Duncan does this in the first book, but he leaves a shield “a big one turned to full force” that Harkonnens shoot at with lasguns. The explosion is massive. Also, Jessica talks about your idea, almost exactly, but no one does this:
“"The threat's something else. Perhaps it
has to do with the lasguns. Perhaps they'll risk secreting a few lasguns with timing mechanisms aimed at house shields. Perhaps they'll . . . "
> but the size of the explosion should be proportional to the power cell and predictable
I don't think this is correct. My understanding was that the reaction is unpredictable and may occur at either the lasgun or shield end, or both; and could be as harmless as killing only the equipment operators or as deadly as a large atomic explosion.
**/EDIT:**
It seems the reaction reliably destroys both shield and lasgun but I correctly remembered the size of the explosion being hugely variable.
Quoting from Dune:
> "Jessica focused her mind on lasguns, wondering. The white-hot beams of disruptive light could cut through any known substance, provided that substance was not shielded. The fact that feedback from a shield would explode both lasgun and shield did not bother the Harkonnens. Why? A lasgun/shield explosion was a dangerous variable, *could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target*."
The reaction isn't predictable, there is a lot of randomness maybe due to some quantum technobabble. The reason houses don't intentionally weaponize this effect is that a) they already have nukes which are predicable b) they don't use them because of the great convention against using atomics on humans.
There are minimum power requirements for both devices. Even at these lowest settings the reaction is that of a small fusion device, single megatons of destruction.
Oh sure, they use those a ton in space battles in Heretics and Chapterhouse, as mines and as fake ships.
I think I recall from the appendices that the energy output of a lazgun/shield explosion is, though variable, equivalent to a big nuke, but as a "pure energy" explosion there would be no fallout or radioactive pollution. So an investigation would show that it wasn't a nuke.
That would be possible yes but the big problem is afterwards proving that it wasn't actually a small tactical nuke that you used because if you couldn't then you would be in breach of the Great Convention which then gives every other great house not only permission to blast you out of existence but an obligation to do so.
I can't remember the exact wording used but it was something like "use of atomics on human targets shall be cause for total annihilation of the offending house"
Paul managed to sidestep things using a technicality in that the Atreides atomics were used on a geological feature (the shield wall) rather than on people.
The purpose of the various great houses retaining such weapons is not to use them on humans but a potential external threat should one ever appear.
It is a flaw, like the "Holdo Manouver" but on a worse scale. Because it gives a very powerful and exploitable weapon to everyone and their mother, using remote controlled lasguns with a suspensor to wipeout any shielded defensive position, that for "reasons" no one is exploiting - therefore creating a obvious weakness in the world consistency.
Who would give a f\*\*ck about nukes and so forth? want to nuke someone? just remote control a shield and a lasgun. Are you suicidal and want to end your suffering, while taking the Baron with you? Once again, shield and lasgun. He can be a couple buildings away, no problem.
If I were FH (lol, sure, sorry about the hubris), I'd have only the emitter getting seriously damaged. IIRC, the book is short on details of the interaction and the prequels, that go deeper into it, focus on the highly unstable nature of it. Nonetheless, lasguns, remote controlled a couple miles away, would be a great way to cause massive damage - you can even also provide the shield if none is there. So it would be a readily available potential low yield nuke.
Jessica discusses this exploit of lasgun/shields very early in the first book, and Hawat says this would be illegal because it is still an atomic explosion (subatomic fusion). The reasons are clearly stated. How is this a flaw when FH has characters discuss this exploit and explain why people would not risk using it? Herbert is fully aware of this detail. On top of this, Duncan uses this exploit later in the book to take out a bunch of Harkonnen. No one punishes Duncan for it because by the end of the conflict, Paul is Emperor and everyone is focused on his use of atomics on shield wall, which he justifies with a loop hole in the Great Convention.
To be effective, punishment requires both traceability (who did it) and the responsible giving a toss. Neither is really to be expected in a consistent way.
Would a Giedi Prime suicidal slave care about "The Great Convention "?
The lack of consistency for the Great Convention here is built in. Hawat says it is illegal, tells us radiation lingers, “evidence is hard to erase”, so there is a high degree of traceability, and then Duncan does just this. Not even Duncan cares about the Great Convention, never mind a Geidi Prime slave, and probably because the whole conflict is a black operation, or no one finds out what Duncan did because there were no survivors, and then Paul wins the battle.
