Dune By Frank Herbert

Dune 

By Frank Herbert

It's 1958 in Florence Oregon the department of agriculture is trying to anchor moving sand dunes using poverty grasses. A journalist starts an article about this project that he will never finish. Instead, his studies will merge with his view of feudalism as humanity's natural state (What the actual fuck? {It’s a popular position}), his interest in superheroes and messiahs, and his observation that the desert is the home of several religions with messianic overtones. Although I would argue with him that Christianity is actually a child of the desert's edge at best. Added into this churning sea was experimentation with psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic produced by a variety of mushrooms, which Herbert made a hobby of cultivating (I am completely non-shocked by this). 

What emerged after five years of research and writing was Dune. A novel that has been compared to the Lord of the Rings in its scope and influence. Much like Lord of the Rings, it has had a powerful impact on its genre and on popular culture outside of it, with music, comics, and other entertainments being directly or indirectly inspired by it. Dune is also infamous for the rocky road it traveled to be published and that difficulty seems to plague every attempt to adapt it. Let's take a look, shall we? 

Dune was first published as a serial in Analog magazine, Part I of the novel was released in three parts under the title Dune World from December 1963 to February 1964. Parts II and III were released in five parts under the title Prophet of Dune from January to May of 1965. The serial version was well received so Mr. Herbert collected them, expanded and cleaned them up, and began shopping around for a publisher for Dune as a stand-alone novel. Over twenty publishers turned him down, not because they thought the novel was bad, but because they thought it was too different and too weird for wider audiences to accept. It wasn't a Buck Rogers style, two-fisted, ray gun tale so, popular wisdom argued that science fiction audiences would reject it (It was, after all, the Fabled Age of Chrome!). 

However, a fellow writer turned editor named Sterling Lanier believed in the story and pitched it to his bosses over at Chilton Company, a publishing company known for primarily printing do-it-yourself auto repair manuals. They started publishing in August 1965, the first run of Dune was priced at almost $6 which in today's dollars is about $49. Needless to say, at first it didn't sell well and critics hated it... Because it wasn't a Buck Rogers style story with ray guns and robots among other things. They complained about the pace, the density and sheer alienness of the societies presented. Lanier was fired but went on with his writing and also became a fairly acclaimed sculptor, so he would get the last laugh on his bosses in several ways here. 

Meanwhile, Dune slowly built up its popularity through word of mouth. A process that modern folks would find agonizingly slow compared to today. Remember there's no internet, no cell phones, if your buddy lives in another city you have to sit down and write him a postal letter and wait weeks for a response. The word did spread, as copies were passed around and more and more people read the book, bought their own copies, turning Dune into a success. In 1966 it won the Hugo, tying with Roger Zelazny's and winning the first Nebula award for best novel. It eventually won over defenders, such as Arthur C Clark and Robert Heinlein. Today it's been translated into over a dozen languages and sold millions of copies and will likely sell millions more. Much like the Fremen who occupy the center of the narrative, Dune endured and outlasted its critics and then burst out into the science fiction landscape in a riotous assault. 

We've done it before but let's go over the background one more time. Humanity is united in a single empire under the Padishah Emperor (Shaddam IV, at this point.  What gets me is how vast and far-flung this empire is, and I’ll get to why momentarily). His authority is not absolute.  He must contend with the Great Noble Houses of the Landsraad, the Spacing Guild, and various other organizations like the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. The Great Houses directly control the planets of the Empire. Now the Emperor does have his own planets.  Including the planet where he raises his dread Sardaukar troops but the Great Houses united could drown them in bodies. That requires them to be united however and the Great Houses are riven with feuds and petty politics (This is what gets me.   The Sardaukar are produced on one planet, and the empire is absolutely vast, with various houses controlling one or more other entire planets.  It shouldn’t necessarily take all the houses to swamp the emperor in bodies, even with his terror troops, because there’s only so terrifyingly badass one guy can be.  I don’t know, it just seems to me that Herbert didn’t consider the problem of scale.{Sure you don’t need everyone, but if a bunch of houses decide to side with the Emperor, so you need a big enough faction to convince at least most of the others to sit this one out or the outright support of the spacing guild to let you defeat everyone in detail.}). In addition, space travel is controlled by the Guild who have created a monopoly on FTL travel. So to overthrow the Emperor you need to unify a bunch of petty aristocrats and gain the approval of a corporate monopoly. Or do you? 

The empire also depends on the spice Melange, which is only found on the planet Arrakis aka Dune. Spice enables the Guild to safely travel by folding space. Spice enhances human mental and physical capabilities and even extends life. Without spice, the civilization of the Empire collapses and traps the majority of humanity into single system isolation. Dune is a desert planet, dominated by giant sandworms that devour anything in their path. Most of humanity lives in the northern hemisphere behind a ring of mountains called the shield wall. So says conventional wisdom anyways, out in the desert the Fremen, the natives of Dune live in hidden communities and resist all outside authority. Considering that outside authority is the House Harkonnen, a Great House known for its brutality, it's easy to see why they resist (It is easy to see why any indigenous people resist imperialism in any form, but the Harkonnen are like… Belgians in the Congo level bad.). Change however is in the air, as the Emperor has taken Arrakis away from the Harkonnens and given it a new house, House Atreides, and thus onto Dune comes hither Paul Atreides the central character of our narrative. 

