Review Tuesday: Dune by Frank Herbert

 

 

DUNE

by Frank Herbert

A murderous conspiracy fueled by a generations old feud unexpectedly yields a religious prophecy. 

Back during the 80s I didn't watch the movie DUNE. I never had any interest in it. It just looked like a bunch of dudes standing around in black suits. Plus it had Sting in it, so that made it a hard-pass. However, when the trailer for the remake came out earlier in the year, I decided it was time to read the book and see what this is all about. 

 

This was NOT the book I was expecting. What I thought was going to be like Star Wars or A Princess Of Mars, a tale of hardships of life on an inhospitable planet turned out to be something very different. It's a socio-economic analysis of the future and how war (and treachery) might be handled. Also, apparently mankind met its doom at the hands of computers, there's an inherent distrust of any technology. This is partly why, even though there is intergalactic travel and personal force fields and even nuclear weapons, pilots do all their own work, and people do their own driving. It was very strange to me! 

 

The Emperor allies with a treacherous house of Harkonnen against House Atreides because of a generations old feud. What seems like a quick victory turns into a long rise of Paul Atreides as the ruler of Dune from the words of prophecy. 

 

The book is LONG. While I am a slow reader, this one seemed to take me even longer than usual. Bear in mind, I usually read in bed just before going to sleep. I only get in around ten minutes of reading before passing out. It took me MONTHS to get through this tome. I was amused when I visited a friend who is also reading it right now and noticed the girth of the paperback. Since I read everything in kindle format I didn't realize how long it was. 

 

FUN FACT ABOUT DUNE. The first attempt at bringing Dune to the big screen was during the 1970s. At that time the enclave agreed that they just didn't have the technology to bring the story to life at that time, and abandoned the production. Instead, two of the writers got together and wrote a script for something called THE STAR BEAST and consulted with another creative consultant from Dune, HR Giger, for monster design. That project ended up as ALIEN!     

FUN FACT ABOUT DUNE. When Frank Herbert was trying to get DUNE published, most publishers passed on it due to its sheer size. Some even wrote to Herbert saying they felt that they might one day likely regret their decision, but they would pass on this work. The manuscript was accepted by CHILTON. If you work on cars, you should be familiar with the famed Chilton's Manuals for automobile repairs. A publisher of repair manuals had the foresight to publish DUNE!    

This classic of science fiction literature was very compelling to read. I really enjoyed the mixture of futurism as well as ancient arts of battle and theology. There are, certainly, extended moments of introspection that if this were happening in real life, you'd wonder why the person you're speaking with just zoned out for about fifteen minutes to mull over the situation. Other than those episodes, the book is really a page turner. It had better be because there are plenty of them! I would also say it's well worth your time to read it, if you haven't 

 

The movie comes out NEXT WEEK!

Get it on AMAZON