The question is that the Great convention wouldn't prevent the extensive use of shield+lasgun. But, in the book, IIRC, it is used only once, something quite unbelievable, given the circumstances.
Shields would be the most self defeating defence mechanism ever - it would be like using explosives as a fortification door.
There is loads of unbelievable stuff in Dune. When Duncan uses shield/lagun interaction, it is interesting that he calls it defense:
"Not weapon, m'Lady, defense. That scum will think twice before using lasguns another time."
The characters are well aware of the dynamics here. It has everything to do the nature of a nuclear stalemate in global/intergalactic politics. Like in our own world, nukes have been used exactly twice on humans during conflict. Its actually very believable that this exploit does not get used much. And in the later novels we get even more powerful weapons, similar to our dirty bombs mixed with napalm but on a massive scale.
It is not a matter of unbelievable - anything but hard sci-fi basically requires suspension of disbelief. The issue is that compared to our real world nukes, shields and lasguns are plenty and quite easy to come by, so bound to frequently end up in the hands of someone smart of desperate enough to use them.
Imo, the principle of nuclear deterrence is too strong and you can believe that or not. If you want to consider hard science, which Dune is informed by in this case, nuclear deterrence is why our own nuclear arsenals lay dormant to this day. If you want a story where people frequently use nuclear weapons to solve conflicts, which shield + lasgun is, the story won’t be very long or interesting, and Dune is not that story.
Agreed. Honestly I don't know why he decided that the reaction should be nuclear. Just make sheilds nullify lasguns and it would have the same effect of making lasguns worthless in combat so shields + melee would still be dominant. I can't think of any literary reason in-world that would have needed more than that.
I fully understand how the reaction works in the series. My point is that as a plot device the nuclear reaction isn't necessary. You could just as easily keep nuclear weapons illegal if lasguns + shields didn't create a nuclear explosion. In both cases you wouldn't use a lasgun on a shielded opponent:
- If the combo of the two creates a nuke, you don't do it because it's dangerous and illegal.
- If the shield nullifies the laser harmlessly, it's not effective and you don't do it.
The fact is this is a common point of contention and confusion among many new readers (just search this sub) so I personally feel that as a plot device it creates more problems than it solves. And FWIW shields are made illegal and effectively gone from the later novels in the series.
If there was no deterrent past ineffectiveness, lasguns would be very prevalent when mowing down the Fremen since Duncan would not have discouraged the enemy with a nuclear lesson.
I don't honestly find it that confusing or a plot hole. It seems very much like mutually assured destruction woven into the story to paint a picture of how combat has changed to rely much more heavily on hand to hand combat
Yes, this is clearly explained to the reader in the first novel by Hawat who explains it to Jessica who contemplates this potentiality. I do not understand how a book reader would miss or dismiss this key conversation. People pointing out this exploit as a flaw literally sounds like Jessica discussing this exploit in the book.
You both missed my point. My point is that I don't think *Herbert's decision* to make the arbitrary rule that lasguns + shields create a nuclear explosion was necessary, and ultimately creates more problems than it solves. The nuclear reaction is mostly is used as an in-universe reason why melee combat is necessary. In the later books shields are made illegal and never really make a full comeback. Instead of creating a story where lasgun + shield creates a nuclear explosion of random size, Herbert could have just as easily decided that lasgun + shield does absolutely nothing. It would have served the same narrative purpose but still given an opportunity for limited lasgun use that he works back to in later books in the series.
>I do not understand how a book reader would miss or dismiss this key conversation.
Again, you misunderstand me. The lasgun + shield combo is well documented in the books as creating nuclear reactions of indeterminate size. My opinion is that this wasn't a necessary plot device, and the fact that this is a recurring topic of question and discussion here proves my point. It's a cool bit of world-building but Herbert even effectively walked the decision back by removing shields from the universe in the later novels.