Paul is an interesting character. He is both the product of thousands of years of controlled breeding by the Bene Gesserit, a sisterhood of talented women who seek to create a superhuman they call the kwisatz haderach, and an utter accident. Because Paul, according to the Bene Gesserit plan isn't supposed to exist, his mother was only supposed to give birth to daughters to marry the Harkonnen heir. Frankly, given what they planned to do to that hypothetical girl, I don't blame Jessica for having a boy instead (I don’t blame her either. And unifying the two houses with Feyd-Rauthe at the head?  Yeeesh.). That said Paul has powers beyond what anyone was expecting and has been raised outside of anyone's control while being trained by both his father's instructors and his mother Jessica (Trained as both a Male Bene Gesserit, and a Mentat, which is utterly terrifying even before the special sauce.). Once exposed to a massive amount of spice, he develops the ability to see into possible futures (Strictly speaking, he had limited prescient vision before that.).  This paired with his own education of Bene Gesserit and Atreides martial arts and political skills turns him into an impossibly charismatic and skilled leader and fighter. Which makes him dangerous to everyone. 

The first part of our novel is how House Atreides comes to Dune, is betrayed from within, and is overthrown and scattered by the combined Imperial and Harkonnen forces. It is a tragic story of good people being betrayed and mistakes made for the noblest ends. However, the well-intentioned House Atreides falls and savage Harkonnen stands triumphant. At this point, Paul and his mother are forced to flee to the Freman and fight for a place in their harsh but collectively supportive society. Paul learns of the secrets of the Freman and their secret goal to create a planet that has both greenery and desert and he works to co-opt that goal with his own goal of revenge on everyone who either helped with the destruction of his family or refused to act to prevent it(In the process, he does legitimately go native.). To this end, he and his mother train the Fremen in the Bene Gesserit martial arts and create a truly terrifying military machine. More importantly, Paul figures out how to utterly destroy all the spice on Dune. Because in his estimation it's only the person who can destroy a thing that can truly control it. 

That's only one of the conflicts driving the story, there's also Bene Gesserit's desperate attempts to save their breeding program, Jessica's attempt to keep Paul from diving into the abyss and the biggest driving conflict is Paul versus history. Because while Paul wants revenge and to topple the throne of the Known Universe, he seeks to do so in a relatively contained way. His visions increasingly show him that once you unleash violence like this, it can't be contained. He is constantly plagued with visions of a Galactic Jihad in his name, of Freman in their millions seizing control of FTL and using it to storm world after world waving the Green Banner of House Atreides as a sign of his divinity. Paul's struggle in this novel is to prevent the Jihad while achieving the throne, but his failure is in the fact that the throne and the Jihad are inseparably linked. Paul could have stopped the Jihad by giving up the throne and deciding that there was a limit to revenge but he couldn't do that. In the end, he’d rather have the blood of billions on his hands than surrender one inch of his ambitions. In short, Dune is about Paul failing to resist the temptations of power and vengeance and how all the power in the universe won't help you if you can't resist those temptations. You'll end up swept up in the tide, as helpless as any peasant (Not really sure how he could have not taken the throne though. In a situation like the one he was in, he kinda had to.  I suppose he could have just held Spice hostage forever…{Take the Imperial family hostage and just rule as Duke of Dune and Caladan and maybe seize the Harroken domains or for that matter just kill everyone and fade back into the desert and let the universe sort itself out.  There are options here, whether they’re as good as taking the throne I suggest we leave to the reader to ponder})

I should note the above is only one way to read the text, there is also the story of a tragic fall, the triumphant rise of a colonized and hunted people into a galactic superpower, or their hideous corruption into a new wave of imperialist oppressors There's the struggle of Jessica to try and save her children from themselves and the outside world. There's also Paul standing there as a prime reason why you shouldn't attempt to breed human beings like cattle (Including back-crossing!  Woooo!). You can also see an environmentalist story.  With the Fremen as a people who are consciously and constantly working to reshape the ecology of their world for the better while seeking to live in harmony with it. There is a commentary on how feudalism leads to decadence and stagnation.  Where the upper class is doomed to turn in on itself in a cannibal struggle for power and influence or even just basic safety. All of this is in the text and is paired with magnificent world-building and characterization. Even Princess Irulan is given a depth of characterization.  This is despite not appearing in the novel until the last chapters and is done by having each chapter start with a quotation written by her about the history of Paul, Dune, or the greater Universe. It's easy to see why Dune swept science fiction like a Fremen army and left a deep imprint. 

The text is somewhat dense at times. The plot starts off slow and builds to a great speed only to scream to a sudden stop (My favorite parts are all fairly early in the text to be honest.). Something Herbert admits to doing on purpose as a way of forcing the reader to come up with their own ideas on Dune.  It is still populated by unforgettable characters and intriguing societies and ideas. The Mentats and Bene Gesserit alone are utterly enthralling as ideas. I could have a dozen people read Dune and they would give me a dozen different ideas of what the story is about and still not be wrong. That fascinates me on a certain level.  I admit, I don't think you could write Dune today as it stands firmly on ideas that modern readers would dismiss in a lesser novel.  For example, racial memory, eugenic breeding programs, or using drugs to expand human perception and mental abilities. That said, I'm giving Dune by Frank Herbert an A. Every time I read it, it takes my breath away and it has more than stood the test of time. Ya hya chouhada muad'dib. 

Having also read this book, many times, it is one of my favorites and I give it an A+

     I hope you enjoyed our review of Dune, which was chosen by our ever-wise patrons.  If you would like a voice on what gets reviewed and when consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/creator-home for as little as a dollar a month.  Next week we take a look at Frank Herbert himself.  Until then, stay safe and keep reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders