Author: Frank Herbert

Finally finished Dune. I’ve been reading it for like half an year.

Really cannot understand how “great” the book is. But tbf, what Dune is to sci-fi is like what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy, and you can’t really too critical with these foundational works with modern eyes as many of the later works kind of iterate on them, so many of the groundbreaking elements at that time just becomes unoriginal and repetitive to you.

This book is really more like a fantasy than sci-fi tho. I believe it was set in the same world as The Wheel of Time. The abilities of Bene Gesserit & Paul are really ridiculous. Directly manipulating the chemical molecules? Really? It’s literally magic.

Also how can the sandworms grow so big? And why can the spice grants people precognition power? I only read the first book and they were not explained anywhere, but according to wikipedia they didn’t seem to be mentioned in the later books either. That’s ridiculous. How can people praise the world building while these extremely important aspects were left unexplained? I feel like the explanation is a very great opportunity to ascend the book into the great, although people already regard it as one of if not the greatest for some reason.

Dune is also extremely orientalistic. It’s like a poor attempt to write a Chinese martial art novel. No, you cannot defeat the enemies without physical training but some secret tips or tricks or “mind training”.

I think this book is still better or at least equal to the Foundation trilogy tho. Dune has several interesting ideas, while Foundation is only based on one showerthought.

This review said it all.

If this is the gold standard against which all science fiction must measure and be judged, let’s just blow our brains out right now and call it a day.

As far as I can tell, Dune largely inspires two points of view. One marvels at its historical importance and world-building (unique, fascinating, complex, rich), and the other dislikes the stilted writing but does so apologetically because Frank Herbert couldn’t help the fact that he wrote science fiction in the 1960s and that Edward Said hadn’t done his thing yet.

Come on , people of the world. Linear models of progress don’t apply to good writing. Frank Herbert can’t write because he’s a shitty writer, not because it was the 1960s. The dialogue is clunky and characters have endless internal monologues (in italics) that serve no purpose but to explain incredibly obvious plot points to the reader. This is an embarrassingly novice mistake.

The plot also lacks any element of surprise. Princess Irulan, oblivious to the concept of spoiler alerts, summarizes all major plot points in her historical vignettes which introduce every single chapter. We can’t wonder about whether and how Jesus Christ Paul will become the messiah of the people because the princess has already told us before we’ve begun the book. We can’t wonder about who the traitor in the Atreides house is because Princess Irulan’s vignette is all like “Yueh! Yueh! A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!”

And then there’s the world-building. It is So. Fucking. Lazy. Half the words are lifted from Arabic and Arab Fremen culture is the result of a scavenger rampage through Islamic concepts, scraps of Buddhism, and Frank Hebert’s Orientalist curiosities all cobbled together into a cringe-inducing whole. The main subject of this book, the sand niggers Fremen, have been in the desert for thousands of years, border on religious fanaticism, and haven’t changed a bit over time. They pray salat, conserve water (because hello, desert), and wait for their white savior Paul to bring them out into the light (or into the shade, as it were). They frequently declare Muslim-sounding things in bastardized Arabic and are very upset because the Imperial forces are preventing them from doing Haj. It’s unclear how the Imperial forces have blocked all outbound flights to Saudi Arabia, but we’ll take it on faith. There was a jihad situation, like, hundreds of years ago but it was apparently a jihad against computers? I don’t know. The ragheads Fremen also do this thing where two men will fight to the death and the winner will take the dead man’s woman as his wife or his servant.

Given the history of the U.S., I think it’s hilarious that a book full of racism, imperialism, and misogyny was considered groundbreaking in the 1960s.

The other thing that makes this book unreadable is Frank Herbert’s I-Tarzan-You-Jane approach to gender:

“There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed … The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives."

Man has the mighty penis. Mighty penis does the thrusting action. Woman has the sacred hole. Sacred hole is warm and open for mighty penis penetration. Thanks for clearing that up, Frank.

Male and female characters in this book align nicely with Frank’s pole-in-hole view of the world. The men do the war because the penis. The women do the manipulation and mind control because the vagina. They are either wives or concubines, and having children is of utmost important. Man and his woman sometimes have tender conversations about all of this. Observe:

“[Paul] began tightening his still suit. “You told me once the words of Kitab al-Ibar,” he said. “You told me: ‘Woman is thy field; go then to thy field and till it.’”

“I am the mother of thy firstborn,” she agreed.”

How romantic.

Anyway, let’s talk some more about Paul, our white messiah. When he’s taking a break from tilling his fields, he’s busy being a cartoon hero. He has no flaws. Like, none. He sees everything, understands everything, knows the future, and every word out of his mouth is prophetic and vaguely Shakespearean. This is the kind of shit he says:

[Re. aforementioned penis/vagina theory]

“And you, my son,” Jessica asked, “are you one who gives or one who takes?”

“I’m at the fulcrum,” he said. “I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without [giving].”

You’re SIXTEEN, bitch. Sit down and shut the fuck up. Nobody cares.

Opposite the cartoon hero is the cartoon villain. He’s really, really evil. He wakes up evil, goes to bed evil, and all the time in the middle, he has evil conversations and evil thoughts. Many of his evil thoughts are in italics so we know EXACTLY where the story is headed because plot twists are also evil and will not be tolerated. Please note, he is also fat as fuck and eats a lot. Also, he’s a big homo. And the homo’s a pedo.

I really have nothing more to say. I AM glad I took the time to wade through this shitstorm of misogyny and orientalism. You can’t read sci-fi and not have read Dune. I always suspected I might hate it, but at least now I have proof.