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Dune (2006)

Dune (2006)

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4.15 of 5 Votes: 1
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ISBN
0340839937 (ISBN13: 9780340839935)
Language
English
Publisher
hodder & stoughton

About book Dune (2006)

Dune: The greatest SF novel of all time, never to be matched by later sequelsWhat more can be said about Frank Herbert’s 1965 masterpiece? This massive epic of political intrigue, messianic heroes, vile villains, invincible desert fighters, telepathic witches, sandworms and spice, guild pilots who fold space, and a relentless action-packed narrative that still has ample room for beautiful descriptive passages and copious philosophizing on the mythology of the messiah/savior. In short, Dune is a perfect SF novel that both entertains and engages the mind, a book frequently cited as the greatest single work of imagination produced in the genre, rivaled only by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.And yet the book had a troubled birth, being rejected by over twenty publishers before being accepted by Chilton Books, better known for publishing repair manuals. How could a book later considered a masterpiece be so roundly rejected? The answer lies in the status and expectations of the genre in the 1960s. At the time, SF was still mainly known for its most famous practitioners, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, who represented an older Golden Age of SF, focused mainly on science, technology, and space adventure.Dune was a completely new creature, so far ahead of its time with it’s emphasis on a baroque far-future universe dominated by competing Great Houses bound to an Emperor, a guild of space pilots, the matriarchal Bene Gesserit witches, geneticall-modified humans called Mentats that served as computing devices, and the complexities of a galactic economy dependent for commerce on a substance known as the “spice“ mélange that extends health and lifespan, expands consciousness, and most importantly allows the guild pilots to fold space and connect the disparate planets of the Empire. In addition, Frank Herbert was very interested in Middle Eastern cultures and Eastern religions like Zen Buddhism, as well as in desert ecologies and the preciousness of water. Weaving this massive and complex group of themes into a coherent, exciting, and moving narrative following the fate of messiah Paul Atreides, later known Muad’Dib, was a feat that few authors have ever achieved since then, including Frank Herbert himself. In fact, Dune spawned five sequels directly written by Frank Herbert, and then over 10 books that fill in the numerous details of his universe, written by his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, who seems to specialize in co-authoring various series such as Star Wars, X-files, and all kinds of novelizations. Most recently his book The Dark Between the Stars was a 2014 Hugo Award nominee. I'm not really interested in reading these spin-off books, when there are so many other books to be read. I did read the five sequels written by Herbert back in high school, and it was a punishing experience, as the first two books (Dune Messiah and Children of Dune) deliberately debunked the messiah mythology established in Dune, showing how the Fremen used Paul Atreides’ status as messiah to wage a destructive jihad across the universe. It’s interesting to hear comments that Herbert intended all along to show what happens when the masses believe in a messiah, and how they participate in the process of creating one. His view is actually quite skeptical, but since Dune is about the rise of the messiah, it benefited from the positive early stage of Paul’s story arc. However, his follow-ups quickly drained my enthusiasm. I guess it should come as no surprise that we prefer to be swept along with the rise of a messianic superbeing, rather than observe the messy aftermath after his rise to power, and various political and religious divisions complicate the world after he takes over. Herbert wanted to explore these themes in great detail, but they were certainly much less commercially-appealing that Dune. I found the next three books (God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse Dune) more interesting but also very complicated and hard to enjoy. Herbert wrote quite a number of other SF novels outside the Dune universe, but he will always be known best for Dune to the exclusion of his other works, and this must have weighed heavily on him as a writer.The story itself focuses on two feuding families, the House Atreides and House Harkonnen. The latter has been in charge of administering the production of Spice on Arrakis, but as House Atreides has gained in power, the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV decided to place the Atreides in charge of Arrakis, with the intention of drawing them into conflict with the Harkonnes