Dune

by Frank Herbert

Paperback, 1977

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Collection

Publication

Berkley (1977), Paperback, 533 pages

Description

Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.

User reviews

LibraryThing member aethercowboy
I saw on an internet forum once, a user asked, "What's the proposed reading order of the Dune books?"

One such response was, "Start by reading Dune, then stop."

While just about every person on the face of the planet has a different opinion about all Dune books other than the first, the fact remains
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the same: Dune is memorable, classic sci-fi.

Having been the product of several failed movie attempts (some of which were actually released), Dune is not your standard sci-fi fare. It doesn't have robots (they apparently weren't 3-laws safe, and thus revolted, causing AI to be outlawed). It doesn't have ansible communication (most communication is done via couriers). It doesn't even have amazing intergalactic battles. It does have, however, interplanetary travel, and laser weapons, and flying ships, and giant sandworms that produce the geriatric spice called "melange."

If you're a fan of Asimov, you'll be used to just grinning and bearing it when he'd go off into a discussion of economics, or physics, or any other such thing he was an expert at. Herbert, likewise, fills his novel with warring political factions, socioeconomic studies, comparative religions, and just a dash of crazy.

The story tells of the House Atreides, whose patriarch, Leto I, is sent to the desert planet Arrakis (also known as "Dune"), to handle spice operations there. This isn't because the emperor wants the Atreides house to be rewarded by having direct access to the universe's greatest mind altering substance (which, turns out, is giant worm poo). In actuality, he just wants the Harkonnens (the fat, red-headed step children of the Empire) to get T.O.-ed at the Atreides, and, well, kill them, as the emperor clearly sees them as a threat to his throne.

Crazy, huh?

Well, add to that the fact that Leto's lady, the Lady Jessica, is a member of intergalactic witches, and the son she's carrying will be the most powerful player in the universe, for a time.

So, when they get to Dune, things seem to be all right, until the Harkonnens stick their big noses into everything, killing most of the House Atreides, exiling the rest to the desert. The rest, including Lady Jessica, her son Paul, a trusted family servant Duncan Idaho, and Paul's unborn sister Alia, all team up with the denizens of Arrakis, the Fremen, and wage war on the empire from their dry, precious, wasteland of a planet.

This book, one of the great sci-fi classics, is a must for any fan of sci-fi. Highly recommended for any fan of Herbert's other work, or those left disappointed by the abominations penned by his son and that Star Wars fan-fiction author.
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LibraryThing member antao
A great book full of grand themes.

Time has only made it grander in its vision. I mean, there was a time when Islam wasn't the great, dangerous "other" to Western eyes. Moderate Islam had an appeal to the west, for example, Goethe's west-eastern Divan. Dune stands in this tradition. It describes a
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world which is full of Islamic thought. It is world in which Islam probably pushed aside Christianity to become the world's leading religion. In demographic terms, Herbert will most likely turn out to be correct. Also, Paul Atreides is a soldier as well as a religious leader, that means, he is not a Jesus figure (who was not a soldier); he is a Mohamed, the leader of a state and of a religion. Then there are the themes of climate change, genetic engineering, the artificiality of religion, which were prophetic. Herbert had a keen eye for the themes that would dominate the next decades (centuries?)

And then there's the literary impact, for example, the way the inner thoughts of the characters is written in italic. “The Song of Ice and Fire” copies that. And thinking about it, the story arc of Robb Stark has similarities to that of Paul Atreides: their fathers are being made an offer they can't refuse and are being forced to relocate to a hostile environment (the desert/the south); the fathers die in a political intrigue and the son and his mother lead the army to avenge them; if it wasn't for the Red Wedding, Robb Stark's arc would have (almost) been the story of Paul Atreides. However, the supernatural elements of the Atreides' character are transferred to Bran Stark.

I don’t like all the sequels; had to read book 5 and 6 twice though to really mildly enjoy them, and the philosophical basis of the narratives wears thin at some point. I mean, the sequels mostly tell stories that are being described as logical consequences of their predecessors. Paul Atreides's rise must lead to his downfall. Leto Atreides does what Paul couldn't do, and then things happen the way Leto predicted them. And then the books stop before the ulterior motive (possibly shoehorned into the Dune world at the time of book 4) is revealed. But I guess the Star Wars novels sort of picked up that concept with the Yuuzhan Vong.

Some random thoughts:

- The more recent mini-series version of Dune & Children of Dune provided a story much closer to Frank Herbert's original;

- David Lynch's version still gives me nightmares - the scenes on Salusa Secundus are quite horrifying; I always knew the Harkonnens were bad from the book, but that bad? whoa. On the other hand there are some aspects I think Lynch really did well - the Giger-esque sets were based on the sketches for Jodorowsky's film. Sting in cod-piece? Classic!

- The music by Toto was still pretty good, and don't forget one of Brian Eno's most famous pieces "Prophecy" is used for Paul's first vision. Also Patrick Stewart as... Patrick Stewart. Actually Gurney Halleck, but since I saw him in this before Sting I picture him more as a lute-playing scottish-sounding psychopath;

- What amazed me about the original Dune series was how almost all the real action occurred 'off screen' as it were; the narration only showed action scenes that were very small, but highly pivotal events. This evokes to me the real coverage of wars we see in the media - we only see 'news-bytes' and little 30 second vignettes of what a clearly larger, far more complex events. Growing up reading action novels and other media like Star Wars or Star Trek, Dune was a real eye-opener to another way of story-telling, and I felt a superior one;

- I gave up on the mini-series almost immediately, due to the fact they gave away the big twist at the end of the novel very early on, as if it were no big deal. Paul's eventual control of the Spice on Arrakis gives him complete control over the so called Spacing Guild (who have a monopoly on space travel) and therefore over interstellar travel, due to the fact that the Spacing Guild need the Spice to make interstellar calculations. This is the big reveal at the end of the novel. It's this complete control of the Spice that gives Paul complete power over the empire. The Spacing Guild had been keeping their total reliance on the Spice a secret. The first prequel novel also made it seem as if everyone knew the Spacing Guild were completely reliant on Spice for their abilities. I gave up on it almost immediately. Yes, I'm a Dune nerd;

