Somehow he failed to end Blade Runner — the Black Lotus anime series came out in 2021 and another live-action series drops next year. Maybe BR is immortal since every release is financially unsuccessful but more always comes — eventually.

This is also true.

It was mostly a joke. A throw-away line that I posted when I was bored this morning. It should not be taken as serious literary criticism.

I totally agree with you on this. They are absolutely opposites and Tolkien’s dislike of Dune was well known. But, technically, they are on the same time line in the same universe.

They aren’t thematically linked. But Tolkien saw his work as a prehistory of our world — we are in something like the 7th age. Herbert saw his work as the far future of our current world. Neither was working in an alternative earth timeline. The stories are, oddly, in a continuous universe.

Loved this book. It also made me feel very sad, especially as a labor union Democrat.