[rsynnott]

Yeah, fair, it was very much Of Its Time (and I'd forgotten some of this; haven't read it in a long time...). That sort of thing can be adapted out easily enough, in general, though; most old sci-fi is going to have some of it. Removing the polyamory entirely would be more difficult, but _that_ probably isn't necessary.

[n4r9]

Yeah, a lot of sci fi of the era was at best dismissive of women as actual people. But some authors were nevertheless pretty good, like Zelazny or le Guin (of course). Even Frank Herbert - the Gesserit may have been kind of evil but at least they had ambitions and power.

[lazide]

Was there anyone who wasn’t at least mostly evil in Herbert’s work? Haha

Even the Atreides were full on ‘the ends justify the means’, if they did nominally have ‘the good of mankind’ as the goal. Those are the most terrible dictators though.

[n4r9]

Hmmm, arguably the Fremen were not particularly evil. But I take your point.

[rsynnott]

The Fremen also embraced a certain amount of "ends justify the means" (mostly in the unseen bit between books 1 and 2); it was ultimately Paul's _fault_, but they very much went along with it.

[lazide]

I’d argue an interplanetary Jihad resulting in the deaths of billions of innocents has at least a decent smidge of evil in the prosecuting of it, regardless of who started it.