- As for George Lucas, I had read Dune by the time I saw 'The Empire Strikes Back' so I was well aware of how much George Lucas outright plagiarized it. 'Dune Sea' - verbatim. Sandpeople = Fremen, Mos Eisley = Arrakeen, Jabba's Palace = Ducal Palace / Paul's Palace, Moisture farmers, sandcrawlers, the skeleton of what is clearly a sandworm, the Sarlac; rather pathetic. I seem to recall Mr Herbert was disgusted by the wholesale rip-off of many of his themes;

- Tried to read all of the prequels as well, seduced by their bullshit claim of having found a trove of Frank's notes, but once I got to Dune 7 and read the hack, trite garbage they had coming out of my beloved characters' mouths I realize I had been royally buggered. Literately speaking;

- Another ingredient was Charles L. Harness for the semi-permeable shields causing a return to swordplay and a lot of the drugged-up superbrain stuff.

(View from above)

- The basic point about 'Dune' was that it came just after Mariner IV robbed writers of the default exotic locale of Barsoom. Arrakis is one of the first times an author had to invent a planet from scratch to do this sort of thing, rather than as an end in itself as Hal Clement had been doing;

- My memory of the sequels is that the "odd" books were good and the "even" books were terrible, though I confess that the only one I ever return to is the first, and the way Herbert built major changes into his future-history is something I probably overlooked at the time;

In all of the above-mentioned points it's an odd kind of SF; Dune’s world is entirely self-contained. Herbert also had the knack (beautifully developed further by the late great Iain M. Banks) of dropping just enough hints about the historical origins of his world and other "off-stage" establishing details - enough to make you believe that he conceived a totality, without having to explicitly spell it out.
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LibraryThing member PJWetzel
Dune is a brilliant story told by an incompetent fool. Frank Herbert seems a deliberate pretender at his own trade. Because of his infatuation with pretense, he comes across to me as a stranger to the real substance of the world he spent so much time and energy building. He navigates it crudely,
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filling it with characters that are all variations on the same theme: brooding, self-possessed, cynical, valuing perception over reality.

My greatest complaint is that Herbert is constantly sabotaging his story’s narrative drive with pointless pseudo-introspective dialogue. He is fatally enamored with such dialogue. The worst of it—the most banal—he obviously recognizes, because he props it up with the cheapest of ploys: he has another character gush with praise over the insipid line.

Time after time he takes the brute force route through the tangle of possibilities that the intricate story line full of characters at cross purposes with one another presents to him—missing opportunity after opportunity for sophisticated story telling. Just one example: The Guild navigators couldn’t navigate their way out of a paper bag without their drug? All interspace travel would collapse without said drug? Puh-leez!

Over and over he assembles a room full of way-too-many characters, swabs it with political tension and innuendo, and with laughably shallow pseudo-philosophy, and then has them stand/sit in static rapture of their own self-involvement and prattle on for 20 or more pages that neither advance the plot nor even produce any consequences to it. He is obviously enamored with politics—the art of appearing to be more than you are. In the end, that’s what the entire book comes across to me as: an exercise in creating appearances without substance.

To his credit, Herbert is superbly talented at turning a phrase. The phrasing is rich, often poetic and always well crafted; and his characteristic writing style is a pleasure to read. Usually that scores big points with me. But not here. ‘Dune’ is touted as one of the most outstanding examples of its genre. I pointedly disagree.
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LibraryThing member bjanecarp
I read Frank Herbert’s Dune perhaps twenty years ago during a long hot Sacramento summer. I worked at Toys -R- Us, a 3 mile walk from my grandmother’s house, where I was living, as I enjoyed the bargain of low (okay, nonexistent) rent, and a mediocre job in the retail industry. Despite the
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hundred degree days (and intolerably bad traffic), I walked to work every day. I didn’t savor being hit by a motorist careening through the Arden district. It took 45 minutes to an hour, and I often walked home, through East Sacramento, in the dark at 10 or 11 PM to return home. Whenever possible, I had a book in my hand: this was where I learned to walk and read. Peripheral vision is my only physical gift from the gods, and I’ve used passionately it ever since. I’ve finished dozens of novels walking to-and-from work, or to classes. Dune was my first walking-and-reading adventure.

I remember very little from my first reading of the novel. I remember a young man with powers beyond those of his peers. And battleship-sized sand worms. And a planet so dry it made the Sahara seem downright moist. Mostly, I remember the love story between young Paul Atreides and his bride Chani, from his youthful visions. Maybe I was young and horny. I was living with a 90-year-old woman, and my libido was certainly not running unchecked at this point in my life. So when i recently picked up the book, about a month ago, I was expecting Dune to be, from my recollection, a beautiful Bedouin-like love story set on the desert planet called Arrakis.

Okay, so maybe I should have paid closer attention to the book, and less attention to Sacramento traffic, all those years ago. The first book had the love story (and the worms in the desert) to be sure, but I somehow missed all the political intrigue. I was at a point in my reading career where I wanted a book to get to the damn story, I suppose, and skipped over the first, say, 150 pages, where Duke Leto Atreides, Paul’s father, was sent to Arrakis and the readers were struggling to uncover his potential assassin. We know from the excerpted writings of Princess Irulan that head each chapter that there will be one the desert call the Muad’Dib. We know The Duke will die, and Paul will go into exile. We know Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica, will be suspected by many people of the treason that killed her husband. We just wait for it to unfold. The anticipation is enormous, and when it finally happens, the payoff is great. Herbert writes wonderful characters against a bleak desert backdrop. The Duke’s real killer was the very nasty, very round Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, who is perpetuating a longstanding feud between the Duke’s house and his own. Behind all this intrigue are the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, who have a secret campaign to “breed” the greater houses and give birth to the one known as the Kwisatz Haderach. The antagonists are nasty without being embarrassingly evil. Their motives seem reasonable, if not to us, at least to them. You can picture some politician making the same decisions as the Baron, or trying the same manipulative policies of the Ben Gesserit. They’re not simply antagonistic for the sake of the plot.

Yep. Rather than being the love story that I fondly remembered, Dune is the story of a desert messiah: one who would bring peace and order to the universe. Oddly, I missed that minor detail during the first reading.
Herbert’s backdrop is rich: amazingly so. When you step into the world of Arrakis, you finding yourself needing a drink of water. When you read about Harkonnen schemings, your mind wanders down the myriad paths that may possibly allow Paul Atreides to escape the designs of multiple political camps. It is rare both the story and the characters in a novel have such depth and richness.

And I must say this: Dune stands on its own. I was satisfied with its ending. Twenty years ago, I didn’t want to leave the characters. I needed them to be alive awhile longer, so knew what happened to them. During this reading, I realized they’d be all right. It’s how Herbert intended them to be: they were painted correctly in the first book of many to eventually be delivered from this author, and eventually, his son Brian. But I urge readers to stop with the first one. You can still love the characters, and enjoy the intrigue, perhaps even more so, without knowing what happened to them. Each book afterwards just seems to weaken the power of the first story.

I would also recommend, perhaps, sitting on a sofa and reading the book. Definitely not a commuter pamphlet, like so many I have read in the past. You can try, but you will miss a lot of the power of the story if you don’t give Frank Herbert’s Dune the attention it deserves.
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LibraryThing member bibliobbe
What to make of this one? It’s supposedly one of the "classic" science fiction books of all time, but I found it clunky and frankly not worth getting excited about. The premise is ok – there’s a planet that has almost no water so is utterly hostile to life, but some people manage to live
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there. Other worlds are interested in this planet because of its spice trade, so you can expect the predictable level of treachery and intrigue. It’s set on a different planet, but it could be in the Middle Ages, with a better class of weaponry. The dialogue is execrable and the story drags along more often than it flows. Almost certainly one for boys who need to get out more.
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LibraryThing member edgeworth
Dune is ostensibly a classic work of science fiction, but it actually contains about as much science fiction as Star Wars. It's set in a galaxy ruled by a sprawling feudal empire, with Dukes and Houses and serfs and fiefdoms. A historical war against artificial intilligences has resulted in a law
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against advanced computers and technology. Personal force-field shields mean people fight with swords and knives. I spent much of the book wondering why Herbert didn't just make it a flat-out fantasy novel.

I suppose it is a good fantasy novel, as fantasy novels go, but I wasn't much in the mood for one at the moment. Or ever, really - I've outgrown them. They're too simplistic. I have no interest in reading about pure good versus pure evil, a dichotomy which Dune was often leaning towards in spite of the protagonist's fears that he might inadvertantly launch a bloody jihad. Take the antagonists, for example: the cruel and evil House Harkonnen, which keeps slaves, encourages oppression, and is ruled over by a fat and corpulent Duke who also happens to be a pedophile. That's just lazy. Nor do endless political machinations particularly intrigue me.

I know it's unfair to compare this to the Wheel of Time series, since that was written twenty-five years later and was clearly ripping off Dune rather than the other way round, but that was the vibe I was getting. Which is bad, because Wheel of Time is bad. As well as the aforementioned political schemes and court intrigue, the're another similar (identical, really) element that will be obvious to anyone who's read both books: the Fremen and the Aiel. Both of them are hardcore, badass desert tribes with byzantine cultures who personify freedom and the joy of life; a modern take on the noble savage. And in both books the author repeatedly beats you about the head with how HARDCORE and BADASS they are. It's a little weird. (It's also further evidence that Robert Jordan never had an original idea in his head, as if we didn't know that already).

For such a classic and renowned work of science fiction, I found Dune to be a disappointment. Oh well. At least the video game was awesome.
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LibraryThing member billmcn
I read Dune. Everybody's read Dune. I loved Dune. Everybody loves Dune. There's nothing I can add except this annecdote: in college I had a Turkish girlfriend who also liked Dune, except it drove her crazy that the head of the empire was called the "Padishah Emperor". "That's stupid," she said.
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"It's totally redundant. 'Padishah Emperor' just means the 'Emperor Emperor'."
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LibraryThing member andreablythe
One day during my high school years, I went over to my friend's house to hang out and stay the night. My friend went to talk with her parents, so I opened up Dune to read a few pages while I was waiting. At which point I dissolved into world of deserts and sandworms and spice and Fremen and
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prophecies and intrigue. I barely looked up from my book, except to eat and sleep (which I suppose didn't make me a very good friend), but my buddy forgave me (which made her a great one).

I've kind of been obsessed with Dune ever since. Not so much with the sequels (though I have read Dune Messiah), but with the original story and its adaptation first into the David Lynch movie and later into the fantastic SciFi Channel mini-series, both of which I have watched many times.

Reading the book again now, fifteen years since the first time I've read it, I'm pleased to say it's held up wonderfully. It is still so damn good.

True, my understanding of gender politics has changed and it's a little bit odd that the Bene Gesserit, a group of powerful women, spend a significant amount of their time trying to breed into creation a man who can do things they cannot. It doesn't really bother me on a significant level, but I can't help but notice it from a new point of views, as with a handful of other such things.

That said, there are so many things that I love about this book, which is full of emotional subtleties that must necessarily get lost in the visual medium of film. I love that it is full of many kinds of strong women, who do not define themselves solely by men. I love the intricate universe Herbert has created and the layers of religion and politics that back the intrigues and lies and espionage of many of the characters. I love Paul, how he is swept along by a fate he both embraces and tries to fight, and fears the future that he hurtles toward and is always trying to stop the coming jihad with every step.