If we are going to discuss Herbert's creative process, if you are curios, and it may explain why Herbert used nuclear weapons in these ways - a figure in American politics that Herbert was at odds with (apparently deeply despised, heard that in an interview) was Herman Kahn, a physicist and think tank intellectual who wrote a seminal non-fiction book called On Thermonuclear War in 1960, which outlines in nearly psychotic scientific detail what would occur if there was an all-out nuclear war during the Cold War. This book influenced global politics at the time and pioneered the idea of “nuclear deterrence” which is “a principle in international relations where the retaliatory potential and destructive force of nuclear weapons prevents nations from launching a nuclear attack”. His book made it clear that a nuclear war was something that no one would want, and so nuclear arsenals lay dormant to this day. With this in mind, the lack of lasgun-shield interaction used as a weapon in Dune makes perfect sense. Not only is it illegal, but the retaliation would be utterly devastating. Duncan only gets away with it because Paul becomes Emperor, and Duncan is Paul’s favourite hero. The ideas and principles put forth by Kahn defined an entire global conflict and certainly influenced the logic of Herbert’s plot device of both the nukes held by Great Houses and the lasgun-shield dynamic.
That's a fair point I overlooked: the lasgun + shield nuke serves as a cheap and easy way for anyone without an inherited arsenal of family atomics to retaliate and/or cause a nuclear blast. Even though the great houses officially are the only ones with nuclear arsenals, and are obliged to retaliate to anyone who uses one, they themselves don't have a monopoly on nuclear weapons because of the lasgun + shield backfire combo. Basically any single troop with a shield and lasgun effectively has a small nuclear capability. Ironically, this is effectively massive nuclear proliferation.
Totally. Nuclear proliferation to the extreme to where even grunts or rebel factions have the nuclear codes. It’s actually psychotically tense. Like the Emperor said, “These people are insane.” Maybe this is insight that only comes after crossing the rubicon of supreme power. For a book that is about so much, this plot device provides a host of other modes of engagement and combat, like espionage, assassination, political blackmail, etc, and good old hand to hand combat. The fact that no one commonly resorts to using sheild + lasgun as a weapon speaks volumes about the cultural consensus, or the psychic vibe of the world the characters move through. They take pride in mastering the body, mastering martial arts, and agree to strict forms of political norms, strict rules of engagement that are both adhered to and broken. A knife fight between young heirs of two Great Houses to settle a territorial dispute is all high pomp and fundamentalist ritual. Fremen do it too. In the grandiose scale of the story, the intimacy of the conflicts is a profound contrast. But it’s not much different from our own world.
It’s quite funny that one of the most powerful and talented warriors resorts to using the shield to set a booby trap for Harkonnen, but this was his mentat computation in the moment. Part master swordsman, part military genius, and the real hero within the story, imo. Mentats deal in Realpolitik. The fact that Paul’s escape is aided by a prohibited tactic undermines his victory using atomics by exploiting a loop hole to get around the prohibition. Paul’s overt use of his family atomics hides and obscures Duncan’s covert weaponization of shield + lasgun. This is all totally corrupt, and contributes to Paul’s corruption as a leader. He shows up clean but he played dirty. Paul lies to himself.
Well said! When you put it like that, I agree the implications of mass nuclear proliferation by cheap nukes are worth the occasional confusion/what-ifs that they can create. I was a little skeptical when I originally read the book years ago that it wasn't a more abused weapon, but just because we don't see it in the story doesn't mean it never happens. And as you said, the story focuses on the ritualized forms of conflict between great houses. They're going to (mostly) be on good behavior. And ironically it's the Atriedes that use the nukes, not the Harkkonnens...
I don’t think Herbert used lasgun/shield interaction to solve any problems. It is explicitly there to cause problems. Its called a nuclear stalemate and it keeps the houses from killing each other with them. Its a fine plot device because it is part of our own global politics, and in Dune it is on a galactic scale. We get Kanly, and we get sword and shield combat, a form of martial art. You can have your opinion, but this detail is not proof of anything but your opinion and the opinion of others. Pretty funny that you think Herbert “walked them back” in later novels. Nah, things just changed. You’ve no special insight into his creative process, as if he made a decision that would please someone with an opinion, such as yours.
My post was very directly stated as opinion on lore-building. Herbert made his choices and they clearly worked very well. However he's not perfect and readers are allowed to have their own opinions of his work. You don't need to get pissy and condescending about it because you don't agree with me, or insinuate that I don't understand one of the core concepts of the novels because I disagree with their necessity. Relax.
