I'm so glad that I did. The plot of "Dune" is fairly easy to summarize - in the far distant future, humankind has reached the stars, but has outlawed the use of computers. Instead, thanks to a mysterious "spice," found only on the desert planet of Arrakis, hyper-evolved humans make space travel possible. Therefore, "he who controls the spice, controls the universe." Noble houses wage war over who controls Arrakis, and a young man, Paul Atreides, fights to fulfill his (possible) destiny as a Messiah-like figure for humanity. Well Dune runs right into, and diffuses, this trap as nimbly as one of its Fremen characters moves across the surface of the sand dunes of Arrakis “making only the natural sounds of the desert”. The spice Melange … does everything from increasing a person’s lifespan to making interstellar travel possible … and whoever controls the spice controls the universe.

The comparisons of Frank Herbert's "Dune" to JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" are obvious (even though Tolkien allegedly did not like "Dune" at all). Both authors created expansive new worlds for their readers to explore, filled with characters who could each have been heroes of their own stories, and the stakes of those fights included essentially world domination. As I finished "Dune," I knew with absolute certainty that I had missed a lot of crucial details and that I had lots of questions about key players. I also knew that I wanted to spend more time in this universe that Herbert had created. We're on vacation in South Florida," said Nehru. "We don't normally carry that kind of cash around with us." I've located the two grandsons from New Jersey," said Korn. "We're meeting them in a nice, quiet setting on the beach this very afternoon, at "Hooligans."We are absolutely delighted to feature Sean’s brilliant work (we found him online!) and could not be prouder to present our 50th-anniversary edition of the greatest science fiction novel of all time, newly reset and featuring this glorious new artwork, to a new generation of readers. Dune will publish on 16 July! Ronny W. Parkerson, in ETC: A Review of General Semantics, thinks that the “central theme of the novel is not only ecology, but ecology examined in many different contexts.” Including the concept of power: Herbert worked as a ghostwriter for S.I. Hayakawa, a famed linguist and a U.S. Senator for California, and was very much interested in the way language worked at its deepest and most superficial levels. Frank Herbert did not call his book Science Fiction or Fantasy, but “an effort at prediction”. His contemporaries in Science Fiction were going strong: Issac Asimov had just published The Rest of the Robots, a long running franchise exploring artificial intelligence. Three years after Dune, in 1968, Arthur C Clarke would publish his most well-known work 2001: A Space Odyssey, reveling in details of relatively near-future space travel. The Bene Gesserit is a society of women, of which Jessica is a member, which exists with the purpose of manipulating both the politics of nations (Great Houses), and the genetic lines of families over generations, to advance human evolution. The book’s opening explores Paul’s place in this. Hodder editors Anne Perry and Oliver Johnson discovered Sean’s work online. No one can explain the thinking behind his art better than Sean himself:

Mentats are human computers assisted by sapho or spice to perform advanced computations. “But the fact that [this computer] is encased in a human body cannot be overlooked … I sometimes think the ancients with their thinking machines had the right idea”, quips the Baron. Halfway through my very first reading of 'Dune' and enjoying it! Sadly, however, I have discovered that the edition I own (Hodder&Stoughton 50th anniversary edition) is one infamous for being riddled with typos and errors. It's of such frequency that it's starting to bother me while reading. I have never seen so many errors in a print book, particularly not in one so widely regarded and so often re-printed as 'Dune'!By the year 9595, if mankind is still alive.... there will be no more wars, you'll experience no strife..." Characters are alive and incredibly well thought out. Moments of surprise never come at the cost of character’s established intentions, motivations or beliefs. Leading to a feeling of great authenticity in regards to the people we meet along the journey Paul is undertaking. All are memorable, well constructed and play pivotal parts in the story on Arrakis. All this spins out in a tale of dizzying detail and fascinating characters. Reading "Dune" for the first time, I see the staggering influence of this book on future sci-fi and fantasy novels and movies. I can't say I loved "Dune," in large part because Paul Atreides is a rather unlikeable hero. But even that has a caveat - I quite enjoyed having a hero demonstrate legendary heroic traits and who develops more than a healthy ego in the process. Paul is in many ways closer to Beowulf than any reluctant hero like Harry Potter. Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's life-span to making intersteller travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world Arrakis. Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

Boundless in its range and sophistication, Dune is a true pleasure to digest. It may not be everyones cup of tea, but for me it was a wonderful journey of revenge, confliction and understanding, as well as accepting, what may come to be. I can’t wait to read the other entries in the series and continue the story of Paul Muad’dib. I’ll leave you with my favourite quote from the book. Your grandfather was very cooperative. He advised us that you're doing quite a lucrative business in the vicinity. He said that you're involved in the tourism and travel industry. You've been making money hand over fist here," said Royce. He'd certainly done his homework on the pair's financial dealings.

