Dune

I first read Dune at about the age of ten in the late 1970s. Because of its enormous influence on science fiction literature, not even counting direct adaptations into other media, I have never been permitted to forget it. But I suspected that after the intervening decades I had probably misremembered much, and I have now finished a fresh re-reading of the novel. (My plan is to continue with the sequels this year.)

This book offers absolutely ferocious world-building of the sort to justify the existence of the term. That said, I was not always wowed by the prose. Some of the character diction seemed needlessly affected. I did like the poetry, of which there is a great deal--a feature not much reflected in the screen adaptations to which show more I have been exposed. I am always fond of speculative fiction that can provide and exploit liturgy, which this book does very well.

When I first read Dune, its attention to ecological issues was celebrated, while its anti-imperialist politics were comparatively underplayed. Now, I suspect that the relative weights of these features in public consciousness may have been reversed. And there is some irony in the more pressing message for each readership being the one less noticed by them. Although, of course, both are important and ultimately inseparable.

As a schoolboy, I read the descriptions of mystical and psychopharmaceutical states in Dune and understood them as proper to exceptional people in an exotic world. Now, after my own psychedelic and contemplative experiences, much about them strikes me as authentic and common. I am left with a chicken-and-egg conundrum: did the novel give me mental scaffolding that helped to flavor or even determine my own later adventures, or did the author simply draw on experiences and insights congruent to mine?

From here on out, I will share thoughts on this widely-acknowledged standard of its genre, first published generations ago, where I won't scruple to flag "spoilers." Caveat lector.

Within the projected history, it is peculiar that the value of Arrakis' export can be so thoroughly mischaracterized to the reader--and presumably to the interstellar civilization--as "the geriatric spice, melange" (5). For how many centuries were even the governing planetary elites supposed to have been kept in the dark about the spice's crucial function for the Spacing Guild and the Bene Gesserit? I guess if it had been overproduced to serve its relatively unimportant medical use, that might be credible.

I enjoyed the two long Villeneuve-directed films adapting this book, and the sort of largely non-culpable omissions they made demonstrate how enormously much the novel contains of plot and character. In the films, there is no scheme to frame Jessica as the traitor, Thufir Hawat doesn't die, Count Fenring does not appear, Leto II is never born, Alia is kept in utero, &c. I have to admit that the casting of these movies was so truly fine that I was happy to use my own mental images of the actors in 'scenes' from the book that were never on the screen. (Liet-Kynes is of course an exception because of the way Villeneuve contradicted the text in that case. I did like her in the movie, and my reading head-cinema picked up Lynch's Max van Sydow for him in the book.)

The 2005 edition I read featured a short afterword by Herbert's son Brian, who has since gone on to write more than a dozen books set in his father's imagined universe. The afterword is largely biographical, and its discussion of the novel didn't show any sort of insight that might excite me to read Brian Herbert's fictional contributions. show less

Herbert's monumental novel of time and space, centered on a desert planet that holds the secret to interplanetary travel, stands as tall today as it did in 1965.

The world he has created is complete and functioning -- while the politics are recognizably human, there are also sub-cultures within it that plan not in generations but in millennia, as eldritch forces manipulate lives and societies and redefine what it is possible for the human mind to encompass.

The evolution of Paul Atreides into Muad'Dib is as horrifying as it is compelling, and it's a journey that sweeps the reader onward into a world of frightening possibilities for humankind.

There is, fifty-some years on, a shadow permeating the culture of the Fremen that Herbert could show more not fully have predicted. While the adaptation of many Islamic concepts makes sense for the harsh desert world of Arrakis, the contemporary reader cannot help but feel a frisson of discomfort at the combination of religion and law, of superstition and world dominance, of single-mindedness that admits no variance from its own harsh control. The term 'jihad' may have been unfamiliar and even exotic to the Western reader of 1965; to the Western reader of 2020, it has a different connotation altogether. show less

Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

This is going to be a short review as I do not have the words to truly do the book justice. Dune is a classic for a reason. The story takes a good hard look at the human condition and wraps it in a scifi adventure story about a young man's fall and subsequent rise as the hero of a repressed people. There are so many great elements to the story which help it remain relevant every time I've read it. A concern for nature/ecology, environmental stress, show more philosophy, religion, morality, loyalty, corporate greed, social upheaval, the importance of family - the list goes on. There are even dragons and witches should the reader prefer a more fantasy-style tale than science fiction. Layers within layers within layers! It is these things that bring me to reread Dune every few years. I still thoroughly enjoy the experience. show less

All right. I'm a science fiction fan (and I recently went to Burning Man), so I'm reading Dune. This way I know what everyone's talking about.

Here's the thing. There are really great parts in Dune -- everything to do with the setting and the world-building is fantastic. Love the Fremen culture, the climate of Arrakis, the language, all that stuff is awesome. But the characterization is boring as heck. Paul is the Chosen One you see in so many stories, a kind of everyman who just reacts to the position he's been put in. The Baron is so stereotypically evil, no motivation there except that all Harkonnens are evil and he's their leader. "See me plot and scheme my evil plots and schemes!" Oh, and he's a "Pervert" too because he likes to show more fuck men. Nice one, Herbert, you win at homophobia. Jessica's the Wise Maternal Woman, the Matriarch.

Oh, and forget about the little people, the common folk. The only characters that matter are the Great Men, the Leaders ruling everybody else. People die left, right and centre and it doesn't matter. The politics of the book are basically feudal, even though it's the future and they have space travel technology and all that. Typical space opera.

So yeah. Dune is good, but it's not fabulous and I don't think it warrants the number of sequels it's produced. When you have people like Ursula Le Guin writing around the same time as Herbert, about culture in a much more progressive way, with good characters and spot-on politics (in my opinion), there's no competition -- Le Guin wins at sci-fi hands down. Dune is not the best science fiction novel ever written, as people would have you believe.

