Dune

Despite my reference at one point that certain authors would have done well to learn from the phrase “Brevity is the soul of wit,” I have not myself excised much excess from this reflection. Hopefully I will take my own advice in the future.

• Introduction
• Re-reading Dune and its sequels
  • First attempt
  • Second attempt
    • Paul’s failures
    • The Kwisatz Haderach
• The sequels
  • Dune Messiah and Children of Dune
    • The Tleilaxu
  • God Emperor of Dune
  • Heretics of Dune
    • The Tleilaxu, again
    • The Honored Matres
  • Chapterhouse: Dune
• Religion in Dune
  • A digression due to Cardinal George
  • How this relates to Dune
• The son’s sequels
  • The good
  • The bad
  • The ugly
• Personal observation

Introduction

I first encountered the Dune universe in middle school when my father took my brother and me to see David Lynch’s film adaptation. I was twelve or thirteen years old and adored it. I came home and told my mother that “it was better than Star Wars!” — and I meant it. I checked out Herbert’s novel from the local library and set about reading it in my manner, plowing through the book and enjoying it despite understanding little of it.

I didn’t realize how little I understood, but I found it engrossing. A future high school friend of mine first met me in those days, at All-City Band. He would later remind me that I didn’t really talk to anyone during breaks; I would simply reach under the chair, where I had lain the book, and pull it out to steal another page or two while waiting for practice to resume.

I subsequently made my way slowly through all six of Herbert’s books. Another high school friend who shared my love of the books espied me reading the sixth and advised,

I did not heed my friend. I read the book, turned the last page, saw a blank page, and exclaimed, “No!” as I realized that Herbert had set up for a great conclusion, which he can’t write because he’s dead.

But my friend was wrong, because I don’t regret reading it.

Re-reading Dune and its sequels

First attempt

The summer between my two years of seminary, I decided to re-read Dune. It had been little more than a decade since my previous experience.

The pastor of the parish where I was interning noticed and asked me if I had read the famous dinner scene. “I read that it took him several years to write that scene,” he remarked, “but it really shows when you read it.”

I don’t know if that’s true, in part because my memory says that he cited something like 14 years, perhaps 7. Either way, I later learned that Herbert didn’t take that long to write the entire novel, never mind the scene. Perhaps his memory deceived him the way mine does, but let’s assume that Herbert did indeed work on that scene longer than any other. It shows. In a novel where just about every word seems perfectly crafted, that chapter excels in subtle exposition.

I made it no farther through the series at the time; I don’t recall why. Seminary kept me fairly busy, and I grew increasingly discouraged that fall, and that probably distracted me from my distraction, which was a shame. I did read other science fiction books that year, so perhaps I couldn’t secure the later books from a library. Either way, I didn’t try again for more than 20 years.

Second attempt

When I read Dune the third time, this time as a middle-aged man, I understood it much more deeply. I know not whether it was my naïveté or my half-wittedness, or perhaps my having read it through the lens of Lynch’s work, but as a middle-schooler I had really misunderstood a few things. My main misconception was in not realizing that Paul Atreides is not in fact a divine being, as Lynch implies; he is, instead, a man with highly trained and carefully honed intellect and physique, with the further advantage of a weapon that no man is supposed to know — only women. In other words, I finally caught up with an observation made by Herbert himself:

Paul’s mind has been trained in the ways of the mentats. In the Dune universe, thinking machines are forbidden, on account of a so-called Butlerian Jihad many centuries prior (perhaps millennia prior; it matters not). Instead, a school of humans called mentats trains to use the human mind, enhanced by a drug called sappho, if memory serves, to use both deduction but also intuition to make highly sophisticated decisions quickly.

Paul’s body has likewise been trained according to the best techniques of his age. However, his mother has also trained him in certain techniques of a female order called the Bene Gesserit, of whom I’ll write more below. The Weirding Way is a martial art, while Voice is a method of modulating one’s voice so as to compel one’s listeners to execute the speaker’s will.

