The Jesus Incident is science fantasy full of characters and scenes lacking verisimilitude and has an awful conclusion that delivers a simplistic theological message. Comparing God Emperor of Dune with The Jesus Incident makes it difficult to believe that Herbert had much to do with the writing of this book.

From the begining the reader is faced with the challenge of accepting that a ship has god-like powers and abilities. These abilities include telepathy without regard to distance or time, omnipresence, time travel, teleporting people without a device, sending people through time and into a different body without a device. Having read Destination: Void when this godlike AI is created makes this seem all the more implausible. Early on I assumed this is a fantasy used to create a SF scenario to examine religion.

After a dubious start, it seems like the plot is starting to move forward but then the book stalls with a series of single character chapters focused on introspection, questions, and redundant information. This process is used to occasionaly advance the story. The timeline becomes unreliable, the locations confusing and very little happens as characters think and think but manage to avoid any substantial philosophy or theology. As the ending approaches, the writing goes from dull and annoying to blantantly stupid as verisimilitude is abandoned. Organic beings (without brains) that communicate with computers. A human using mental and organic telepathic powers to guide a space freightor in an emergency landing (into the sea or onto a beach - the writing isn't clear). Characters actions are unreasonable or conflicting. A character is unresponsive, too weak to speak, then suddenly walking around coherent and fine without explanation. An energy beam gets repelled and redirected by vegetable group mind power. This kind of stuff is garabage! Absolutely terrible!

After suffering through some of the worst "science fiction" written, the philosophical and theological payoff promised by the title and Herbert's name consists of a simple message about religion and mankind that could have originated from any disgruntled student at any religious based private school. I think it's sad that Herbert's name is on it and wished I hadn't read it.

TJI warps into our reality a fresh new universe, while building on some of the story outlines from Destination Void. Herbert and Ransom deliver a memorable tale conerning the nature of life, consciousness, spirituality, while overlaid with a story framework of extreme genetic manipulation in a hostile world. Bill Ransom a local WA poet, i guess is reflected the character of Penille (also a poet). THis is an interesting take on

As with all Herbert books a lot of people are super smart/badass and do a lot of thinking about thinking about thinking. Its not as draining as strategy/counterstrategy from the dune series but more around the gradual spiritual awakenment several of the characters go through.

Yea theres some christianity stuff in there, but not enough to call this book a Space Christian opera. Its mostly focused in one vivid mind bendy reality sequence. Jesus is just used a symbol of sacrifice and greater human ambition - i think the book could have done a bit better in explaining why this symbolism versus other religions was used. Many an internet debate would be quelled by 1 or 2 additional sentences.

The high bar you would expect from herbert novel is thankfully maintained here. Vivid descriptions, a wide variety of characters. Surprising amount of sex and adult content for a Herbert book.. While the ending is a bit abrupt - you dont really get much closure from Raj or Hali or some others, i will eagerly anticipate the next two books in the series.

My understanding of the book was enhanced by reading Destination void first - i recommend this.

If you've read and loved Dune, this is definitely worth a read. Herbert teams up with a poet (Bill Ransom) to tell a great sci-fi story, which I just now found out from wiki is the second in a four part series!

Whoops I gotta read the first one ("Destination:Void"), and then re-read this one and the equally good sequel "The Lazarus Effect." And then read the final one ("The Ascension Factor").

I have a lot of work to do.

Despite thinking about it at length, I'm still unsure why I found this book so unapproachable. Maybe it was because none of the characters stood out to me as particularly interesting or well fleshed out. So many characters seemed to differ in name only. Initially I thought Waela would be my favorite character because her introduction was the most interesting, seeing her perched stealthily on a cliff side watching the hostile savannah around her. But after a time she seemed no more interesting than any other character. Even now I'm having a hard time thinking of anything to criticize about the novel because so little of it left an impression on me. This really surprises me considering how deep and evocative Herbert's other stories have been (I'm thinking of Dune here). Maybe I was just turned off by all of the allusions to Jesus and the crucifixion story, allusions which really didn't seem to lead anywhere. I guess that shows how done I am finding that story interesting. Then at the end, the story's climax entailed the birth of some kind of super baby, which is again such a trite way to end a book. Sci-fi has beaten that storyline to death long ago and Herbert wrote this novel much too late for his use of it to be excusable. Upon finishing the Jesus Incident (what does that title even mean?) I'd decided not to read the next novel in the series despite having bought it already, and I almost decided to give up reading Herbert altogther considering that none of his other novels have really measured up to his Dune series. But I've started the next novel only because I hadn't yet bought something else to read. So far the Lazarus Effect has been loads better, but I'll wait and see if that lasts.

