So.
I re-read Dune a few weeks back in preparation for the movie, and I am thoroughly disappointed to see that it's been pushed back to next year. I don't know why, but this trailer did something that no movie trailer has managed to do in... maybe five years.
It got me pumped to see a movie.
There's no reason why it should have. It's a standard Hollywood trailer, all fast flashy cuts and little in the way of context. But every time I watch it, I get goosebumps. Why is that? I dunno. Maybe because every frame of the trailer is screaming "It's Dune! It's the original, unadulterated Dune! It's not updated for modern sensibilities! We're giving it the same treatment we gave the Lord of the Rings films, if not better."
Or maybe it's the masterful inclusion of the Pink Floyd soundtrack. I mean, they were slated to produce part of the soundtrack for the original Jodorowski adaptation, and for good reason. Eclipse from Dark Side of the Moon is an utterly sublime choice for a movie about mind-expanding psychotropics. And hold the phone, I just learned that Hans Zimmer is composing the soundtrack. Hans Zimmer directing a cover of a Pink Floyd album is the combination I never thought of yet desperately needed in my life.
Anyway, I'm pumped for this movie. And the next one. The first book in the Dune series is like The Hobbit. Too long for a single movie, but if you expanded it a bit you could comfortably have enough material for a pair of movies, and I'm glad that Legendary is resisting the temptation to turn it into a trilogy.
Anyway, circling this around to the book...
Dune is commonly hailed as one of the great masterpieces of science fiction, and commonly compared to Lord of the Rings for both its worldbuilding and its philosophy. When I was growing up in the oughts, it was often hailed as one of the great science fiction masterpieces.
Maybe I'm running in different circles now, or maybe the science fiction fandom has gotten more iconoclastic and forgotten its roots (Probably both) but I haven't heard it hailed so much in the past decade. So the question is... is Dune still a masterpiece?
Dune, this little book that was rejected by one publisher after another until Chilton (Yes, those guys who publish the automotive manuals) decided to give it a try, and has since been lauded as a milestone of worldbuilding and philosophizing in science fiction.
Does it hold up? Is it dated?
Yes. No. Maybe.
I've noticed that Dune has a fatal flaw. I haven't read the rest of the series yet (Pending a trip to a used bookstore in Eastern Washington this Saturday) but the first book has a nasty habit of narrating cinematic battles and climatic character introspection... after the fact. The last stand of the Atreides troops is recounted from Duncan Idaho to Lady Jessica, while they're hiding in a bunker. Paul drinking the water of life and his epic battle to prevent his brains from melting and dribbling out of his ears is likewise told after the fact, when Jessica and Chanti wake him up. The Sardurker's disastrous raid against the Fremen and their capture of Paul's daughter? Recounted by the Emperor to Baron Harkonen. After they return.
As a general rule of thumb when it comes to writing, you don't do this. You don't skip over scenes and describe them after-the-fact unless you're trying to surprise or shock the reader with unanticipated information.
Another failing of Dune is that it's told in omniscient perspective, which is probably the worst perspective to use aside from second person.
So Dune has fatal flaws, in that the prose writing is dated.What about the worldbuilding? To be honest, this question right here is what got me typing in the first place. Because the worldbuilding in Dune is top-notch, but it's also not too special these days.
Let me put it this way. To research for Dune, Frank Herbert had to spend about five years researching, writing, and advising back in the day when you had to go down to a library, hunt through a card file, and maybe make friends with a librarian who could expand your search. Nowadays we have the internet. The research required for worldbuilding is necessarily much easier.
So Dune might not be so special in that regard. It's still a great example of worldbuilding. It stands a thousand feet high over its contemporaries, and still holds up to modern classics like the Expanse series and Cryptonomicon. But it's harder to appreciate how great it was when we have collaborative universes and professional authors knocking out books that equal or exceed it in complexity.
Where it isn't equaled is philosophy.
The core tenet of Dune is that fanaticism is awful, and relying on another human to do your thinking for you is dangerous. The Butlerian Jihad is explained as such. Men turned over their thinking to machines, and were enslaved by men who controlled those machines.
The strongest societies in the known universe are the Fremen and the Sardokur, both of whom come from harsh environments that will kill the unwary. Men and women alike are forced to think for themselves and live a strictly regimented life, or they will die and drag down the people around them. Paul's journey is one of a child becoming an adult. He loses his father and is forced to think without his mother to nurture him. But even the Fremen's extreme capability and independence becomes a liability when they see Paul as the Messiah.
That sort of reflection isn't something I often see in science fiction.
Not the way Dune did it.