I also really love how Herbert handles Princess Irulan, a character who appears in the main thread of the story only once, in the last few pages. And yet, despite this small, brief entry, she is made significant through the quotes of her writings on the events after the fact. It's just such a clever way to bring a figure into the reader's consciousness and make her important before revealing her as the end to the conflict between the houses. I also love how these quotes expand and explore the world even further and give you a chorus-style prediction of the end of the story, the reader thus taking part in predicting the future (our own prescience) the characters themselves are not yet aware of.

The list of things I love goes on. It's really a fantastic book with lots of layers. I'm looking forward to also rereading Dune Messiah and then reading Children of Dune (the only two books that still have Paul as a main character). Though I don't know if I read more of the series than that, since it's these characters who appear in the first Dune that remain the ones I love.
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LibraryThing member Terpsichoreus
People often forget that this series is what innovated our modern concept of science fiction (up until Neuromancer and The Martix, at least). Dune took the Space Opera and asked if it might be more than spandex, dildo-shaped rockets, and scantily-clad green women. Herbert created a vast and complex
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system of ancient spatial politics and peoples, then set them at one another's throats over land, money, and drugs.

Dune is often said to relate to Sci Fi in the same way that Tolkien relat...more People often forget that this series is what innovated our modern concept of science fiction (up until Neuromancer and The Martix, at least). Dune took the Space Opera and asked if it might be more than spandex, dildo-shaped rockets, and scantily-clad green women. Herbert created a vast and complex system of ancient spatial politics and peoples, then set them at one another's throats over land, money, and drugs.

Dune is often said to relate to Sci Fi in the same way that Tolkien relates to Fantasy. I'd say that, as far as paradigm shift, this is widely true. Both entered genres generally filled with the odd, childish, and ridiculous and injected a literary sensibility which affected all subsequent authors.

Few will challenge the importance of Star Wars' effect on film and storytelling in general, but without Dune, there would be no Star Wars. Princess Alia, the desert planet, the Spice, the Bene Gesserit, and Leto II all have direct descendants in the movies. It is unfortunate that Lucas seems to have forgotten in these later years that his best genius was pilfered from Herbert, Campbell, and Kurosawa.

Though I have heard that the later books do not capture the same eclectic energy as the first, Dune itself is simply one of the best pieces of Sci Fi ever written. Read it, Starship Troopers, Ringworld, Neuromancer, and Snowcrash and you'll know everything you need to about Sci Fi: that you want more.
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LibraryThing member TheBooknerd
Yet again I fall into the minority when it comes to a widely popular book -- that is, I didn't care for it. I do appreciate many things about this book: the world-building, the creativity, the sociopolitical themes. However, I found the story itself to drag, lag, and plod along in a rather
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yawn-inducing manner. I would never have finished the book had I not been required to for a class. I've read grammar texts that were more exciting. I'm sure that, in it's time, this was a very exceptional book. And, it being a classic, I suppose everyone should read it at least once, like reading "The Odyssey" or "Great Expectations". These days, though, there are more interesting and better written things to spend time on.
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LibraryThing member DirtPriest
I am officially out of the nerd fleet brig after reading this SF masterpiece, but I honestly think that I would have enjoyed it less if I had read it earlier in my SF career. It is a very deep book, as several characters would put it, plots within plots within plots, feints within feints within
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feints. The political awareness and commentary by Herbert is profound and eye opening as the author makes so many wise statements about politics and political power that they would be hard to count, much like 1984 in a way, but without being depressing and disheartening. The literature value of it is quite high as well and it is something that should be widely read outside of the SF community, and I'd bet that it is. Herbert also explores the concept of legitimate precognition in great detail. The world of Arrakis is the sole provider of 'spice', which gives the near mystical power of foresight. This is greatly magnified in the person of Paul, who is the product of a centuries long genetic breeding project. He becomes a member of the Fremen, a people who wander the desert in their stillsuits, designed to constantly reclaim their body's water. Water is a critical part of the story and makes the Fremen a unique fantasy creation.

My only complaint is that there is a bit too much of the 'making up new words for old things' going on throughout, to the extent that there is a several page long glossary in the rear of the book. At least in my copy, I'm assuming it is standard. Do you really need to call apricots 'mish-mish'? Not really. Some of this sort of thing is standard, and frankly sets a fantasy realm apart from reality, but it's not that big of a deal. Something a non SF reader might want to know going in, that's all.

It really is one of the most inventive worlds that I've read, along with a list of memorable and very well developed characters, all of which have distinct personalities and dialogue traits. Another opinion of mine, Herbert is the most Dickens-like of the classic SF authors. He takes a long time to develop characters and makes them unique. There are a few totally evil bastards along the way, but they are interesting characters in their own right, with their own feints with in feints, plots within plots. In my limited experience with Dickens, this seems to be what makes his stories so enduring and endearing. Everybody knows that the best stories are character driven, look at Star Trek. Those characters are so enjoyed that the actors usually have their careers ruined, or at least permanently colored by playing them.

Most people know of Dune as a stand-alone work, but it is actually the beginning of a centuries spanning epic saga of a colossal space empire. The sixth book (Chapterhouse: Dune) is set thousands of years after Dune and the story set in motion in the first book chugs right along for millennia, involving the same institutions. There are several prequel books by Herbert's son, and a few that take place after Dune, wikipedia has what seems to be a decent chronology of the dozen or more total Dune books. I'm really exited to explore one of the great creations of the SF genre, it does compare favorably to Middle-Earth thus far in scope and detail. We'll see if that continues. (I'd bet that it does)
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LibraryThing member theWallflower
This one's on everyone's must-read sci-fi books of all time so I figured I'd better read it or I'm not really an author. And I hadn't seen the David Lynch movie before this, so I wasn't ruined by that (I have seen it since, but I'll get to that later) (And I did see the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series
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and read the comic before, so I knew what to expect going in).

And it's a good thing I did -- there is a lot going on here. It takes place in a very well-developed world. Almost too well-developed. There's a lot of characters, a lot of factions, and a lot of plot lines. Too many things to remember, if I hadn't already known what was going on. It's got the feel of a Homeric epic. But at its base, it is the tale of a hero's journey. One involving a privileged prince. It's Star Wars-ian in feel -- princesses, interstellar empires vs. rebels, lots of mystical hoosefudge.

