One of my favourite things about Dune was how Frank Hebert wrote realistic, rational characters. Each character's motivations and decisions were well explained. This was important because most of them possessed some level of "advanced" mental capabilities, so taking the time to describe their thought process—which usually involved multiple layers of actions, reactions, and deceit—made for a more believable story.
This style of writing is common for the sci-fi genre. There is a lot of focus on explaining and analyzing a situation through the characters' minds. What separates Dune from other sci-fi books is how Herbert has balanced this analytical subject matter, which can be dry and emotionless if over-done, with beautiful prose. In the afterword, Herbert's son Brian explained how his father would write some sections of the novel as poems first and work out the details after. Writing in this way leads to a novel full of colourful and expressive passages.
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
— Frank Herbert, Dune, pg. 663
I decided to read Dune because of its reputation mostly. I've seen it pop up before, usually in contexts such as "greatest books you've ever read" discussions. It's regarded as one of the most important science-fiction novels ever written. It's to sci-fi what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy. So with that in mind, Dune was next on my reading list.
I enjoyed Dune immensely. There's something about sci-fi and fantasy novels that makes it easy to get emotionally invested in the story. It's a form of escapism that no other genre of fiction can really duplicate. I think it's because they're not bogged down by the details of reality and the reader's knowledge of how reality works. However, a good sci-fi novel will offer reminders of our reality and history in analogous forms.
Additionally, when reading older sci-fi books, such as Dune (1966), it's cool to see how well the author predicted the course of technological progress. One area of technology that Herbert mentions in Dune was the advent of artificial intelligence, or "thinking machines" as they were referred to in the story. In the canonical history of Dune, thinking machines were outlawed many thousands of years ago when they became an existential threat to humans,
The Butlerian Jihad, occurring ten thousand years before the events described in Dune was a war against thinking machines who at one time had cruelly enslaved humans. For this reason, computers were eventually made illegal by humans, as decreed in the Orange Catholic Bible: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
— Brian Herbert, pg. 98
The dangers that AI could pose to humans was not a relevant topic in 1966—but today it has become a prevalent issue due to the advances in AI research. Surely this required prescient thinking and knowledge from Herbert, which I found quite impressive.
A Story To Remember
The story itself is quite captivating. By the time I was 100 pages in, I was fully engaged and wanted to know how things would play out. The first 100 pages come with a bit of a learning curve as you're introduced to a bunch of concepts and names. But if you stick with it you'll eventually find yourself immersed in a rich and complex interstellar society—with issues that are still intrinsically human and technology that is beyond our capabilities.
What Herbert did really well was building tension as the story progressed. Events and information are revealed at a calculated pace, enough to keep you intrigued and anxious to see the outcomes. Herbert conveys this tension effectively in two ways—in both the writing and in the scene construction.
For the writing, Herbert adjusts the prose to fit the emotions of a situation, which imparts different feelings suitable for the context. An example is during the initial raid of Arrakeen, which took the Atriedes family completely off guard. The telling of the scene is done in short sentences, using simple, emotional words to reflect the intensity of the character's reactions. For example, the following is Jessica's initial reaction as she realizes what is unfolding around her:
People walking. She sensed it through the floor. Jessica squeezed back the memory of terror. I must remain calm, alert, and prepared. I may get only one chance. Again, she forced the inner calmness. The ungainly thumping of her heartbeats evened, shaping out time. She counted back. I was unconscious about an hour. She closed her eyes, focused her awareness onto the approaching footsteps. Four people. She counted the differences in their steps. I must pretend I'm still unconscious. She relaxed against the cold floor, testing her body's readiness, heard a door open, sensed increased light through her eyelids. Feet approached: someone standing over her.
— Herbert, pg. 293
Herbert takes time to describe the immediate details of the scene while also conveying the inner monologue of the character so the reader can see through their eyes in these crucial moments.
As for how Herbert builds scenes, he chooses the perpsective from which to describe it really well. For example, when the final attack against the Harkonnen ships is launched, the scene switches to the Emperor's quarters, where he and the head of Harkonnen house are analyzing the battle. Despite the rest of the battle taking place from the perspective of Paul and the Freman, the switch to the enemy's view allows the reader to feel the shock as the Freman break through the ships blast-shield and invade the Emperor's quarters.
Details like these are why Dune is such a popular and acclaimed novel. The world of Dune is rich and complex, and the problems and conflicts that its inhabitants face are deeply reminiscent of our world. Herbert touches on religion, environmentalism, ecology, economics, and military strategy throughout Dune. Despite the wide-breadth of subject matter that Herbert includes, I still gained some meaningful insights from all these different areas. This is due to Herbert's ability to boil down a complex subject like environmentalism into its essential issues, and then reinterpret them in the context of the world he built.
With that being said, it doesn't matter how creatively an author might imagine a world like Dune if they cannot convey it effectively. It could stay trapped within the writer's mind and never shared with anyone else—something which must be the tragic fate of many would-be fantastic books. Thankfully Frank Herbert is an extremely talented writer who had the capability to translate the exciting world of Dune into a series of books. I look forward to visiting it again.