Dune (Dune #1) in Reading with Style

Sep 26, 2021 Andrew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, reviewed, guardian-1000, political-fiction, usa-american-lit, weird-ass-fiction, sci-fi-new-wave

I keep wavering between 4 and a half and 5 stars for this book. For now I've chosen four and half, I'll probably have another wobble and go back to four. Then ill probably change it again. So it goes.

Well, how to start to confront this mighty book, a huge totemic grand obelisk of sci fi, a book, rather like the gigantic sand worms themselves, something to be in awe of and yet also something that, with patience, can be wrestled with, reigned in, and ultimately controlled.

Well, yes, it's good. Exc I keep wavering between 4 and a half and 5 stars for this book. For now I've chosen four and half, I'll probably have another wobble and go back to four. Then ill probably change it again. So it goes.

Well, how to start to confront this mighty book, a huge totemic grand obelisk of sci fi, a book, rather like the gigantic sand worms themselves, something to be in awe of and yet also something that, with patience, can be wrestled with, reigned in, and ultimately controlled.

Well, yes, it's good. Exceedingly good. Contrary to my expectations, it was no slog at all. In fact, it positively zipped along. The writing I never had a problem with, possibly because I was so actively invested in the plot and so fascinated by the world those aspects people criticise about it, the internal dialouges, the sense of portentous seriousness, its philosophy, were the bits I adored. And although dialogue remains largely at the flat level, and much of the plot remains at the level of high abstraction, I didn't much mind for this, as it is an epic, a vast canvas where ideas are the key drive behind it. And some sections of it are truly phenomenal, far from it being dry (ironic), sterile writing, it has genuine flair and majesty in it. Herbert has a style which I can't quite pin down, it's simultaneously to the point and at times beautiful, and in the bits where he allows his poetic imagination to flourish (the ecologists death, Paul's first sense of truly being awake to the possibilities of time) are phenomenal pieces of writing).

What them, are the points that are such strengths of this book? Well, of the top of my head I can think of two main ones. 1) is the worldbuildng - it's staggering. Aside from Tolkien, I fail to find an author who seemingly thought out so much of the world he constructed and knew precisely where everything went in it, like a fine master craftsman intricately placing his cogs inside a meticulously crafted clock. One only needs to read the first appendix, on the ecology of Arrakis, to see what a weight of knowledge went into it). It benefits widely just by how amazingly, startlingly original it is. I struggle to think of a sci fi author, certainly before, and indeed very much since (and my god, can you see the influence afterwards on sci fi) who crafted such genuinely original concepts and ideas seemingly with no baggage behind. Only Assimov, in his Foundation series, managed to create such a vast canvas, and frankly, much of his stuff has not aged well, either in the way characters are written or the actual science involved. Herbert, very smartly, neutralised one of those points immediately by essentially aging and deliberately making the book archaic. By setting it in in a post-robot age, where technology as we know it has effectively been widely curtailed, he effectively made it timeless. In fact, in many ways its a rather pessimistic vision of the future, there's no Federation here, its a brutal, feudal empire with a rigid caste system of hierarchy. In effect, he wrote something in almost stark contradiction to pretty much every sci fi book before him and even some today, he projects so far into the future that he suggests in some way we may go backwards, hugely technologically advanced in some areas (space travel, laser shields) yet politically and culturally backwards, and brilliant showcasing of uneven and combined development right on the heart of the space empire itself. It was a stroke of genius, and by effectively cutting out entirely the need for technobabble, which always, almost without question, is cringe inducing in the long term, he refocused the story onto humans, on questions of philosohy and central question of power. And indeed, the other enormous advantage Herbert's book has is just how intricate and complicated the power politics is. There's an enormous sense of realism in his depiction of the power structure of the universe, with the Emperor and his Sardaukar elite troops, acting sort of like a central sun with many small suns around it, but then with many outer planets surrounding it, the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild as massive gas giants, with the Houses of the Laandsraad and their respective armies as outer planets, each of them floating and orbiting around each other in a dance of intrigue. This is extremely well thought out, as some science fiction tends to be obsessed with a monolithic "Empire" and (it is nearly always THE Empire, monolithic and evil, as in Star Wars), but adding this level of complexity to it gives it a genuine sense of verisimilitude. Herbert clearly knew his stuff, he was patently very politically aware, and knew that most power systems are a complicated mass of different class factions, with changes in policy often merely being a change amongst the dominant class factions (one cannot understand America's foreign policy over the past century without understanding this interplay between the President, the CIA, the Pentagon, the formal military, the Millitary-Industrial Complex, the NSA and the wider capitalist system, not to mention the various pressure groups impacting on all of them from civil society). In that sense, he got it spot on, and for me the political discussions, the complex power plays are the most interesting. I get if for some people that slows the book to a crawl, but for me, Herbert added a level of historical realism to his (already conceptually brilliant) sci fi book that is unbeated in my opinion. He also did the revolutionary, and again, AFAICT, unheard of act of introducing the notion of scarcity to his sci fi. Every other sci fi franchise has some measure of FtL travel, which is just implicitly assumed and never doubted, usually as part of a post-scarcity age (Star Trek in particular). Not so here. By plopping in this one key ingredient, the fact that all space travel is dependent on a single resource, he creates a world of possibilities far more interesting, creatively stimulating, and, again, more realistic than just having people zip around willy nilly. By turning space travel into something limited, he forces open questions most people don't ask of empires, whose producing the energy for said empire and how is it generating. He turned space flight from a sci fi technogimmick into a question of power relations. Again, the relationship to oil, and the power grabs and wars in the middle east precisely because of it, couldn't be clearer. He added capitalism into the question, made explicit with the CHOAM company (a kind of cartel of cartels organising shares amongst the respective factions over the spice production) a clear analogy for OPEC.

