Gers: Explore the Planet Universe “Sand Dunes” with Roland Lehoucq at the Fleurance Festival
At the end of the 32nd edition of the Florence Astronomy Festival, on Friday evening, the French astrophysicist Roland Lehawk, whose name is an asteroid (31387), will host a conference on the novel “Dion” by writer Frank Herbert. Maintenance work.
Nearly 60 years after its publication, Frank Herbert’s story “Dunes” remains one of the most influential and influential works in global science fiction. Friday evening, 9:30 p.m., at the Cultural Center in Flerence, Roland Lehoucq, an astrophysicist at the CEA of Saclay, presents the decoding of the work.
Why Dion?
It’s a masterpiece of SF novels that you have to read, and it’s a great intellectual song. I use science fiction a lot, it’s kind of my trademark, to talk about a lot of things. Dune? There was news about the film by Denis Villeneuve. And in October 2020, we released a book, A Scientific and Cultural Analysis of Sand Dunes, by a group of astrophysicists, scientists, linguists, philosophers, technical and chemical philosophers, gender issues, and US history…
What does this job represent for you?
It’s a chance to say a lot of things, it’s a multidimensional novel, and there are scientific elements, metaphysical elements, meditations on power, religion, immortality, human survival, and its relationship to technologies.
How is the conference organized?
First, an analysis on the planet Arrakis, the sandworm, space travel as shown by the distillate – a device that allows almost all the water that leaves the body to be recycled and used by Fremen to live in the desert … Why not use solar energy? How does solar energy work?
Then consider the relationship to technologies: it is one of the very rare SF novels dealing with the humanity of the distant future, which has voluntarily abandoned thinking machines such as robots, computers, etc. What are transformations etc. does this mean?
Dune will also be an environmental novel?
There are water problems permeating life, which concretely raise questions about adaptation. Fremen have an ambition to transform their world, they want to make it greener through geoengineering, does that make sense? It is a potential response to an environmental problem.
Honorable Mention: Azar Khalatbari Prize
On Friday evening, the Florence Film Festival will award the Azar Khalatbari Prize. French-Iranian scientific writer, with a PhD in geophysics and a master’s degree in the history of science, specializing in the fields of physics, astrophysics, earth sciences and mathematics.
Azar Khalatbari under the lens of her husband Philippe Legnona in 2018.
Azar was a ray of sunshine, warm, positive, life force, but she died in the spring. She was supposed to come to Fleurance to launch Le Festival du Film. He will be honored before the last conference.
“Organizer. Social media geek. General communicator. Bacon scholar. Proud pop culture trailblazer.”