Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

Chapterhouse:  Dune (1985) is the last Dune Chronicles novel that Frank Herbert managed to complete before he died in 1986, leaving behind apparently only an outline for the final volume in this second quasi-trilogy set in the Dune universe.  Knowing this before re-reading it made for at-times uncomfortable reading experience, as I found myself detecting what I suspect were clues as to themes, plot events, and character developments that he had planned to address in the never-written seventh novel (I discount what Herbert's son, Brian, and Kevin Anderson wrote, since I suspect that they added quite a bit of extraneous material that they had invented and did not stay true to any outline, if such did in fact exist, that Frank Herbert had created before his untimely death).  However, on the whole, Chapterhouse:  Dune was one of the better "middle volumes" that I have read in some time.

The story picks up eight standard (Earth?) years after the events of Heretics of Dune.  The Honored Matres, freshly returned from the Scattering that followed Leto II's transformation/death 1500 years before, have furthered their wrathful conquest of the old Imperium.  The Bene Gesserit have been driven underground, forced to seek refuge on their "secret" planet/new headquarters of Chapterhouse.  The newly-discovered Atreides descendant/sandworm handler, Sheeana, has helped the Bene Gesserit begin the process of turning that planet into a new Dune.  On board the Ixian no-ship, which keeps prying prescient eyes from detecting him, the latest Duncan Idaho ghola, now possessing all of his serial memories, has to train the clone of the late Miles Teg, who died on Rakis fending off the Honored Matres before they blasted the planet into a lifeless shell those eight years before.  The former Honored Matre (Matron?), Murbella, is being trained to become a Bene Gesserit.  And there are Jewish refugees aboard the ship as well, a secretive remnant of the Imperium's oldest surviving religion.

These are the basic characters and plotlines that stretch across the last two novels.  As he did with Heretics of Dune, Herbert spends more time developing the characters and their precarious situations than he did in the previous four volumes.  There is a greater sense of urgency throughout the book, making it perhaps the quickest and easiest to read of the six volumes.  This is not to say that Herbert skimped on the challenging themes and ideas that were present in the earlier novels. If anything, the way that both the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserit interact with each other and with the people surrounding them serve as prime examples for the ideas that he has explored throughout the entire series.

Early in this series, I noted that these books, particularly the first, read like "ecological novels."  I went on to explain that the complex interactions between human groups, their value systems, their economic systems, their political arrangements, their religious hierarchies, and the influences they had on the living and non-living parts of their environs and how there was also a reciprocal relationship in which their surroundings altered and affected each human interaction group - all of these formed a complex ecological web that affected events within the story.  In Chapterhouse:  Dune, it was the exploration of the survival instinct, connected with Leto II's Golden Path, that drove much of this novel's narrative.

Although I was not very fond of Herbert's application of sexual activity and bondage through sex in this novel and the previous one, he certainly brings to the fore the idea that it is within sexual interplay (not necessarily just intercourse) that the seeds of human change and desire first develop offshoots.  Why do the Honored Matres exploit sexual desires in order to control males?  What has them (and later, the Bene Gesserit) so fearful about survival?  What deaths occur within the "little death" and what futures spring forth from them?  These are some of the underlying questions that I asked myself while re-reading this novel for the first time in nearly nine years. 

What is so important about Duncan Idaho and "wild" genes?  Finally, Herbert began to hint just what Idaho's ultimate role might be.  Throughout the series, he has been a loyal (sometimes, too-loyal) supporter of the Atreides, who had originally rescued him from the Harkonnens at some point prior to the first novel.  But as the series progressed, Idaho became more than just a sort of mute Chorus for the Atreides tragedies that were unfolding.  He became a gene source that would be introduced at certain times to produce offspring that contained wild, unpredictable powers, something not always to the liking of the Bene Gesserit.  But here in Chapterhouse:  Dune, through the careful denials placed in strategic places, it seems Idaho may be akin to what the Bene Gesserit had hoped to produce before Muad'Dib appeared:  a Kwisatz Haderach, a shortener of the paths.