Over the course of the novel, Paul uses:

• Voice to help him survive treachery that causes the fall of House Atreides;
• mentat skills to “see” where a sandstorm’s winds are safer and navigate an ornithopter thorugh it when any other man would certainly die;
• the Weirding Way to win a critical hand-to-hand combat that launches him on the road to leading an uprising of Dune’s native Fremen;

…and combines these skills to successfully lead that uprising to overthrow his father’s enemies and avenge his death.

Paul’s failures

Yet this “Messiah” experiences multiple tragedies, and fails in his main goal: preventing the Fremen Jihad, which spells the deaths of billions of lives (and is confirmed in the sequel).

This latter failure is what surprised me most about my third reading of the novel. Somehow, in my previous readings I had not noticed Herbert’s repeated allusions to Paul’s desire to prevent the jihad, and his attempt to direct the uprising through the very narrow gates of probability that would emerge into a peaceful reign.

Paul failed.

This, I think, is one of my favorite parts of the novel after my third reading, and it’s certainly not something you’ll get from Lynch’s film, which is still not a bad thing in my opinion — though when I viewed it again last year, I understood why it failed. I no longer think it’s better than Star Wars, though Herbert’s novel certainly is.

The Kwisatz Haderach

While the Bene Gesserit have no religion, they are not above using the religious impulse to their own ends. One of their branches, the Missionaria Protectiva, has seeded more primitive planets with myths so that a member of the order who finds herself unexpectedly among them can manipulate the local populace.

Dune is one such planet, and the Missionaria Protectiva seeded Dune’s Fremen tribes with the myth of a messiah, the Kwisatz Haderach. Paul’s mother, Jessica, herself trained by the Bene Gesserit, finds herself and Paul in such a situation, and comes to realize that the Fremen have been so brainwashed. How I missed this as well on my first two readings baffles me.

Jessica exploits this myth to help Paul and herself survive among the initially hostile Fremen. This is not a “get out of jail free” card; among other trials, Paul undergoes the Water of Life, which like the Gom Jabbar is a Bene Gesserit device that only women have previously survived; it will enhance his intellectual and physical gifts and training even further, making him a fearsome force. Indeed, the Bene Gesserit had a breeding program that was supposed to produce a Kwisatz Haderach, and Paul was part of this breeding program — but out of love for Paul’s father, Lady Jessica disobeyed her superiors and gave her consort a son. (Apparently the Bene Gesserit gifts of self-control extend to determining which sperm cell fertilizes the egg.) Paul’s training helps him survive the ordeal, though only barely; he spends many days unconscious and is nearly killed and rendered for his water. (The novel is set in a desert, after all.) Overcoming this ordeal helps elevate him to the status of a god in Fremen eyes — though as the sequels show, their view of god is quite different from ours.

The sequels

I hardly remember the sequels from my first time through them. I reread them after my recent, third reading of Dune, so most of what follows consists of my memories from the second trip through the sequels.

Dune Messiah and Children of Dune

The first sequel considers the later years of Paul’s short reign, followed by his sister’s regency during his children’s minority. Both have subplots that involve treachery, but Dune Messiah’s subplot of treachery is more interesting if only because it begins to introduce the Tleilaxu. Children of Dune’s subplot, however, is rather unimaginative and seems like standard sci-fi fare. If Herbert intended to go somewhere with it, he seems to have changed his mind and held on to it as a plot device.

Dune Messiah’s biggest strength lies in its subversion of the prescience that Paul’s mentat abilities, abetted by the Water of Life, have given him. Prescience might seem an enviable gift, but already in Dune Herbert shows that Paul’s foreseeing the Fremen Jihad rather increases his stress and eventual tragedy. In Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, prescience becomes more of a curse: it is not so much knowledge of the future as of the future’s possibilities — including the consequences of each, both good and ill. Nor is it a perfect knowledge, but rather “the ability to see farther than others, like one who stands atop a sand dune while others are still below.” (Not an exact quote.)

The two books also introduce a device I do not care for, the idea of genetic memory, that our memories are embedded in our genetic material, and that, under the right circumstances, we can unlock them. It is an important device throughout the novels, and Herbert uses it well; I just find it a step too far — more than a step, really, the one place in the novels where I had to work hard to suspend disbelief.