The second great benefit the book provides is something that it is endlessly criticised for, and something which lingered at the back of my mind like a nasty stain, its depiction of the white saviour trope and Orientalism. Or rather, its ruthless dissection of both. Herbert is accused of regurgitating the "mighty whitey" concept, showcasing a superstitious and ignorant group of desert primitives, simultaneously more brutal and and more esoteric than the equivalent "western" presence, needing a white saviour messiah figure to liberate them. But this plainly isn't true, as a close reading of the text demonstrates. For what it's worth, Duke Leto is described as "olive skinned", clearly indicating that he isn't white, and therefore, logically, Paul probably isn't either. But regardless, to my mind it's a remorseless deconstruction of the entire saviour/messiah trope, said again and again throughout. The use of the quotes at the beggining of each chapter, more than adding intriguing worldbuilding, is part of the deconstruction, showing the mythbuilding built after the fact, the psedo-profundity and sense of destined mysticism which is always put onto the events, not the actual events themselves. Its quite clear the Fremen's religious fanaticism was an imposition, part of outside meddling as part of the long game of the Bene Gesserit in their power plays. It's stated quite openly by the Lady Hessica at one point that she considers them useful precisely as tools for help her and son against the Harkkonens. So there's no sense there of this being there natural stare, or indeed even a sense of benevolent former colonialists feeling white guilt towards the natives. Its a rather ruthless imperial power posture, one with disastrous results for the Fremen in the end. Paul, by the end, is almost a borderline antagonist, capable of seeing the horror up ahead but faintly unable to stop it, driving the Fremen people into cult worship for his own gain. There's even a scene where he simply screams that all this training and preparation is so he can claim "his fief". There's no noble cause here, its all shades of grey. The Harkonnens, villains incarnate, make anyone look better by contrast. By in their stupidity, arrogance, and imperialist hubris end up driving people to a cause which not only destroys them but ends up swallowing the empire they hoped to dominate. I mean, sound familiar? The book was written in '66, and the context of Vietnam cannot be underplayed. The relationship between the spice, Arrakis and the Fremen to Vietnam and the Viet Minh is clear. But more than simply reflecting his times, what's startling is how prescient Herbert was. After all, with his use of Islamic terminology everywhere (including outright use of the term 'jihad', an obscure term not known to anyone outside of specialist Islamic scholars in the 60s but now known to every schoolchild and pregnant with foreboding) and the nature of the conflict, a squabble amongst rival imperial powers in a desert land with one side harnassing a group of local guerilla fighters and, through ignorance and active malice, in the process radicalises them into religious fanatics, couldn't be a clearer depiction of Afghanistan and its situation 30 years later. Americas devil pact with Saudi Arabia, and its arming of Muhageen forces, and their subsequent radicalisation under the influence of the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence services (both firm US allies) produced consequences to that decision still haunting us to this day. There is never any hint of it being orientalist in the sense of a wild outside world intruding on the civilised world, or the counter, or a luscious and beautuful, unsullied people, of simple and spiritual peoples here to teach the modernity-blighted imperial core the error of their ways. I say this for two reasons. 1) the use of Islamic and Buddhist terminology scattered around doesn't appear to be limited to the Fremen, it appears to be the general cultural frame of the entire empire. So its hardly an "outsider" culture. Frankly, "orientalism" as a concept, is a bit silly, and it is clear why here. It either presumes a westerner can never, ever portray any Eastern culture without automatically falling into the trope, even if done with genuine empathy and care to attention, thus effectively killing any possibility of cross-cultural understanding or interplay (also presuming an essentialist understanding of "east" and "west" in the first place from which to construct such an antagonistic relationship, which is patently stupid). And two), it just seems like a dumb trap. To me, the use of Islamic and more eastern-orientated concepts in a sort of synchretic amalgam brings a richness and a depth to the wordbuilding. Not to mention, a logic, as it seemed correct to presume that a bazillion years in the future that there would be, by this time, such a melding of cultures that we (a primarily western audience) would find quite unusual in our still primarily Anglocentric world (although not for long buckos). No doubt if Herbert has soley used western European terms and stripped out all references to Islamic terms he'd be equally accused of Eurocentrism, of presenting a "culturally imperialist" vision of the future entirely dominated by western standpoints blah blah blah. So its a stupid concept, a piece of witless, sneering, preening postcolonialist shit used to bound thought and prevent critical engagement, a slur word used by the intellectual cretins of the cultural studies seminars ready to trot out whatever inane mcWokeite frame of reference they have for the moment. Said, that noxious, poisonous imbecile of post colonialist studies, has much to awnser for, and it says volumes that one can only sincerely believe in the concept fully if one, like he did, believes (ironically) in an eternal western racism rooted practically in nature which innately incurable, a neat inversion of the traditional racist, white supremacist notion, which says exactly the same (see here for a great demolition of Said and his work: https://youtu.be/xPYX21BamPQ).