While I will not weigh in on the unfinished narrative arcs dealing with Murbella, the surviving Bene Gesserit, the plots of the sole surviving Bene Tleilaxu, Scytale, and the Jews onboard the no-ship, I will note that Herbert did develop these arcs just enough to make me wish fervently that he had lived to complete the seventh volume, as there are so many issues involving free will and fate that are left unresolved here that I was left frustrated when I read the final volume and came to realize just who "Marty" and "Daniel" might have been.  But life, in its complex forms, did appear to go on at the conclusion and that, I suspect, is a large part of what Frank Herbert wanted to explore in this quasi-trilogy.  A shame he didn't live to finish it, but at least this novel was as enjoyable as the last two.  Very glad that I undertook a re-read, as I find myself with a greater appreciation for Herbert's accomplishments, despite the flaws and odd world-views that I noted in previous commentaries, than I had after my initial reads in 2001.  Certainly worth the effort for any who have vacillated on reading these novels.

Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

Heretics of Dune (1984), the penultimate volume in the original Dune Chronicles, was simultaneously the easiest and the most difficult to read of the five novels read so far.  I ascribe this to the structural and plot shifts in this novel, but the degree to which I enjoyed this novel depended upon how quickly I was able to adapt to the narrative focus shifting away from the Atreides descendants to the Bene Gesserit and the latest in the long line of Duncan Idaho gholas.  It was not the easiest of adjustments, especially at first.

For most of the series to date, the Bene Gesserit, who apparently were modeled after Catholic religious orders (I seem to recall a comment, I believe in God Emperor of Dune, where Leto II compares them, in an unfavorable fashion, to 16th and 17th century Jesuits), have been presented either as cold-hearted genetic manipulators or as active antagonists to the Atreides protagonists of the previous four novels.  It took some adjustment on my part to view the narrative here in light of their extended stage time.  If it weren't for the reappearance of the Idaho ghola and yet another Atreides descendant, I am not for sure if I would have been able to buy the shift in narrative.  Herbert certainly did not do too much to help change reader perspectives of the Bene Gesserit and, later, the other main forces in the old Imperium.

As was the case with the previous volume, Heretics of Dune is set well after the events of the previous novel.  1500 years have passed this time since the "transformation" of the God Emperor Leto II into what his worshipers on the now again-arid planet of (Ar)Rakis call the Divided God.  The pent-up frustrations that had built up in the human species under Leto II's rigid 3500 year control have exploded into a universes-expanding event called The Scattering.  Recently, some of forces within The Scattering have returned to the lands of the Imperium and led by the Honored Matres, they seem hell-bent on unleashing destruction whenever they cannot manipulate their way into control.  Only the Bene Gesserit, their untrustworthy allies-by-necessity the Bene Tleilaxu, and the military prowess of the recalled Bashar Miles Teg (whose purposeful resemblance to the old Duke Leto I plays a major role in the novel) appear to stand in the way of the Honored Matres gaining complete.  And on Rakis, a long-foretold controller of the sandworms, Sheeana, has appeared.

Although Herbert did cover these topics to some degree or another in his previous four volumes, in Heretics of Dune, the religious backstories behind the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Tleilaxu come to the fore.  The religious fervor of the Zensunnis and Zensufis and how each have affected some of the motivations behind the the groups' actions throughout the series makes for some fascinating scenes.  However, Herbert appears more interested, as he did to a lesser extent in the earlier novels, in the cynical manipulations of the religious orders than on the consequences of the faiths of the various groups.  I could not help but to wonder if this focus on the manipulative forces within religious communities might have contributed to the sense of cold distance that I had on several occasions here and in the earlier novels whenever there would be scenes involving religious groups.  There just seemed to be little to these faiths other than how religions can control people and shape their desires. 

