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Dune

by Frank Herbert, 1965

Published: 2021.04.16

Updated 2022.08.18 to include Dune Messiah

Home > Book Reviews > Frank Herbert > Dune

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry

★★★★ (3.5 of 5)

(* not including sixty pages of appendixes)

 

Summary

Often cited as the world’s best-selling science fiction novel, Dune is considered by some to be the best book in the genre. Even Arthur C. Clarke said of it: “I know nothing comparable to it except Lord Of The Rings.” It tied (with a Roger Zelazny book) for the 1966 Hugo Award for best novel (beating Robert A. Heinlein’s excellent The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress) and won outright the very first Nebula, besting greats like Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak. In 2019, BBC Arts included Dune in its list of 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. All this for a book that was submitted to and rejected by more than twenty publishers before auto repair manual publisher Chilton agreed to publish it.

Set in an extremely distant future — something like 10,000 years from now — the novel begins with Duke Leto Atreides being reassigned to a desert world — Arrakis — as part of a conspiracy between the galactic emperor and a scheming baron (Harkonnen). The duke’s son Paul is a teen, but has been well-trained in combat by the duke’s leading experts and also received training from his mother, Lady Jessica, in the mysterious arts of a secretive all-female religious order, the Bene Gesserit. Knowing that the assignment to Arrakis is a trap, the duke sees no other choice and goes. Before long, the Harkonnen/imperial trap springs and Paul finds himself in the desert with the mysterious Fremen. (For a book this old, I feel no need to warn about spoilers.) Bit by bit, Paul earns the respect of the Fremen, helps them in their guerilla warfare against the Harkonnens, takes back the planet, and marries the emperor’s daughter.

 

The Good

The story draws on a large number of archetypes, mythological myths and symbols, religious beliefs, and historical parallels — some more obvious than others — and can be read on several levels. It was clearly well researched and painstakingly constructed over several years. The world-building is astoundingly deep relative to so many other sci-fi novels I’ve read.

The primary characters are described well and briefly, not only in appearance but in background and personality.

The narrative moved more quickly than I would have suspected for a book of such length (with the exception of the very beginning, where almost nothing happens for sixty-something pages). The action scenes are precisely narrated and believable.

Thoughts and emotions are described realistically.

The narration is third-person omniscient and switches between characters’ viewpoints within each scene, going inside first one mind and then another. Though this is often confusing and poorly done in other novels, Herbert executes these maneuvers gracefully and the reader is never left wondering which character is thinking or feeling a specific part.

 

The Disappointing

As much as I enjoy descriptions of people and places in books — so I can get my bearings and “see” what’s happening — Dune waxes on interminably sometimes about what rooms look like. And it’s almost never important. Almost every room that anyone enters, Herbert mentions that there are tapestries hanging around and that the place is lit with “glowglobes” (which are apparently some futuristic fictional lightsource). Neither the tapestries nor the glowglobes figure into the story (at all), but he can’t mention a room without saying both. He also spends some time describing where chairs are positioned, how desks are shaped, and how high the ceiling is. The same is true when Paul and his mother take to the desert and live in the Fremen caves — every cave chamber’s shape and size is mentioned, along with (again) tapestries and glowglobes. And, yes, it’s important to mention that the Fremen have careful seals on their hidden caves — both for secrecy and for protection from the dryness of the desert — these door seals are mentioned every time someone enters or leaves. My guess is that 40 or 50 pages could be shaved off this book by removing references to tapestries and glowglobes, door seals, and irrelevant chair positions within rooms.

The above is true for a few people too. One character has an “inkvine scar” (it’s never explained what that is) that moves of its own accord, and every time that character shows up, his “inkvine scar” must be mentioned again, and how it’s moving on his face. Paul and a few other characters have “aqualine” noses, and this isn’t important to the story at all, but the word aqualine is used often. The Fremen, due to consumption of too much melange (spice), have very blue eyes — even the whites of their eyes have turned blue. And that is mentioned literally hundreds of times, especially when not relevant.