and keeping both in check. House Atreides is led by Duke Leto Atreides, his concubine the Bene Gesserit Lady Jessica, and Leto’s son Paul, who is part of a secret breeding program to create a Kwisatz Haderach, a male messiah with incredible mental powers who will lead the Bene Gesserit and humanity to greater heights.The levels of intrigue and complexity are staggering, and though a description cannot do it proper justice, Herbert’s complete dedication to his creation recalls the massive world-building achieved by Tolkien in Middle Earth. Despite all the alien concepts, politics, intrigues, warring groups, desert warriors, and mish-mash of Zen Buddism, Islamic and Christian mythology about messiahs and jihads, and the complex economic and ecological implications of the sandworms and spice, the reader is completely drawn into this world and believes in it. It is truly an amazing achievement, recalling how fans embraced George Lucas’ Star Wars universe, but so much more complex, dark, and mature in its themes. It was inevitable that Dune captured the imaginations of film directors, but the scale and complexity of the story made the transition to film extremely difficult. Film rights were acquired in 1971 but little progress was made until 1974, when a French group acquired the rights and Alejandro Jodorowsky, a Chilean avant-garde film maker, writer/poet and spiritual figure. His ambitious plans for the film would have reached about 12 hours in length, and featured roles for Salvador Dali, Orson Wells, David Carradine, and even Mick Jagger. The artwork would involve the legendary Jean Giraud (of Moebius fame) and H.R. Giger (of Alien fame). Alas, such an ambitious and sprawling project was doomed to failure, and this story is detailed in the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which I would love to see if I could rent it.After plans for Ridley Scott to direct fell through, it was not until 1984 that Dune finally made it to the big screen, with David Lynch at the helm. Wait, you mean the director of Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Twin Peaks? That’s right. It’s still a mystery why Lynch chose to direct Dune, since he had not shown interest in the SF genre and had not even read the book. But to his credit, he made a valiant effort to put on film this notoriously difficult and sprawling work.As could have been predicted, the Lynch film was severely panned by film critics, moviegoers, and fans of the novel. It was dark, confusing, and incoherent (due to excessive cutting to get it to 2 hrs 17 min in length), and the Baron Harkonnen was so physically revolting to look at that I had to turn away from some of his scenes. But it did feature a pretty cool soundtrack by Toto (especially the haunting closing credits) with the prophecy theme penned by Brian Eno. And it I will never forget Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides in the final climactic scene, a knife fight to the death with Feyd Rautha Harkonen, played perfectly by Sting! Even Sean Young and Patrick Stewart have important roles as Chani and Gurney Halleck. But this was another doomed attempt. Try to imagine cramming all the plot details, background information on the political machinations of the dozens of characters and factions, details on the complex ecology of Arrakis, the relationship of the sandworms and spice, the Fremen and Bene Gesserit, into a film just over 2 hours long. The studio’s demands for cuts were so drastic that Lynch has since dissociated himself from the film and refuses to talk about it. That’s a shame, because many have revised their view on the film and I consider it a valiant attempt at scaling the Everest of SF films.It’s essentially an impossible undertaking, though there was a later 2000 Sci-Fy channel miniseries (4 ½ hours in length), which I have yet to see, that has some adherents. Judging from the recent prominence of big-budget cable TV productions like Game of Thrones, and the vast improvement in special effects, it strikes me that Dune is ripe for another adaptation, and could easily fill several quality seasons in the right hands.Finally, as this was the first time I revisited Dune since high school, I decided to get the ensemble-cast audiobook version. It’s complete with sounds effects like the sound of desert winds blowing and ominous music, and these are carefully done not to detract from the narration. A note on the narration, however: the books starts out with a full cast of voice actors, but then switches to a single narrator (Simon Vance?) midway and towards the end, with a few scattered scenes with the full cast. It’s a bit disorienting, especially as the voice of Baron Harkonnen switches from a simpering evil character to a deep-voiced and powerful voice akin to Michael Clarke Duncan. It would have been better to kept the full cast for the entire book, but for some reason it got a bit jumbled. Still, it’s an excellent audiobook production.