The characterizations were better here, perhaps because there was not as much of an introspective bent to the narrative.  The Bashar Miles Teg and the latest Duncan Idaho ghola in particular were interesting because more time was spent showing their inner conflicts, as Herbert did not seem to rely as much upon internal monologues to drive the plot as he did in the earlier novels.  In fact, Idaho plays a much more central role to the plot here, although at first it took a while for Herbert to explain just exactly why the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Tleilaxu kept reviving him centuries after Leto II's sandtrout dissolution.  Having him be, even more so than was the case in God Emperor of Dune, a source of "wild" genes in the thousands of generations of genetic crossbreeding added an intriguing element to the plot, one that I'm curious to see if it will carry over to Chapter House:  Dune. 

I found the narrative, and in particular the prose, to be easier to focus.  As I noted in my previous commentaries, Herbert's prose often was dense at the expense of a good story flow.  Here, with the lessening of internal monologues and on showing the effects of the changes introduced in the first four volumes, everything seemed to flow better.  This is not to say that there weren't some interesting concepts introduced or explored here.  The Honored Matres and their manipulations of males was in turns intriguing and off-putting.  Having biological developments, particularly of a sexual nature, enhanced by training certainly created a looming menace to the Honored Matres, although this also had its drawbacks.  One scene late in the novel involved the Honored Matre Murbella and Duncan Idaho was a bit disjointed in how clinical a sex scene was described.  This was especially true in reading descriptions of a "pulsing vagina," which unfortunately conjured up images closer to the infamous South Park episode starring Oprah's minge.  Suffice to say, Herbert did not write a good sex scene there.

I am going to hold back on discussing my perceptions of gender roles in the latter Dune novels until the next one, since Chapter House:  Dune reads more like the second half of this novel rather than a distinct novel of its own.  I will note that despite exploring the backstories more here, Herbert certainly left much to be explored.  I wonder if Heretics of Dune was indeed conceived as the opener of a trilogy, as it had the feel of setting up situations and the chief participants more than it did as something that could be read semi-independently of the other novels.  Regardless, I enjoyed it more this time around than I did when I originally read it back in 2001.  Looking forward to the final volume, despite knowing that Herbert's original vision most likely was not fulfilled in the stories co-written by his son and Kevin Anderson.

Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

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God Emperor of Dune (1981), the fourth volume in Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles, is the oddest of the series to date to place.  Set 3500 years after the events of Children of Dune and 1500 years before the events of the fifth novel, Heretics of Dune, it is a bridge novel that somehow also ends up feeling as though it were as separated from the fictional "past" and "future" of the series as the titular character, the transformed pre-Sandworm/human Leto II Atreides, appears to those around him.  This perhaps might be the most difficult of the series to categorize and to analyze briefly.

The structure of the novel differs significantly from the previous three.  Although Herbert still utilizes chapter epigraphs to provide thematic content related to plot developments inside the novel, the voice of these epigraphs shifts away from distant observers toward Leto II himself, via the use of "stolen journals" and official recordings. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Herbert originally had envisioned this novel being told exclusively through the voice of Leto II; it certainly feels like there are vestiges of that in the way that epigraphs and several of the dialogues between Leto II and others are constructed.

When I first read this book back in late 2001, it was, along with the first book, my favorite in the series.  In re-reading it, I found myself remembering why I had held this book in high esteem, although I also noticed several structural elements this time that I had either downplayed or ignored in my initial read.  Depending on how one takes Leto II's personality (-ites?) and the observations that Herbert makes through his titular character in regards to human motivations, sexuality, religious practice, etc., this book either will be a thought-provoking read or a horrid mess of a didactic dialogue that needs to be expunged from the reader's mind. 

The story begins as Leto II is approaching the final stages of his transformation into a full-blown Corialis sandworm.  Due to the environmental changes begun in the first three volumes, Arrakis is no longer an arid planet.  The precious spice melange stopped being produced with the last death of the sandworms.  Leto II controls all of the spice supplies necessary to keep the constituent parts of the old Imperium barely functioning.  He is worshiped by some, such as the Fish Speakers he created out of elements of old Terran myths, and reviled as the Tyrant by others.  Leto II's life is the tragedy of those who never have been allowed to be fully human and that is the starting point of this novel.

