The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List discussion

I highly recommend Dune. It's epic sci-fi with more than a touch of fantasy.

It has feudal nobility fighting for the favor of the emperor.
It has spaceflight powered by mutated creatures able to fold space due to a mind-expanding drug.
It has religious factions fighting for control of the prophezised messiah.

David Lynch of Twin Peaks fame (among other things) made a 1984 movie based on this book. The Dune movie is clearly Lynch, not so much Herbert. It's a far cry from the book.

The Sci-Fi Channel made a Dune mini-series in 2000, which is more faithful to the book.

Dune is a fantastic book. The confusion of the first few pages as you enter a new world quickly dissipates as you feel yourself drawn in and understanding begin to seep from the pages of the story. The imagery is amazing, the attention to detail enthralling and the characters deep and well-developed. This easily fits into my group of most favorite books.

A section of the story that I really enjoyed was the mention of Heisenberg. The reader is engulfed in this alien world and suddenly there is reference to something in recent history. It pulled me out of my reverie as I was reading, jolted me actually. It is during the time that Jessica and Paul have been discovered in the caves by the Fremen and Paul meets Chanti from his dreams. The lines from the story states, "A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened...". This was actually a great comparison to Paul's inability to completely pinpoint time, the fact that his visions flowed from past, present and future, but left him without the capability to exactly pinpoint in which time they were. This coincides with Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" which theorizes that locating a particle in a small region of space makes it impossible to determine the certainty of the velocity of the particle; and conversely, that measuring the velocity of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain. Time can never accurately be measured. I found it rather shrewd that Herbert threw Heisenberg's name in there to begin with as Heisenberg was in the employ of the Nazi's and that in itself is representative of the oppressive similarities between the Fremen and the Jews.

This striking bit of intellectuality is just one example of the amazing intelligence behind the writing of this book. This intellect is further emphasized by Herbert's capability to create his novel from articles and ideas written about and visits to the sand dunes of Florence, Oregon where scientists were working on slowing down the growth of these dunes and the feared encroachment into local cities and highways. The brilliant vision of Herbert morphed this real problem into a whole book centered around ecology and the human ability to survive through adaptation and education.