(Note in 2023: The previous paragraph is slightly wrong: the notion of genetic memory appears already in the first novel, but is not nearly as prominent as in the sequels, where it becomes a fulcrum.)

Children of Dune wraps up the first three books in a tidy trilogy. Paul Atreides is dead (yes, really); his son, Leto II, sits on the throne. In addition to Paul’s enhanced faculties, Leto has merged with Dune’s sandworm into a hybrid that possesses indefinite lifespan and superior strength. His sister has married his primary rival to the throne, ensuring a peace and stability that will last for millennia.

The Tleilaxu

Several nations or races of the Dune universe push the boundaries of what is forbidden after the Butlerian Jihad. Ixians specialize in mechanical and computational technology, while the Tleilaxu specialize in biological engineering.

The novels hardly acquaint us with any Ixians, but the Tleilaxu feature prominently from Dune Messiah on. While their products are highly sought after, they typically include a certain revulsion which other humans then extend to their race, often calling them the dirty Tleilaxu. One of the Tleilaxu’s most prized inventions is the ghola, something akin to a clone. The Tleilaxu re-manufacture both for Paul in Dune Messiah and for Leto II in God Emperor of Dune (and in every subsequent novel besides) a beloved servant of the Atreides who played a small but important role in Dune. At the beginning of Dune Messiah, the Tleilaxu do not yet have the means to “restore” a ghola’s memories, but a significant fulcrum of the plot involves their attempt to combine treachery an an experiment to do this.

Another Tleilaxu “product” are the wonderfully named Face Dancers, who disguise themselves by changing their physical appearance. This makes them natural tools for treachery.Two drawbacks to Face Dancers are lack of independence and sterility, but Herbert generally portrays their Tleilaxu masters as stupid bunglers and would-be traitors whose only true competence lies in their biotechnical expertise.

God Emperor of Dune

Much like Dune Messiah, God Emperor focuses on the last few months of Leto II’s reign. Most readers find this novel the hardest to complete, and my younger self was no exception. My older self didn’t find it quite that hard, but while I appreciated it more, I’m still not sure it pulls off whatever Herbert wanted.

One reason I enjoyed this much more as an adult is that I have experienced forty-plus years of politics and bureaucracy, and Herbert, throught Leto, makes many dry observations of both. The novel also contains character development of a sort, though less of human characters and more of organizations. The Tleilaxu and the Bene Gesserit take front stage, and we learn a little more about Ix.

As mentioned already, an “average” Tleilaxu operation is generally comical in its ineptitude. In God Emperor, the Tleilaxu manage to use Face Dancers in an “above average” attempt to assassinate the God Emperor. By “above average” I do not mean that it was particularly successful — it was not — but that it initially provides Leto with some entertainment: his prescience did not foresee the attempt, so it amuses him. However, it eventually angers Leto; being more worm than human (his words!), he is in love, and the attempt endangered his beloved’s life.

The Bene Gesserit, meanwhile, seem to have grown wiser over the millennia of Leto’s reign, and even manage to win his favor by warning him of one such Tleilaxu plot. From this point on, the Bene Gesserit change from antagonists to protagonists, though not perhaps the series heroines.

On my second reading, I noticed a few flairs in God Emperor that I doubt I caught the first time. One I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere is illustrated by Leto’s vocabulary: he refers to his line of gholas as “the Duncans”, and to individuals as “the Duncan”. The Dune universe doesn’t see gholas as truly human, so they don’t attain to a full human dignity: they are products to be manufactured, bought, used, and discarded.

Heretics of Dune

Heretics re-introduces multi-layered plots to the Dune series, but abandons several threads without satisfactory resolution. Set thousands of years after God Emperor, which itself was set thousands of years after Children of Dune, it introduces more fascinating inventions of Ix and Bene Tleilax: no-ships, chairdogs, and shigawire. Language has also changed over time: the Atreides are now the Odrade, or at least some of them are; planet Arrakis is now Rakis; and so forth. Gone also is any hint of an empire or even of feudal houses; the only powers worth mentioning are the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the Bene Tleilax, Ix, and a new enemy, described below.

