Book Review: Dune the Series
An introduction to one of the best Science Fiction series of all time
Topic: Book Review

I have been a Science Fiction buff for a while now. Isaac Asimov and his Robot stories had started me off, well before Will Smith decided to bring a rather weak adaptation of the novels for general-purpose consumption. It was however Asimov's Foundation series that had got me firmly entrenched as an Asimov fan and had me hooked on to reading multi-book series too. Along the years other multi-volume mainstream fiction happenned - The hitchhiker's guide, The Lord of the Rings - till I chanced to read up on the Dune series.

My initial exposure to Dune was actually a lot earlier. It was during my college days that I happenned to pick up a dusty well-thumbed copy of the book and borrowed it just to break the monotony of the rut I was chewing those days. Maybe that wasn't a good time or I wasn't quite ready for it - but I remember returning the book to the library virtually untouched. Even discovering that it was indeed a well read book on campus, and that there were many trivia sessions just focussed on the Dune series did not get me round to reading the series - until now. Now I realize, only partially of course, what the fuss was all about.

I have read the six books that compose the primary series. The original series is written by an illustrious science fiction writer called Frank Herbert. In addition I have gone through three prequels written by Frank's son Brian Herbert along with another science fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson. Idea for idea, the series is one of the best pieces of science fiction any reader can ever hope to read - and I hope to capture a part of the magic in these reviews. I am not sure how I want to handle writinjg this - will it be a summary, will it be a discussion, will they be spoilers - I really dont know. But I do promise to make them worth reading. I intend to put together one page for each book of the six-book series. This page, however is not tied to any book - just the series and other associated reminiscences.

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I have often recommended Science Fiction to my friends and have encountered considerable resistance. Many, I know, have a well entrenched antipathy towards the 'poorer cousin' of fiction. That probably arose from characterising the genre as science fiction as if the words 'science' safely marked it from other forms of fiction that does not use science. While this additional word has caused some to indeed look upon SF as merely an incomplete form of fiction, for others it has turned out to be a warning sign. Some were afraid to approach SF because they did not really "do well in physics in high school".

As if science fiction was unable to turn people away, there came a further barrier to SF in the form of sci-fi or scifi or skiffy. Adopted by many to mean a low budget cyborg flick where monster bugs devoured entire cities, the connotation of sci-fi refused to let people consider it as serious literature. Which is why there is a healthy difference of opinion among those who read SF as to the nomenclature of the genre - is it SF or sci-fi or skiffy.

I remember reading somewhere, that the difference betwen Science Fiction and fantasy is that the author bothered, somewhere along the book, to cook up some reasoning by devoting some print to the why and how aspect of what happenned. I would like to take the same approach to the entire identity crisis for this genre.

Science Fiction for me is when the author has done enough homework to be comprehensively consistent in his depiction. Now there is no definition of what consistency is required nor what I mean by comprehensive. However it is the dedication to the story line that, for me, identifies what part of genre the book belongs to. If attention to detail identifies SF, then the lack of it identifies sci-fi or skiffy. As the name goes, it is probably a flippant cousin to SF. Possibly more entertaining or more famous, but ultimately not as meticulous as SF.

A rule of thumb, as might be possible, is this. If twists in the story, bringing in new characters, powers, luck, turned out to be in the favour of the plot simplifying - that would probably be sci-fi for me. However if plot thickens and becomes meatier with additional charaters and inputs - making the whole thing a lot more difficult to manage - that for me is closer to how real life operates and would end up being more of SF.

With that out of the way, I would still believe sci-fi to be as much Science Fiction in the larger sense. So I will be using the word SF to denote all parts of the spectrum of Science Fiction - skiffy, sci-fi or as defined above, classical SF.

The next issue that SF has a genre has to contend with is its characterization as fantasy - associted with all the negative overtones of course. Fortunately for me, I do not have a negative connotation to fantasy - but I still remember the first time I felt others' scorn upon me for reading fantasy fiction. "But that is a fantasy novel," went the harrangue. "How can you discuss fantasy as fiction."

Unfortunately you can. Fantasy stems from the word fantastic - meaning highly unbelievable. Fiction is plain falsehood - merely unbelievable. So other than the degree of the stretch of imagination required - both fiction and fantasy are equally distant from a news paper headline. So your sub-genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy are all a measure of how much the author helped the reader make this leap of imagination. There is an additional trick I use, which comes in handy when I have to classify or even when I am reading a book and need help in making this leap of imagination. I will discuss that next. Use this trick when you feel you cannot make head or tail of an SF story - for that matter any story.

The temporary suspension of disbelief

I was first exposed to the term during a course I was taking in college - "Science Fiction - An Appreciation", taken by a very different kind of professor. It has since helped me in understanding the genre better and in helping others make the leap of faith, so to speak. The idea is discussed below.