Leto II's Golden Path, the planned future for humanity envisioned by him and his now long-dead sister Ghanima (and earlier rejected by his father, Paul Muad'Dib) that is to save humanity from a cataclysm called Krazilec, is progressing at a horrible (and predicted) cost to human impulses.  Leto II has seized control of the Bene Gesserit breeding program and he has introduced new elements into the human genetic pool, elements that add quicker speed, endurance, reflexes, and ultimately, in the form of Siona Atreides, protection against prescient powers such as Leto II himself.  It is a project that has taken a huge toll on those involved, particular Leto II himself, and it is this cost and how others around him fail to understand it that becomes the core of God Emperor of Dune.

In shifting the focus inward to Leto II, Herbert appears at first to de-emphasize the complex interactions of people, their political, religious, and social structures, and their physical environments.  However, upon further consideration, each of the issues introduced in the first three volumes finds fruition here, in Leto II's manipulations of each of these ecological elements.  Although Herbert's interpretations of the origins and uses of certain elements (such as the nature of warfare, his take on utility of homosexuals, view on how the genders vary, etc.) are a bit questionable at times (the Jungian interpretation that Herbert gives, through Leto II and later Moneo Atreides, of the juvenile nature of homosexuality is pretty much discredited today), those elements do contribute to the story's focus on the terrible cost Leto II is enduring to protect the human species from extinction.

Although as an intellectual exercise God Emperor of Dune might be above-average, as a novel it is stylistically a mess.  Herbert rarely showed an ability to write evocative passages revolving around strongly-drawn characters and in this novel, outside of Leto II, the other characters, from the latest Duncan Idaho ghola revival to the descendants of Leto II's sister to the religious/military orders now existing in the Imperium, are all little more than ciphers who appear to exist more to serve as the foil for Leto II than they do to create a vivid story.  While doubtless Herbert's concerns were more with the exploration of the consequences of human genetics and their actions and mistakes, the lack of a strong discernible plot and dynamic characters to develop both plot and themes renders several stretches of this novel almost as bone-dry as the Saheer desert that exists as Leto II's training area and nostalgic stomping grounds.

At this point in my re-read of the series, I am resigned to the fact that Herbert's style does not appeal much to me.  The faults that I've noted in previous commentaries are again reflected here, as the tendency to have internal monologues to show the narrative and character tensions gets rather tedious after a while.  Yet there is something compelling about the story despite the problems I have had with the prose and characterizations.  It is Herbert's vision of humanity and its possible futures that intrigues me, even when I disagree with his assessments of specific elements.  God Emperor of Dune was a slog for much of the time, but despite this, I am more curious than I was before to re-read the last two volumes and see how the consequences of the actions here play out.

Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

Children of Dune (1976) serves as a mini-resolution of sorts for the Dune Chronicles novels.  In this third volume, several of the thematic and plot developments of the first two novels, Dune and Dune Messiah, come to a head, as author Frank Herbert continues his exploration of the complex ecological relationships of humans; their (anti-)heroes; their hierarchies of politics, social networks, and religions; and the ways that his imagined worlds affect and are affected by their physical, social, and moral environments.  It is not an easy novel to read, however, as I found out in my first re-read (and second total read) since 2001.

If Dune Messiah served in part to illustrate the corruptive aspects of (prescient) knowledge and power (as embedded in Paul Muad'Dib's struggles to rein in the Jihad done in his name), then part of Children of Dune's attraction for readers drawn to the political/moral elements of Herbert's first two novels will be the application of this insidious corruption to Paul's younger sister, Alia.  However fascinating it was to see her descent into depravity at the hands of an ancestral element within her, what I valued most about Children of Dune was how Herbert inverted some of the plot elements introduced in the first novel.