Most of the novel follows the Bene Gesserit’s point of view. For some reason that never becomes clear, they have been purchasing Yet More Duncan Idaho Ghola^TMs from the Tleilaxu, one at a time, and training them from childhood until they fail for some reason. The current Duncan doesn’t look to last much longer.

On the planet Dune, once officially Arrakis, now Rakis, the cult of the God Emperor persists. Leto’s death brought back the sandworms, that source of the spice the regent’s poor choices on climate manipulation had doomed to extinction in Children of Dune. This cult demands the worship of sandworms, but is otherwise even more incompetent than the Tleilaxu, and in fact ends up subverted by them.

Several threads of an intricate and interesting plot lead us to several worlds, a first for the Dune series, where no previous novel saw any serious action on more than two worlds. Many of the worlds we return to exhibit the effects of decisions from previous millennia. In a curious twist, a Jewish people persists in one novel, and their precautions against potential persecution constitute a clever crux of the novel.

The novel ends with multiple catastrophes, setting up for the sequel.

The Tleilaxu, again

The novel opens with one of the most intriguing beginnings of the series, if not the most intriguing beginning: we finally glimpse the Tleilaxu Masters unmasked. They have plotted to rule the galaxy for millennia, and their previous stupidity as a feint. Now will their true plans move into action! Ghola technology made this possible: the Masters reproduced themselves and thus were able to acquire wisdom as well as knowledge, devising the perfect plan.

…except that they are deluding themselves. The plan doesn’t fail so much as wither away, because the much-reincarnated Tleilaxu Masters did not in fact gain the intelligence they expected.

…or did they? Like the authors of the Sci-Fi Channel’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, to me as a reader it felt as if Herbert intended to take the book in a different direction, couldn’t figure out a satisfying way to make it work, and abandoned it. As I say, their plot sort of withers away unsatisfactorily.

If he did have a satisfactory resolution, it somehow never came into being. Maybe that was supposed to be part of the seventh novel, but considering the catastrophes that occur at Heretics of Dune’s end, I can’t possibly see how. Perhaps the point was simply that the Tleilaxu were deluding themselves, but it is by now perfectly clear that if Herbert had some coherent idea here, I am too thick to have picked up on it.

The Honored Matres

Heretics of Dune introduces a new enemy, the Honored Matres. An organization much like the Bene Gesserit, they reverse what the Bene Gesserit consider virtues (self-control, patience, ruling from the shadows, etc.) and embrace the corresponding vices. They rule directly rather than from the shadows; they use sex to control rather than to direct evolution; they rule their order by tyranny rather than consensus; they have no patience, no sense of long-term strategy.

No one is sure of the Honored Matres’ origin, but it occurred during a human diaspora that followed the death of Leto II. Humanity dispersed beyond the control of existing power structures with the help of Ixian ships that mitigated the need for Guild Navigators. Somewhere in that diaspora, the Honored Matres were born, and as they returned, they drove terrified refugees before them. An important question is whether they return merely out of a lust for power, or whether they themselves are fleeing an Enemy they discovered and disturbed.

Chapterhouse: Dune

While not as action-oriented as Heretics, Chapterhouse mixes God Emperor’s reflections on bureaucracy and human fallibility with significantly more plot. Herbert places a lot of frustration with bureaucracy and disgust with politics on the lips of the Bene Gesserit. You will notice that I find it rather quotable, and routinely wrote down one appealing nugget after another.

I so enjoy quoting the novel that I’m not sure I care to write much about the rest of it, but I’ll try.

After the catastrophe that ends Heretics of Dune, Darwi Odrade has risen to lead the Bene Gesserit. The novel is told almost entirely from their point of view, as I recall; it’s certainly the only point of view I remember. (I count the male protagonists as Bene Gesserit. The reader would understand.)

Odrade has to build on her predecessor’s work to maintain a fragile alliance against the Honored Matres, who have now erupted into the galaxy and seek to destroy the Bene Gesserit homeworld, Chapterhouse. However, the Honored Matres seek not only power: they do indeed fear someone or something, an Enemy that pursues them from the diaspora, and one reason for their return is to reacquire knowledge that could assist them against that enemy, against whom they have yet to inflict a significant defeat.

