Islam stands somewhere between. The Koran is as full of moral and legalistic prescriptions as the Bible, but it was written by one man in a state of mystically transcendent consciousness.
And the "heaven" of Islam, salaciously misunderstood by many, including many Muslims, is described as a state of continuous orgasm, which, seen on a mystic level, is a state of transcendent consciousness not unlike the Buddhist Nirvana.
Which perhaps explains why the Sufis, an older and thoroughly experiential religion, aimed entirely at achieving such states by ecstatic dancing, drugs, and other such means of transforming consciousness, could become an aspect of Islam and be generally accepted as such by the mainstream thereof.
And why alcohol, a drug not known for its psychedelic effects, is far more acceptable in Christian cultures than marijuana and hashish, which are far more acceptable in traditional Islamic cultures than alcohol.
Which may explain why Frank Herbert chose to employ Islamic mystical and religious referents in a novel whose central themes are the cultural, psychological, and religions relationships between a psychedelic drug and the societies based upon it, and the stepwise visionary transformation of a young boy's consciousness by the use thereof into the transcendent consciousness of a "Kwisatz Haderach," a being so enlightened that in the end he can even perceive the ironic tragedy of his own prescience.
Which certainly goes a long way towards explaining why DUNE could not find a major American publisher, inside the science fiction or in the mainstream, in the early 1960s, before there was anything like the Counterculture it helped to create.
And why it eventually became a long-term best-seller after the evolutionary changes in the consciousness of a generation it did so much to catalyze.
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND may have been the model, for better and for worse, for much of the hippie life-style--communes centered around a charismatic guru, an alternate life-style including free sexuality, and in the unfortunate case of the Manson Family, a glib moral rationalization for the discorporation of inconvenient people--but DUNE did something much more profound.
Reading DUNE can actually transform your consciousness in a positive manner. It can elevate your spirit. It can take you on a fictional "psychedelic trip," can induce a visionary experience that stays with you, from which, in some small or not so small way, you might emerge as something of a Lightbringer yourself.
A large claim for a science fiction novel? To be sure.
But if you are reading this, you have the book in your hand, and the opportunity to see for yourself that DUNE is an empowering novel.
I can only send you on your way to that experience with the testimony of my own, published as a part of my autobiography in the Gale Press CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SERIES.
Here I describe my decision as a 25-year-old who had published about four stories and who had had a near-death experience in a hospital two years previously to leave New York for California:
"And California, San Francisco in particular, for me, like so many others, was the mythical Golden West towards which Young Men were supposed to go, the land with no winter, North Beach, the Sunset end of the Road, the object of a thousand and one vision quests, the Future itself, somehow, the glorious leap into the Great Unknown.
Appropriately enough, Frank Herbert and about 300 mg of mescaline sent me on my way....
Walking west through the Village night on 4th Street, peaking on mescaline after reading the final installment of the magazine serialization of DUNE, a powerful meditation on space-time, pre-cognition, and destiny soon to launch a hundred thousand trips, I had a flash-forward of my own.
I would be a famous science fiction writer, I would publish many stories and novels, and many of the people who were my literary idols, inspirations, and role-models, and former clients, people I had never met, would come to accept me as their equal, as their ally, as their friend.
And my life's mission, would be to take this commercial science fiction genre and turn it into something else somehow, write works that transcended its commercial parameters....that would help to open a new Way....
This is what you're here for. This is why you passed through the fever's fire and didn't die in that hospital bed. This is what you must do. You must go West to meet your future.
The mescaline talking? An overdose of 25-year-old ego? A stoned out ego-tripping wish-fulfillment fantasy?
Call it what you will. Everything I saw in that timeless Einsteinian moment would come to pass."
That was my description of the prescient DUNE-inspired vision of my 25-year-old self. Here is the present tense:
"And when I'm really feeling down, I remember a 25-year-old kid stoned on mescaline, walking across 4th Street to the Village, high on DUNE, and dreaming those crazy prescient dreams....
He was going to be a famous science fiction writer, he would publish many stories and novels, and the many of the people who were his literary idols, inspirations, and role-models would accept him as their equal, would become his allies, his friends.
And his life's mission would be to take this commercial science fiction genre and turn it into something else somehow, write works that transcended its commercial parameters, works...that would open a new Way....
This is what you're here for. And so I was. And so I am."
One of the many epithets attached in the novel to Paul Atreides, Muab'dib, Kwisatz Haderach, is "the Opener of the Way."
