Dune is many things. It is a science fiction book from the 60s. It's about colonialism, and messiahs, and guys named (I kid you not, there are multiple of them) Duncan Idaho. Dune is weird, too. And not in a quirky, random, kitschy way either. No, Dune is weird in the way that a lot of mid-century science fiction is strange, and inscrutable, and sometimes so boring that makes you feel like your brain is falling out of your ears. But Dune is also important. It's one of the finest science fiction series ever put to page. It routinely inspires debate and discussion, even now in 2021. There have been so many adaptations and attempts at adaptations that "Dune Movie" is practically its own genre, spanning works from David Lynch to Alejandro Jodorowsky, to Denis Villeneuve.
The universe of Dune is one where interstellar travel in the distant future is made possible by a substance called "spice". This substance can only be found on one planet, the desert world of Arrakis. Therefore, whoever controls the flow of this substance effectively governs the economy of hundreds of worlds and trillions of humans, because without it, you're stranded and unable to buy and trade with other planets across the galaxy.
What spice is, and what it does, is intentionally ambiguous, but it does get you absolutely zooted out of your mind if you do enough of it, and it can keep you young for a long time and also let you sort of see into the future. Like 5 Hour Energy.
The emperor of the galaxy gives the planet of Arrakis to the Atreides family, who rule another planet called Caladan, in the beginning of the first novel. Formerly the planet of Arrakis belonged to Harkonnens, another royal family. What the Atreides family doesn't exactly know when they arrive is that the emperor and the Harkonnen family have conspired against them. Arrakis is a death trap, they're set up for failure. The emperor wants to take them down, and is using Arrakis to do so.
The Atreides family in the first book consists of duke Leto Atreides, his wife (whose name I can't remember and honestly who doesn't do much), his son Paul, and his concubine Jessica. Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, an all female religious and political order who influence events on a galactic scale. The Bene Gesserit is very interested in Paul, because he was never supposed to be born. Members of the Bene Gesserit have such fine detailed control over their own bodies that they can even pick the sex of their unborn children, and Jessica was supposed to have a girl with Leto. Out of love for him, she betrayed her order and had a son instead.
This decision has galaxy-spanning consequences, because Paul is the result of a generations long breeding program to bring about the Kwisatz Haderach, a kind of messianic figure. And this is where we begin to see what Dune is actually about.
Dune isn't necessarily about messiahs and chosen ones, it's more about the consequences of choosing someone as a messiah. It interrogates the impulse that humans seem to have, time and again, to pick someone of great power and hold them up as a singular figure in history, a person in whom they can vest their hopes, interests, and their future.
Paul, after discovering that he has vast prescient powers beyond what anyone could have predicted, uses this future sight and sees something terrifying: a galaxy wide holy war (called a jihad in the text) that will kill billions in his name, and there is nothing he can do to stop it. It's a kind of queasy, cosmic horror that a lot of science fiction and fantasy books wouldn't even touch with a ten foot pole, but Herbert handles it beautifully. Paul is not a "good person" by any stretch of the imagination, but he is our protagonist, and we're on this roller coaster with him.
Dune is not a light read, but it's worth it (and it's sequels) if you're interested in seeing a grand, tragic narrative that puts historical processes and human human decisions under a microscope to explore how each can affect the other. The recent film by Denis Villeneuve that was released this year in theaters and HBO Max is fine. I'd give it a 6/10, and it's a good introduction for anyone who doesn't have the time to dive into the book right now, but it does unfortunately sand off some of the weirder edges of Herbert's storytelling, and the result is a decidedly less wild and wooly narrative.
Currently, Dune is the top selling book on Amazon.com. It's selling more copies than the Bible. If that doesn't tell you something about its staying power and influence, I don't know what will.
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