I mentioned the superb world-building above, but it’s also worth mentioning how little of it is explained or even mentioned in the story. It’s evident that Herbert did the work, coming up with future versions of ancient religions, following the paths of government, politics, culture, language, science, and technology through hundreds of generations. But if the future people in your story have invented a new word or reused an old one to mean something different, at some point you have to explain this to the reader. For example, “erg”. In 2021, erg is a unit of energy measurement. But in 10,000-something, erg means “a sea of sand.” I know this because there was a surprise glossary at the end of the book, but it’s never mentioned during the story. I went the whole book not knowing what an erg was. People are going to the erg. We located the erg. No context to tell me if it means cave or mountain or butte or cache... And it was one of hundreds of such words that were never defined during the story — only in the glossary at the end.

 

Conclusion

In my memory, I tried to read this once before, because I’d heard it was one of science fiction’s iconic novels that everyone loved. I don’t remember whether that was during high school (late 1980s) or after college (late 1990s), but I do remember not making it through the entire book. My memory is that I got bogged down in the complexities of the first 60-something pages, when little happens but the reader is introduced to dozens of characters, convoluted politics and culture, dozens of unfamiliar (made-up) words that aren’t defined, etc. This time, I promised myself I would push through all that, and I did.

It was worth it. Any science fiction fan who hasn’t read Dune probably should. It’s clear after reading that many later works were inspired at least in part by it (I recognized in it several precursors to things that later appeared in Star Wars, for example.) The story is epic in scope, the world-building is overwhelming and probably an example of the author working too hard on such a thing, the characters are memorable, and the universe is realistic enough.

If I could give a future reader one tip, it would be this: bookmark the glossary in the back. (It’s also close to a list of the main characters, and other important information without which I felt I didn’t understand the novel.)



Photo by Wil C. Fry

★★★ (2.5 of 5)

(* not including the introduction added in 2007)

I’ve included this Dune Messiah review on the same web page as my Dune review (above) because I didn’t think it warranted constructing an entirely new web page.

Unlike its predecessor, this book had no trouble getting published — Putnam picked it up right away. Wikipedia says it takes place 12 years after the events of the first book, but the exact time period isn’t mentioned in the story (I guessed from context that it was more like sixteen years later, because Paul’s sister Alia was born near the end of the first book and is now a youth of 16). Quite a bit has happened in the meantime. For example, a whole new religion has sprung up (or at least a new branch of an older religion) and Paul Atreides has pushed the borders of his empire throughout the known universe. (The expansion is repeatedly called a “jihad”, and apparently it has killed a whopping 60 billion humans or more. At one point, this mass death is compared to Hitler’s grand total, but that scene passes quickly without much introspection.)

The opening promises interesting action coming soon: there is a secret conspiracy brewing between some of the groups disenfranchised by Paul’s rise to power. But then very little comes of this plot. Paul knows about most of it due to his prophetic powers and reluctantly moves along the timeline that he believes can’t be avoided. The only action scene is when a “stone burner” (some sort of futuristic atomic weapon) is set off in the capital city, blinding Paul and some of his guards. (Paul, of course, doesn’t need his eyes because he has magic powers.) The rest of the book is mostly people talking to Paul or each other, and Paul thinking about what will probably happen. There is a “ghola”, apparently a clone of Duncan Idaho (who died in the first book) but who magically can remember things that Duncan would have remembered. For unexplained reasons, the ghola has metal eyes instead of organic ones.

There was a weird scene where Paul’s teen sister was training in the nude (because of reasons?), and when Paul and Stilgar burst into her room without knocking, they just kind of stare at her for a while. “He took his time reading the reactions on her face and body; the flush of her exertions coloring her skin, the wet fullness of her lips.” I suppose when you’re both Emperor and Messiah, you get to do what you want, but I can’t read scenes like this without thinking of the author writing it.

I powered through the book because I paid for it, but wouldn’t recommend it with any of the same gusto that accompanied the first one. One good thing: it was far shorter than the first book, perhaps because tapestries and glowglobes weren’t mentioned nearly as often, and the author neglected to tell us of all the furniture positions in every room.

 





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