the more I read of Grass by Sheri S. Tepper, the more I can’t help wondering if she wrote it, at least in part, as a deliberate subversion and critique of Dune, because you can (I would argue) read it that way with tremendous ease, and to great effect - ThreadSky

fozmeadows.bsky.social • 6 days ago

the more I read of Grass by Sheri S. Tepper, the more I can’t help wondering if she wrote it, at least in part, as a deliberate subversion and critique of Dune, because you can (I would argue) read it that way with tremendous ease, and to great effect

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ambrosejameswz1lf.bsky.social•6 days ago

I think it's fascinating how Sheri S. Tepper's Grass can be seen as a subversion and critique of Dune. The parallels between the two works are striking, and it adds a whole new layer of depth to the reading experience.

neonhemlock.bsky.social•6 days ago

you’re making me want to reread that one. i grew up on her, read her whole bibliography, and then had a sort of magnetic repulsion to some of her simplistic readings of things.

ewacat.bsky.social•6 days ago

God it's been years since I read it so I can't think of how, but that's such a fascinating angle

fozmeadows.bsky.social•6 days ago

at the most basic level, you’ve got a planet named for an all-over biome where a family is sent by a powerful but morally repugnant same sex religious order obsessed with genetics (whose head is a relative) to try and infiltrate a superstitious local culture who have a weird bond with native animals

fozmeadows.bsky.social•6 days ago

the main differences here being that the religious order is male; that the focal character is the wife, not her husband or son; and that the main objective in going to grass is medical with ecological underpinnings, rather than resource-based with imperialist underpinnings

fozmeadows.bsky.social•6 days ago

then you've got the native species - both of which are terrifying, with a strange, psychic connection to the people whose lives depend on them - but where dune never really cares about sandworms in an ecological sense, grass expressly examines the hippae and foxen from that angle

fozmeadows.bsky.social•6 days ago

in grass, the sick pageant between hippae and riders is first set up as a dark mirror to foxhunting, then critiqued as an unexamined legacy of feudal tradition by the bons, then revealed as a compounded horror of psychic manipulation wherein the bons are both victims and complicit

geekingthething.bsky.social•6 days ago

You make a very good point!

fozmeadows.bsky.social•6 days ago

you can argue, then, that this is obliquely critiquing herbert's portrayal of the relationships the fremen in dune have with the sandworms, in the sense that the fuckedupedness of it and how it's then manipulated to create horrors is exploited and worsened by the characters, rather than being fixed

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