Dune (1965)

Update 8/28/17

Re-read. Number 13. :) I cry when Paul meets Gurney. I shiver when Jessica consoles Chani. I'm awestruck by the peaks and troughs of time, free-will, and the weakness in Paul even as he heroically strives against the evil that is about to be unleashed upon the universe.

*sigh*

Perfection. Easily the number one book I've ever read. :)

I waver, sometimes, but right now, it is my absolute favorite. :)



Original Review:

This is a phenomenal classic of literature.

It's not just science fiction. It transcends science fiction, as a fascinating discussion of free-will versus inevitability. Can the Jihad be denied? Can Paul ever really avoid his own death, despite seeing every time-line play out with him as the butt of every cosmic joke? Can even cruelty or mercy even remain comprehensible after such knowledge?

Yes, I think this work outdoes Nietzsche. It certainly does a great job of making us care about the question.

Is this all? Is this just a work that pays great justice to philosophy of action and inaction?

Or is the novel merely a clever play at turning the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle into the physical embodiment of a man? It is that, of course. The Kwisatz Haderach can be many places at once, and he can be both alive and dead at the same time just like that certain cat.

Is the novel a coming of age tale, first set as a mirror against his father Leto, only then to mirror the whole universe that had just turned against him? Yes, of course. He was, after all, both the product of all his upbringing and his genes, embodying the question of nature versus nurture. He was taught within many schools of martial arts and assassins, as well as training the mind in both the schools of the Mentats with their pure logic and that of the mystics, the Bene Gesserit, that allows complete control over the body down to the cellular level. And if this training wasn't enough, he was deeply schooled in politics, leadership, and the meaning of loyalty. The boy was raised right. Of course, that is nothing without ninety generations of genetic bloodline tampering from the Bene Gesserit, right? To become the fulcrum between cellular memory, tapping the minds and lives of all your genetic ancestors as well as tapping the ability to fold time and space, to become the eye of a storm of time.

What a damn brilliant setup for one tiny character, no? His training links to the unlocking of his genes and to the life-extending and enveloping spice, Melange, to make him not merely aware of time in a theoretical sense, but eventually to be unable to discern what was in the past, the present, or the future. Here's a true Super-Man, well beyond Nietzsche.

And don't believe for one second that this serious discussion about what would make a superior man makes for dull reading. No. We've got PLOT that's probably some of the most exciting and visceral in all of literature, driving us right into the web of intrigue, vengeance, treachery, and galactic politics.

To quote the text, we've got "Plans within Plans," and it hardly stops there. We know the House Atreides is falling into a trap laid by the Emperor and House Harkonnen, and yet free-will and pride prevents any chance to avoid it. The setup is brilliant and extremely political, giving us character sketches of some of the most brilliant and memorable characters of all time.

Duke Leto, the Red Duke, the most honorable and beloved leader.
Duncan Idaho, the emotional and intuitive hero.
Gurney Halleck, archetypal loyalist and troubadour.
Lady Jessica, the woman who ought to have had all honor in life, but was unjustly reviled and set aside for political necessity. (Chani being both her mirror and her eventual glory.)

And of course, my favorite character of all time, Paul Muad'dib Atreides, the one that would prevent the greater evils he foresaw, and went to enormous lengths and sacrifice to achieve, but who eventually failed in his task because even a god cannot overcome destiny. (Or the will of so many minds set as one.)

So damn brilliant.

Frank Herbert spent five years writing this treasure, working and reworking it until he published it at age 25. None of his other works come close to this masterpiece, and there's little wonder. It was birthed, fully-formed, like Athena from Zeus's head, with enormous forethought and care.

The worldbuilding was just as carefully formed, from the ecology of Arrakis and the life-cycles of the sandworms, to the history and the creation of the Fremen from their mild beginnings as Zensunni Wanderers, adherents to the Orange Catholic Bible, to their history of oppression so like those of those who are Jewish, to their settling and hardening of their bodies and souls in the wastes of Arrakis, also just like the Jewish who carved out a place for themselves in Israel. (Current politics aside, this was a very potent idea before 1965 when Herbert wrote this, and indeed, the core is still just as powerful when you turn it back to Muslims.)

The Galactic culture is rich and detailed. The CHOAM economic consortium, with their monopoly on space travel and their need for the Spice to allow them to see a short period into the future to plot a safe course before folding space. The Empire is caught on a knife's edge between a single power and every other House who sit in the possibility of putting aside all their squabbles for the sole purpose of checking the Emperor, if they so desired. (And Duke Atreides was such a possible popular leader among all the Great Houses, which was the primary reason the Emperor wanted him dead.)

