Dune: What a science fiction novel can be

I enjoy reading, but more than just reading I enjoy great books.  I'm not so picky about the genre, though I'd be lying if I said I was well-versed in the canon of romance novels.  But I'm game for pretty much anything else.  I dabble in all types of works: classic literature, social science, history & philosophy, business, science fiction.  What I'm generally looking for, what a book has to do to really "count" for me, is affect me in some way. 

And I'll tell you something.  Reading Dune, by Frank Herbert, did affect me.  It made me stop and think, "Damn, so that's what a science fiction novel can be."

I picked up the novel simply because I had a ridiculously long trip to India coming up, it's ranked as the best science fiction novel ever, and it was on sale at the local bookstore.  That's the kind of trifecta I'll gamble on any day.  As for the trip, I've documented how that went here, though I neglected to say in that post that I spent a solid 17 of those 24 hours reading this book. 

And as for Dune, yeah, I think it is the best science fiction novel ever.  I was always partial to Ender's Game before, but Dune is so much bigger, so much more comprehensive and far-reaching.  Ender's Game is a great story.  A great story.  But Dune is an epic work.  It's...huge.

As I said, reading Dune made me stop and think about just what a science fiction novel can be.  Frank Herbert builds a universe in which he explores a scope that includes religion, politics, ecology, military strategy, human emotion and notions of destiny and an individual's ability to manipulate their future.  His characters are at once superhuman and plausible.

I'm going to skip the process of going through the story-line for you (Wikipedia has as much written about Dune and its characters as Herbert wrote in his entire book) and just provide some interesting context to the book that I feel makes it even more impressive.  It was published in 1965.  At this time, most science fiction novels were about 1/3 the size of Dune, and due to that fact, most publishers wouldn't touch the novel.  They believed a novel the size of Dune would never sell.  The book was finally picked up by an auto parts catalog publisher who agreed to give it a shot.

The book went on to win the Hugo Award and the inaugural Nebula Award.  It is the best-selling science fiction novel in history and was the first bestselling hardcover science fiction novel ever.  And now it's on my best books I've ever read list.  If only Herbert were still alive to see this day.

Comments

[mom]

Dune is awesome. Enders Game is just the FIRST book in a pretty incredible universe - Read the rest of them! ^_^

[bryan]

Actually, Dune is also just the first book of many. But while the "Ender" series may be equally incredible, Dune accomplished that in one book.

Not having read any of the books past the originals, though, I can't really say.

[uncle walter]

I literally took weeks reading, nay, wallowing gleefully in the details that flood the pages of "Dune". In contrast, I read "Ender's Game" in a single session, imagining its screenplay with the turn of every page. (There is a screenplay that's been in the works for years, but Card admits that it's a bastardization of the story, changing the POV to the adults in the story, instead of Ender.)
http://www.taleswapper.net/movies/endersgame/endersgame_update.html)
In reading that link, it looks like they're making a new start, incorporating "Ender's Shadow" into the same movie. Should be interesting.