The Bene Gesserit having been attempting to grow sandworms on Chapterhouse, and to that end have transformed most of their world into a desert. They reflect on how it is often necessary to sacrifice things that are good to obtain something greater, and the effects it has on those who trust us.

Summaries of the novel typically state that it ends with a cliffhanger, but that’s not correct. A “cliffhanger” occurs when the resolution of an episode of immediate importance goes unresolved. Chapterhouse ends with no such unresolved dilemma, and with no surprising revelation that demands further investigation. Rather, it ends with several significant and unresolved plot threads: the last of the Tleilaxu and his gholas; the mysterious Marty and Daniel; the Bene Gesserit schism; the stolen no-ship; the Chapterhouse sandworms. None of these difficulties demands immediate resolution, but leaving the story here certainly leaves the reader unsatisfied.

The nerve Herbert had, to die after writing it!

Religion in Dune

Many reviewers praise Dune for its use of religion. I’ll grant that what Herbert executes, he executes well, but religion is actually one of Dune’s weaker aspects. With rare exception, its notion of divinity is indistinguishable from supermen, much like the heroes of Greek mythology, dropped into a pseudo-scientific context. I think Herbert himself came to see this weakness later on, and attempted to redress it, as I explain below.

A digression due to Cardinal George

The notion of religion in Dune reminds me of a speech that Francis Cardinal George once gave at Mundelein Seminary. In it, he distinguished between a seminary and a department of religion. While the former studies and teaches religion, you don’t have to believe in the religion to serve there — indeed, many consider sincere faith an impediment to good scholarship on religion — the absence of faith, even better.

Cardinal George pointed out that this is antithetical to the purpose of a seminary, which is not to teach about religion in a sterile fashion, but, from the word’s roots, to nourish through a seed of faith (“seminare” = “to seed”) that already exists. Students’ and faculty’s lived experience of God necessarily excludes a certain sterile, skeptical point of view, but likewise opens up completely different opportunities impossible to pursue at a department of religion. The seminary’s duty is not merely to teach but to form; the seminarian isn’t there merely to learn but to be formed. This is why a Catholic seminary includes daily Mass, communal prayer several times a day, being “set apart” from the world, pastoral assignments, and so forth.

How this relates to Dune

Herbert’s use of religion in most of the novels is impressive from a department of religion’s point of view. Is there superstition? yes. Cynical manipulation? yes. Vague spiritualism in place of doctrine and devotion? yes.

But faith? true faith? no.

The major terms expressed by most of Dune’s characters are an amalgamation of terms taken from south Asian religions. A number of adherents are Zensunni: “Zen” from Buddhism, “Sunni” from Islam. In Heretics we learn that the Tleilaxu hold to a version of Islam so extreme that I believe even the most extremist Muslims would find it repugnant. Herbert seems to have had a particular fascination with Islam; later reading had made me aware of Islamic terms that are used by the Fremen, like “Fedaykin”.

Herbert seems to have avoided Christian terminology. The closest reference I recall to any sort of Christianity lies in “the Orange Catholic Bible”, a term with double meanings:

• It is the result of an ecumenical gathering of all human religions, who agreed to end religious disagreements and warfare by assembling a book that contains all their spiritual wisdom. (“Spiritual” but not “religious”. Here the idea of “catholic” as in “universal” appears: that which appeals to everyone.)
• “Orange” balances “Catholic” by referring to Northern Irish Protestants, who at the time of Herbert’s writing were in conflict with Northern Irish Catholics.

The Bene Gesserit are intriguing as an all-female society with religious overtones, including the aforementioned Missionaria Protectiva, but they have no religious faith and are in many other ways the very opposite of a Catholic religious order. Where a Catholic religious order prizes virginity and chastity, and many of them withdraw from the world to live in a religious society parallel to mainstream human cultures, the Bene Gesserit are experts in the arts of seduction and manipulation of breeding lines, and embed themselves within the world to manipulate it. The Honored Matres are not so much an “opposite” of the Bene Gesserit but a reduction ad absurdum of their principles when one renounces discipline.

