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Dune (Dune #1)

Frank Herbert

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May 21, 2008 Werner rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-i-own, science-fiction

Dune definitely deserves a longer review than I can give it here! Its setting type --a far-future, human-colonized galaxy-- was already a familiar staple of the genre when Herbert wrote this work; but the scale, scope and sheer inventiveness of his world building is in a class by itself, rivaling Tolkien's for complexity. (The book has four appendices that contribute to the back-story, and a glossary --which the reader will use extensively!)

This work, though, has more to offer than world-buildin Dune definitely deserves a longer review than I can give it here! Its setting type --a far-future, human-colonized galaxy-- was already a familiar staple of the genre when Herbert wrote this work; but the scale, scope and sheer inventiveness of his world building is in a class by itself, rivaling Tolkien's for complexity. (The book has four appendices that contribute to the back-story, and a glossary --which the reader will use extensively!)

This work, though, has more to offer than world-building. At one level, it's a great tale of adventure and action, in a galaxy dominated by a corrupt and exploitative empire with a feudal social structure rife with all the abuses which that can entail. Much of the book's fighting is with edged weapons, and the harsh environment of the desert planet Dune (the unusual ecology of which Herbert works out in detail, with real plausibility) poses life-or-death challenges of its own. Even for this quality alone, this is a gripping read. In some particulars, it resembles Burrough's SF work, and would probably appeal to his fans (of which I'm one). But Herbert's capacity for nuanced, evocative prose and round characterization (even of his villains) is as much head-and shoulders above Burroughs as is his consistent, carefully thought-out world building.

On another level, the enmeshing of characters, like Paul and his mother, who are not themselves evil, in a social system that is profoundly so, and in situations and a physical environment that create their own "brutal necessities," gives Herbert opportunities to explore the many fascinating shades of gray that can lend particular interest, moral complexity --and useful moral instruction by example-- to fiction. Finally, this is a novel that definitely deals with serious and important ideas: about human ideas, about society, about philosophy, and about religion. (Herbert's ideas about the latter, which tend to be humanistic and syncretistic, are most clearly presented in an appendix; I don't share them, but that doesn't detract from the the literary value of the novel, from the quality of his stoytelling, or from the degree to which he makes you care about the fate of his major characters.) ...more

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