It is all inevitable and the reading as a result is poorer.ĭune perhaps epitomises science-fiction. The subsequent books are really just the working through of the ideas set out there. The Feudal-Federalism of the Space-Empire, the breeding programme to create a Messiah figure who can guide humanity towards an unpredictable future, the land makes the people and the people make the land, the replacement of computers with specialised people. The weigh of the ideas is really all placed in the first volume. For something similarly ambitious yet more consistent in its delivery (& I lost interest in this series as it ran on and on) I personally prefer Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Trilogy. In Children of Dune we see the surface of Arrakis beginning to change as the plans to transform the ecology of the plant are being put into effect, and some of the social implications of those changes beginning to emerge, but the book is not as packed with ideas as Dune. Full of enthusiasm after reading Dune I read Dune Messiah but it is one of those books that divides the fans from the readers I suppose. The sequels are not fascinating unlike the first novel. It is a great science-fiction novel about systems of power and the role of ecology, although admittedly delivered in an accept it or loath it writing style and with various weird ideas including: Feudalism in space, a stress on lineages in which nonetheless many of the women seem to be mystic-concubines, homosexuality is shorthand for depraved evil, and space Arabs with blue eyes. At the centre of the first novel is a desert planet, Arrakis, and the secret desire of its inhabitants to transform it's ecology. The realisation of the interrelationship of environment, people and culture coming out of that experience is a key feature of the series. Frank Herbert's Dune was in part inspired by his experience working in a research centre in California studying desertification.

Dune saga book