If I were to walk into your physics class and said - the knob to increase and decrease gravity is in a huge vault near the city of Greenwich in England - you would probably laugh me out. Because that is what you are supposed to do in a physics class. To learn physics you are supposed to ask questions, identify doubts and query around your doubts in order to make holes in an statement. And acting like that would get you a good grade too.

What did you do back there? You used disbelief as a tool to identify flaws in the statement - if there is a knob then it must be connected to something. A something that generates gravity? On earth? In the entire universe? How does it work? How come there has been no evidence of it till now? What about Kepler's laws?

If you asked all those questions, I would end up telling you that I do not, indeed have answers to all that. You would then take my inability to answer as proof that the statement is indeed false.

That however is not a good strategy to adopt in a literature course. Long long ago there lived a king who had seven sons - if you reacted to that asking for records of the kings life and proof for his existence, they would flunk you in the course. So you would assume that the king lived and assume that he had seven sons. You would then, based on the assumption, go ahead with trying to understand how the seven sons fought each other for the kingdon and his wife.

What did you do differently? You suspended your disbelief and accepted certain statements without question. After that, you started reading the rest of the story, assuming that these initiate statements were true.

Each story has certain precepts - or axioms of you will. They assume a world that may or may not reflect the world we know. It is a form of alternate reality that is assumed as given. The story does not, and need not, justify these precepts - but it builds the rest of the story starting from the assumption these precepts as true.

The story of Frankenstein starts from the precept that it is possible to build a monster artificially. Given that, it sought to understand how such a monster would live, love and survive. The tale of Frankenstein is less of a manual to build your own monster and more of the tale of a monster and its creator assuming they existed.

Similarly the stories in I, Robot, or the movie for that matter assumed the existense of a world that had robots that were built according to the three laws of robotics. The stories then wove around the paradoxes that such a world would produce to spin a good tale. You would not enjoy the tale if you were worried about how the energy for such a robot would be generated or how the robots could be forced to obey the laws. You suspend your disbelief at these questions.

Conventional fiction deals with a world that is already available to its readers. The story of a young couple dealing with the death of their only child and adopting another child - may be the plot of a really good fiction story. The story of a young couple dealing with the death of their only child and thinking of adopting a robot is a plot science fiction stories are made of. The story lines for both stories are about relationships - only in the latter you need to accept the precept that robots can indeed be adopted for kids.

Many believe that the existence of robots and the like makes the an SF story technical. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While there are stories that tend to become highly technical in their plots, most SF stories are remarkable romantic and human in their story lines. They tend to be explore the traditional aspects of relationships, humanity and the human spirit against a different canvas - the disbelief for one you temporarily need to suspend.

One of the best tricks I use to read an SF story is something most of us have already used. When you come across a unfamiliar word in a story, the good thing to do is to figure out a temporary meaning for the word based on its usage and go on with the story - trusting the story will make things clearer. The same thing works for suspension of disbelief.

When you come across a character, a precept, a concept of a bug-eyed monster you have not heard about. Do not refuse to move forward unless you know everything about it. Trust the author to tell you more about the bug-eyed monster. Push forward, assume that there exist bug-eyed monsters. Assume that the author will tell you more about it later on. And try to infer more about the bug-eyed monster at the same time as you are trying to romanticise why the hero wants the heroine to leave the lair of the bug-eyed monster.

Dune

The Dune series has a bug-eyed monster too. It is called the sandworm. The sandworm lives on the desert planet of Arrakis also called as Dune - when the name of the book and series. If however the story was just about the monster and the planet, it might have been a half-decent sci-fi tale, or a successful B-grade horror flick at best. There is however a vast and rich landscape that is built around the sandworm that makes Dune such a lasting classic.

The story of the Dune series, is set in a multi-planet galactic empire. The empire is governed by a pseudo-feudalistic monarchy. There are houses - great and minor that have fiefdom over the various planets. Some examples of the houses are the House Corrino, House Atreides and House Harkonnen. We will briefly look at some aspects of life at the time of the events of the first book - Dune.

Government: Government is feudal and a monarchy. Houses rule over their assigned planets or sometimes parts of planets. Houses have the ability to collect taxes, maintain armies and possess weapons including nuclear weapons. All Houses are in turn represented at the Landsraad council. The council is headed by the ruler of the biggest house who is also the emperor of the galaxy. The current house heading the Landsraad is the House Corrino and Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV is the current emperor of the known universe. The Landsraad is a free council and oversees operations of all houses - and has the ability to impeach the emperor too. However the emperor holds the highest authority and vote in most council matters.

Emperor: While technically the emperor is nothing more than the head of the mightiest house and simultaneously the head of the Landsraad council - for all matters houses tend to be subordinate to the emperor. Going against the emperor would not only be difficult to get support for, but would almost always haunt in the future. House Corrino holds the position of the leader in the Landsraad council partly due to its illustrious past and partly due to its power through the control of the Sardaukar.

