Science Fiction Aficionados discussion
How old were you when you read Dune?
I read it when Lynch's film came out in '84 so I was 16. I have reread it twice since then and it makes more sense to me each time. ;)
I read it when I was 14. I've read it at least twice since then and I'm 27 now. I've enjoyed it every time.Skip anything written by Brian Herbert though. I've attempted to read two of his Dune books and gave up each time. They are awful.
Senior year in High School. I was 17.
I just read the book this summer and I am 39. I saw the movie (the one with Sting) when I was a kid and loved it. I have seen the movie many times ever since, and I tend to stay away from books that I have seen in the movies. Someone finally convinced me to read it, and I thought it was Ok.
Tried it at 12, but was too young to keep with it, and then just haven't been interested in the three decades since. The various film versions haven't helped my opinion but soon I hope to peruse all the classics I have missed over the years, including this one.
I first read Dune the year it was published, 1965. I've read and re-read the entire series many times. Have to say I found the newer series co-authored by his son to be disappointingly tedious and largely a waste of time. Stopped after reading three or four... Frank Herbert was an original visionary and his shoes are just too big to be filled... So far! I found the David Lynch film bizarre, though I've watched it a few times. The SF Channel mini-series was OK though uninspired IMHO. I'm still hoping for a definitive film treatment of the entire Herbert opus (as long as they don't include his son's stuff)...
I think I was 14 or 15 the first time I read the first book. I was fascinated, enthralled, and well on my way to being a sci-fi geek. Eleven seems a bit young to me, but my daughter is 16 now, and she read it at a young age, too. It hasn't seemed to hurt her or induce any sociopathic tendencies. ;^)
I was 13/14, and it is still one of my favorite books. I have never re-read it, I probably should, since it's been almost 30 years.I say go for it, and if it is too dense, then put it down and pick it up in a couple more years.
I read all the sequels he wrote, but Dune is the best of them. As for the pseudo-prequels written by his son and Kevin Anderson, well, after reading the first 3 of them the best I can say is, it's nice to revisit the Dune universe, and to speculate about the backstory, but they aren't very good. Caveat emptor and all that.
I was about 19 when I read Dune and it completely enthralled me. I had just read Asimov's foundation trilogy and thought nothing could top that! Dune had so much more depth, diversity and weirdness than anything I had read before. It was the first time in my life I had read a book that asked more questions than it answered. I loved the intrigue and the lack of clarity at the end. I think the ending of Dune altered my reading perspective forever.
I love books that leave questions unanswered and don't fully resolve things. I am now constantly irritated if a book ties up all the loose ends and presents me with a pretty package of solutions in the last chapter (Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga), which I loved up until the last few pages.
I could go on all day about Dune and the universe Herbert created. Great, great book - shame about the others in the series, Herbert never fully recovered his mojo after the first one!
The prequels written by his son are very poor in my opinion.
The first, second or third time? Don't mind me; I suspect the first. It was in 1986 because Chapterhouse was already in paperback. I read Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune one after the other. I was 25 years old and thought I'd found the most amazing series I'd ever encountered! Given that said, I have to respectfully disagree with Cybergit above me on a few points. While Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have collaborated successfully/not-quite-successfully on the prequels/interquels/sequels to Frank Herbert's originals, I've appreciated knowing more of the story given their efforts. While not all that they wrote and distributed (which I've read) adhered entirely to Frank's original 6 novels, I liked that the effort was made to both back up and finish the story. I can't say whether the claim to an undiscovered treasure trove of Frank's intentions for the world of Dune is valid because I haven't seen the evidence. Nonetheless, despite some discrepancies and/or lackluster within House Atreides, Harkonnen and/or Corrino (specifically regarding Paul's birth), and even if The Battle of Corrin winds up a let-down to The Butlerian Jihad and The Machine Crusade (due specifically to Xavier Harkonnen), I reiterate that I remain appreciative of Brian's and Kevin's efforts.I've also read Paul of Dune and The Winds of Dune. I'd have to re-read them to remember them significantly. However, I've just received a copy of Sisterhood of Dune and ever since the end of The Battle of Corrin, I've wanted to know more about the Bene Gesserit, the Mentat, the Suk, the Spacing Guild, and the Navigator origins and development.
Conversely, I absolutely love the ways in which Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune wound down the series! Both novels by Brian and Kevin were far better than their prequels or interquels to the complete series (save Sisterhood, which I haven't yet read).