Set nine years after the concluding events of Dune Messiah, Children of Dune revolves in large part around three members of the Atreides family, the above-mentioned Alia and Paul's two young twin children, Leto II and Ghanima.  and how each deals with the ancestral memories that were awakened in them before their physical births.  Much of the narrative tension deals with how Alia succumbs to the malevolent guiding of one of her ancestors, while the two twins struggle to learn how to cohabitate with these ancient memories/personalities.  It is this narrative tension between the choices that these three characters make that I found to be one of the more fascinating parts of this book, especially as Leto II becomes more and more cognizant of that terrible prophetic future that his father tried so desperately to avoid during the course of the first two novels.

Surrounding this narrative core are several peripheral conflicts that resonate with earlier events - the scheming of House Corrino to retake control of the Imperium, the mysterious and nefarious legend of Jacuruku and what that might portend for Arrakis's present and future, the runaway effects of the windtraps and other measures to reverse Arrakis's desertification, and the moral outrage, as embodied in the mysterious blind prophet The Preacher, against the deleterious effects that power and ready water have had on the Fremen in the quarter-century or so since Muad'Dib came into the desert.  The complex interactions between these several subsidiary conflicts quickly come to a head in ways that I found both intriguing and very frustrating.

It was at times difficult to remain engaged with the text.  As noted in my earlier reviews, Herbert was not as much interested in the characters for their own sake, but instead for the ideas and symbols that could be expressed through them.  The passages involving Lady Jessica and the Corrino heir, Farad'n, were at times tedious to read, in large part due to the sense I got that their repartees were more to explore ideas than to explore their characters.  It is a weaknesses of mine, I suppose, to lose interest when characters become more symbols of ideas than actual dynamic personages, but one of the difficulties I had with this novel was the overly didactic nature of the character interactions.  While at times these type of exchanges were necessary and occasionally were even entertaining (such as the talk between Ghanima and Leto II before their decision on the Golden Path was made, or the conversation late in the novel between Leto II and The Preacher), on the whole, the dialogue in Children of Dune was the weakest of the three for me in terms of there being a natural ebb and flow.  Stilted dialogue, compounded with a near surfeit of chapter epigraphs spelling out certain plot/theme elements, can lessen enjoyment after a while.

However, much of these deficiencies were counterbalanced by the evolution of the ecological element of how humans adapt to/are adapting their environs from a planetary level to a more universal one that encompasses the moral, spiritual, social, religious, and political subsets of human sociology.  I am intrigued with the implications of Leto II's Golden Path and the reasons why his father had rejected it.  There is a lot of foreshadowing in this book of elements that I believe Herbert addresses in much greater length in his final three volumes (and which he probably intended to address in the never-completed Dune VII), especially in regards to the apocalyptic Kralizec, or the Typhoon Struggle.  Herbert devotes much more space here to concerns of how lax and complacent humans have become in the ten thousand years or so since the Butlerian Jihad and how fragile their continued survival as a species truly was despite their control of the hundred planets or so of the Imperium.  Very curious to see how he develops these points in the remaining novels.

So while I did not enjoy Children of Dune as much as I did the first two novels, I did find it to be a valuable part in broadening the narrative to encompass concerns about human survival and evolution.  Although Herbert's prose was again not very appealing to me, he does manage to set up quite a few intriguing conflicts that play out over the course of the book, as well as developing the seeds of future conflicts.  As a "bridge" novel, it does its tasks competently, although not spectacularly.  Mild recommendation at best, but mostly for those who were fans of the first two novels.

Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

Before I begin discussing the second Dune Chronicles book, Dune Messiah, I want to note something from my earlier review of Dune that I purposely neglected.  Those who are familiar with the series might have wondered why in that review there is very little to no discussion of the religious and political elements of that novel (certainly, there was a round of discussion regarding this on a forum where I posted a copy of my review).  There are two main reasons, some of which I explained at length in the link above.

The first is due to the way the story was structured, much more emphasis was put on the influence that a person's ecosystem has in shaping that person; ecology is not just the study of how humans influence the environment but also how environmental pressures shape humans and their perceptions of the world around them.  I realize this is a highly debatable point (and the amount of discussion on this point in that linked thread bears this out), but it is a key element, if not the key element I took from the novel.  The second reason is that despite Dune ending with the ascension of Paul Atreides/Muad'Dib to the throne of the Padishah Emperors, the ending to that book clearly indicates that the overall story of Paul, his Fremen, and the complex issues raised in the first novel are far from complete.