As witness the above, certainly something Frank Herbert's masterpiece was for me.
The Opener of the Way. Something that DUNE will never cease to be.
(END OF ESSAY)
From the same thread, a mini interview with the author of the essay, Norman Spinrad:
The SandRider interviews Norman Spinrad about Frank Herbert & DUNE, January 2009
SandRider: Would you talk briefly about the very first and very last time you spoke with Frank Herbert? Norman Spinrad: I don't really remember when I first spoke with Frank. I think the last time was in a car somewhere, where Frank told me about being in another car with Dino De Laurentis. According to Frank, Dino asked him to try to write the screenplay to the DUNE movie. Frank told him screenplays weren't his thing, he didn't think he could do it. Dino says "I'll give you a million dollars to try." Frank: "You talked me into it." Then Frank tried, the screenplay was no good, and he said to Dino: "See, I told you." This is me now, not the story Frank told me then, except he did go on about being supportive of Lynch's screenplay, and I think because he himself had failed to adapt the novel.
SR: Is there a non-DUNE Herbert book that you think is "better" or "more important" than his most popular and widely-read work ? NS: I don't like "better" or "more important" as categories, but I would say that THE SANTAROGA BARRIER is argueably Frank's best novel on a literary level.
SR: You've written that DUNE has become "the template for a generation and more of imitative works, including all too many sequels by Herbert himself. " Where do you think Frank should have ended the DUNE storyline ? Or, what seemed to you to be the natural ending point that he exceeded ? NS: The third DUNE novel should have been the last one. Frank told me that when he started, he actually wanted to write one huge novel, and thought it out that way. Publishing reality mandated it be published in thirds. After than, it was mostly about money, offers he couldn't refuse
SR: I've always thought DUNE could have stood alone, on its own. Certainly the "story" of the Golden Path was completed at the end of GOD-EMPEROR, when Leto II is "returned to the sand". What did you make of very open-ended conclusion to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE ? NS: Well DUNE, the first volume, left some things in midair. DUNE MESSIAH was book 2, right, CHILDREN book 3, could have ended after book 2, but publishers alway want at least a trilogy. There's a story, I only heard second hand, that Lester del Rey rewrote the ending of 2, or persuaded Frank to do it, so that a third book would be possible.
SR: Do you believe Frank had intentions of a "Dune7" ? Along the same lines, what do think of the claim of Brian Herbert to have found floppy disks containing the "complete" Dune7 outline in a safety deposit box years after Frank's death ? If there were notes, do you believe Brian and Kevin J. Anderson used them faithfully in their new "Dune" books ? NS: Maybe. Frank kept going as long as the big money kept rolling in. Knowing Frank's political philosophy, I once asked him how he could keep writing this royalist stuff. He told me he planned to end the series with a novel that would transition to a fictional universe of democratic rule. Never wrote it, of course. And Brian and Kevin certainly didn't from any 7 notes.
SR: Now that Brian and Anderson's new book "Paul of Dune" is set in between DUNE and DUNE MESSIAH, not just a sequel or a prequel, but an "interquel" if you will, do you think Frank Herbert's Dune Legacy is in danger ? Will these new books "devalue" the DUNE trademark and so taint Frank's literary Legacy ? NS: Who knows? In the long run, it depends on the critics, readers, and publishers. One thing Brian and Kevin can't ever do is put the byline "by Frank Herbert" on their stuff. That "Dune" is now a trademark I find disgusting, and the more it is devalued, the better. That trademark has little or nothing to do with Frank Herbert's literary legacy.
SR: At this point, Peter Berg is set to direct the next film adaption of DUNE. He has stressed the "ecological" theme of the book. I know you have an opinion on that. How has Berg missed the point, of DUNE being a primarilay "ecology-themed" novel ? NS: I don't like judging a film that hasn't even been shot. But certainly DUNE is not primarily an ecology-themed novel. Indeed, with the depicted ecology of Arrakis consisting of the Worms, the Spice, and humans, it's hardly a novel with ecologial sophistication on a scientific level. I think those who try to see or play it that way do so because the truth is so dangerous--namely that DUNE is centrally about chemically enhanced states of consciousness, and while balanced, is not negative about it. In THE SANTAROGA BARRIER, Frank confronts this head-on, and no way anyone can pretend it's about something else.
SR: Have you read Brian Herbert's biography of Frank, DREAMER OF DUNE ? NS: I don't have that strong a stomach.
