Words&Dirt

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to shake my head when asked by another scifi enthusiast if I’ve ever read Dune. To be unfamiliar with Frank Herbert’s classic is to leave a giant of the genre unexplored––to dismiss a leap forward in our thinking about technology and futurism. Now that I’ve finally traversed this sandy terrain, however, I can’t give it an unqualified recommendation. Dune is a fascinating and impressive novel, but its core elements haven’t all aged at the same rate, nor with commensurate grace.

From the viewpoint of a 21st-century reader, Dune’s opening pages feel remarkably medieval. Sure, we get a space-faring society with advanced technology and biochemical behavior control, but the story is dominated by a trio of anachronisms: imperialism, patriarchy, and the emergence of a messianic prophet. Combine these with the Spacing Guild’s supercharged extractivist mindset, and Dune seems downright regressive––not usually an indication of longevity in the scifi world.

The book is beleaguered by other pitfalls as well: stilted inner monologues, lost opportunities for suspense, and a disappointing ending. The monologues reveal much about Herbert’s intricate fictional world, but also over-explain the thoughts and motivations of characters, sometimes to the point of unintentional comedy. Herbert also exposes the details of a betrayal plot long before the betrayal takes place in the story, thereby quelling what would otherwise be an exciting and unexpected turn in Dune’s opening act. And the final act, though dressed in the requisite climactic garb, falls flat as we realize that neither Herbert nor his characters seem overly concerned with questioning the status quo of the archaic socioeconomic systems on which the Imperium is founded. (Herbert leaves open the possibility that this may happen later in the series, but Dune itself ends with the protagonist making what is ostensibly a traditional power grab.)

Not all of Dune is frustrating or outdated, and the book ultimately proves more complex than its narrative trappings might suggest. Fifty years after its original publication, the book has stood the test of time. The Dune-verse is thick and wide, sporting a complex vernacular and history that prompt many readers to liken it to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Herbert’s preoccupation with desertified landscapes and survival in harsh environments feels unnervingly prescient for a generation brought up under the penumbra of climate change.

Awkward inner monologues aside, Herbert’s descriptive prose is uncommonly vivid and poignant, especially for a scifi author. Passages like the one below impart a rich sense of what it might be like to live on Arrakis (the Dune planet):

He had never imagined anything here could be as beautiful as that shattered red horizon and the purple and ochre cliffs. Beyond the landing field where the night’s faint dew had touched life into the hurried seeds of Arrakis, he saw great puddles of red blooms and, running through them, an articulate tread of violet…like giant footsteps…Then he saw the human figures moving into the flower fields, sweeping them with strange scythe-like devices––dew gatherers. Water so precious here that even the dew must be collected. (loc. 2119)

The significance of water in Arrakis’s native culture––the Fremen tribes––is a welcome reminder of its incomparable value for all human life. The Fremen society is a “strong man” hierarchy with abhorrent gender practices, but it’s also a genuine meritocracy––a hale and unified people in the face of extreme survival conditions. They become radicalized when Paul-Muad’Dib––a young outcast Duke of the Imperium––shows up with his mother and fits snugly into a Fremen messiah legend.

When Paul’s unique biological makeup begins reacting with the spice––Arrakis’s prized resource––he gains unusual powers of future projection that represent a primitive but potent biochemical singularity. Herbert’s descriptions of Paul’s spice-laced journeys through possible futures are magnificently crafted, and not just for something written in the 1960s:

There was a sharpened clarity, the inflow of data, the cold precision of his awareness. He sank to the floor, sitting with his back against rock, giving himself up to it. Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future…the winds of the past: the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of the present and the one-eyed vision of the future––all combined in a trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space.

There was danger, he felt, of overrunning himself, and he had to hold onto his awareness of the present, sensing the blurred deflection of experience, the flowing moment, the continual solidification of that-which-is into the perpetual-was.

In grasping the present, he felt for the first time the massive steadiness of time’s movement everywhere complicated by shifting currents, waves, surges, and countersurges, like surf against rocky cliffs. It gave him a new understanding of his prescience, and he saw the source of blind time, the source of error in it, with an immediate sensation of fear.

The prescience, he realized, was an illumination that incorporated the limits of what was revealed––at once a source of accuracy and meaningful error. A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened: the expenditure of energy that revealed what he saw, changed what he saw.

And what he saw was a time nexus within this cave, a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action––the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand––moved a gigantic lever across the known universe. He saw violence with the outcome subject to so many variables that his slightest movement created vast shiftings in the pattern.

The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too, was action with its consequences. (loc. 6097-114)

Despite its inherent limitations, Herbert handles the messiah element rather well. Even as he assumes the role of mythic hero, Paul-Muad’Dib is not unaware of the irony or precarious nature of his situation. He tells himself his rise to power is for the general good, but has the wisdom to fear his own influence over the increasingly rabid Fremen believers:

I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought.

In a rush of loneliness, Paul glanced around the room, noting how proper and on-review his guards had become in his presence. He sensed the subtle, prideful competition among them––each hoping for notice from Muad’Dib.

Muad’Dib from whom all blessings flow, he thought, and it was the bitterest thought of his life.
(loc. 9667, emphasis his)

In a century when religious zealotry has come roaring back from what some had thought a permanent grave, the ascension of Paul-Muad’Dib is a newly relevant cautionary tale, one that begs readers to examine just how far a people should reasonably go in trying to throw off the chains of unjust imperialism. Despite a handful of outmoded traits, Dune remains an important milestone in science fiction––one worthy of perusal and consideration.

Rating: 7/10