DBR to follow, at Ceridwen's request. She must have used one of her Bene Gesserit tricks on me.***Dune. Dune is a fascinating book. A classic of science-fiction, it plays equally as fantasy and allegory. It is deeply textured, richly layered. And if you want to read a sensible review of it, I'd go read, say, Cedriwen's. This one is going to be full of silliness.Arrakis. The desert planet. Home to spice and sandworms. Dune. You know, I went to the desert once. The Sahara Desert. It looked like this (ps I took this picture!): I don't feel like tracking down a picture from the movie, so you have to imagine what Arrakis looks like. It looks a lot like the Sahara.So anyway, one of the "things to do" when you're in Morocco is to drive out into the Sahara and go for a camel ride, stay overnight in a Berber tent. Ah, camels. I don't know if any of you have ridden a camel (but I'm sure if you have, you will back me up on this): not as much fun as you would think. Riding a horse is, let's face it, always a little uncomfortable. You have to straddle it (twss!), you have to keep your legs at a weird angle (twss!), it starts to hurt after a while (uh... twss?). Riding a camel, on the other hand, sucks. Camels do not wear saddles. They wear blankets. A camel's hump is not very squishy for something that is supposed to be full of water, if my elementary school understanding of why they can live in the desert is accurate. If kind of feels like you are sitting on a rock, and it feels like someone is repeatedly hitting your public bone with a baseball bat. This is not just a guy thing; my girlfriend confirmed that after about five minutes, riding a camel ceases being at all fun and becomes an exercise in pain management. It hurt like hell while it was happening, and it was hard to walk the next day (omg, twss!).On Dune, the desert-inhabiting Fremen don't ride camels. They ride these:Scary. But probably not more uncomfortable to ride than a camel.Look, this is me with Fergie. I am smiling because I am no longer riding it. Other than the sand and stuff, Arrakis is pretty different from Western Africa. Like the sandworms, which attack anyone who dares venture into the desert, there are the Fremen, a mysterious tribe of fighters who have a strange relationship with what they call "the Markers," there is this stuff called spice that must be carefully harvested from the sands, the risk rewarded by the incredible worth of the spice as a drug used by the Guild to gives the navigators the prescient sight they need to chart courses through hyperspace, and by the Bene Gesserit witches, why use it to preserve their ways from generation to generation. Also I don't think Dune had package tours.Dune is a famously boring and complicated book. You may have heard that it has a lengthy appendix, and that when David Lynch turned it into a movie, the story was so complex that audiences had to be given cheat sheets along with their tickets. (Don't blame Frank Herbert for that, though. The Dune movie is just marvelously bad, as this chart will illustrate: )Don't let its reputation fool you. Sure, Dune is a little bit boring in parts (the characters like to philosophize redundantly and have prophetic visions). But it is also an awesome space opera, with an entirely transporting sense of place and vidiv world-building. The political struggles that drive the plot engine are fiendishly complex to the occasional point of obtusion (I can't believe that is a word), but also a lot of fun to read about, thanks to sneering villains like Baron Harkonnen, who isn't just any old bad guy, but a grossly obese, slithery, murdering, rapist pedophile. The Fremen, a tribe of deeply spiritual religious fanatics who control a natural resource and are willing to die for what they believe... in. Hmmmm. And then there are the sandworms. I loved everything about this concept, from Herbert's vivid descriptions, to their presence as an omnipresent threat throughout the book, to their epic inclusion in the explosion and violence-heavy climax. Awesome.I haven't really said anything about the book. It's good. It's Dune. It is a super-famous classic for a reason. It has compelling characters (Lady Jessica is one of the most interesting female protagonists in classic sci-fi, and the book's take on gender politics, with an elite group of women are a powerful, secretive and controlling force in the galaxy , is worth examining.) It is epic in scope. It's nearly as deep as Tolkien (there's that appendix).It's also just cool.