One of the biggest problems is that the hero falls into a typical "can-do-no-wrong" author trope. Everything he does works perfectly executed, reasonable, and unflawed. Plus he's got those nice deus ex machinas working for him like "The Voice" and "The Weirding Way". No matter what he faces -- a tiny assassin robot, a fight to the death, kidnapping -- he wins. Likewise, the villain is traditionally villainous -- molests young boys, kills servants, addicted to various things, and manipulates loved ones to gain power.

I found myself reading it just for the sake of reading it. This was written sixty years ago, so science-fiction and writing style has changed a lot since then. Back in the day, this was probably awesome. But time has not been kind to Dune. I acknowledge its significance in the genre. Star Wars = Dune + samurais. In fact, each movie has a desert planet in it.
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LibraryThing member Grimshado
People are divided over whether this is a good book or not. I firmly believe this is an amazing book, but I am willing to admit Bias. It is on my lst of books to try and read every-other-year.

When I first read this book, I was 12 or 13. I'd spent most of my childhood in conservative rural areas.
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The previous 4 generations of my family worked in the Petroleum industry. I'd had limited exposure to ideaa and philosophies and activites outside that world.

This book introduced me to the concept of finite resources. This bok introduced me to religions outside the evangelical Baptist world I'd been surrounded by. This book opened my eyes.

In retrospect many characters exhibit simple, extreme emotional responses. They are all locked into a single motivation and world view that informs everything they do. They seem flat.

But they story is moving and engaging. The world building is incredible. The philosophy still moves me.
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LibraryThing member anterastilis
What have I been reading this year? Harry Potter and Dune...and that's about it.

I have never really gotten into Sci-fi in book form. I've read some - War of the Worlds, Enders Game, but when I set them down, they were down. No huge impact on me. I love Sci-fi TV shows and movies...perhaps its the
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exploding things and other sorts of eye candy that suck me in. In any case, I figured it was about time to try some literary Sci-fi. And why not start with one of the bigguns...Dune.

The book begins with Jessica and her son, Paul. Jessica is of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, women raised with exceptional powers of genetic memory and control over others. Paul seems to have inherited some of these traits (that are usually only evident in women). There's speculation right from the beginning that Paul might be super-special - someone to be watched over, harnessed, and feared. Paul is also the son of Leto Atreides, head of the House Atreides. Leto falls out of the Emperor's favor and is sent to live on Arrakis, the Dune planet. Arrakis is populated with Harkonnens (particularly nasty people, enemies of the House Atreides) and Fremen, strange people who have adapted to life in the desert by wearing stillsuits (which sound kind of like spacesuits, only they recycle water from ones body). And there are sandworms, which reminded me of that weird old Kevin Bacon movie, Tremors.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but it surely wasn't a novel of political intrigue. The politics of the planet Arrakis and its place in the galaxy (sole producer of the spice Melange, incredibly important for all life) was the major focus of, oh, the middle third of the book.

This book chronicles Paul's development from Imperial Brat to fugitive to fighter to fulfilling his destiny as a sort of demigod. Don't worry, this is all pretty apparent from the beginning of chapter one. I did enjoy it, even for just the descriptions and feel of the book. Frank Herbert did a great job creating a world, populating it with fascinating characters, and telling the tale of how Paul Atreides came to power.

It is the first of the series, so it ends rather abruptly. I liked the ending, though. There's a good, sudden connection between two characters that were previously at odds.

Will I pick up the next Dune book? Not right now. This book is incredibly complex. Everyone's got a detailed history and specific relationship with everyone else. I'm surprised at how much I remember - there were times in which I felt like my head was yanked open and information was just being poured in faster than I could comprehend it. It was dense and it took me quite a while to get through it. I hope to read another one someday.
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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
Dune is The Lord of the Rings of science-fiction: Thick, dense, written in omniscient with incredible world building and a cult following. "Arrakis" aka Dune, the desert planet is just about the most memorable world in all of science fiction. So arid is this world that in order to survive its
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inhabitants use special suits to recycle and preserve every bit of moisture from their body. The sandworms, the precious "spice" crucial to interstellar travel, the culture of the planet is indelible in my mind decades after reading it.

This book was published in 1965 yet, unlike most science fiction up to that date, has rounded, important and strong female characters. I cared about Jessica--and her son Paul.

There's just so much to this novel--it has elements of fantasy. Paranormal powers held by the "Bene Gesserit witches," a feudal structure--yet has well-thought out and imaginative use of science as well.

I wasn't as entranced by the sequels--I wasn't happy with some of the developments in the later books, the way the characters went, and as with many series, I think the later books suffered from bloat. But this first novel was entrancing in the best tradition of science-fiction, putting you literally into a world very different than our own.
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LibraryThing member mtilleman07
I'm of two minds (pun intended) on this one. On one hand, it's a really masterfully constructed alternate universe: not too crazy, gorgeously internally consistent, and compellingly nuanced. For a single book, Dune established a world, and told a moving story. That being said, there could have been
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fewer flat characters and more complexity. The characters Herbert actually gave us are for the most part remarkably one-dimensional, but not so much so that the book could be meaningfully read as an allegorical tale.

On the other hand, you'll never forget this bad boy was written in the 60's and not more recently? Need to demonstrate how evil the evil character is? Make him a lecherous homosexual! It's not like that's stopped happening, but it ties into the blithely accepted class relationships (which bother only one character, and even then not enough to influence the plot) to suggest a deeply conservative (with a small c) world.

Glad I read it, it's a classic, etc. etc. etc. but I'm not sure how much I care about what happens in this alternate world, however skillfully conjured.
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LibraryThing member jmchshannon
Read as part of the Social Justice Challenge and its focus on Water during the month of February, I was not quite certain what to expect upon picking up this very famous and exalted book. I remember how much my mother loves the movie version of the book and faintly remember being thoroughly
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confused by the plot every time I tried to watch it as a girl. I remember the focus on Spice and the blue eyes, and the sand worms. Who could forget them? But the plot itself remained a mystery.

