Science Fiction & Fantasy Award Winning Book Group discussion

Dune was the 1966 winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

I picked it for December 2020 because there was a film adaption by Denis Villeneuve scheduled for release now. Almost every adaption of Dune has been bonkers (arguably the book is as well) so I was looking forward to some interesting chat about book vs. film.

Alas, coronavirus has ruined my plan. Nevertheless, Dune is a great book and I hope you enjoy the read.

This is one of my favorite SF novels. I'm not saying it's the best but I really enjoy it. It's also one of the first, if not the first, adult SF novels that I read. I had previously read a bunch of fantasy and some of Heinlein's 'juveniles'. The only SF that I might have read before this that I can think of would be Starship Troopers and/or The Book of the New Sun.

I have heard/read several people describe Dune as a fantasy wrapped up to look like SF. Not sure if I agree with that but it would explain why this is one of my faves. I've also heard/read several people who say that they found this book boring and DNF'd it. This always surprises me until I remember that I've picked up Dune Messiah at least three or four times and never managed to get past the first 100 pages.

Hopefully I'll pick this up this weekend. I have to find one of my copies first.

It's definitely a unique book. I've read it relatively recently, so I'll be glad to discuss it.

I didn't think of it as 'fantasy wrapped up to look like SF', but I feel that the distinction between the two genres is sometimes blurry and, in the end, subjective. As for it being boring... you know, completely subjective again. There are no books out there that are for everyone. I actually managed to read Dune Messiah and The Children Of Dune, and I liked them, but I got so tired of the pretentiousness of the characters and being absolutely unable to understand them because their motivations are never revealed that I dropped the series, and it's very likely I'll never read the other three books. At least I don't have any motivation to do it in the near future whatsoever.

One reason I like Dune is that it's both SF and fantasy. Or, at least, it scratches both those itches for me.

Paul has the perfect 'Hero's Journey' narrative arc in the first book, and the moral concerns about good leadership are all very 'fantasy' to me.

But the thought-through ecology and the rational approach to prophets and messiahs feels very SF.

I can't imagine how anyone could find this book boring! It's got everything. On the other hand, I can see why one might bounce off Messiah and Children of Dune - you have to enjoy a certain amount of speculation on political philosophy to get through all the speechifying in those books!

I find Frank Herbert's love of making up words (or borrowing a whole load of words from other languages) adorable, but it never stops being funny to me that he has a made up-name 'gom jabbar for a poison needle, which is a pretty ordinary thing found in most cultures, but he doesn't have a made-up name for the magical pain box, which is just called the box!

Another one I have... but I haven't read. Too many books, too little time. (I guess I am not the first person who said this). Curious is that I have the whole saga in Spanish (unread), paperback in English and the whole saga in my Kobo (good deal of £2-£3 for all of them, if I remember properly. Hopefully, I will manage to join for more books of the month in 2021.

I'm new here so I don't really know how this works but I read this in anticipation for the film which unfortunately was pushed to a 2021 release :(

It didn't win me over or make me think its the best sci-fi written but I do respect Herbert's world building here! My favorite part of the book was actually the history, setting and the culture that Herbert envisioned. I also found it somewhat funny how the characters reacted to people crying because of how wasteful it was 😂 I haven't decided if I would read the subsequent sequels just yet but I might consider picking them up if the movie is as good as all the hype it has been given.

I love the whole series - reading the rest now that I've read this one. I'd recommend them if you enjoyed this one.

I think the most interesting part of the rest of the series is that it undoes so much of the first book. In Dune Paul is a bid damn hero - and then in Messiah, he has to cope with what he's unleashed. He is very much riding the tiger, and questioning whether heroes are actually a good thing at all.

And it's interesting about prescience as well. Would it be good to be able to know the future or would it make everything futile? Do we need chance and danger to keep ourselves alive?

Nick wrote: "I love the whole series - reading the rest now that I've read this one. I'd recommend them if you enjoyed this one.

I think the most interesting part of the rest of the series is that it undoes so..."