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In my head, the purpose of this review is very clear. It is to convince YOU to read this book. Yes, you! Waste time no more. Go grab a copy.Machiavellian intrigue, mythology, religion, politics, imperialism, environmentalism, the nature of power. All this set in a mind-boggling, frighteningly original world which Herbert ominously terms as an "effort at prediction". Dune had me hooked!First impressionThe very first stirring I felt upon opening the yellowed pages of Dune was that of stumbling upon an English translation of an ancient Arabic manuscript of undeniable power and potence which had an epic story to narrate. The tone was umistakably sombre and I realized Herbert was not here to merely entertain me, he was here to make me part of the legend of Muad'Dib. It was intriguing and challenging and heck, since I live for challenges I decided to take this one up too, gladly. The challenge was the complexity and depth of the plot, which left me perplexed, in the beginning. I knew there were dialogues which meant much more than their superficial meaning and was unable to grasp at it. I felt a yawning chasm between Herbert's vision and my limited understanding of it. However, of course, I plodded on and could feel the gap closing in with every page much to my joy and relief. The Foreword"To the people whose labours go beyond ideas into the realm of 'real materials'- to the dry-land ecologists, wherever they may be, in whatever time they work, this effort at prediction is dedicated in humility and admiration." The foreword makes it pretty clear that Frank Herbert isn't kidding around. This is a serious effort at predicting how our world is going to look two thousand years from now and by God, it's a bloody good and detailed prediction. However, the real merit in this effort lies in the commentary on our lives in the present.Why Frank Herbert is a geniusThe setting of the book is arid futuristic. the plot is driven by political mindgames reminiscent of The Game of Thrones. The issues he tackles are as modern as the colour television. Herbert's genius manifests itself in his ability to combine the past, the present and the future in one sweeping elegant move called Dune.Plot and SettingDune is set in a futuristic technologically advanced world which after the Butlerian Jihad (the bloody war between Man and Machines) has eliminated all computers and passed a decree declaring "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind". Since there are no computers, the essential working of the galaxy is still medieval and feudal with heavy reliance on men and their dallying around. Lots of thriller potential right there. Men with superhuman analytical abilities called Mentats have taken the place of Computers. On the other hand, we have the Bene Gesserit, an ancient school of mental and physical training for female students (it gives them superhuman intuitive powers) who follow a selective breeding program which makes them feared and mistrusted through the Imperium. Their desired end product of this breeding program is the Kwisatz Haderach, a superman who’ll be able to glimpse into the future. How he’ll be able to do this is rooted in Herbert’s idea of determinism: given that one can observe everything and analyze everything, one can effectively glimpse the future in probabilistic terms. Quantum physics anyone? The Kwisatz Haderach is the proposed solution to the male-female dichotomy, between the analytical and intuitive.The plot of Dune is almost wholly set on the desert planet of Arrakis (also referred to as Dune), an arid wasteland where water is so scarce that men have to wear stillsuits which recycle human moisture for further consumption. The source of the galaxy’s interest in the planet is Melange, a spice which bestows upon one longevity and prescient powers. Everything on the planet is permeated with the spice, the air, the sand, the food. Everybody on the planet is hopelessly addicted to the spice, their only hope for survival being their continued intake of the spice. The Spacing Guild, the economic and trading monopolistic arm of the Galaxy badly needs the spice for interstellar transport. This is because their frigates travel faster than the speed of light and hence travel backward in time. The spice is the only way they can look into the future and see their way ahead. How cool is that! All the powers on the Galaxy are out to mine the spice, braving the sandworms, their name merely an euphemism, for they are gigantic 200 metre long creatures which always come digging through the sand whenever spice mining is undertook. Always. There’s also another little glitch. There exist on the planet, the kickass native desert tribal Fremen, whom the foreign powers look down with suspicion and disdain. The Fremen ethos is one of survival and scarcity, driven by tribalism and egalitarianism. Okay, I’ll stop right there. No more spoilers about