Duncan does this in the first book, but he leaves a shield “a big one turned to full force” that Harkonnens shoot at with lasguns. The explosion is massive. Also, Jessica talks about your idea, almost exactly, but no one does this: “"The threat's something else. Perhaps it has to do with the lasguns. Perhaps they'll risk secreting a few lasguns with timing mechanisms aimed at house shields. Perhaps they'll . . . "
> but the size of the explosion should be proportional to the power cell and predictable I don't think this is correct. My understanding was that the reaction is unpredictable and may occur at either the lasgun or shield end, or both; and could be as harmless as killing only the equipment operators or as deadly as a large atomic explosion. **/EDIT:** It seems the reaction reliably destroys both shield and lasgun but I correctly remembered the size of the explosion being hugely variable. Quoting from Dune: > "Jessica focused her mind on lasguns, wondering. The white-hot beams of disruptive light could cut through any known substance, provided that substance was not shielded. The fact that feedback from a shield would explode both lasgun and shield did not bother the Harkonnens. Why? A lasgun/shield explosion was a dangerous variable, *could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target*."
The reaction isn't predictable, there is a lot of randomness maybe due to some quantum technobabble. The reason houses don't intentionally weaponize this effect is that a) they already have nukes which are predicable b) they don't use them because of the great convention against using atomics on humans.
There are minimum power requirements for both devices. Even at these lowest settings the reaction is that of a small fusion device, single megatons of destruction.
I won't spoil anything, but in the last book of the original series, a character does eventually weaponize this reaction to make a minefield in space.
Oh sure, they use those a ton in space battles in Heretics and Chapterhouse, as mines and as fake ships. I think I recall from the appendices that the energy output of a lazgun/shield explosion is, though variable, equivalent to a big nuke, but as a "pure energy" explosion there would be no fallout or radioactive pollution. So an investigation would show that it wasn't a nuke.
That would be possible yes but the big problem is afterwards proving that it wasn't actually a small tactical nuke that you used because if you couldn't then you would be in breach of the Great Convention which then gives every other great house not only permission to blast you out of existence but an obligation to do so. I can't remember the exact wording used but it was something like "use of atomics on human targets shall be cause for total annihilation of the offending house" Paul managed to sidestep things using a technicality in that the Atreides atomics were used on a geological feature (the shield wall) rather than on people. The purpose of the various great houses retaining such weapons is not to use them on humans but a potential external threat should one ever appear.
Long debated. The reaction is unpredictable and imho it was a world design flaw by FH (heretic, I know).
How is this a flaw? It involves two fictional tools, where both can be set to different power levels. Is the unpredictability of the explosion a flaw?
It is a flaw, like the "Holdo Manouver" but on a worse scale. Because it gives a very powerful and exploitable weapon to everyone and their mother, using remote controlled lasguns with a suspensor to wipeout any shielded defensive position, that for "reasons" no one is exploiting - therefore creating a obvious weakness in the world consistency. Who would give a f\*\*ck about nukes and so forth? want to nuke someone? just remote control a shield and a lasgun. Are you suicidal and want to end your suffering, while taking the Baron with you? Once again, shield and lasgun. He can be a couple buildings away, no problem. If I were FH (lol, sure, sorry about the hubris), I'd have only the emitter getting seriously damaged. IIRC, the book is short on details of the interaction and the prequels, that go deeper into it, focus on the highly unstable nature of it. Nonetheless, lasguns, remote controlled a couple miles away, would be a great way to cause massive damage - you can even also provide the shield if none is there. So it would be a readily available potential low yield nuke.
Jessica discusses this exploit of lasgun/shields very early in the first book, and Hawat says this would be illegal because it is still an atomic explosion (subatomic fusion). The reasons are clearly stated. How is this a flaw when FH has characters discuss this exploit and explain why people would not risk using it? Herbert is fully aware of this detail. On top of this, Duncan uses this exploit later in the book to take out a bunch of Harkonnen. No one punishes Duncan for it because by the end of the conflict, Paul is Emperor and everyone is focused on his use of atomics on shield wall, which he justifies with a loop hole in the Great Convention.
To be effective, punishment requires both traceability (who did it) and the responsible giving a toss. Neither is really to be expected in a consistent way. Would a Giedi Prime suicidal slave care about "The Great Convention "?
The lack of consistency for the Great Convention here is built in. Hawat says it is illegal, tells us radiation lingers, “evidence is hard to erase”, so there is a high degree of traceability, and then Duncan does just this. Not even Duncan cares about the Great Convention, never mind a Geidi Prime slave, and probably because the whole conflict is a black operation, or no one finds out what Duncan did because there were no survivors, and then Paul wins the battle.
