Dune
Frank Herbert, 1965

Reading Dune has really reminded me why I don’t like science fiction. It ought not to be the case, I love John Wyndham and Isaac Asimov, but they contribute so much more to a book than just a space story.

There was nothing intrinsically wrong with Dune. It’s a classical story of a young Duke orphaned by an enemy royal house and his struggle to avenge his father and build a new life with people from the planet that he “rules”. And the story is given depth by the conception of a fascinating culture where water is so scarce that a dead body is valued for the amount of moisture that can be reclaimed from it. But I found that Dune fell into the same category as Iain Banks in that the culture was introduced by an immersion into its nuances without much description or explanation. For example, the Freman Keynes meets the Duke Leto and notices that he wears a “jubba cloak with Atreides crest at the breast, and wore it in a way that betrayed his unfamiliarity with the garment”. There is no description of how this jubba cloak differs from a usual cloak, and hence the reader is left somewhat alienated. This might be intentional – after all, for a large proportion of the book, the main characters are having their first experiences on a new planet and so are equally alienated from its culture, but if were the case, then the sections taking place on their home world ought to be free of such comments. In the end the reader is left to grapple with these descriptions as best they can until the item/ceremony/relationship is explored more deeply elsewhere.

I can see why Dune has become a classic. The culture of the Fremen is compelling and inventive. The story is simple. It is only cluttered by the half explained religious and regal ceremonies. I shall not bother with the other books – unless they have other intriguing aspects of Dune life I think I shall not be terribly interested in the Atreides saga – but it has allowed me to appreciate the depth of Asimov and Wyndham where space and technology are just settings to explore human nature.