this. Except that they value water to the extent that spitting on a person is the highest honour they can bestow upon him.Our protagonists are the Atreides family, consisting of the Duke, his Bene Gesserit concubine Jessica and their son Paul, who have been entrusted the stewardship of Arrakis. We discover the alien planet of Arrakis along with them, firstly with fear, suspicion and wonder and ultimately, love and respect. Paul Muad’Dib, however is no ordinary prince. There’s a teeny weeny chance he might be the Kwisatz Haderach, something which troubles him constantly and gives us our conflicted hero. The poor chap trips balls over the spice and has visions of black hordes pillaging and murdering around town bearing his flag and sees his dead body multiple times.My favourite character, however has to be the Baron Vladmir Harkonnen, the most evil character I’ve ever come across in my literary excursions. He is ruddy ruthlessness, he is virile villainy, he is truculent treachery. He executes the inept chess players in his employ which says oodles about his badassery and his fondness for cold-blooded logic. He sees everything in simplistic chess terms. What is my best move? What is my opponent’s best move? Is there anything I can do to completely squash his move? Is there a tactic which leads to mate in three? ThemesIn this setting, Herbert does so much, it’s unbelievable. Religion, politics, the dynamic nature of power, the effects of colonialism, our blatant destruction of our environment are themes which run parallel to the intensely exciting and labyrinthine plot. He shows the paramount importance of myth making and religion for power to sustain over long periods of time. Man, as a political animal is laid completely bare.Real lifeNow these are my thoughts about what Herbert could have meant to be Arrakis-It makes perfect sense. Herbert draws heavy inspiration for the religious ideology of Muad’Dib from Islam. He says “When religion and politics ride in the same cart and that cart is driven by a living Holy man, nothing can stand in the path of such a people.” which is the philosphy of the politics of Islam. Islamism in a nutshell. The spice, much desired by everyone, is the oil. Baron Vladmir Harkonnen is symblomatic of the wily Russians. The Desert foxes Fremen are representative of the native Saudi desert-dwelling Bedouin tribe who have a strongly tribe-oriented culture and undoubtedly value water in equal measure. And the ultimate loser is the environment.Why do good books get over?I almost forget this is a science fiction novel, it’s that real. It is also scary and prophetic. It is a reading experience that will leave you dreaming of the grave emptiness of Arrakis and make you wish you were there to brave it all in the privileged company of the noble Fremen. Frank Herbert achieves the pinnacle of what a sci-fi author aspires to rise to; authentic world building.
—Rajat Ubhaykar

Welcome to Unpopular Review Time! Where I go against what almost everyone else says about a book.Before we start, please do not be fooled by the three star rating. Even if I didn't like really like the book, I have to acknowledge there are reasons why Dune is a cornerstone of the Sci Fi genre. Now, let's talk about the important stuff.This is a masterpiece of world building.We get a new planet, and while it's obvious that Herbert based his desert planet on real sights and cultures, it's still awesome. The Fremen and their culture, the stillsuits, the worms, the plight for water... It's all explained in such a vivid detail without being boring or repetitive. And while reading you can see the references! Can we talk about how many movies and books have been influenced by this?We also get a future Empire where machines are no longer used for computation purposes. Instead, humans have been trained to unlock their full brain potential and make such calculations. And we get two schools of these "enhanced" humans: the Bene Gesserit and the Mentats. And we get lots of details explaining this new society: the Empire, the Noble Houses, the Guild, how each group interacts with the others, the intrigue surrounding all dealings... The plot is straightforward and follows a 'Chosen One' pattern. Paul, is the 'Chosen One', the Lisan al-Gaib, the Kwisatz Haderach. He gets many names. After a betrayal, he finds refuge among the Fremen and seeks revenge from those who wronged his house. Here comes my first problem with the book, you can divide it in a before and after around the betrayal point. (I'm not spoiling anything by telling you this, believe me, the book will tell you ALL about it) Before this the plot drags along at a slow and unpleasant pace (at least for me.) The story is told in a third person omniscient point of view, and the author uses this liberally, giving us a peak into the different characters' thoughts. And he loves repeating ideas. So we get to know about the betrayal from the bad guy who planned it, from the