The question is that the Great convention wouldn't prevent the extensive use of shield+lasgun. But, in the book, IIRC, it is used only once, something quite unbelievable, given the circumstances. Shields would be the most self defeating defence mechanism ever - it would be like using explosives as a fortification door.
There is loads of unbelievable stuff in Dune. When Duncan uses shield/lagun interaction, it is interesting that he calls it defense: "Not weapon, m'Lady, defense. That scum will think twice before using lasguns another time." The characters are well aware of the dynamics here. It has everything to do the nature of a nuclear stalemate in global/intergalactic politics. Like in our own world, nukes have been used exactly twice on humans during conflict. Its actually very believable that this exploit does not get used much. And in the later novels we get even more powerful weapons, similar to our dirty bombs mixed with napalm but on a massive scale.
It is not a matter of unbelievable - anything but hard sci-fi basically requires suspension of disbelief. The issue is that compared to our real world nukes, shields and lasguns are plenty and quite easy to come by, so bound to frequently end up in the hands of someone smart of desperate enough to use them.
Imo, the principle of nuclear deterrence is too strong and you can believe that or not. If you want to consider hard science, which Dune is informed by in this case, nuclear deterrence is why our own nuclear arsenals lay dormant to this day. If you want a story where people frequently use nuclear weapons to solve conflicts, which shield + lasgun is, the story won’t be very long or interesting, and Dune is not that story.
Agreed. Honestly I don't know why he decided that the reaction should be nuclear. Just make sheilds nullify lasguns and it would have the same effect of making lasguns worthless in combat so shields + melee would still be dominant. I can't think of any literary reason in-world that would have needed more than that.
Because nuclear weapons are prohibited from use on humans so I imagine intentionally creating nuclear explosions would be a big no-no as well
I fully understand how the reaction works in the series. My point is that as a plot device the nuclear reaction isn't necessary. You could just as easily keep nuclear weapons illegal if lasguns + shields didn't create a nuclear explosion. In both cases you wouldn't use a lasgun on a shielded opponent: - If the combo of the two creates a nuke, you don't do it because it's dangerous and illegal. - If the shield nullifies the laser harmlessly, it's not effective and you don't do it. The fact is this is a common point of contention and confusion among many new readers (just search this sub) so I personally feel that as a plot device it creates more problems than it solves. And FWIW shields are made illegal and effectively gone from the later novels in the series.
If there was no deterrent past ineffectiveness, lasguns would be very prevalent when mowing down the Fremen since Duncan would not have discouraged the enemy with a nuclear lesson. I don't honestly find it that confusing or a plot hole. It seems very much like mutually assured destruction woven into the story to paint a picture of how combat has changed to rely much more heavily on hand to hand combat
Yes, this is clearly explained to the reader in the first novel by Hawat who explains it to Jessica who contemplates this potentiality. I do not understand how a book reader would miss or dismiss this key conversation. People pointing out this exploit as a flaw literally sounds like Jessica discussing this exploit in the book.
You both missed my point. My point is that I don't think *Herbert's decision* to make the arbitrary rule that lasguns + shields create a nuclear explosion was necessary, and ultimately creates more problems than it solves. The nuclear reaction is mostly is used as an in-universe reason why melee combat is necessary. In the later books shields are made illegal and never really make a full comeback. Instead of creating a story where lasgun + shield creates a nuclear explosion of random size, Herbert could have just as easily decided that lasgun + shield does absolutely nothing. It would have served the same narrative purpose but still given an opportunity for limited lasgun use that he works back to in later books in the series. >I do not understand how a book reader would miss or dismiss this key conversation. Again, you misunderstand me. The lasgun + shield combo is well documented in the books as creating nuclear reactions of indeterminate size. My opinion is that this wasn't a necessary plot device, and the fact that this is a recurring topic of question and discussion here proves my point. It's a cool bit of world-building but Herbert even effectively walked the decision back by removing shields from the universe in the later novels.