This is one of the most technical science fiction books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It was so complicated that I was not certain I wanted to finish this book. I am personally not a tremendous fan of science fiction, and the world in Dune is so foreign that it truly was a turn-off in the first fifty pages. However, once I read past those initial pages, I found myself drawn into a very rich world that reminds me very much of Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings trilogy in its detail and specificity. I particularly loved the details that were reminders of our own world, especially since the book itself is supposed to take place 8,000 years into the future. It increased the plausibility of the book to be able to recognize such words like baklava, Sunni, Ramadan, and the like.

This book is very much about character development. Paul Atriedes starts out as a youth still being trained for his future as Duke of a planet and faces total destruction of his family and his House. He is thrust into a foreign environment so harsh, so desolate that to live there is considered a death sentence. Watching him grow and accept his role as leader of the House Atriedes as well as the Fremen of Arrakis is the entire book, but it is a fascinating journey.

Dune is extremely well-written with exacting details that are incredibly realistic. It is by no means an easy book to read. As much as I anxiously turned each page and so desperately wanted to find out how it ended, I had to read each page slowly and carefully because it is so technical. Mr. Herbert bounces around between ecology, military science, politics, religion, technology, geology, sociology and psychology using his own language and phrasing that does make the book read at times like a training manual in a foreign language. However, it is well worth the effort and time to decipher each page because of the beauty of the world of Arrakis and the universe created by Mr. Herbert. It may be harsh, cruel, corrupt, and unforgiving but the age-old battle of humanity and equity versus power is familiar enough to provide its own lessons about humanity, dedication and power.

On the planet Arrakis, water is power. To cry for someone or something is the ultimate sacrifice because it is wasting valuable water (tears) for no purpose. Water is the ultimate source of currency because on a planet that does not get any rain, water is life. To tie that to our society today, this is a familiar idea. Water is power and always has been. In ancient times, civilizations were built and destroyed based on their ability to grow around and control major waterways. In the most desolate parts of the world, being able to bring in a source of clean water remains a sign of wealth. What occurs in Dune - other than the mind-altering psychic powers achieved from the spice, the interstellar travel, the different planetary Houses, and the like - does pertain to today's society.

The need for water is so basic that those of us who are lucky enough to be surrounded by a seemingly endless supply of it take it for granted. Dune is a brutal reminder of the necessity of water and what it can mean for an entire society without access to it. In addition, the book remains a fascinating study of character growth, accepting new cultures and customs and adapting to a very sensitive political environment. The lessons taught about standing up for your belief system, honoring humanity, and paying attention to your surroundings are excellent and remain important today. If you are a science fiction fan, then you most likely have already read this book. If you have not, I highly recommend it.
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LibraryThing member Choccy
I liked the idea offered from this book. The adventure and the sci-fi elements were definitely promising. The planet and the ways of living of the people to cope with the harsh environment were interesting.

Too bad, the characterization plus some of the plots were not according to my taste. Some
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were killed off too fast, the others were...well,simply boring and predictable.

The first part was awesome, the second and the third lost me. The final battle did not offer the highest dramatic tension as hoped. Plus, I found the philosophical nuances (and whatnot) a bit tiring. I wanna see more action, for Verne's sake!

To complete my rambling here: I got the feeling that this book is somewhat misogynic. Not only because I don't like reading books with concubines in it, mind you.

But hey, since I appreciated the ideas offered, I'm still gonna give it a three-star rating. Doesn't mean I'm gonna read it the second time in the near future though.
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LibraryThing member ed.pendragon
Dune is one of those thoughtful novels that successfully straddle the genres of fantasy and speculative fiction. SF often deals with philosophical ideas and scientific concepts in a fictional setting where exploration of the conundrum frequently takes precedence over the plot. Fantasy, on the other
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hand, often shows less interest in mechanisms and tends to go for a variation on a familiar narrative.

Dune presents itself as a fantasy (Chosen One has to restore or improve on the previously obtaining status quo using quasi-magical means) with a large dollop of scientific speculation (planetary ecology, resource exploitation, human behaviour and ethics). A cursory reading will pick up on the essential Good versus Evil theme, while a closer reading will consider the dilemmas that the main characters have to confront within the harsh environment they find themselves in. Paul Atreides, the central figure in the story, has to come to terms with his own growing psychic abilities, with political intrigue, assassination plots, treachery and the demands of the arid planet of Arrakis; the fantasy aspect centres on what happens to him and the SF aspect on how it happens.

Does it work? I think it largely does, and the fact that Dune has been chosen as one of the Gollancz SF Masterworks series is an indication that this is certainly not an idiosyncratic judgement. A crucial part of the plot machinery is the use of Fate or Destiny, a characteristic Fantasy trope but, I think, rarer in SF: past generations have seeded the idea of a Chosen One on the planet Dune, founded on selective genetic manipulations made by a secretive cabal, but all doesn't go entirely to plan when a male, not a female, and from the wrong generation, gets recognised on Dune as the person who was prophesied and proceeds to act accordingly. This idea of Fate subverted is reinforced by the family name Atreides (which harks back to legendary Greece and their belief in gods ruling human destiny) but is also further developed by linking up with scientific speculation, current in the 60s, on the possible existence of parallel futures based on whether different choices are made or different accidents come about. I think many rationalists would fight shy of predestination, but Herbert makes an interesting attempt to consider how self-fulfilling prophecies can come about but doesn't go as far as Hari Seldon in Asimov's Foundation stories in suggesting that the future can be fairly accurately predicted.

Another way of thinking that emerged in the 60s was concerned with holism linked with the idea of self-sustaining planetary ecosystems. While current scientific thinking disputes whether this theory of ecosystems was not largely down to wishful thinking, holistic concepts still remain very powerful and influential in many individuals' beliefs. Dune's terraforming ideas were a reflection of the zeitgeist of that post-war period, an era of optimism for change for the better.