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LSD was at the heart of the US counterculture in the early 1960s, with the US on the brink of much further engagement in the Vietnam War. It could be bought at a chemist, it was the subject of CIA experiments on mind control, it was spoken about at lecterns as cures for all pyschological illnesses. But it is too simplistic to write Dune off as a hippy-inspired narcotic story which was a product of its time. LSD was made illegal a few years after Dune was published. In January 2021, Oregon decriminalised LSD. Dune" von Frank Herbert ist zweifellos ein Meisterwerk der Science-Fiction-Literatur, das die Leser auf eine fesselnde Reise in eine ferne Zukunft mitnimmt. Diese Rezension bezieht sich auf die englische Ausgabe des Buches. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction. A sprawling and complex mélange of a novel, Dune combined grand themes about human nature and human relationships to the planet(s) we live (or might live) on. Herbert wrote about his inspirations: “I find fresh nuances in religions, psychoanalytic theories, linguistics, economics, philosophy, theories of history, geology, anthropology, plant research, soil chemistry, and the metalanguages of pheromones.” When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

After 10,000 years have come and gone, if mankind is still alive, we have won....we'll be comfortably re-planeted.... you'll mostly feel euphoric and contented..." In the year 3535, the Propaganda Prince rules the people for thousands of years.... his ego is huge, and there's nothing too terrible that he fears..."This setup owes something to the Mars stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books, as well as the tales written by Idaho-born food chemist Elmer Edward “Doc” Smith, creator of the popular Lensman space operas of the 1940s and 50s, in which eugenically bred heroes are initiated into a “galactic patrol” of psychically enhanced supercops. For Smith, altered states of consciousness were mainly tools for the whiteous and righteous to vaporise whole solar systems of subversives, aliens and others with undesirable traits. Herbert, by contrast, was no friend of big government. He had also taken peyote and read Jung. In 1960, a sailing buddy introduced him to the Zen thinker Alan Watts, who was living on a houseboat in Sausalito. Long conversations with Watts, the main conduit by which Zen was permeating the west-coast counterculture, helped turn Herbert’s pacy adventure story into an exploration of temporality, the limits of personal identity and the mind’s relationship to the body. The far-future universe created by Herbert is nothing short of a phenomenon. After the novel’s publication in 1965, it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, going on to sell over 12 million copies, and spawning five sequels, as well as multiple board games, computer games, television series and feature films. It is a universe of ‘traps within traps’, of human computers, secretive witch-cults and fanatic warriors, all with their own intricate histories and intentions. Humanity has resorted to a delicately balanced feudal system of governance, each aristocratic family struggling for survival, competing for control of a decadent empire. However, despite the grand scale of Herbert’s fully formed universe, at its heart Duneis the story of a single boy, Paul Atreides, who finds himself caught in the web of a myth, centuries in the making. Is he the fabled Kwisatz Haderach, able to span time –‘who can be many places at once’? Betrayed and exiled into the waterless deserts of Arrakis, his destiny will not only be fulfilled, but the future of humankind decided, and from the dunes will arise a saviour – Muad’Dib – both terrible and beautiful in his absolute power. Anything on the agenda for today?" asked Royce, suddenly business-like, ever the practical one, and exuding confidence. The pacing is excellent and does a wonderful job of balancing the savage action that takes place, as well as the deeply intricate moments of discussion and discourse. The political landscape and cultural complexity of Dune plays just as important a role as the action does, garnering a platform for the set piece moments to take centre stage. Those said moments are nurtured by the minute happenings that take place across the universe, and without them would feel hollow and empty.