traitor himself, from everyone inside House Atreides who knows that there's a traitor and suspects everyone,... and all this before anything actually happens! When the scene finally rolls in I was so tired of the plot I almost gave up on the book.After this the plot actually picks up and there's lots of action. However I had some more problems with it, as I'll explain ahead.While they were all artfully created and developed; there's no way to connect with any of these characters.The way Herbert planned his 'Chosen One' and his society, most of the characters are deeply logical and, dare I say, stuffy? They think and re-think, and plan and plot, and think again, computing everything with a very small dose of humanity. (Ha! And they call themselves humans.) Paul is wise beyond his years, not only by his training, but by his evolution during the story. It made me think of another chosen child: Harry Potter, but where we all wanted to be Harry, or at least one of his friends; I really had no thought of befriending this one. (I did pity him a lot.)And then there's the bad guy! Oh Gods. I've never in my life seen such a TERRIBLE antagonist and I don't say this lightly. He's a fat ugly guy, who cannot even move himself. He's a pedophile, a slave worker, treats everyone horribly including his own family. There is absolutely no redeeming quality to this guy. He's almost cartoonish in how bad he is. And I never ever got his hate for the Atreides, I can understand greed, personal vendettas, house wars. But his hate seemed too personal and at the same time too huge to be understandable. Also, he was the typical movie villain that loved to rehash his plots over and over again, and brag about how cunning he was. Complete freaking waste of time.Last, but not least. The ending is incredibly abrupt and I DID NOT like it. Call me romantic, call me naive, call me soft. I don't care. I thought that last paragraph was the wrong thing to say. All in all this was a great book, but it wasn't my cup of tea. I suggest you read it. If only so you can see Star Wars in a pretty different light. ---Image Credits'The Defeat of the Sarduakar' by John Schoenherr."Fremen of Dune" by Sammy Hall "Vladimir Harkonnen" by a-hour
—Alexa

There's a characteristically witty essay by Borges about a man who rewrites Don Quixote, many centuries after Cervantes. He publishes a novel with the same title, containing the same words in the same order. But, as Borges shows you, the different cultural context means it's a completely new book! What was once trite and commonplace is now daring and new, and vice versa. It just happens to look like Cervantes's masterpiece.Similarly, imagine the man who was brave or stupid enough to rewrite Dune in the early 21st century. Like many people who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I read the book in my early teens. What an amazing story! Those kick-ass Fremen! All those cool, weird-sounding names and expressions they use! (They even have a useful glossary in the back). The disgusting, corrupt, slimy Harkonnens - don't you just love to hate them! When former-aristo-turned-desert-guerilla-fighter Paul Muad'Dib rides in on a sandworm at the end to fight the evil Baron and his vicious, cruel nephew, of course you're cheering for him. Who the hell wouldn't be?So that was the Dune we know and love, but the man who rewrote it now would get a rather different reception. Oh my God! These Fremen, who obviously speak Arabic, live on a desert planet which supplies the Universe with melange, a commodity essential to the Galactic economy, and in particular to transport. Not a very subtle way to say "oil"! They are tough, uncompromising fighters, who are quite happy to use suicide bombing as a tactic. They're led by a charismatic former rich kid (OK, we get who you mean), who inspires them to rise up against the corrupt, degenerate... um, does he mean Westerners? Or only the US? And who is Baron Harkonnen intended to be? I'm racking my brains... Dubya doesn't quite seem to fit, but surely he means someone? Unless, of course, he's just a generic stereotype who stands for the immoral, sexually obsessed West. This is frightening. What did we do to make Frank al-Herbert hate us so much? You'd have people, not even necessarily right-wingers, appearing on TV to say that the book was dangerous, and should be banned: at the very least, it incites racial hatred, and openly encourages terrorism. But translations would sell brilliantly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and a bad movie version would soon be made in Turkey.I honestly don't think Herbert meant any of that; but today, it's almost impossible not to wonder. If anyone reading this review is planning to rewrite The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, you'd better make sure you get your timing right. Who knows how it will be interpreted five years from now?
—Manny

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