(A glossary at the end of the book helpfully defines the word “jihad” for readers.) After determining that this newly unearthed material would, in fact, require two books to relate in its entirety (and perhaps filing the anecdote away for use in a future novel, “The Frank Herbert Code” ), the authors set to work on “Hunters of Dune” and the forthcoming “Sandworms of Dune.” Oh, and also a companion volume, “The Road to Dune.”īefore I turn my attention to “Hunters of Dune,” let me take this opportunity to say some further nice things about Frank Herbert’s original novel: “Dune” was more than a clever rip-off of “Lawrence of Arabia” - it was a metaphor for the environmentally conscious age it was written in, reverent enough to pay homage to its Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots, and prescient enough to suggest that kingdoms must become more attuned to the worlds beyond their castle walls in order to survive. (The dust jacket to one such prequel, “Dune: House Corrino,” announces it is “The Triumphant Conclusion to the Blockbuster Trilogy That Made Science Fiction History!”) But the legend of “Dune” still wasn’t finished: while researching their books, Anderson and Herbert the younger say, they discovered a set of safe-deposit boxes containing printed notes and “two old-style computer disks,” on which their predecessor had left detailed plans for a seventh “Dune” novel that would begin where “Chapterhouse” left off.
#Children of dune book review series#
Anderson have collaborated on their own series of “Dune” novels, in which the authors fill in the back stories of the franchise’s central characters without hitching their sandworms to Frank Herbert’s unfinished opus. In recent years, Herbert’s son, Brian, and Kevin J.
#Children of dune book review serial#
So what if its characters also happen to eat a narcotic, mind-expanding spice and ride on the backs of giant sandworms while speaking in oddly elevated Shakespearean tones? (“Someday I’ll catch that man without a quotation and he’ll look undressed,” goes one instantly memorable line of dialogue.) Perhaps its closest modern descendant is the HBO television series “Deadwood,” another serial epic in which the fanciful settings disguise the work’s larger philosophical intentions: in the case of “Dune,” a powerful ecological message and a reminder to its readers that their actions will have profound consequences for generations yet unborn. “Dune,” published in 1965, remains a perfect, self-contained work of science fiction: an enormous 500-page novel of feudalistic families clashing in a futuristic world for control of its precious few natural resources, and an exiled boy-king learning the traditions of a foreign land in order to fight his way back onto his throne.
My personal favorite Herbertism, from the original “Dune,” is this one: “Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: ‘Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.’ ” This is not just a clever-sounding koan for achieving enlightenment and impressing your friends it is a rigorous, demanding principle that neither Herbert himself nor his successors could fully adhere to. These days the only reliable mark of a true fan is his e-mail signature, where he can safely inscribe a line or two of the axiomatic wisdom that Herbert dotted across his “Dune” novels - proverbs like “A process cannot be understood by stopping it,” or “The real universe is always one step beyond logic” - as a coded electronic wink to his fellow pilgrims driving their caravans across the sands of cyberspace. And the once proud cries that the disowned three-hour cut of David Lynch’s film adaptation be granted its proper place in the cinematic canon have diminished to a whisper.
There are no semiannual gatherings I know of where devoted readers - Dune-iacs? Duneheads? Herbertologists? - dress up like the noble Paul Atreides or the wicked Baron Harkonnen. Though there is ample evidence that a sizable audience still exists for “Dune,” Frank Herbert’s multivolume saga of the desert planet Arrakis, there seems to be no surefire method for distinguishing these people from the public at large.
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