I enjoyed the first book enough to say that I'm intrigued to know what happens to Paul and the others after that ending. One of the caveats I had with Dune was I found the characters somewhat dry? Maybe that's because I'm more used to reading characters which portray more 'emotions' than Paul did? Does that improve in the sequels? I like it when authors deal with the consequences of actions too! Good to know that Paul doesn't just end being a hero/god(?)-like figure.

Nikki wrote: "One of the caveats I had with Dune was I found the characters somewhat dry? Maybe that's because I'm more used to reading characters which portray more 'emotions' than Paul did? Does that improve in the sequels?"

I don't think it improves, it stays on the same level. And we never know what the characters think, why they do the things that they do, etc. Some of them have prescience, so they know something and believe they have reasons to do certain things, but the reader remains in the dark :)

Nikki wrote: "One of the caveats I had with Dune was I found the characters somewhat dry? Maybe that's because I'm more used to reading characters which portray more 'emotions' than Paul did? Does that improve in the sequels?"

Unfortunately, no.

If anything, it gets a lot more dry! :D

There is a lot of talk about the applications of power and it all gets a bit philosophical.

Personally, I did care a lot about the characters and the what happened to them in the end, but what happens to them is all tied up in the consequences of prescience and the knowledge that it gives and the fate of humanity - lots of abstract stuff.

What does anyone think of the theory that Jessica is actually the main character of Dune, not Paul?

It has a certain appeal to me - she's such an interesting character and she does drive a lot of the plot, whereas Paul's destiny does somewhat happen to him.

I feel like she fades into the background as a player towards the end though, Paul does get the big climax.

Oh, that is an interesting theory! I felt that in the 1st book at least it didn't really feel like there was one standout main character. I think Paul and Jessica both felt like they both had the same amount of page time? Maybe there is more focus on Paul though, with the fight scenes and all. It would've been nicer to get to know more on Jessica in the first book, I think we got only a little bit of it.

Yes, one thing I like about the first book is the way we get to see the internal monologue of everyone in the story. It's funny because the general advice on writing fiction is not to jump around from one person's view point to another, but Frank really pulls it off, I think.

Nick wrote: "Yes, one thing I like about the first book is the way we get to see the internal monologue of everyone in the story. It's funny because the general advice on writing fiction is not to jump around f..."

Ooo yes! I totally forgot about the author's habit of quickly jumping into another POV in a scene. Kudos to Frank definitely for that, I found his transitions fairly smooth especially when Paul and Jessica were in the same scenes.

I finally got a copy and started my reread. One of my favorite parts of the book are the characters.

Nikki wrote: One of the caveats I had with Dune was I found the characters somewhat dry? Maybe that's because I'm more used to reading characters which portray more 'emotions' than Paul did?
I agree that the characters are dry or even a little flat, especially for modern readers. But I think they shine when compared to other SF books of the time period. Of the older science fiction that I've read the only author who comes close in my opinion would be Heinlein. I think the older pulp and fantasy authors were better with characters. I haven't read a ton of older SF though so I'm open to recommendations.

I think my biggest problem with the story is Jessica's reaction to Paul's transformation. It's said several times that she's afraid of and fears her son. But she must be fairly high up in the Bene Gesserit and she's obviously very intelligent so she was aware of the end goal. She's aware of the history and the centuries of genetic manipulation that it's taken to get to this point, she takes a shortcut and defies church orders, makes sure Paul gets Mentat training, reaches the end goal, and then she's afraid. That has always bugged me a bit.

Jon wrote: "I think my biggest problem with the story is Jessica's reaction to Paul's transformation."
Jessica's motivation wasn't to create the KH though, her motivation was to give Leto the son that he wanted because she loved him (the Bene Gesserit usually try to avoid love and viewed as a failure on her part!)
So Paul wasn't exactly the KH they wanted; the the KH they were planning would've had different genes and been half Harkonnen, and he would've been owned and raised by the Bene Gesserit in an environment where they could completely control all the nurture and mould him into what they wanted.

Jessica gave Paul all the training to make him the best man she could because she loved him - I don't know if she ever thought she'd actually get the KH - she's pretty nervous at the start when Paul gets the gom jabbar test, and that's just to see if he passes the entry level assessment of being human.