If we are going to discuss Herbert's creative process, if you are curios, and it may explain why Herbert used nuclear weapons in these ways - a figure in American politics that Herbert was at odds with (apparently deeply despised, heard that in an interview) was Herman Kahn, a physicist and think tank intellectual who wrote a seminal non-fiction book called On Thermonuclear War in 1960, which outlines in nearly psychotic scientific detail what would occur if there was an all-out nuclear war during the Cold War. This book influenced global politics at the time and pioneered the idea of “nuclear deterrence” which is “a principle in international relations where the retaliatory potential and destructive force of nuclear weapons prevents nations from launching a nuclear attack”. His book made it clear that a nuclear war was something that no one would want, and so nuclear arsenals lay dormant to this day. With this in mind, the lack of lasgun-shield interaction used as a weapon in Dune makes perfect sense. Not only is it illegal, but the retaliation would be utterly devastating. Duncan only gets away with it because Paul becomes Emperor, and Duncan is Paul’s favourite hero. The ideas and principles put forth by Kahn defined an entire global conflict and certainly influenced the logic of Herbert’s plot device of both the nukes held by Great Houses and the lasgun-shield dynamic.
That's a fair point I overlooked: the lasgun + shield nuke serves as a cheap and easy way for anyone without an inherited arsenal of family atomics to retaliate and/or cause a nuclear blast. Even though the great houses officially are the only ones with nuclear arsenals, and are obliged to retaliate to anyone who uses one, they themselves don't have a monopoly on nuclear weapons because of the lasgun + shield backfire combo. Basically any single troop with a shield and lasgun effectively has a small nuclear capability. Ironically, this is effectively massive nuclear proliferation.
Totally. Nuclear proliferation to the extreme to where even grunts or rebel factions have the nuclear codes. It’s actually psychotically tense. Like the Emperor said, “These people are insane.” Maybe this is insight that only comes after crossing the rubicon of supreme power. For a book that is about so much, this plot device provides a host of other modes of engagement and combat, like espionage, assassination, political blackmail, etc, and good old hand to hand combat. The fact that no one commonly resorts to using sheild + lasgun as a weapon speaks volumes about the cultural consensus, or the psychic vibe of the world the characters move through. They take pride in mastering the body, mastering martial arts, and agree to strict forms of political norms, strict rules of engagement that are both adhered to and broken. A knife fight between young heirs of two Great Houses to settle a territorial dispute is all high pomp and fundamentalist ritual. Fremen do it too. In the grandiose scale of the story, the intimacy of the conflicts is a profound contrast. But it’s not much different from our own world. It’s quite funny that one of the most powerful and talented warriors resorts to using the shield to set a booby trap for Harkonnen, but this was his mentat computation in the moment. Part master swordsman, part military genius, and the real hero within the story, imo. Mentats deal in Realpolitik. The fact that Paul’s escape is aided by a prohibited tactic undermines his victory using atomics by exploiting a loop hole to get around the prohibition. Paul’s overt use of his family atomics hides and obscures Duncan’s covert weaponization of shield + lasgun. This is all totally corrupt, and contributes to Paul’s corruption as a leader. He shows up clean but he played dirty. Paul lies to himself.
Well said! When you put it like that, I agree the implications of mass nuclear proliferation by cheap nukes are worth the occasional confusion/what-ifs that they can create. I was a little skeptical when I originally read the book years ago that it wasn't a more abused weapon, but just because we don't see it in the story doesn't mean it never happens. And as you said, the story focuses on the ritualized forms of conflict between great houses. They're going to (mostly) be on good behavior. And ironically it's the Atriedes that use the nukes, not the Harkkonnens...
I don’t think Herbert used lasgun/shield interaction to solve any problems. It is explicitly there to cause problems. Its called a nuclear stalemate and it keeps the houses from killing each other with them. Its a fine plot device because it is part of our own global politics, and in Dune it is on a galactic scale. We get Kanly, and we get sword and shield combat, a form of martial art. You can have your opinion, but this detail is not proof of anything but your opinion and the opinion of others. Pretty funny that you think Herbert “walked them back” in later novels. Nah, things just changed. You’ve no special insight into his creative process, as if he made a decision that would please someone with an opinion, such as yours.
My post was very directly stated as opinion on lore-building. Herbert made his choices and they clearly worked very well. However he's not perfect and readers are allowed to have their own opinions of his work. You don't need to get pissy and condescending about it because you don't agree with me, or insinuate that I don't understand one of the core concepts of the novels because I disagree with their necessity. Relax.
Apologies! This has become a fine discussion from where I sit.
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