ŷ������

I can't explain what attracted me to Dune--the 1965 science fiction epic by Frank Herbert, winner of the first Nebula Award and (in a tie, with This Immortal by Roger Zelazny) the Hugo Award--any better than T.E. Lawrence could explain what attracted him to the Arabian Peninsula. The book's prestige among genre fans was a factor, as were admissions by many that they read it in junior high school and found Herbert accessible. As inclined as I am towards local coffeeshops, perhaps Herbert's head space while writing the novel in Santa Rosa, California from 1959-1965 appealed to me most. I could almost smell the incense burning.



The galactic intrigue begins in the year 10,191 with excerpts from writings by the Princess Irulan, daughter of the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV and a holder of literary pretensions. The princess offers some perspective at the beginning of each chapter, hipping the reader to what's happening behind the scenes. We're introduced to Paul Atreides, the 15-year-old heir of Duke Leto Atredies, a charismatic planetary governor of Caladan whose popularity among the noble houses of the universe has garnered the attention, and jealously, of the emperor. Setting a trap, he offers Leto the planet of Arrakis, the most valuable real estate in the universe.

Arrakis is inhospitable to all but titanic-sized sandworms and a fierce tribe of desert dwellers known as the Fremen, but produces the priceless spice melange. In a future where mankind no longer relies on computers, the spice is a transformative agent that expands consciousness: empowering the navigators of the Spacing Guild who travel through space, the savvy Mentats who advise heads of state and the bewitching Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit sect who see the future. Leaving their ancestral home on the verdant Caladan for Arrakis with Paul is his mother, the Lady Jessica, the duke's concubine and a Bene Gesserit, who is a black sheep among the Reverend Mothers.

Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness." -- FROM "MUAD'DIB, FAMILY COMMENTARIES" BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN

On moving day, Paul is visited by the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Jessica's teacher, for a rite of passage and a test. The old crone confronts Jessica, who defied the Bene Gesserit order that she bear a daughter the sect intended to marry off to Feyd-Rautha, heir to the House Harkonnen, the industrious enemies of House Atredies. The Bene Gesserit believed the progeny of such a pairing would have produced the Kwisatz Haderach, a male with the power to see through space and time as they do. Jessica opted to bear Duke Leto the boy he wanted instead. The Reverend Mother sees some potential in Paul, but offers no hope his father will live to an old age.

Paul's education is overseen by his father's advisors--Thufir Hawat (a Mentat), the troubadour-warrior Gurney Halleck, the swordmaster Duncan Idaho and Dr. Wellington Yueh--but mostly by the Lady Jessica, who has trained her son in Bene Gesserit meditative techniques. Arriving in the garrison town of Arrakeen, Jessica encounters a housekeeper named the Shadout Mapes who is full of Fremen superstitions, intrigued as to whether Jessica may be the One, mother to the messiah who their prophecy holds will lead their people out of slavery. After Paul saves the housekeeper's life from a Harkonnen booby trap intended for him, she confides to the boy that there is a traitor among them.

Duke Leto forges an alliance with the Fremen, using imperial planetolgist Liet Kynes--who's gone native on Arrakis--as a liaison. Operating with the blessing of the Emperor and the assistance of his Sardaukur troops, the gluttonous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and his Mentat, Piter De Vries, attack Arrakeen after the traitor in the House Atredies lowers the garrison's shields for them. The Baron exiles the Lady Jessica and Paul so he can claim plausible deniability in their deaths, but mother and son find refuge with the Fremen, with the tribe's revered leader Stilgar and Kynes' daughter, Chani. Paul learns of the prophecy of Muad'Dib, the desert mouse, who the Fremen hold as their messiah.

Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of his power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation." -- FROM "ARRAKIS AWAKENING" BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN

Dune held me for over 616 of the paperback's 794 pages (appendixes, a map and an afterword by Brian Hebert stretch this edition to 883 pages) and in spite of its headlong dive into anticlimax, distilling the novel's pleasures have reminded me of what a fantastic trip it is. What separates Dune from the work of most of Herbert's peers is the finesse of its prose and the depth of its characters as well as its ideas, which in a novel of this size, are plenty. Rather than write a novel in six sleepless nights as many before and since have done in this genre, Herbert took six years to research and write his science fiction, and the quality control shows.

Names like "Beast" Rabban or Count Hasimir Fenrig materialized to form clear images of Herbert's characters in my mind, and I liked how each of them--whether noble, assassin or servant--served their institutions and played their part in this galactic intrigue to their end. No one in Dune remains static; there is work to be done or movement to be had at all times. The novel is like a chess game and the faster it plunged toward its climax, these characters did begin to resemble game tokens instead of humans. Herbert also writes entrances much better than he does exits--a symptom of book one in a series, perhaps--but envisions a wealth of roles for women in his universe.

Dune is science fiction and if you're in the market for having your imagination stretched, you came to the right place. I found Herbert's ideas to be vastly compelling, many of them explored in detail and at length with fluid prose, as if the author were an anthropologist reporting back on a real universe: A future where expanded consciousness is more powerful than any machine. A matriarchal religious sect steering the genetic future of mankind. A consciousness expanding spice exploited as a commodity. A planet so arid that special suits are required to retain the body's moisture and tears are a phenomenon. There's even song verse!

"This was a song of a friend of mine," Paul said. "I expect he's dead now, Gurney is. He called it his evensong."

The troop grew still, listening as Paul's voice lifted in a sweet boy tenor with the baliset tinkling and strumming beneath it:

"This clear time of seeing embers--
A gold-bright sun's lost in first dusk.
What frenzied senses, desp'rate musk
Are consort of rememb'ring."

Jessica felt the verbal music in her breast--pagan and charged with sounds that made her suddenly and intensely aware of herself, feeling her own body and its needs. She listened with a tense stillness.

“Night’s pearl-censered requi-em ��
’Tis for us!
What joys run, then��
Bright in your eyes��
What flower-spangled amores
Pull at our hearts ��
What flower-spangled amores
Fill our desires.��

And Jessica heard the after-stillness that hummed in the air with the last note. Why does my son sing a love song to that girl-child? she asked herself. She felt an abrupt fear. She could sense life flowing around her and she had no grasp of its reins. Why did he choose that song? she wondered. The instincts are true sometimes. Why did he do this?

After several abandoned attempts to adapt Dune to film, particularly in the wake of Star Wars, a big screen version produced by Raffaella De Laurentiis and written and directed by David Lynch opened in December 1984. Notable today for being the first big budget motion picture produced by a woman (with a production price tag of $40 million) and a rare studio assignment from the visionary who'd give the world Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, the film was a commercial disappointment and was nearly universally panned by critics, but has resurfaced as a cult movie.

Shot in Mexico, the eclectic cast featured Kyle MacLachlan as Paul, Francesca Annis as Jessica, Jürgen Prochnow as Duke Leto, Freddie Jones as Thufir Hawat, Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck, Richard Jordan as Duncan Idaho, Dean Stockwell as Yueh, Kenneth McMillan as Baron Harkonnen, Brad Dourif as Piter De Vries, Sting as Feyd-Rautha, Linda Hunt as Shadout Mapes, Max Von Sydow as Dr. Kynes, Everett McGill as Stilgar, Sean Young as Chani and Virginia Madsen as Princess Irulan. Herbert's ideas are evocatively translated, but Lynch's commitment to imagery over story is an acquired taste.