Ultimately, however, Dune is a fantasy, tapping into our needs for good storytelling, strong characters (many of whom are shown to have familial relationships) and unexpected cliffhangers. I'm not sure that Arthur C Clarke's assessment of the novel as comparable with Tolkien stands up to scrutiny, but in terms of worldbuilding Herbert comes close. Certainly there is similar apparatus of appendices, map and glossaries; use the glossary as you read the novel, by all means, and try to relate the action to the map, but leave the appendices to after a first reading.
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LibraryThing member AFlickering
I got Herbert's classic Dune expecting to find the archetypal sci-fi epic, a grand, gritty, futuristic, gimmick-free tale of strife and conflict. That, I most certainly got. Twists and turns abound, this has plenty for any reader who likes an exciting, fast-moving, intriguing plot. Rife with
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treachery, an array of diverse characters lock horns in a variety of ways with palpable tension and sometimes dire consequences - plots within plots within plots develop. What I didn't expect, however, was such an emphasis on religion and mysticism, on culture, on ecology and landscape, on inner discipline and wisdom, often insightfully reflecting the nature of humanity. Nor did I expect such an undercurrent of beauty flowing beneath the brutality, be it in the landscape, in the people, in the mentality of individuals. Arrakis is a deadly world, yet it holds its charms too as certain characters note - in a beautiful sunset perhaps, in a simple silence, or in the richness of Fremen culture. Necessarily hard and uncompromising in their ways, the Fremen, residents of their harsh and dry Arrakis home, are swept up by the dream of a more habitable world, where water falls from the sky, where greenery isn't swallowed by the vast sands and lakes are more than just wishful thinking. A young boy born a future-seeing prophet, hardened by intelligence beyond his years and a sensation of terrible purpose, unable at times to keep his own frailties at bay as he teeters on the fine line between liberation and ruin. An ever-complimentary contrast of harsh violence with gentle beauty is what makes this story special, epitomised for all to see by Gurney Halleck - an ugly, ruthless killer, with the mind of a poet and a talent for song.
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LibraryThing member JGolomb
It's been a good 20 years since I've read Dune. I've been introducing my 10-year old to science fiction and thought I'd see if he was ready for Herbert's classic. I'd forgotten the intensity of the story-telling. Herbert's language is big and bold and you get a sense of the poetry his son writes
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that Frank H. used when crafting this SciFi classic. There is no levity in the story. All aspects of the plot are deep and weighty and dramatic.

I found myself realizing how the core plot can be found in many an epic tale - Kings and Queens battling over power and treasure. The setting is science fiction, but there's a significant fantasy component baked into the prophetic and magical powers of the two lead characters: Paul and his mother Jessica.

This story is placed in a space-traveling future on a planet called Dune...as desolate, dry and remote as the name sounds. The Atreides family is in a generations-long battle with the Harkonnen family. Both are embroiled in the treacherous manipulations of the Imperial Emperor, the all-female religion-building Bene Gesserit, and the space traveling monopoly holding Guild.

Herbert has built an imaginative, vast and realistic Universe. It's clear from this debut novel in a series whose publications stretch over 40 years, that Herbert put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into layering on the flesh of his world's history, past, and future. And all aspects are based in bits and pieces of our own histories, religions and cultures. And this doesn't even cover the very clear and obvious ecological message wrapped around the true central figure of the book - Planet Dune. The metaphysical philosophizing works well within the royal dramas and intrigues.

This edition contains an afterward written by Herbert's son Brian who's carried on the Dune tradition with a series of books published over the last several years placed in the Dune universe along various timelines relative to Dune.

Stay away from the movies, but absolutely jump (back) into this book. At about 500 pages, it's still a fast and exciting read.
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LibraryThing member shabacus
I came to Dune fairly fresh, without a lot of preconceived notions of what it was about. I think "desert planet" was floating around in the back of my head. I pictured Tatooine.

What I got was something... unusual. I couldn't decide if the book wanted to be sci-fi or fantasy, although since everyone
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speaks about it in terms of science fiction, that's what I'll call it. I felt like I had just been dumped into the middle of a much longer story, and that's not a bad thing, just disconcerting.

What I couldn't quite catch was the shape of it. There is definitely a lot of the mythic hero in Paul, but I felt that so many of the other characters went off into their own plot threads and got discarded when it appeared they no longer served the center of the story. The result felt jumbled, not intentional but the relics of an earlier draft.

It was good. I enjoyed it. But I didn't finish with the burning desire to read the others in the series, especially since (as I understand it) they trend downhill in quality. All of that being said, I can certainly understand how the story would excite the imagination and leave others wanting more.

Recommendation: Read it if you haven't, because it's the kind of classic that informs everything that comes after it. It just didn't strike me as spectacular.
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LibraryThing member sushicat
The House of Atreides has been gifted with the riches of Arrakis (Dune), an inhospitable desert planet that is the sole source of melange spice, a highly addictive substance that is key to space travel. The gift is a poisoned one and within a short time they are all but annihilated by their forever
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enemies, the House of Harkonnen. Only Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica remain. They are driven underground among the ranks of the native Fremen, who fight the Harkonnen rule over their planet.

The tale works on many different levels: a wealth of political intrigue, different groups with their own agendas; the ecological aspects of Dune, it's impact on society; religious myths and the impact of prophecy fulfilled; magical technology, weird creatures and wonderful characters to love and to hate. And it's really well written.

I've never been much of a science-fiction fan - or so I thought. What I tend to dislike about science fiction is the focus on science, space travel and battles. What I like about fantasy is the impact on society and human interaction magic abilities have, as well as the discovery of the fantastic concepts created by the author. Put that way I realize that the appreciation of the genre is not really about the genre itself, but rather about the kind of story an author has to tell.

