Wednesday, April 5, 2017

A Refutation of Rebuttal to a Response to a Defense of a Review; or, Let's Get Meta!

  Earlier I wrote a little something about an article by Mr. Genesson where he attempted to 'defend' Dune against a review one of my sons wrote.
  He has responded.
  His response is, well - more of the same.

  The main thing I wrote about in my post was that Mr. Genesson should feel bad because of the the three errors of fact he made; errors of fact about the review; errors of fact about Islam; errors of fact about the book, Dune, he was attempting to defend.
  Let's look at his rebuttal and see if he addresses these.

  His claim that "Mohommadans do not search for a Messiah...":
  He fails to mention it. At all. Total miss. Doesn't acknowledge it was even an issue. I mean, sure - he's obviously totally and absolutely wrong, but a serious reply would at least include a mention of one of the three things mentioned as a gross error and explicitly why his defense was 'objectively bad'.
  His failure to respond makes it difficult for me to take the rest seriously.

  His claim that [paraphrase] 'melange only grants prescience to the Kwisatz Haderach':
  He semi-dodges and then doubles down.
  Mr. Genesson writes.
  "As to my possibly incorrect recollection on the effects of melange, I can only blame the years. That said, Navigators don't see the future.."
  Sorry, friend, Dune explicitly states navigators see the future. Paul chastises them for taking 'the safe path that leads forever downward to stagnation' with their prescience. Wikipedia and the Dune wiki alone can confirm this, as can Mr. Genesson himself with the book. There are also explicit references to the Fremen in their water of life ceremonies seeing the future, and so on.

  sigh.
  The rest is about as bad. The original review has a line 'it really sucks you in', Mr. Genesson says '[the reviewer never said it sucked him in', and so forth.

  I bear Mr. Genesson no ill will. As I stated, he is more than welcome to love Dune as much as he wishes.
  But I have no more desire to interact with him about the book Dune when he demonstrably doesn't know it that well. Nor about a review he obviously didn't read very closely.

  Mr. Genesson, I wish you well and I hope to meet you over over a friendly pint.

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