Dune, Frank Hebert, 1965

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I’ve found it very challenging to finish my review of Dune, despite finishing the book in April 2024. I think I got a bit too caught up in the Dune mania in my algorithmic bubble - simultaneously watching the second film, rewatching the first film, reading the book, seeing clips on YouTube, talking about it with friends, and more.


I’ll offer a few cursory thoughts now, retaining my incomplete full review. Maybe I’ll come back to it when the Dune fatigue has worn off. 


The book is really good, although there are some weaknesses, primarily in the action sequences where sequences of events can be sudden and difficult to follow. There are backstory elements which are pretty illogical and cases where characters engage in a silly level of conspiracies, plotting, and preempting each other. The world-building and characters are exceptional. The writing style is unique due to its use of total information for the reader, sapping the book of traditional drivers of suspense like mystery, but offering a really interesting form of dramatic irony.  


The films make some substantial changes as would any adaptation, but they are excellent. I think the films are fairly comparable to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings in terms of their relationship to the source material. The changes clearly seem to be made to adapt the material for a different medium.


I think the most interesting thing about the book is the morality it explores. It is not a clear good vs. evil. Instead, I think it is drawing on the motivations and realities of ecology and nature, where violence and death are part of life and evolution. Herbert famously wanted to show the dangers of charismatic leaders like Paul, who brings violent holy war to the galaxy despite and because of his ability to see the future and (you would think) avoid bad outcomes. There are major implications that “bad” might not exist, or that he was incentivized to do good outcomes for him specifically, but not the collective. 


The last thing I’ll touch on for now is that Dune is an interesting inversion of the slightly earlier Foundation series. This is not my original observation, I read about this on Dune’s Wikipedia article. Check out the idea there, I really liked that parallel.

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