Dune - Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert was born in 1920 and created one of the most famous novels in the history of science fiction, Dune. He grew up in Washington state in the USA and Frank loved reading as a child reading the stories of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs. From a young age he knew he wanted to be an author. However, Frank was very independent and he wrote what he wanted to write and this meant he inevitably had a hard time making a living, bouncing from job to job and from town to town. In the end, after six years of research and writing, he finished Dune. Unfortunately it was rejected by many publishers before it was finally ...  Read the complete review

Dune is one of very few science fiction books which I first read in my teens, which I still give shelf space to and which I feel likely to read again. Written in the sixties, it is a product of its time – consciousness expanding drugs and ecological concerns feature heavily - but it manages to remain relevant, despite the fact that technology has already surpassed what most science fiction writers of that era imagined possible. Frank Herbert has catalogued the future as he sees it exhaustively. Arrakis, or Dune, the desert planet on which the space drama unfolds, has a deceptively rich and varied ecology, one which Herbert has tortured into a logical form ...  Read the complete review

I first became interested in the Dune books after I saw David Lynch's 1984 film. Despite its critical mauling, I was sucked into the universe Frank Herbert had created. Knowing the film could not contain all of Herbert's ideas, and overcoming my apprehension when confronted by the book's formidable thickness, I spent several weeks lost in its pages. The events of Dune take place in our own universe, thousands of years in the future. Frank Herbert began penning his ideas in 1959 (dune.wikia.com/wiki/Frank_Herbert) and was working on his seventh when he died in 1986. His son continues to expand his father's universe, writing six prequels to Dune and two ...  Read the complete review

Melange, is a spice grown only on the desert terrain of Arrakis, a hot, barren planet, known to it's inhabitants as Dune. It is a harsh, unforgiving place to live, with vicious, giant sandworms living under the sand, that guard the precious spice, and no water at all. Melange has special properties, allowing pilots to see into the future, helping them with their space travel. Without the spice, they would not be able to travel. The spice also prolongs the life of those that use it, and is highly addictive. Duke Leto is given the planet Arrakis to look after and control, he is a gentle and kind man, with many good qualities, considering the harsh ...  Read the complete review

Complicated, superb, and prophetic, Frank Herbert's Nebula award-winning Dune has captured the imaginations of millions of readers worldwide. A novel which has transformed their perception of what the future could be. Considered one of the greatest science-fiction masterpieces in history, Dune is an epic tale of a hero’s journey and the prophecy surrounding him as he develops into a God. What Frank Herbert has accomplished is the most imaginative and finely intricated sf novel you are ever likely to read. Dune is a sheer triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune tells the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who is prophesized to ...  Read the complete review