This is one reason I found both the Jews and the Tleilaxu so compelling: in Heretics of Dune: they had the appearances of a genuine faith as opposed to a deified nationalism, superstition, or rationalized powerlust. Alas, Herbert’s desire to explore this seems to have been minimal — or perhaps that was a goal of the final novel he never wrote.

The son’s sequels

Many years after Herbert’s death, his son Brian announced the discovery of some notes his father had written towards a seventh novel, including a plot outline. He set about writing this novel with Kevin J. Anderson, a more established science fiction author. They first wrote a significant number of prequels to try and clarify characters and events that would appear or be referenced in the sequels, though they claimed the sequels could be understood without reading the prequels. In addition, they claimed that once they started writing the sequels, it became clear to them that one book would not be enough to contain the ideas, so they wrote two: Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune.

The good

The one good thing about the sequels is the preface to book 7, where Anderson and the younger Herbert acknowledge the elder Herbert’s genius, and acknowledge frankly that they aren’t up to the task of replicating Herbert’s voice.

I hereby pause to recognize that admirable humility.

The bad

Their admission of inadequacy cushions the disappointment from page one. It becomes immediately apparent that you have moved out of the high-quality, highly polished writing craft of the first six novels, with at least two arguably deserving of a place among the greatest works of fiction.

Oriana Fallaci once said that the key to good writing was to revise, to revise, to revise; Shakespeare observed that “brevity is the soul of wit,” and I believe (correctly, it turns out!) that Blaise Pascal apologized to a correspondent for the length of a letter, for “I haven’t had the time to make it shorter.” The elder Herbert clearly expended effort refining his writing; it becomes painfully clear that Anderson and the younger Herbert had no interest in that. The transition from Chapterhouse: Dune to Hunters of Dune is much like following up a high-quality cinematic film with a Saturday morning cartoon.

Yes, it’s really that bad.

The ugly

The admission of inadequacy occurs at the same time as possibly the most impressive work of fiction in the Dune universe: the claim Herbert and Anderson make that they will follow the elder Herbert’s general outline. This grows increasingly incredible as the novels proceed, if only because the sequels’ plot is about at sophisticated as the writing that attempts to elaborate it. It basically falls apart at the end of the first novel. which concludes with an unbelievable “big reveal”.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the description Daniel and Marty give of themselves in Chapterhouse: Dune was in fact a poorly executed misdirection on Herbert’s part:

Further suppose that Herbert and Anderson really are filling in an outline the elder Herbert had sketched, that he really planned to introduce the characters Omnius and Erasmus, who as it turns out are resurrected from an earlier age, of whom there has been no hint at all throughout the first six novels, not even in Heretics or Chapterhouse.

If so, it would count among the least satisfying misdirection I can imagine, much worse than those films that have one too many twist endings. It’s essentially the very opposite of Herbert’s very brand. It doesn’t stand to reason.

Again, we have to admit this merely for the sake of argument, because even if we admit that Herbert committed this to a plot outline, there’s no reason not to think that Herbert had a few thoughts, sketched them out before or during the writing of Chapterhouse: Dune, then changed his mind by the conclusion. The notes were just that: Notes. Thoughts. Ideas. Nothing more.

Personal observation

I have on several occasions written longer-form stories. I haven’t attempted to publish any since college, but I have on some of those occasions sketched out some ideas, at least in my head, but also on paper (or computer). They almost never turn out the way I first wrote, because I revise them, find weaknesses and contradictions that need fixing, rethink the flow and what the reader can take at a certain time, and so forth.

Let’s grant this very questionable assumption that the great reveal at the end of Hunters of Dune is indeed what the elder Herbert committed to writing at one point. I can’t imagine how he would have seen that idea through to execution; it contradicts too much of what came before. The difference between an independent Face Dancer and a resurrected Artificial Intelligence is no small matter.

My advice to the potential reader is to read the first six novels… and stop. It is indeed disappointing to finish the sixth novel and to realize that Frank Herbert is dead. It is worth reading the novel more than once; there’s just so much to like. Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune could well have stood with the unwritten seventh novel as their own story, even had the first four novels never been written.

I don’t exactly regret reading Brian Herbert’s sequels, but at the end, I could easily conclude that they weren’t worth the effort. I can’s say that about the original series.