What I wrote after I finished reading it:
Finished Dune. It ends in a fucking royal marriage? What the hell! "Oh by the way, love of my life, you're gonna be my concubine (but I love you more, I promise!) but it's for the good of the empire." The book basically outlines how evil and Machiavellian the Empire is (at least in my eyes it does), but does absolutely nothing to destroy it. Paul is just given (is born into!) more power than everyone else, and uses it to gain the throne. Whoop-de-do. Oh and maybe he'll destroy the evil prison planet and try to grow more green things. Good job, King Paul. Way to use your Divine Right to uphold the status quo. Okay this paragraph isn't very articulate but I don't care. show less

As an admirer of science fiction, I wholeheartedly believe that Frank Herbert’s “Dune” transcends the silver screen adaptations. This magnum opus, with its sprawling desert landscapes, intricate political machinations, and profound ecological themes, is a literary voyage unlike any other.

Herbert’s masterful world-building immerses readers in the arid sands of Arrakis, where the spice melange flows like a river of cosmic consciousness. The saga of Paul Atreides, the prophesied Kwisatz Haderach, unfolds with a richness that no film could fully capture. The intricacies of the Great Houses, the enigmatic Bene Gesserit, and the fierce Fremen rebels intertwine to create a tapestry of epic proportions.

While the movies—despite their show more visual spectacle—inevitably compress and simplify, the novel unfurls at its own deliberate pace. Herbert’s prose, akin to the shifting sands, reveals layers of philosophy, power struggles, and mysticism. The sandworms, colossal and mythic, symbolize both danger and transformation—a metaphor that resonates far beyond the confines of cinema.

In the grand theater of imagination, “Dune” reigns supreme. Its exploration of religion, destiny, and ecological balance lingers long after the credits roll. So, dear reader, venture into the desert, ride the sandworms, and savor the spice. For this literary odyssey deserves not just stars, but entire constellations. show less

Aside from some occasional character flatness, Herbert masterfully weaves his tale to the delight of readers. The geopolitical intrigue, vivid world-building, and awe-inspiring desert ecology of Arrakis are stunning. A timely meditation on resource scarcity and power.

My first reading of Dune was before college, and I've long considered it a "favourite" even as, typical of me, I recalled only broad aspects of character and plot. Re-reading decades later, I was reminded of that first reading's faint surprise at some timeskips and major developments pushed offstage -- anticipating, for example, that the Fremen revolt would have been covered in detail only to find it covered in a few pages, glancingly, and then ... done. (Wait, wasn't the Sardaukar-Fremen war what the entire book was leading up to?!)

For this reading, my intent was to inhabit the world more than travel alongside the characters. I wanted to better appreciate Herbert's universe and sociopolitical setting, confident the plot would be show more entertaining enough. I began with the Appendices to better grasp the universe as I read through: not merely Arrakis, which I generally recall Herbert handling well in the course of the novel, but for his spacefaring civilization and the political machinations within it. I also looked into various secondary sources. *

Dune always had the conceit of being written as by an historian: most obviously, chapter epigraphs from fictional books summarizing encounters at a remove and in the past tense. This framing provided the space opera equivalent of an epic, and remained just as effective this reading. What I missed the first time, though, was how this careful storytelling calls attention to Herbert's thematic arc, less overt than the narrative arc but equally important to his story, and how his worldbuilding is in service of his themes as much as of his plot. A key instance of such dual-purpose worldbuilding is Herbert's use of a desert prophet (notably common to three religions of our own civilization, he observed) around which to structure his themes.

No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero. [276]

Herbert brings together (at least) two broad themes in Dune.

That heroes are painful for a society and that superheroes are a catastrophe.
Herbert is on record as assuming humans are fallible by definition, and that several factors compound this foundational problem: leaders reinforce their shortcomings by assuming a myth of infallibility and deflecting criticism to maintain power; power structures coalesce around leaders and are co-opted by corrupt actors; noble intent never is sufficient to avoid these problems, and may in fact merely direct social pain toward the least deserving; and, followers are as culpable as leaders.

Systems take over and grind on and on.
Human-made systems amplify the mistakes of human individuals. Human projects with the largest scale psycho-socially are religious: "messianic convulsions." Ecological projects have potential for taking politico-economic projects to a global scale, and the largest of these would be terraforming a planet.

Paul Atreides / Muad'Dib is a different character viewed from this lens, a well-intended and perhaps ideal candidate for community-minded leader, and yet by the end of this volume, seemingly on a different path than he planned. And, an unexpected result of following the thematic rather than plot developments was insight into those puzzling offstage events: they would have been interesting novelistically, no doubt, but would merely delay the thematic developments Herbert was keen to address. So that "missing" Sardaukar-Fremen war suggests the reader is looking in the wrong place for the important developments, that the conflict's outcome was not the climax of the story so much as it was inevitable, and to question the apparent victory of House Atreides.

That the novel holds up under both readings is a testament to Herbert's avoidance of mere proselytising. "(Otherwise, who will read your pot of message?)"

As I hoped, this approach made for a very different reading experience, but happily one no less enjoyable. I see there is ample enough material remaining for a third reading, but first I will continue through Herbert's original trilogy: though he wrote six Dune books, he conceived originally of "a long novel, the whole trilogy as one book." I want to see where his thematic arc leads.

* Dune initially was serialized in Analog, and comparisons with the revised novel revealed interesting omissions. Herbert also discussed his preoccupations leading to the story in interviews ("Dune Genesis", OMNI 1980 is of special interest) and in liner notes and "connective text" to recorded readings ("Sandworms of Dune", which Herbert recorded for Caedmon 1978). show less