Indeed, looking at Dune Messiah as being both sequel and complement to Dune has some merit.  Despite taking place twelve years after the final events in Dune, Dune Messiah takes several of the thematic elements present in the first novel and explores them at greater depth.  Sometimes, this deeper exploration into elements such as the character of Paul may be a bit off-putting for certain readers desiring a story that has more of the surface structure and tone of the first novel, but when I re-read this book for the first time in nine years, I found myself enjoying it much more.  In a few ways, Dune Messiah may be a better story than its predecessor. 

As the story opens, Paul's jihad (whether or not he wishes to claim such is beside the point) is nearing fruition.  Sixty-one billion people, according to Paul's own calculations, lie dead in the aftermath of the conquest/jihad launched by the Fremen Naibs.  The traditional powers of the Imperium, the Bene Gesserit, the Guildsmen, and the mechanistic-oriented Bene Tleilaxu, have begun conspiring on how to cause Paul's downfall.  But how does one remove a ruler who has near-complete prescience and is aware of so many possible futures?

Paul in turn is besieged by doubts and worries.  He is revolted by the violence done in his name and the deification that others wish to see in his body.  Yet his visions show that there are far worse futures than the blood-soaked present his followers are enacting.  And yet despite his awesome powers, Paul finds himself more and more trapped by the futures he beholds and the steps he has to take in order to avoid the worst of all possible futures.  But at what cost does this avoidance take?

In some aspects, Dune Messiah is a relatively simple, linear novel.  Making up less than two-thirds the length of the first novel, Dune Messiah is the shortest of the six novels written by Frank Herbert.  Yet in its compactness, there is a far clearer sense of the issues that Herbert wants to emphasize.  While there are still a few occasions where Herbert abuses the use of internal monologues to drive the action, on the whole, he does a much better job developing the characters, particularly those of Paul, Irulan, and the restored ghola-form of Duncan Idaho, the loyal Atreides retainer who died to protect Paul and Paul's mother, Jessica, in the first novel.  These characters and their conflicts feel much more immediate than they do in Dune, making for a more pleasant re-read than I had anticipated.

If part of the original novel was devoted to the tragedy of a Duke that everyone knew was sentenced to die through political betrayal and manipulations, that tragedy finds its reflections in the religious aspect of Paul's rule.  How does a man prevent others from viewing him as a god?  How does a person who is blessed/cursed with prescience going to handle knowing so many possible outcomes, most of which would have disastrous results?  Herbert's treatment of these important issues, as reflected in how conflicted and confused Paul becomes over the course of the novel, is handled much more adroitly than I felt was the case in the first novel.

This is not to say that there are not any deficiencies.  Despite being more focused than the original novel, Dune Messiah still at times has a sluggish pace, where often it appears that machinations introduced toward the beginning of the book take overlong to develop, leaving scenes like the penultimate one with the twins to feel somewhat rushed and underdeveloped.  For those who value the planetary aspects of ecology, this novel does not focus as much (or rather, it focuses very little on the natural aspects, but much more on the human aspects) on how environment and humans shape each other.  This is very much a novel about humans and what motivates them to betray and to swear allegiance to a higher goal than their self-preservation.

The conclusion is rather ambiguous, setting the stage for the third volume, but leaving unanswered several of the questions I noted above.  But perhaps that is the point, to leave thorny issues for the reader to consider long after the final page has been turned.  All I know is that I took far more out of this re-read than I did from my initial 2001 read. 

Frank Herbert, Dune

"I must not fear.  Fear is the mind-killer.  Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.  I will face my fear.  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.  And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.  Only I will remain." (p. 8)

The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear is perhaps one of the most famous passages from a 20th century SF novel.  It certainly is a powerful truism and it is one of the things that people first associate with Frank Herbert's Dune.  Published in 1965, Dune was the first winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966, in  addition to winning the Hugo Award that year as well.  I first read it and its five sequels in the Fall of 2001 and while I have not read the others since this, this is the third time total that I have read Dune and the first since April 2008.  It is always interesting to see how a reader's reaction to a text evolves over time.  Sometimes, the text "improves" with a re-reading (this happened when I re-read Moby Dick at 23 after hating it at 17) and sometimes the text seems to have more flaws than was the case on the initial read.  For Dune, it is a mixture of both.

