the cultural impact of this book is indisputable, I couldn't help feeling incredibly underwhelmed when reading it.
Even the plot couldn't save Dune, since it's spoiled at every juncture by 'Princess Irulan' and her epigraphs before each chapter.
Did noone tell her about spoiler alerts
From the very first pages, this book plunges you in at the deepend with an absurd amount of overly complex worldbuilding, which just makes the book laborious to work through.
It wasn't for me, and the postDune reading slump is real, No one should argue the importance Dune, It laid the foundations for a great deal of the themes and constructs in modern science fiction, Frank Herbert was as important to the genre as Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke, Unfortunately, just like them, he's quite dated, and his books can be a labor to read, One thing he maintained from old science fiction was prim and scientific dialogue that no one would ever actually speak.
I've known many scientists, and they don't talk like this, You're not going to convince me a child does,
The stuffy dialogue is inserted into even stuffier narrative, until it feels like nothing is organic about Herbert's prose.
This is a terrible tragedy when you've got a world that he put so much effort into building and it is an amazing feat of worldbuilding, technically interplanetary building.
But unlike J. R. R. Tolkien, who he is so frequently compared to, Herbert didn't make sure to include a great story in his world.
Instead he included a story that frequently illustrated how clunky an artificial world can be, even if it's lovingly crafted.
I
struggled to attach or find interest in anyone, yet they're more archetypes than human beings, whose logic races past modern skepticism and whose dialogue is cloyingly artificial, the way people cared for the Hobbits, Dwarves and Rangers.
In his worldbuilding, Tolkien at least saved himself from being dated by antedating himself, and even with his illuminated prose, wrought more characteristics in just one protagonist than all of Dune's cast.
Even the political intrigue Herbert tries to fall back on was overdone in the Spy genre decades before he started this book.
All fans of the "Genre" genres should appreciate Herbert's massive contributions, but they shouldn't pretend to enjoy the books if they don't, and they should be wary of certain pitfalls typical of science fiction that survived into his landmark work.
“I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought, ”I dont think I actually enjoyed this book, But I certainly respected the hell out of it, For a bit I thought I had it all figured out, pegged it as your bogstandard Chosen One story, and then it went where I didnt think itd go and neatly subverted my expectations.
It tackled stuff that is uncomfortable and therefore is generally handwaved over in the usual SF epics, And for that I seriously respected this dense complex tome,
We people tend to love the idea of a charismatic allpowerful leader who inspires faithful following and true fervor, that cultlike blind devotion.
We give those leaders tremendous power to lead and decide and determine fates, So many stories rooted in the weight of our species collective history glorify this so many countries still apparently yearn for powerful visionary leaders that others proclaim to be dictators.
So many religions go to wars over the legacy left by a popular charismatic leader centuries ago, interpreting those legacies as the engine for the action, destruction, obedience.
Hero worship. Messianic worship. Prophecies and tyrannies. Desire for a Savior to rescue you from the evil, Good intentions paving the road to hell, It all leads to terrifying places which we may be powerless to stop,
“A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.
He maintains the level of individuals, Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob, ”
This is a novel of a reluctant Messiah, the journey of a man becoming the Chosen One but unlike the traditional story of a charismatic savior, this is a darker picture of the dangers of messianism and hero worship, of allowing blind devotion replace common sense.
The book ends in an ambiguous place, and I presume the sequels may develop the theme or run away from it and make this a more traditional hero journey.
But I certainly hope not, Because the dark implications of messianism say more about human nature than the happier stories based on the same idea, but with more idealism.
We love our ideas of ideal benevolent rulers who can set things right, dont we Or the martyr figures inspiring “righteous” battles Messiahs and figureheads seem to fulfill the deepseated cultural longing for an inspirational leader, dont they Friends become followers and worshippers, and the metaphorical slope becomes quite slippery.
“The Fremen have a simple, practical religion," he said,
"Nothing about religion is simple," she warned,
But Paul, seeing the clouded future that still hung over them, found himself swayed by anger, He could only say: "Religion unifies our forces, It's our mystique. "
"You deliberately cultivate this air, this bravura," she charged, "You never cease indoctrinating. "
"Thus you yourself taught me," he said, ”
Yes, in sitelinkDune Frank Herbert hints at the dangers present in such ideas, What seems like your traditional heros journey turns out darker and more sinister, But its not the rise of an antihero either, Its subtler than that, without actually being all that subtle,
“No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero," his father said.
Paul Atreides, in his own words, is “something unexpected, ” A son of a planetary Duke because an interstellar posttechnology future is actually feudal and a highly trained BeneGesserit concubine of the Duke , Paul fits very well the idea of a Messiah of the tribal resilient society of Fremen people of the harsh desert planet Arrakis, neatly fulfilling their religious prophecies and possessing genetic superpowers himself, augmented by rigorous training and catalyzed by the ingestion of a magical wonderdrug known as spice.
“He found that he no longer could hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor or even the Harkonnens.
They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes.
And the race knew only one sure way for thisthe ancient way, the tried and certain way that rolled over everything in its path: jihad.
”
But Paul through his prescient powers can see what his mythologized destiny leads to, A galactic scale slaughter led by fanatics in his name, And there is not a way to escape it, once your life fits the mysticism of their faith even if the faith and prophecies were stealthily prereplanted for sort of a similar purpose.
Religious fanatics are destined to wage a brutal war that the Messiah is unable to stop,
“When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself.
You are always a little less than an individual, ”
With great power comes great responsibility, and all that jazz, But is any of it actually worth it Wouldnt the world be better without the burden of Heroes Are you destined to become exactly what youre trying to avoid
All this is gently hinted at, laid out in the framework of the appealing Heros journey.
It seems that should you desire, you can still easily choose to read it as a typical heros/antiheros story, just less idealistic than it could be.
But that would be Star Wars and not Dune,
“He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man.
There is no measuring Muad'Dib's motives by ordinary standards, In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery.
Can you say he did this out of a sense of justice Whose justice, then Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: "I am the Kwisatz Haderach.
That is reason enough. ”
And you also cant help but be mesmerized by a harsh desiccated planet where life is focused on survival, where not even water but mere moisture is the most coveted and rarest thing, where hopes for a better, wetter, greener future quietly flourish, tied into messianic ideas but grounded in science.
The place of nightmares, written vividly and skillfully, making me want to gulp down a gallon of drink just because I can, making me appreciate that my reality doesnt hinge on surviving on my reclaimed bodily fluids.
The world is harsh, unforgiving, brutal, hostile, The characters well, mostly Paul, but to an extent his mother Jessica as well are cold, calculating, composed and often very unsympathetic.
Pauls father values lives over property, Pauls actions, on the other hand, lead to eyebrowraising among his fathers old lieutenants who note the difference in priorities:
“Nothing money won't repair, I presume," Paul said.
"Except for the lives, m'Lord," Gurney said, and there was a tone of reproach in his voice as though to say: "When did an Atreides worry first about things when people were at stake”
Its dense and complex, full of politics, short on actual science fiction but full of ruminations on human nature and it leaves me feeling that all of this is a beginning of another cycle of violence, just with a new figurehead at the mast.
As Terry Pratchett said, “But here's some advice, boy, Don't put your trust in revolutions, They always come around again, That's why they're called revolutions, ” A new Hero or a new Messiah comes, and begets another cycle or struggle and violence, to be reset anew by a new figurehead sometimes in the future.
All while sandworms quietly slither under the sand,
Oh yeah, there are sandworms, too,
stars out of respect for Herberts subversive story that made me think, Im content with the story ending here, with ambiguity and dread for whats to come, .