Once upon a time in a science fictional decade far, far away there was an author named Frank Herbert. He wrote a novel called Dune and it was good. He wrote a few more Dune-related books and they were a mixture of good and bad. And he wrote a book called The White Plague and it was good as well. And then he joined up with another author (a poet) named Bill Ransom and wrote a novel called The Jesus Incident--and completely lost this member of his audience.

After having this novel (and its two companion pieces) sitting on my TBR shelf for decades, I decided that this year, with my Mt. TBR Challenge, was the year to finally tackle it and get it out the way. I'm going to confess up front--I did not read every word of the entire thing. I skimmed a great deal of the mid-section....because, let's face it, it wobbled between being down-right confusing and all-out boring. With Dune Herbert created a whole new world--lots of things going on that were unusual and different, but he managed to give the reader enough information about that world that we knew what was up and we actually cared about Paul's journey to become Muad-Dib. In The Jesus Incident, we have another whole new world....and I just don't get it and I don't really care all that much.

Well, okay. Yes, I did get it. We have this experimental group of the last survivors of Earth. They were originally set up to try and create sentience. Somewhere along the line, they succeeded and now their space vehicle, Ship, is sentient. And thinks it is god. And wants to be WorShipped. And it has brought the humans and their clones (yeah, what?) to a new "paradise" planet where they will be tested--one last time. (Apparently, there have been many "testings" prior to this that we really don't know about. Must not be important). If they fail to figure out to WorShip properly, then Ship is going to "wipe the tape," end the experiment, in a word--get rid of mankind. Nice.

Oh. And that "paradise" planet? Not so much. It's full of all kinds of predatory life that just love to kill humans/clones. And there's not enough food for everybody. Sounds like the perfect place to take your next vacation, don't you think?

You'd think that might be complex enough to hold my attention. Yeah, no. Because when it came down to it, the answer to how Ship expects to be WorShipped is a pretty lame and predictable and recycled answer. No new insights here. No real comment on the human condition or human spirituality or anything. Just not Herbert's best writing, in my opinion. One star.

2,5 dar mai dau o șansă trilogiei.

n  

"Is the lesson diminished because the history that moves you is fiction?"

n
Trigger Warnings for The Jesus Incident at the bottom of the review

For a story set on a spaceship and a fictional planet with alien entities, clones, and an AI that has decided it is god, this book embraces or spotlights many core values of humanity. If it weren't so long, I'd be inclined to call it a fable, because there is a moral to it, if you pay attention.

Unfortunately, it IS long. Longer than it seems like it should be for 430-ish pages, much of which could have been cut out without losing much or any real plot or character developments. For example, there was one 29-minute long chapter in which one of the characters stares at some art and has the same thought again and again in a circular pattern with only mild deviations. The point of this character being so troubled could have been made in half the time or less.
This is only one example of how dry this book could, at times, become.

The disjointed nature of it, with vague time slips and skips, changing character perspectives as well as setting every single chapter made it almost feel like less a story, more a philosophical character study with only ever TENDRILS of overarcing plot for about 70% of the book.

Around the 70% mark, those tendrils finally tethered into something substantial, and everything suddenly started moving very quickly after pages and pages and pages of thought exercises and religious allegory. The last 30% of this book I actually quite liked a lot. All of the characters had their moments, boiling points were reached, and the questions left unanswered thus far were satisfied.

I find myself one of the few who neither loved nor hated the experience of The Jesus Incident.
Overall, I'm glad I read this book. It makes you think. It fills you with something at the close of the final pages. But my gosh, was it a slog to get through at times.
I wouldn't say I recommend it unless you're ready for 70's sci-fi lingo and an incredibly slow build of painstaking development for a surprisingly decent ending.
I'm not immediately inclined to read the sequels (and it's not necessary to get a full story), but I'm not absolutely ruling it out either. Maybe someday.


The Jesus Incident Trigger Warnings:

~Discrimination/Racism/Classism (of clones)
~Body horror-ish (lots of past lab experiments involving growing clones)
~Implied torture
~Possibly implied rape
~Implied past torture or rape
~Non-con (or, at best, reluctant) sex that's on screen but vague and fade to black
~Tons of religious jargon, not only in the sci-fi sense, but also pulling from other religions, especially Christianity
~Predatory behavior
~Cheating, technically
~The use of the term "ship tits" that are feeding tubes of some sort from the Ship that people suck from *gags* (I realize this isn't a typical trigger, but my gosh, did it turn me off and almost make me quit the book)
~ This is all I can think of, but it may not be all possible triggers. Tread with care.

Reporting periodically to Rob as I read this book, I noticed that from an outsider's view it could seem a bit incoherent.