Dune is one of the earlier "ecological" SF novels, predating the first Earth Day by five years.  As such, there is a powerful unspoken character, the planet Arrakis, who comes to dominate the narrative much more than any of the human protagonists.  Harsh, seemingly unyielding and full of dangers, Arrakis appears at first glance to be untameable, but ultimately it is the taming of this planet that drives much of the novel.  From the awesome Shai-Halud (or the huge sandworms) to the water-preserving stillsuits that the Fremen wear to the cataloging of the effects that the spice melange has on its users, Herbert develops a vividly-rendered desert environment that contains an aura of mystery and danger.  Arrakis indeed is by far the most realized and dynamic of the characters that appear in this novel.

The human conflicts, whether it be between the Houses of Atreides and Harkonnen, between the Emperor and the Landsraad or between the Fremen and the Harkonnen, are nowhere near as well-developed.  Despite the interesting choice of naming the name of Paul Muad'Dib after the mythological Greek house of Agamemnon, very little is made of this purported connection with Greek tragedy.  Perhaps Paul's father Leto I, fated it seems to die and with everyone expecting it, may seem at first to fit the tragic role, this is undercut by Herbert's sloppy narrative.

The characters in Dune rarely seem to be "human" in their thoughts, actions, or mistakes.  In large part, this is due to Herbert's unfortunate tendency to overuse internal monologues, with several scenes containing multiple characters, each of whom will be shown to say something, only to be followed with their internal monologue indicating whether or not "truth" was spoken.  Below is a scene where Duke Leto, his Bene Gesserit concubine Jessica, the water-shipper Bewt and the Imperial Planetologist Kynes interact:

"My Lord, the Duke, and I have other plans for our conservatory," Jessica said.  She smiled at Leto.  "We intend to keep it, certainly, but only to hold it in trust for the people of Arrakis.  It is our dream that someday the climate of Arrakis may be changed sufficiently to grow such plants anywhere in the open."

Bless her!  Leto thought.  Let our water-shipper chew on that.

"Your interest in water and weather control is obvious," the Duke said.  "I'd advise you to diversify your holdings.  One day, water will not be a precious commodity on Arrakis."

And he thought:  Hawat must redouble his efforts at infiltrating this Bewt's organization.  And we must start on stand-by water facilities at once.  No man is going to hold a club over my head!

Bewt nodded, the smile still on his face.  "A commendable dream, my Lord."  He withdrew a pace.

Leto's attention was caught by the expression on Kynes' face.  The man was staring at Jessica.  He appeared transfigured - like a man in love...or caught in a religious trance.

Kynes' thoughts were overwhelmed at last by the words of prophecy:  "And they shall share your most precious dream."  He spoke directly to Jessica:  "Do you bring the shortening of the way?"

"Ah, Dr. Kynes," the water-shipper said.  "You've come in from tramping around with your mobs of Fremen.  How gracious of you."

Kynes passed an unreadable glance acros Bewt, said:  "It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness."

"They have many strange sayings in the desert," Bewt said, but his voice betrayed uneasiness.

Jessica crossed to Leto, slipped her hand under his arm to gain a moment in which to calm herself.  Kynes had said: "...the shortening of the way."  In the old tongue, the phrase translated as Kwisatz haderach."  The planetologist's odd question seemed to have gone unnoticed by the others, and now Kynes was bending over one of the consort women, listening to a low-voiced coquetry.