So, on the many issues of Dune, this is where I currently stand/sit/relax.
I think I first read Dune when I was 16. Maybe younger. answer Kim, I think the prequels are actually better than the sequels. I got kind of bored by the sequels. With the prequels, even though you ultimately know how things end up (if you've read Dune already) they're still full of intrigue, action, and suspense.
I would have been 14. At 11 I was definitely too young to understand all the nuances, and even at 14 and an avid reader, I still missed a fair bit. I think it's a good plan to reread later if you choose to read it at 11. I understood much more each time I reread it.
In 1967. I bought the the first paperback edition published by Ace. It had a nice blurb on the cover by Arthur C. Clarke comparing it to The Lord Of The Rings. At first I could not get into it so I spent some time reading the glossary at the back of the book. Once I knew what a mentat and a kwisatz haderach was , it was a whole lot easier. I was 16 at the time.
I read it when I was about 16 I think -- around the time the David Lynch film came out. I really liked it. It must be time for me to read it again now.
I was in my early 20s about 1992-3.I inherited the series and they were old 1960s paperbacks with yellowing pages but I was enthralled.
I was in my early twenties. My 11 year old couldn't get into it yet, but I don't think she wanted to try. It will be one that I have to force her to read for 100 pages or so.
I read it at 12-13 years of age. Even at that age Dune was fascinating; an in-depth creation of a political economic and social commentary woven within the pages of the novel. It has been worth reading with new appreciation as I have grown older and experienced life.
I first read Dune (after being told by many people since high school that I should read it) last summer—at the tender age of 52 ;-)
I saw the movie first, when I was eleven, and even though a lot of people don't like it, I thought it was really amazing. I read the books in high school and realized they were really different but I still like both for different reasons. A lot of people seem to like the tv mini series because it was closer to the actual story but I didn't think it had an epic feel and the movie, as inaccurate as it was, still for being epic. I know that's an ongoing debate and there are lots of haters on the movie but I like it, for what it is. Anyway, I'm probably going to re-read Dune again this year. It is one of those stories that is worth re-reading.
I have tried to read dune several times, i cannot even get past the first chapter.
I think I was 15 or 16. I loved it. It's a whole world between two covers, complete with a religious transformation, solid characters and sand worms! Very ambitious and mostly successful. An amazing book. I liked the second and third of the series but couldn't get through the fourth, which sucked because I bought it in hard cover when it came out, I wanted to read it so badly. I got through about a hundred pages and stopped. I'm noticing the first post on this thread was in 2011. I hope he read it.
Hi, my names Larry and Im a SFaholic...I tried to read Dune a couple of years ago..Didnt enjoy it...
I was about 13 when I did. Perhaps 16 actually; I think I got it from my school library. I liked it, but it could do with a re-read/.
This is one of those rare occasions when I thought the film was better than the book!
24 years old and about two years before the movie came out.Movie was good and the book was great.
Somewhere around 9 or 10. I remember it was at least 2 years before the 1984 movie came out. I loved it. Although it is a good enough book that you will get different things out of it each time you reread.
I avoided it in my teen years. My younger brother had read it, but it seemed too hard a read for me at the time (I think I had a touch of ADD back then). So, I was probably in my early 20s the first time I read it. Blew my mind, thought it was genius, most astounding SF I'd read.Read it again in my late 20s, along with all the rest of the series. Read it all in kind of a feverish obsessive way one summer. When I finally got through it all and had gotten over the buzz, I looked back on it and realized that a lot of the latter books were pretty bad. Like the first two were good, but after that it devolved pretty rapidly.
Read it a third time in my mid 30s. I was surprised at how much less I admired it. That was the last time I read it. I'm 55 now. I found the interior dialog and the omniscient POV to be rather...blunt? Skittish? I don't know, it was disconcerting how much it jumped around to the inside of everyone's head. It felt kind of uneven and disjointed. The story itself held up, but the writing style hasn't withstood the test of time for me.
15, and then other 2 times about 5 years apart and on each re-read i picked up more and understand more of the of the universe of Dune.
I was fifteen years old. I thought it was the most amazing thing of all time.