"It's not really about Jesus so far. They're just out away in space, waking up from hybernation."

"But there's an intelligent spaceship. It might be God."

"Now it's about a poet."

"Oh there is a Jesus, but Haysoos. Jesus Lewis."

"There's demons - well, they're not really demons, just dangerous creatures on the planet. But they call them demons."

"Oh well I guess now she got sent back in time to see Jesus get crucified."

"The clones are rebelling."

"Oh did I mention there's sentient kelp?"

"What's happening now? Wow. Um. I guess the poet and this lady both hallucinated that they were having sex, but the poet has like gone to another plane and now the lady's pregnant. With a superbaby."

But it all seems to fit together when you actually read it. I guess that's Frank Herbert for you. He sure loves to contemplate the nature of a god. And babies born sentient, ancient, and wise.

This book is a rare example of a book that was absolutely nuts and yet which I didn’t have too much to say about it, in part because I’d have to go into the story line for a lot of it to make sense. And I don’t really want to do that because it’s pretty intricate and full of little details that I didn’t necessarily understand the significance of because I’m not religious.

But as you can probably tell from the title, this book reflects a lot of the Christianity myth except it’s set in space on a spaceship. There are a lot of related puns there, such as the fact that people WorShip it.

Unfortunately, I don’t give a damn about religion, and so I didn’t particularly appreciate all of that stuff as much as I might have done. On the plus side, I also didn’t hate it, which was always a risk with a book like this.

The bigger problem was that it was pretty typical old-school sci-fi, and I’ve just read so much of that lately that all of the books are starting to blend together. That made it tricky for me to focus on some of the details and to keep everything straight in my head, especially when it came to the interplay between the different tribes on board ship.

There was also a lot of fictitious history to go into, which was an added challenge on top of all of the biblical illusions. That meant that even though I enjoyed reading this, I also felt like I was missing a lot, and that I’d have to read it a half dozen times before everything settled into place.

Luckily, the plot and the characterisation were pretty good, so even though I missed bits here and there, I still enjoyed what I did absorb. It’s a feeling that I’ve come to associate with Herbert, because the same thing tends to happen in the Dune books. I also don’t feel as though it’s my fault as a reader, because I’m pretty sure that Herbert went out of his way to write like that.

Still, even with all that said, this isn’t Herbert’s best, and I’d recommend the Dune books and even stuff like the Saratoga Barrier ahead of this.

A recurring comment we hear about Herbert's Dune is how it (sadly & unfortunately) becomes more relevant every year; another common sentiment is that, beyond the first few titles, the series becomes more esoteric and tangential as it goes on. If you've drifted off in the middle of, say, God Emperor of Dune and want to spend more time with that OG Herbert ecological mysticism, you could do worse than to begin the Pandora Sequence. The Jesus Incident reads like a leaner, slightly sloppier Dune, yet reflects issues and challenges that plague the modern world in ways that remain interesting. The overarching theme here involves the unavoidable dominance of nature over the small-minded, self-interested politicos who wish to reign it in for their own purposes, and for anyone who is supremely nervous about how these themes manifest in our real, current world, will prove interesting and even cathartic.

A very bizarre science fiction book that caught my interest and held it, but is deeply disturbing and even disgusting in parts--not really surprising considering Frank Herbert is one of the authors. He is so good at exploring humanity in ways that are strange and foreign yet somehow familiar at the same time. I'm sure this is a book I will be thinking about for a while and it is worth reading through to the end, even though at times it seemed a bit repetitive and bogged down in the nightmarish sequences in the middle of the plot before it rises towards the climax and resolution.

I really enjoyed being immersed in this science fiction reflection of religious storytelling. The story is packed with fascinating sci-fi ideas, none of which overwhelm due to the quality of the writing from Herbert and Ransom. What's not to love about an IA Ship that has grown all powerful, built a planet and declared itself God. Each character is beautifully crafted. The way we spent very personal time with them, learning their desires, ambitions and particularly their varying relationships with Ship – their God, felt unique, and builds a strong understanding of the cast at play. I loved the concept of a very real God that speaks to some of its flock and ignores others, and guides and threatens in a very real way. The question of God and higher consciousnesses, and the position it has and should have in society is constantly being asked in this book. When does a society need religion, and when has a society outgrown it? Herbert and Ransom play wonderfully with these concepts, while continuing to drive the narrative forward. The planet which Ship creates for its disciples to prove themselves, with its huge array of dangerous creatures and unexplored mysteries, was more than enough to cement this as a very thoughtful and well executed Sci-fi story. The story has stayed with me - and very much invested me in books 2 and 3. I recommend giving this a go.