Kwisatz Haderach, Jessica thought.  Did our Missionaria Protectiva plant that legend here, too?  The thought fanned her secret hope for Paul.  He could be the Kwisatz Haderach.  He could be. (pp. 130-131)

Obviously, this scene is meant to convey much - Kynes coming to realize the goal of the Atreides, the pointing out of the other source of wealth on Arrakis, Jessica's hopes for her son Paul, and Leto's resistance to manipulation.  However, there just is not much "life" to this passage, nor is there in the majority of similar passages in the novel.  The characters are there, thought overwhelms action overmuch, and the end result is that there is a sense of staticity about the characters; they rarely show plausible character development.  They are little more than the background to the war for the environment.

There are other concerns that cropped up when reading this novel.  It is interesting how 45 years ago, women, even those of societies in the imaginary 200 centuries after our time, are little more than domestic help or are seen as vague threatening nunneries that seek to manipulate men.  Jessica and Chani are defined much more by whom they love (Leto, Paul) than by what they themselves accomplish.  While certainly not a topic that would have dominated SF talk as much back in the mid-1960s, Herbert's treatment of women certainly would raise eyebrows in the early 21st century.  His treatment of homosexuality is even more troublesome for the modern reader.  The only homosexual character that appears in this novel is the main villain, Baron Harkonnen and in one chilling passage, he requests that his Mentat, Pietr, send him a male youth that has been drugged, since he hates for him to be thrashing about. Herbert's implied connection between homosexuality and pedophilia certainly is troublesome at best, especially considering that modern studies have shown no correlation between sexual orientation and pedophilia.  Needless to say, popular attitudes about this sensitive topic have changed much in the intervening 45 years, which made that passage all the more odd to me.

However, these concerns, which I noticed much more on this re-read than I had during my initial 2001 read or my 2008 re-read, only dampen the effect of the novel.  Herbert's Arrakis is one of the more powerful settings that I have read in any fictional work and perhaps is one of the more fully-realized secondary-world creations.  Not just the complex interactions between desert and its organisms, but also how well Herbert mixes in religious faith and tradition with these interactions of humans and environment.  Although there were a few times where the symbiotic relationships seemed a bit too strained and unrealistic, on the whole, the novel as a whole works because of the sense that the "real" story was unfolding around the action involving the human groups.  It will be interesting to see if this strong environmental presence will be seen in the succeeding novels (my memory of those is faint, to be honest) or if the irritating narrative quirks mentioned above will overshadow any interesting developments.  Will note that I will wait to the second volume to discuss Herbert's concept of jihad.

On the whole, Dune is a very flawed novel that, despite its many flaws, is a very powerful read, especially for those readers intrigued by the idea of a fiction considering how environments can shape people and their beliefs.  Certainly, it has been a very influential novel, as evidenced by some minor elements present in the next series I shall review, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series.  In many ways, its status as being one of the most influential American SF novels is justified; attention to how the human and environmental elements interact is done to a much larger scale here and perhaps served as a precursor to sweeping SF trilogies such as the Mars novels that Kim Stanley Robinson wrote in the 1990s.  This re-read served not only to strengthen my appreciation for the series, but also to make me more aware of how a novel can contain troubling flaws and yet still be a worthwhile read.  Highly recommended for most, with caveats noted in several paragraphs above.

Dune: Three Editions and more

Lately, Frank Herbert's classic SF novel, Dune, has been on my mind for a variety of reasons. There was an aside here that made me think back to it and its meaning to me. There was a random search on Amazon a month ago that turned up the Serbian translation of the first third of the novel (far right), headed up by a notable author, Zoran Živković, whose own works I have enjoyed immensely. There was the time a few years ago that I imported the Spanish translation (seen in the middle) just so I could see how the story read in translation.

But through it all, I have not read the novel in English since late 2001/early 2002 or fully in translation since 2004 (although I shall be trying to complete both in the next few weeks). In a time in which Earth Day is now an annual celebration/call to arms, this eco-novel (among a great many other things) is just as relevant and as important now as it was back in the mid-1960s when it was serialized and later released as a single volume. Hopefully, I'll find the time in the coming weeks to make a few posts here and there (and some even on the blog) about this book, which is one of my all-time favorite SF novels.