excellent. Dune is one of the three best science fiction books ever writen, along with The Mote in God's Eye and A Fire Upon the Deep. This is an outstanding book of immense scope. The characters are deep and realistic, the action scenes are terrific, and all this combines with one of the most creative masterpieces of a future history ever imagined. Herbert touches on religion, politics, war, technology, sociology and even ecology, all in one book. Dune is so richly detailed that every time someone re-reads it, they pick up aspects they did not even notice before.
The hero is Paul Atriedes, son of aristocrat Duke Atriedes. Paul is trained as a leader. He comes from long lines of carefully selected ancestors (manipulated by the Bene Gesserit society), with the intention of making him a sort of superman, with genetically endowed prescience. Paul foresees a disastrous future holy war, or jihad, which will engulf the galaxy, emerging from the Fremen, the inhabitants of the planet Arrakis. Even as he fights to save his life and to regain his family's stolen holdings, his primary goal is to avoid the jihad.
Herbert imagines a future society based on class leadership, with some good nobility and some evil nobles. Due to a prior disaster with artificial intelligences, society shuns computers. Assorted guilds control much of science and technology, plus inter-stellar space navigation.
None of the movies based on the book even come close to being as good as the book. For one thing, they neglect Paul's primary motive of preventing the galactic war. Ignore the movies. Re-read Dune. A year later, re-read it again. |
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