| Product: |
Dune - Frank Herbert |
| Date: |
30/05/01 (76 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Visually stunning, Inspirational
Disadvantages: Long winded in places
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 become the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib. In his lead up to his destiny Paul avenges the traitorous plot against his noble family—and brings to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream as he learns to control the mind expanding drug known as Spice. It is a stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, with pure environmentalism and politics at its core. Frank Herbert formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
The characters themselves are so finely tuned and developed - each with their own distinctive, yet believable, personalities. But what stands out the most in Frank Herbert’s novel is the immense detail he gives to his Universe and the planet Arrakis, which may be it’s only downfall to a lot of readers who may find the novel hard work. The story tends to be written as a subtle yet complex plot, which is only surpassed by the overwhelming realism of Herbert's creation.
Frank Herbert began with a concept and mostly unfleshed images, which took shape across about six years of research and one and a half years of writing. It was conceived as a long novel, the whole trilogy as one book about the messianic convulsions that periodically overtake us. Fanatics, con artists, the innocent and the not so inno
cent bystanders - all were to have a part in the epic drama. This grew from his theory that superheroes are disastrous for humankind and even a real hero. Herbert’s observation convinced him that in the power area of politics/economics and in their logical consequence, war, people tend to give over every decision-making capacity to any leader who can wrap himself in the myth fabric of the society. Take a look at the evidence - Hitler did it. Churchill did it. Franklin Roosevelt did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it.
This, then, was to be one of his themes for Dune - Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Therefore enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. While this concept was still fresh in his mind, Herbert went to Florence, Oregon, to write a magazine article about a US Department of Agriculture project there. The USDA was seeking ways to control coastal (and other) sand dunes. Herbert had already written several pieces about ecological matters, but his superhero concept filled him with a concern that ecology might be the next banner for would-be-heroes, for the power seekers and others ready to find an ‘adrenalin high’ in the launching of a new crusade. Ecology encompassed a real concern, however, and the Florence project fed his interest in how we inflict ourselves upon our planet, he could begin to see the shape of a global problem, no part of it separated from any other - social ecology, political ecology, economic ecology. Dune the novel was born.
Certainly one of the greatest sci-fi books I've had the pleasure to read. I look forward to reading the next chapters in the epic saga, which I am sure will lack the originality of the first but make this a fantastic series.
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