Herbert neither seems to fall into either camp, he neither seems to idolise and esoterise the Fremen or outright demonise the. He presents them as the product of centuries of ruthless colonialism and ethnic cleansing, pushed to millenninerial religion as a coping mechanism to the harshness of their lives and shamelessly manipulated by colonial forces for their own end. They are not pitiable, or condemnable. Again, there is a sense of stark realism about their presentation. Anti colonial forces are not always actually the good guys, especially if not almost actually if said forces are the products of imperial meddling. They're the Taliban, not the Viet Minh in this universe, conveyed with all the moral greyness and ethical problems bound up in that.

So, I loved the book. I even think the characters are strong, something which also gets criticised. I find the Emperor, a man who only appears about 90% into the book, a fantastic portrayl of someone who gets in over his head in a desperate move for survival only to see it crashing down. The Duke Leto is another, a faintly tragic character, a man of faintly faded glory, bitter and estranged to his cocubine/wife Jessica, obsessed with death and to some extent aware its coming, who at one point its almost hinted welcomes Arrakis as a suicide, a John the Baptist to Paul's Christ. But then there's Paul himself, the christ figure who hates that fact, the messiah who is aware of his own fate yet actively tries to fight against it, a little boy burdened with a chosen one status by a bunch of evil Jedi manipulators (who got their plan wrong anyway), who increasingly destroys his soul as he drives on ahead with the jihad. Even the Baron, perhaps one of the nastiest characters on fiction (and indeed, sometimes overstatingly so, it doesn't seem great in retrospect for the only gay character in the book to also be a pedophile. Aside from playing into nasty stereotypes, it is also just seems unnecessary) I actually think has a depth and nuance to him, himself a sort of victim of circumstances, regretful at the Dukes death and cautious about the future.

The book certainly is not perfect. It does drag in places, especially towards the end of part 2 and the beggining of part 3, and the ending is curiously flat. The characters are often embodying archetypes, fittimg for a mythic epic such as this but which by definition does somewhat prevent more multi layered characters (although as I say above, not totally without nuance, especially with Paul). But I think if you are looking for something less focused on action or the science aspect of sf (both for the better IMO), love the political, philosophical and psychological aspects that Herbert is conveying (and see it as part of a broader cycle Herbert is conveying, as what he is saying cannot be understood without considering the later books) I think you'll find it one of the most stunning, inventive, thought provoking and exquisite works of fiction ever made.

It also had big ass giant sci fi monsters for the kids, in the form of the sand worms, just to prove this is in fact a sci fi book. ...more

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Jul 09, 2013 Thomas Acland rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, 1960-s, fantasy, bbc-big-read, to-see-film, space-opera

This book had some very good points and some distinctly average points, while I was reading it my impression was always somewhere between a three and four star rating but the ending sadly was not as good as it needed to be and therefore I have settled on a three star rating.

The story itself is well described by the goodreads' description and is every bit as crazy and the blurb makes it sound, any book that can include interstellar travel as one of the key theme really relies on the use of the u ...more

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