And of course, we have our Villains.

The Baron Harkonnen has always been a crowd pleaser. Brilliant in his own right, devious and able to corrupt anyone with just the right sorts of pressure, including a certain absolutely trustworthy doctor we might mention.

"The Tooth! The Tooth!" -- You can't handle the Tooth!

Feyd Rautha Harkonnen is especially interesting for the question of nature versus nurture.

The Bene Gesserit had intended him to mate with Paul, who should have been Leto and Jessica's daughter, and that offspring should have been the cumulation of ninety years of a breeding experiment to recreate the Kwisatz Haderach which had come about almost by accident during the Butlerian Jihad in the deep past, to overthrow the AI overlords.

He was practically Paul's genetic twin, or at least, his potential to be the "One who can be many places at once" was on par with Paul. But instead of fulfilling the kind of destiny that we get with Paul, we see him grow up under the auspices of his Uncle the Baron, becoming as cruel and devious as he was deadly. He was the argument of nurture in the conversation, of course, and having so very little of it eventually cost him his life.

I often wonder about the directions that Dune could have taken, all those little paths in time and circumstance that could have been. What if Feyd had been brought to Arrakis earlier and overwhelmed with Spice the way that Paul had? Sure, he wouldn't have been able to convert the unconscious changes into conscious manipulation, but he might have had enough glimpses of the future, the way that the Fremen did, to have given him the edge he would have needed to kill Paul.

And then there's a relatively minor character, Hasimir Fenring, the Emperor's personal assassin, who was nearly the Kwisatz Haderach, himself. Unable to breed true, he was still potent enough to be completely hidden to Paul's time-sight in the same way that Paul was hidden from the Spacing Guild's weaker time-sight. His training as a skilled killer was also superior to Paul. He was, by all the hints and tricks in the tale, Paul's perfect downfall. It always gives me shivers to think about, and it was only in a single instant of both recognition and pity from Paul that stayed Fenring from killing our hero. It was just a moment of whim.

The setup was gorgeous. Paul's pity, had it been missing at his moment of greatest triumph over the Emperor, would have meant Paul's assured death. I still wonder, to this day, what stayed Frank Herbert's hand from killing his most wonderful darling. We knew the pressure of religion and politics was going to have its way upon all the oppressed peoples of Dune. The return of a monstrous religious Jihad was going to happen one way or another, sweeping across the galaxy and toppling the Empire, regardless of Paul's frantic plans and desires. Paul's own death would only mean a higher level of fanaticism, and Frank Herbert's warning against unreasoning devotion would have been made even clearer with Paul's death.

Perhaps it was pity that stayed his hand. Who are we to say who lives and who dies?

If you really think this review is overlong, then I apologize, but please understand that I could absolutely go on and on much longer than this. It is a symptom of my devotion to this most brilliant of all tales.

And yes, it still holds up very, very well after twelve reads. I am quite shocked and amazed. ( )

Dune - F.Herbert - 553pg - 5/2/20 - 5 stars
Audio performance - multiple narrators

”To read Dune in the twenty-first century, after the resurgence of militant Islam is doubly disquieting.” Michael Dirda: Introduction to Folio society edition 2015

I believe this was the third time that I’d read Dune from beginning to end. Nothing matches the complete immersion of a first reading, but as my first reading was at least 40 years ago, there was much I didn’t remember. It was worth reading again. I’m hardly alone in believing that this book is one of the best. I know it has been called a space opera. That is a term that I apply to lighter, more trivial fiction. If this is an opera, it’s heavy, like Wagner. (It’s just a shame that the following books in the ‘cycle’ did not live up to the first.)

The Folio Society edition of this classic is a treasure of my home library. The endpapers of the book are beautifully detailed maps of Dune. Like a map of the moon, it feels like a real place, if not exactly a vacation spot. The illustrations by Sam Weber depict the characters and scenes of the story exactly as I pictured them from my first reading of an unillustrated paperback. They are also very beautiful. The introduction by Michael Dirda and Brian Herbert’s afterward were informative and interesting.