Hard to be exact, but I would have been a teenager at the time - a young teenager. The breadth of vision and the staggeringly imaginative setting just blew me away. I wasn't quite as impressed when I re-read it recently, thirty odd years later, but that is in part a tribute to how much Dune has influenced pretty much everything written since, so that it is no longer as unique as it once was - it remains however the original, and inspiration for so much. You can even see it in the first Star Wars, with Tatooine's moisture farms being the most obvious example, but the mysticism of the jedi is also reminiscent of the Bene Gesserit, albeit in more muscular form.
I was 17 and it was the first sci fi book I'd ever read. It's still one of my favourites. Some really good characters. Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho and some others.
I was 16 when I first read the first trilogy in french and had to wait for the translation and release of the other books. At some point I finally had enough waiting and read "God Emperor of Dune" in English, quite a tall order for a first book in a foreign language for me... I've since read the whole series every 5 or 10 years (in the original English of course), each time with a slightly different perspective and a better understanding. There is no doubt to me that the Dune series is a masterpiece.
Although I was a big SF fan all my life I didn't read Dune until Star Wars came out in 1977 and I was 30 years old. A friend at work mentioned that the planet Tatooine in Star Wars made him think of Arrakis in Dune. He then convinced me to read Dune and I was very glad he did.
I read Dune in my 20s, then re-read it and a few others in the series in my 30s.Now that I am 59, I am reading all 20 books, finished the first 5 so far. I am using the read order from here: http://www.dunenovels.com/blog
I first tried to read it in middle school as it was one of my mother's favorite books. I just couldn't get into it. I tried again in high school and had much better luck.
I read it around age 16 or so. Thought it was amazing and quickly read the other books in the series.
I think I read it when I was 12 (definitely before high school). It's certainly more tame than other books I read at that age. There's going to be socio-political stuff that might not make sense, but that's what re-reading is for!
One can hardly be too young to read a decent sci-fi novel above all one of depth and scale such as Dune. I've also read it while in my early teens and I clearly remember how much it impressed me. I believe that the best part about reading great books at young age (besides the sheer fun of it) is how a good novel holds the power to mould one into a better human being. That being said, it might be a bit of a daunting task to get through the whole series. Still, if you do, it will be worth it. There are at least two more volumes in the series that are just as good or better than Dune itself. Oh and don't get me started on the whole Herbert's universe... Think Silmarillion but on steroids and you can trust me on that (I didn't even have to Google spelling of the book!)
14-15. I cannot really remember. It changed my life.
I read it in Analog as the two separate serials, Dune World and The Prophet of Dune in 1963-65 (which were eventually combined an dpubkshed as Dune. So I first encountered it when I was 14, which I think was a good age for reading this book. The other books in the series are okay and worth reading if you like them (a bit of a tautology there), but the first one truly is a SF classic.I really wish I had those Analog magazines. Whe I spent a year in Australia of the U.S. government, I asked a friend to keep them for me. He unfortunately moved to Maine.
I think I was around 15 the first time I read it, and in my late 20’s the second time. I’m turning 55 this year and getting ready to read it again.
I was twelve - and chose it for a book report at school My teacher was a bit skeptical, but it definitely ignited by love for scifi/fantasy.
When I was 11 I read my first science fiction novel, The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Soon after that, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. I read Dune when I was 13, so you might be ready to read it. It is definitely true that you understand different things when you read a book at different ages. I just realized that from the date of the original post means that you are 18 now. I wonder if Joshua ever read Dune. It is not on his Reading list.
Gary wrote: "When I was 11 I read my first science fiction novel, The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Soon after that, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. I rea..."My dad was on that book club subscription. I think your copy of Dune is from that.
I read the first two books when I was 21 and in the hospital for two weeks. I'd say give it a go! If it's too challenging, you can always set it aside for later.
I was probably around 12 when I read Dune. I later read the sequels and tried to read some of the later books in the series by Frank Herbert. I didn’t find them particularly interesting. I read one or two of the books his son wrote with Kevin Anderson but emphatically did not like them.
In 1984, inspired by the movie, I started trying to read the book when I was 16. Got through 2 chapters and gave up. I finally read the entire book when I was 45. It was a tough read for an easily distracted teenager.
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I had just completed my (still) favorite reading experience of all time - "LOTR" - and was looking for other Sci-Fi trilogies to read.
I started with "FOUNDATION".
And followed with "DUNE".
Not as good as "LOTR", but better than "FOUNDATION" - and definitely worth the read.
And how can this be?
"For he IS the Kwisatz Haderach!"
Todd