Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)

The Dune, the first volume of one of the most influential and applauded science-ficiton sagas was published 53 years ago. Had he been a painter, Frank Herbert would have been one of those who can sketch up the contours of an enthralling vista with just a few strokes of brush. A picture rich with blurry details that pull the eyes with irresistible gravity, yet remain constantly out of reach of full comprehension. You only need to be two dozen pages in the book to have your head buzzing with names, obscure references and fragments of some strange future history. And a yearning for more. Noble houses locked in centuries of deadly rivalry, the Guild, Mentats, the Bene Gesserit, the Butlerian Jihad, and of course..."the spice". You had only wanted to read some sci-fi, but you accidentally stumbled into something new and unique. And it will change your concepts of science-fiction, high literature and pulp forever.


I don't know what makes a great book, or even a good one - I've read many such filled with cliches and flat characters or predictable storyline. But Herbert did it fusing science-fiction, fantasy, religion, mythology and philosophy in a grandiose tale, that in the sequels spanned through millennia and generations of protagonists. It wasn't only incredibly rich, it was original. In the era of space travel, the structure of society and the feuds and intrigues were of some medieval era. There were force fields and lasers, but men lived and died by the sword. There were space ships, but no computers, and an abundance of phenomena seemed magical, but rooted in genetics and uncovered resources of the human mind. I'm sure many teenagers have got into Silva's Mind Control Method or something similar in the hope of turning into Mentats, and some might have even started yoga to acquire some of the body-control skills of the Bene Gesserit. I, for one, enjoyed the philosophy, the depth, the metaphors.

But Frank Herbert would have also been one of those painters who never finish a painting, but start a new one once the old is about to collapse under the weight of its baroque details. The problem with complicated plots is that it's hard to avoid getting entangled in their web. The problem with mysteries is that the truth at the end often doesn't live up to the promise. The Dune suffers heavily from both maladies. The writer, finding himself lost in her own story, can raise the stakes and gain some time by further twisting the plot. But it's like living on borrowed time and makes all the more harder to come out unscathed at the end. I had the feeling that Herbert never really bothered.
The dialogues are so laden with hidden motivations, multiple layers of agenda or just some grand plan looming in the background, that it's bordering kitsch. For all the questions he gave half-answers breeding ever more questions. The characters themselves often seemed to be lost. Their acts, character development, as the turns of the story itself, seemed whimsical - or in best case governed by the rules of drama rather than of reason.

I know that what I identify as flaws many others celebrate as virtues. I don't want to argue with them. For all its warts Dune has enough of virtues. It's grandiose, it's poignant, it opens the minds of young readers who just wanted some sci-fi like few other books. Like a drug. Like the Spice.