Islam stands somewhere between. The Koran is as full of moral and legalistic prescriptions as the Bible, but it was written by one man in a state of mystically transcendent consciousness.
And the "heaven" of Islam, salaciously misunderstood by many, including many Muslims, is described as a state of continuous orgasm, which, seen on a mystic level, is a state of transcendent consciousness not unlike the Buddhist Nirvana.
Which perhaps explains why the Sufis, an older and thoroughly experiential religion, aimed entirely at achieving such states by ecstatic dancing, drugs, and other such means of transforming consciousness, could become an aspect of Islam and be generally accepted as such by the mainstream thereof.
And why alcohol, a drug not known for its psychedelic effects, is far more acceptable in Christian cultures than marijuana and hashish, which are far more acceptable in traditional Islamic cultures than alcohol.
Which may explain why Frank Herbert chose to employ Islamic mystical and religious referents in a novel whose central themes are the cultural, psychological, and religions relationships between a psychedelic drug and the societies based upon it, and the stepwise visionary transformation of a young boy's consciousness by the use thereof into the transcendent consciousness of a "Kwisatz Haderach," a being so enlightened that in the end he can even perceive the ironic tragedy of his own prescience.
Which certainly goes a long way towards explaining why DUNE could not find a major American publisher, inside the science fiction or in the mainstream, in the early 1960s, before there was anything like the Counterculture it helped to create.
And why it eventually became a long-term best-seller after the evolutionary changes in the consciousness of a generation it did so much to catalyze.
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND may have been the model, for better and for worse, for much of the hippie life-style--communes centered around a charismatic guru, an alternate life-style including free sexuality, and in the unfortunate case of the Manson Family, a glib moral rationalization for the discorporation of inconvenient people--but DUNE did something much more profound.
Reading DUNE can actually transform your consciousness in a positive manner. It can elevate your spirit. It can take you on a fictional "psychedelic trip," can induce a visionary experience that stays with you, from which, in some small or not so small way, you might emerge as something of a Lightbringer yourself.
A large claim for a science fiction novel?
To be sure.
But if you are reading this, you have the book in your hand, and the opportunity to see for yourself that DUNE is an empowering novel.
I can only send you on your way to that experience with the testimony of my own, published as a part of my autobiography in the Gale Press CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SERIES.
Here I describe my decision as a 25-year-old who had published about four stories and who had had a near-death experience in a hospital two years previously to leave New York for California:
"And California, San Francisco in particular, for me, like so many others, was the mythical Golden West towards which Young Men were supposed to go, the land with no winter, North Beach, the Sunset end of the Road, the object of a thousand and one vision quests, the Future itself, somehow, the glorious leap into the Great Unknown.
Appropriately enough, Frank Herbert and about 300 mg of mescaline sent me on my way....
Walking west through the Village night on 4th Street, peaking on mescaline after reading the final installment of the magazine serialization of DUNE, a powerful meditation on space-time, pre-cognition, and destiny soon to launch a hundred thousand trips, I had a flash-forward of my own.
I would be a famous science fiction writer, I would publish many stories and novels, and many of the people who were my literary idols, inspirations, and role-models, and former clients, people I had never met, would come to accept me as their equal, as their ally, as their friend.
And my life's mission, would be to take this commercial science fiction genre and turn it into something else somehow, write works that transcended its commercial parameters....that would help to open a new Way....
This is what you're here for. This is why you passed through the fever's fire and didn't die in that hospital bed. This is what you must do. You must go West to meet your future.
The mescaline talking? An overdose of 25-year-old ego? A stoned out ego-tripping wish-fulfillment fantasy?
Call it what you will.
Everything I saw in that timeless Einsteinian moment would come to pass."
That was my description of the prescient DUNE-inspired vision of my 25-year-old self. Here is the present tense:
"And when I'm really feeling down, I remember a 25-year-old kid stoned on mescaline, walking across 4th Street to the Village, high on DUNE, and dreaming those crazy prescient dreams....
He was going to be a famous science fiction writer, he would publish many stories and novels, and the many of the people who were his literary idols, inspirations, and role-models would accept him as their equal, would become his allies, his friends.
And his life's mission would be to take this commercial science fiction genre and turn it into something else somehow, write works that transcended its commercial parameters, works...that would open a new Way....
This is what you're here for.
And so I was. And so I am."
One of the many epithets attached in the novel to Paul Atreides, Muab'dib, Kwisatz Haderach, is "the Opener of the Way."
