Book Commentary: Frank Herbert's 'Dune'

[Skirmisher]

One of my ongoing goals is to read the seminal literary classics that have influenced our industry in so many ways, and I think Frank Herbert's Dune certainly falls into that category. I recently just finished it and following are some of my impressions, any of which I would welcome feedback on.

* It is pretty clear to me that Herbert had the same sort of "Western History" background that all of us over a certain age have and a number of recognizable themes jump out at me in his work. For example, the relationship between Baron Vladimer Harkonnen and Feyd Rautha would seem to be based on that between Tiberius and Caligula, the Sardaukar are pretty clearly space Mameluks, and the story of Paul Atreides, by all accounts, is a retelling of the Mahdist uprising in Egypt and Somalia in the late 19th century (if not a rendition of the rise of Mohammed and Islam itself). And the feudal vying for spice rights in Arrakis is very evocative of the efforts of the Western powers to acquire access to Middle Eastern oil in the 20th century.

* Herbert does pretty overtly romanticize Arab culture in general and all but glorify Bedouin culture in particular. That probably sat pretty well with his audience 43 years ago, but now that we are at war with both Arab and tribal powers -- putting us in the unenviable place of the villified Harkonnens -- I have to wonder if this comes off as quite so charming for current readers.

* I think the various movie versions of the book have all done a pretty good with it (yes, I know most people did not like David Lynch's Dune!). Having seen them all did take away from some of the mysteries that were revealed in the book. There is quite a bit in the book, however, that never gets touched on in the films, so it is still a source of many fun revelations.

[Geoff]

I read Dune in High School. It's one of my favorites. I never did get around to reading the sequels though. I should definitely get back to that series.

[Skirmisher]

I read Dune in High School. It's one of my favorites. I never did get around to reading the sequels though. I should definitely get back to that series.

Suffice it to say, I have been pretty impressed with it. My high school reading included a lot of Fritz Lieber and H.P. Lovecraft in particular. A few other things that have struck me about Dune:

* Herbert is very vague as to what the "weirding way of combat" actually is. Lynch interprets this in the context of powerful sonic weapons, but I was surprised to discover that this is no means explicit in the book. And a scene in the film where an aircraft is shot down with a sound projector is paralleled in the book by one where an aircraft is instead shot down with rockets.

* Several of the main characters are very young when the book begins and not much older when it ends (e.g., I think the Paul Atreides and Feyd Rautha are each about 15 when it begins and 18 when it concludes). Sting, however, is 33 when he plays the latter character in Lynch's 1984 film! And Sean Young, whose character Chany is initially described as a "child," is 35. This age disparity, by the way, is something that struck me when I read Gone with the Wind and compared it with the 1939 film. In the book, men in their 50s routinely court girls in their early teens -- and Rhett Butler is decades older than Scarlet O'Hara -- and this is not reflected in any obvious way in the film.

[Steve Lortz]

I remember reading "Dune" a couple of decades or so ago. I was taken by H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs in my early teens, and became an avid sci-fi reader until  I came to dwell in the belly of a submarine. Living sci-fi is different from reading it. After that, I primarily read fantasy for the longest time. I remember I had read "Dune" after I got over my aversion to sci-fi, so it must have been in my late-20s or early-30s. At any rate, it didn't exercise a formative influence on me.

Speaking of seminal literary classics and formative influences, have you ever read the Skylark series or the Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith? THERE'S some classic space opera. "Skylark" was written before WWII, and "Lensman" was written afterwards. It's interesting to see how Smith's concepts were changed by his experiences with the administrative aspects of technological development during WWII.

If I could play around in the holodeck, I'd choose a Doc Smith story.

Have fun!
Steve

[Skirmisher]

I ... became an avid sci-fi reader until  I came to dwell in the belly of a submarine. Living sci-fi is different from reading it. After that, I primarily read fantasy for the longest time.

I get you on that! I was a mechanized infantryman and think that has got to play a big part in my complete lack on interest in Hammer's Slammers or anything of a similar ilk. I would say that I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy in pretty much equal parts nowadays, but that both take a back seat to "vocational" reading that supports whatever projects I have got going at any given time and "classics" like Lewis's "space trilogy," Dune, and the like.

Speaking of seminal literary classics and formative influences, have you ever read the Skylark series or the Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith? THERE'S some classic space opera. "Skylark" was written before WWII, and "Lensman" was written afterwards. It's interesting to see how Smith's concepts were changed by his experiences with the administrative aspects of technological development during WWII.

I don't know Skylark, but my Dad has been trying to get me to read the Lensman books for years. Weren't they serialized in Analog or some other periodical?

[Skirmisher]

Just finishing up Dune right now and am reading the four appendices it contains. These are actually extremely interesting and I am enjoying them quite a bit, as I suspect will anyone interested in books covering the deep background of fantastic worlds (e.g., Tolkien's The Silmarillion). I would almost recommend a prospective reader of Dune to read these in advance, and I would definitely suggest that they refer to the final appendix -- a long and detailed glossary -- as needed during their reading, as this will in some cases give them a deeper understanding of the story.

Indeed, this glossary is almost a self-contained work in itself, and it went a long way toward giving me a greater appreciation for the sophistication of Herbert's science fiction. I would not be at all surprised to discover that it and the other appendices originally comprised some sort of separate guide to Dune released for fans of the work. The other three contain information on the social, political, and religious history of Herbert's universe (and the one on religion exhibits, I suspect, much of the author's attitude toward religion, which overlap in many ways with those of a great many intellectual writers).

Finally, if anyone out there happens to have an early edition of Dune, I would be very interested in knowing whether it contains these appendices -- or whether anyone knows whether they were, indeed, released initially as a self-standing work. If they do, that is certainly to Herbert's credit in itself.

[Skirmisher]

Noticed that the 1984 film Dune was on tonight and decided to watch it again to see how it compared with the book, which I just recently finished reading. In short, I think the movie generally gets a bum rap and that it is much better than people often give it credit for. And some of the clunkiest elements of the film -- such as all those damn voice-overs -- are adapted directly from the thoughts of characters in the book (in many cases verbatim).

Lynch does take some unnecessary liberties, of course ... For example, I don't recall anything from book about Harkonnen "heart plugs," and that whole thing with the rat tied to cat and it being the source of the drug administered to Thufir Hawat seems both perverse and dumb. Also, as mentioned before, the interpretation of "weirding combat" as having a sonic basis is fairly arbitrary. In Lynch's defense, however, Herbert is aggravatingly vague about what this sort of combat consists of, and in a visual medium like film the director probably had to make up something to fill in the blanks.

Overall, in any event, I like this film -- and that is saying something, in that I loathe just about everything else Lynch has ever done.