As it turns out the KH is pretty terrifying and not what any of the BG imagined it would be, and they spend the next several millennia bitterly regretting it and trying to avoid a re-run!

I agree with everything you say although I would say that Jessica was nervous when Paul got the gom jabbar test because she was afraid he would die, not because she was afraid about what it might say about him as a potential messiah. But yes, by the end of the book most rational people should have been at least a little fearful of him, for multiple reasons.

To be clear the part that bothered me was in the desert, right after the attack, before the two of them met the Fremen. Jessica "had helped train the intelligence which did this, but now she found herself fearful of it". At this point he was just coming into his Mentat 'powers' but he hadn't really done anything other than put two and two together. A bit later he has a waking dream and she has to "subdue her terror" because he suddenly knows some Bene Gesserit trivia and is acting strange. It's a very minor quibble of mine but every time I read it I just feel a little "twang" of "that doesn't feel quite right to me".

Nick wrote: What does anyone think of the theory that Jessica is actually the main character of Dune, not Paul?

I always thought of Paul as 1A and Jessica as 1B. It might have been interesting if it had started with primarily Jessica's POV and then as the story progresses it slowly shifts until at the end it's primarily Paul's POV. Would it have worked if it was written solely from Jessica's point of view?

Nikki wrote: Ooo yes! I totally forgot about the author's habit of quickly jumping into another POV in a scene. Kudos to Frank definitely for that, I found his transitions fairly smooth especially when Paul and Jessica were in the same scenes.

I agree although I would have liked more from Duncan, Thufir, Gurnsey and Dr Yueh. Maybe Chani and Stilgar too. I think if this was written today we'd get more from these characters. But then again this book would then be a trilogy. The version I read this time was 800 pages and if you think about it the author did skip a lot of the action and just hit the high points of the story.

Is it ever explained what the Kwisatz Haderach is or does, other than being a male Bene Gesserit? And the difference between what Paul became and the KH?

Jon wrote: " I would say that Jessica was nervous when Paul got the gom jabbar test because she was afraid he would die, not because she was afraid about what it might say about him as a potential messiah."
Yes, that was what I meant - I think we're on the same page here? - if she had really believed she'd created the messiah all on her own then she wouldn't have been frightened at this point.

Jon wrote: " Would it have worked if it was written solely from Jessica's point of view?"
I think it would've been much harder to write. All the important stuff about the horrors of prescience is happening in Paul's head, and his thought process is very much a mystery to Jessica and everyone else. And she doesn't have a good viewpoint of the final battle either...

Jon wrote: "Maybe Chani and Stilgar too."
Yes! I want more Chani viewpoint! She marries the messiah and yet still seems to be the calmest, most level-headed character. I'd love to know more about what she's thinking.

Jon wrote: "Is it ever explained what the Kwisatz Haderach is or does, other than being a male Bene Gesserit? And the difference between what Paul became and the KH?"
No, I don't think it's put into words at any point. Nobody gives a big speech about it or anything.
I think, it was partly that a male would have access to all sorts of useful information from the male line of memories that they couldn't access which would be a big asset; but mostly to have a messiah that could lead all humanity, but who would be loyal to the BG so that really they were controlling all humanity.

What Paul realised - what the Bene Gesserit didn't understand - is that everything carries the seeds of it's own destruction. The BG imagined that they could perfect humanity if they just had control. Paul realised that taking control of people and managing their lives for them would ruin them. We need conflict, danger, and surprise to thrive. The Fremen have the hardest lives and are the noblest people. The Harkonen are fabulously powerful, and thus absolutely depraved. The Bene Gesserit didn't realise that as soon as someone gains the power of the KH, the first thing they'd want to do is throw it away, because they can see where it ends.

Paul's tragedy is that he couldn't quite bring himself to throw it away, he spends the next two books trying to ride the tiger. It falls to his son Leto II to make the ultimate sacrifice (there's also hints in book II that the Bene Tleilax once created their own KH, who promptly killed himself).