When I browsed the tab for science fiction classics I was quite astonished to see that I read quite a number of those - but did not really label them as such. Suddenly the boundary between science fiction and fantasy looks a lot fuzzier. Which reminds me of the quote from Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Looks like I need to browse a bit more on this shelf!
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LibraryThing member Widsith
Dune is one of those sci-fi novels where you get hit by a stream of dense, exotic-sounding coinages and no explanations about where we are or what's happening. It reads like there was a prologue which was removed before publication. Our hero, Paul Atreides, is also known as Muad'dib, and having
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endured the gom jabbar may be the Kwisatz Haderach foretold by the Bene Geserrit as well as the Lisan al-Gaib predicted by the ijaz of the Fremen, otherwise known as Usul in his home sietch…etc.

The exposition can be a little clunky at times, too. How's this for subtly introducing the identity of a new character:

‘Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, do?’

To which my initial reaction was: Is it not a shit thing that I, the reviewer Warwick Wise, read? Nevertheless, there is a certain charm to it all, the characters are a lot more than cardboard cutouts, and the world-building, prefiguring everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones, is complex and excellent.

The story itself is a very classical hero-narrative (deliberately so – Herbert was a big fan of Joseph Campbell), which moves slowly but has all kinds of interesting details. Perhaps surprisingly, it felt to me like a real product of the 60s in many ways, with a central role given to mind-altering substances and an important ecological theme – the book is dedicated to ‘dry-land ecologists’. (Dune was popularised among the countercultural community after being included in Stuart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, in a completely unexpected link with my other recent reading.) But all of these factors also make it quite relevant today, not least the depiction of a religiously fanatical desert community being exploited for the hugely profitable substance found by drilling into the sands. Those are all just added extras, though – if you don't enjoy the prospect of a big, sprawling political science-fiction saga then you're not going to get much out of the various subplots.

This Folio Society edition is kind of gorgeous, featuring these absolutely exquisite illustrations from Sam Weber, as well as a badly-written afterword from Brian Herbert which does not incline me to read the later sequels he wrote from his father's notes. I probably should have read this twenty years ago, but I'd still consider it a good, foundational piece of sci-fi, which sheds light on several aspects of the tradition and can still be enjoyed plenty for its own sake.
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LibraryThing member greeniezona
(review originally written for bookslut)

Dune had been calling me.

From the moment it arrived in a box full of books from my sister (I had lent it to her previously but I needed it back to review it for the 100 books list), it had been calling me.

Every single time I finished a book and wandered to
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the bookshelf to decide what to read next, it called me.

Why was I resisting? This is a good question. Part of it was just that I had read it before, and I knew that I loved it. I suppose I was saving it, to console me after reading a particularly painful book. There were also a lot of books on the list that were new to me, and I didn't want to jump straight into something I already knew. Something comfortable. I wanted to be challenged.

I also wanted to get some studying done. As soon as I gave in and picked up, I was gone, given over completely to it. Homework? Who cares! Time for bed? Who cares! Missed the bus and have to sit at the stop for half an hour before the next one comes? Yay!

One might think that a book I'm this familiar with would be easier to put down, but it was exactly the opposite. My mind was constantly jumping ahead to what was next, and I was eager to get there and read it again. Never mind that I've seen the movie over and over again. Never mind that my father read the book to my sister and me when we were younger, and that I had read it again myself as recently as two years ago. That's how much I love this book.

And what's not to love? Sure, there's the stupid macho pissing contest between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, which goes on for seemingly little reason, but that's small beans compared to all the wonderful things in this book.

First of all, I want to be a Bene Gesserit, okay? Forget "Jedi knight" as an alternative religion, the next time the census comes around I'm writing down Bene Gesserit. Lady Jessica is one of the most fascinating women in science fiction. She's incredibly powerful in many ways yet entirely powerless in others. She defies her superiors in an organization whose motto is "We exist only to serve." She does so in the hope of producing the Kwizatz Haderach, yet is horrified when it appears that this is exactly what she's done.

Her son, Paul, Usul, Muad'Dib, the Kwizatz Haderach, could be said to be the main character of the book (that is, if you don't assume that the main character is the desert planet itself.) As pointed out in Michael's recent review of Dune, Paul is a young fifteen when his father is assassinated and he and his mother are thrown out into the harsh desert in the middle of a planet-wide war. With only stillsuits to conserve their water, a bag of tools salvaged from a thopter crash, and their wits, Paul and his mother must dodge huge man-eating worms, avoid the perils of the desert, and befriend the "locals," the Fremen, who aren't usually given to showing kindness to those not born and raised in the desert.

Then there is the desert itself. Dune, the planet Arrakis. A planet on which there is no surface water to be found outside of the small frozen icecaps at the planet's poles. The planet which is the universe's only source of the spice, melange, which is what makes interstellar flight, amongst other things, possible. The entire human civilization depends upon the production of a resource constantly threatened by sand storms, politics, and the worms, which are always drawn to mining activity and will swallow a mining craft whole if it isn't rescued first. Wells that produce water mysteriously dry up within a few hours. And for a planet seemingly devoid of water, the air contains more water than would be expected.

Really, I could go on and on about Dune, and I think that I've rambled enough. Dune is unquestionably one of the best science fiction books ever written. It does not succumb to any of the usual limitations of the genre, instead it addresses so many larger themes in life it could make one dizzy. It is a science fiction novel not afraid of science, nor shying away from human nature and relationships.

And here I am raving again. Let me just say this: Dune is one of the most enjoyable and accessible books on the 100 books list. If you haven't read it yet, you should. If you are tempted to see the movie first, please see the movie and not the truly awful mini-series, for which my high hopes were dashed within the first thirty minutes (and I could not bring myself to watch it any longer.) Neither are terribly true to the book, but the movie at least gives a good feel for the themes and general plot of the book.

Please excuse me, it's time that I finally went and read the rest of the series.
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Language

Original publication date

June 1, 1965
1965

Physical description

533 p.; 6.8 inches

ISBN

0425027066 / 9780425027066
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