History: The history of the Imperium effectively starts from then Butlerian Jihad. In the days before the jihad, humans had built computers and robots which eventually became self-aware. This precipitated into the war of men versus machines, protracted and deadly - the Butlerian Jihad. The war eventual ended with the defeat of the machines and the Great Convention among men. The Great Convention established the Guild, the Great Houses and Imperium while setting a number of rules of life in the Imperium.

Religion: One of the biggest changes by the Great Convention was taking strict steps to ensure machines would never enslave humans again. The Orange Catholic Bible - OC Bible - adopted after the war specifically states "Thou shalt not create a machine in the likeness of man". While many parts of the galaxy followed their own religion and practices, most were based on the OC Bible and never went against this and other basic precepts.

War: The other great change percipitated by the Jihad has been a repugnance to large scale destruction and weapons of mass destruction. Atomics were restricted to Great Houses and their use was banned. War was redefined as the War of Assasins, with combat rules strictly defined to prevent loss of bystander lives. The use of poisons and assasins, therefore, gained prominence especially in intrigues between different Houses. No talk of war is complete without mentioning the source of Emperor's power - the Sardaukar. The Sardaukar are soldier-fanatics for House Corrino who have been conditioned from birth to be remorseless, deadly and extremely skilled in the art of killing.

Travel and Commerce: Pre-Butlerian Jihad days had space travel conducted by machines. With the ban on all thinking machines, space travel had to be now conducted by humans. The Great Convention established the Guild - as a monopoly for all space travel. The Guild trained Navigators - physically deformed addicts of the powerful narcotic from the planet Dune - who were the only people who could navigate space-time for successful space travel. The Guild thus controlled all travel and hence commerce and was therefore a key pillar for the Imperium. The Guild was strictly neutral and operated only for profit. Another organization - called CHOAM - was responsible for most of the trade that happened through the Guild.

Technology: One of the main technical developments in the Imperium is the development of the Holtzmann field. It is used in a number of ways - in Glow Globes for providing self-sustaining light, in Suspensors to counter gravity, in Shields both personal and shields and large as cities. It is also partly used to produce the beam of a Lasgun - which is the strongest that can be used in combat without violating the Great Convention. It however it not used much because of a peculiar problem with the Holtzmann fields of a Lasgun and a Shield. If a Lasgun ever struck a Shield, it would result in a detonation which was as big as an atomic explosion - typically evaporating both the Lasgun holder and the Sheild wearer. To travel one could use a craft with rapidly flapping wings - the Ornithopter

People: The picture painted by Dune reaches epic proportions because of the people that make up the lanscape. In addition to peoples of different forms inhabiting various planets - the post Butlerian Jihad world resulted in different schools to develop human capability. Two such schools produced the Bene Gesserit and the Mentats. With the outlawing of machines from thinking - there was a requirement to have humans who could store and manupulate large quantities of data and compute results for their humans masters - the Mentats. The Mentats are human logic computers, typically serving one of the Houses wealthy enough to afford them. The Bene Gesserit on the other hand is a school of women - sisters - with extreme mental and physical training. While they are not as computationally accomplished as mentats, they have stunning physical prowess and are tied to the sisterhood for life. The sisterhood have many agendas open and hidden causing many to fear and loathe them, referring to them as witches. Another interesting people, are the indegenious inhabitants of Dune called the Fremen. Essentially an off-shoot of the Zensunni wanderers, the Fremen live in the highly harsh environment of the planet.

Dune: The Dune (Arrakis) with it capital at Arrakeen, is a desert planet. It is hot, dry and composed mostly of sand and rock without any known sources of open water except the polar ice caps. Ordinarily, the Dune would have had no interest to anyone other than its inhabitants - the hardy, secretive Fremen. However Dune has Sandworms (Shai' Hulud or the Maker) and the Sandworms produce Spice. The Spice is a deadly hallucinogen that has many geriartric properties. The Guild uses Spice as it is needed for their Navigators to navigate space-time. Spice is the poison that corrupts and deforms the Navigators giving them a capability to dimly see into the future, essential for space travel. No Spice - no space travel. The Spice, while deadly in large quantities, prolongues life and health in small quantities. The Spice is used by the Bene Gesserit during the conversion ritual of sisters into Reverened Mothers. In short, Spice ran the Imperium, making Dune the most important planet in the entire Imperium.

The Imperium, the Bene Gesserit, the Guild along with the Dune, the Fremen and the Spice form a rich landscape. Add to that the blood feud between the House Atreides and the House Harkonnen, and the action is hotting up. And finally add to this mixture the fact that till date House Harkonnen were in-charge of Dune - the most important and prestigious fiefdom - and they were moving to be replaced by House Atreides because of an Imperial and Landsraad directive.

That is where the book Dune by Frank Herbert starts. Now read on...

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Document Changes
April, 23, 2005: First published version.
May 1, 2005: Latest Update.