recognize that there are other options when it comes to adult speculative fiction? The release of the Dune film saw a beautiful rendering of Arrakis, a stunning show of the advancement of special effects, and… the repeated display of masculine centralization and reiterated narratives, characters and even sound effects and props from the science fiction we already have in rotation.

When does the repeated adaptation of the same male authors and their ‘classic’ works become just a reduction of every new female-written novel that has the same (if not more) capacity for world-building and audience-awing?

Wheel of time lord of chaos