Not wanting to take my beautiful book out of the house, I also had an Audible book. It was performed, unabridged, by some of the best voice actors. The performances were excellent, but the book did not adapt well for so many changes of voices. Orlagh Cassidy was great for the epigram voice of Princess Irulan at the beginning of each chapter. Using actors to speak the parts of other characters resulted in one voice for verbal conversations and another, Simon Vance, voice for the internal thoughts of the character. It would have been smoother to let Vance perform the whole book. Small complaints, though. I enjoyed the audio enough to have effectively ‘reread’ the book twice through April and into May. ( )

My favourite memory of this book is when I was reading along, thoroughly hating everything, and then the book abruptly ended fifty pages before I was expecting it to because it turns out the rest of it is all appendices.

I don't even know where to begin reviewing this book, although the rant I launched into on Tumblr taught me I had many things to say. Perhaps I was doomed to dislike this book when I started at page one and discovered that its two main characters were named Paul and Jessica. Still, I moved past that; I'd heard this book was good, I was going to persevere. Then on page 20 or so Paul was obnoxious and sexist and I got frustrated. And then, it has to be said, Paul never really did anything to redeem himself for being generally obnoxious. Mostly he just oscillated between continuing to be obnoxious and being some all-seeing, all-knowing dispenser of wisdom and neither of those personas was particularly endearing.

Honestly, I was annoyed for a lot of the book that Paul had all of these special mental abilities that supposedly had never been had by men before, only women, and Paul was such an arrogant twerp anyway that I strongly disliked him being some kind of Chosen One. I felt that Frank Herbert was going to have this rule that only women can have these powers, the character of Paul should have been a woman then. But then it seems that the entire point of the plot is that he IS the first man to have this abilities - the Kwisatz Haderach or however it's supposed to be spelt - so then I guess it just annoyed me that there was this deep gender essentialism in something that should not have anything to do with gender at all (the innate abilities of the brain...).

Aside from that! This book also had approximately 9658976897579668 male characters who I couldn't tell the difference between. Towards the end there some guy named Guernsey or something turned up and supposedly he was Paul's friend from way back but I had no clue who he was and nor was I entirely sure I was supposed to. The female characters who existed seemed mostly interested in basking in the glory of Paul (probably he had a halo or something too, idk). Chani was nothing more than his love interest. That woman he won (as property) by killing Jamis was the same. Alia barely even did anything. Jessica was by far the most developed of the female characters, but even she was really disappointing because literally everyone spent the entire book talking about what a threat she posed to Paul and like, no, she didn't in any way whatsoever. PAUL HIMSELF at one point identified Jessica as his "true enemy" and well, I guess he's not all-seeing and all-knowing after all because that was LITERALLY NEVER FOLLOWED UP ON. All she did was disapprove of his relationship with Chani because she's an utter snob and disapproved of him seeing a "desert girl". Wow. I'm shaking in my boots, Jessica.

There are some defences to be made of this book - for instance, Herbert was obviously not trying to write about anything other than a deeply sexist society, so the fact that women get treated as property and evaluated in terms of their marriageability is not a flaw of the writer so much as the deeply annoying society he invented. Nonetheless, there were not enough female characters and those characters that did exist were not strong enough to counteract this. But then again, the male characters weren't very strong either, hence why I mixed them all up, so... really...

Anyway, I was dithering about whether to give this book two stars or three (mostly because I'd heard it was so good and I thought I'd judged it unfairly just because of the names-of-the-characters thing making me hostile from the off). BUT THEN I READ THE LAST PAGE.

NO JOKE, the last page is about how Paul has to marry this Princess Irulan to secure peace across the kingdoms or something but NO WORRIES because he's going to treat Princess Irulan like a worthless piece of shit forever because his true love is Chani! And Jessica is really pleased about this because she no longer hates Chani and she apparently thinks Princess Irulan deserves to live a life of misery because, y'know, she dared to be born a woman into a family that would force her into an arranged marriage and that is definitely all her fault.

Seriously, I hate you Jessica.

And basically everyone in this book, really. I guess Chani was okay, if not very well developed. Also the woman Paul won off Jamis, she was sassy, except I forgot her name so I guess not that sassy.

In conclusion...

This book is hyped beyond all proportion. I didn't understand it and it annoyed me but if you like long books with irritating and indistinguishable characters, go for your life.

(EDIT: I decided to demote this book from two stars to one star, because I actually really hated it so two stars was bizarrely generous. I don't remember anything I liked about this book. Don't read it.) ( )

The most extraordinarily brilliant audiobook I have ever listened to. ( )

i dont know why i never read this before. i have heard conflicting opinions on if i should read other books in the series. ( )