As witness the above, certainly something Frank Herbert's masterpiece was for me.
The Opener of the Way.
Something that DUNE will never cease to be.
(END OF ESSAY)
From the same thread, a mini interview with the author of the essay, Norman Spinrad:
The SandRider interviews Norman Spinrad about Frank Herbert & DUNE, January 2009
SandRider: Would you talk briefly about the very first and very last time you spoke with Frank Herbert?
Norman Spinrad: I don't really remember when I first spoke with Frank. I think the last time was in a car somewhere, where Frank told me about being in another car with Dino De Laurentis. According to Frank, Dino asked him to try to write the screenplay to the DUNE movie. Frank told him screenplays weren't his thing, he didn't think he could do it. Dino says "I'll give you a million dollars to try."
Frank: "You talked me into it."
Then Frank tried, the screenplay was no good, and he said to Dino: "See, I told you."
This is me now, not the story Frank told me then, except he did go on about being supportive of Lynch's screenplay, and I think because he himself had failed to adapt the novel.
SR: Is there a non-DUNE Herbert book that you think is "better" or "more important" than his most popular and widely-read work ?
NS: I don't like "better" or "more important" as categories, but I would say that THE SANTAROGA BARRIER is argueably Frank's best novel on a literary level.
SR: You've written that DUNE has become "the template for a generation and more of imitative works, including all too many sequels by Herbert himself. " Where do you think Frank should have ended the DUNE storyline ? Or, what seemed to you to be the natural ending point that he exceeded ?
NS: The third DUNE novel should have been the last one. Frank told me that when he started, he actually wanted to write one huge novel, and thought it out that way. Publishing reality mandated it be published in thirds. After than, it was mostly about money, offers he couldn't refuse
SR: I've always thought DUNE could have stood alone, on its own. Certainly the "story" of the Golden Path was completed at the end of GOD-EMPEROR, when Leto II is "returned to the sand". What did you make of very open-ended conclusion to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE ?
NS: Well DUNE, the first volume, left some things in midair. DUNE MESSIAH was book 2, right, CHILDREN book 3, could have ended after book 2, but publishers alway want at least a trilogy. There's a story, I only heard second hand, that Lester del Rey rewrote the ending of 2, or persuaded Frank to do it, so that a third book would be possible.
SR: Do you believe Frank had intentions of a "Dune7" ? Along the same lines, what do think of the claim of Brian Herbert to have found floppy disks containing the "complete" Dune7 outline in a safety deposit box years after Frank's death ? If there were notes, do you believe Brian and Kevin J. Anderson used them faithfully in their new "Dune" books ?
NS: Maybe. Frank kept going as long as the big money kept rolling in. Knowing Frank's political philosophy, I once asked him how he could keep writing this royalist stuff. He told me he planned to end the series with a novel that would transition to a fictional universe of democratic rule. Never wrote it, of course. And Brian and Kevin certainly didn't from any 7 notes.
SR: Now that Brian and Anderson's new book "Paul of Dune" is set in between DUNE and DUNE MESSIAH, not just a sequel or a prequel, but an "interquel" if you will, do you think Frank Herbert's Dune Legacy is in danger ? Will these new books "devalue" the DUNE trademark and so taint Frank's literary Legacy ?
NS: Who knows? In the long run, it depends on the critics, readers, and publishers. One thing Brian and Kevin can't ever do is put the byline "by Frank Herbert" on their stuff. That "Dune" is now a trademark I find disgusting, and the more it is devalued, the better. That trademark has little or nothing to do with Frank Herbert's literary legacy.
SR: At this point, Peter Berg is set to direct the next film adaption of DUNE. He has stressed the "ecological" theme of the book. I know you have an opinion on that. How has Berg missed the point, of DUNE being a primarilay "ecology-themed" novel ?
NS: I don't like judging a film that hasn't even been shot. But certainly DUNE is not primarily an ecology-themed novel. Indeed, with the depicted ecology of Arrakis consisting of the Worms, the Spice, and humans, it's hardly a novel with ecologial sophistication on a scientific level. I think those who try to see or play it that way do so because the truth is so dangerous--namely that DUNE is centrally about chemically enhanced states of consciousness, and while balanced, is not negative about it. In THE SANTAROGA BARRIER, Frank confronts this head-on, and no way anyone can pretend it's about something else.
SR: Have you read Brian Herbert's biography of Frank, DREAMER OF DUNE ?
NS: I don't have that strong a stomach.