The last couple of posts told what I liked about Dune. In this post, I want to say some of the things I didn’t like.

– A little short on back story: I can’t put my finger on specifics, but throughout the book, despite the way Herbert expertly works in back story, I wanted more. A little bit more of how the universe got to where it was.

– Just short on explanation: Many times I felt things happening in the book were not explained as clearly as I would have liked. I felt I lacked understanding on some things, and that was disturbing.

– Pagan-like religions: I am never comfortable reading about pagan religions, or witnessing their rituals, even if only in words. At several points after Paul and Jessica joined the Fremen, Herbert gives us this paganism. I read it, but didn’t particularly like it.

– Barron Harkonnen: He was too much a villain. From his obesity to his evil intents to the implied homosexuality (with that shown in a vile way), he was evil. The best advice I have seen on creating villains is that they must have some redeeming qualities, not be 100 percent evil. The fat Barron was, and that was a negative.

– the emperor’s gambit: I never did understand why the emperor set up Duke Leto, ordering ordering the Harkonnens off the planet then ordering Duke Leto to take over Arrakis, but then aiding and abetting the Harkonnen’s recapture of it. Why? What was he after? Late in the book was a suggestion that Duke Leto was so nice in the way he dealt with subjugated peoples, and he was so effective at training his fighting personnel, that the emperor felt threatened and had to do away with him. Maybe that was it, all of it, but I wish it had been better explained.

– the change in Paul: When Paul had his visions, described as prescient memory, and his personality changed, he was a less-likable character. And less understandable. I could probably write a whole post on this, but I’d have to go back and pick out some specific examples. I’ll just say I didn’t like Paul as much after his change than before.

Well, that’s it for Dune, I think. If you haven’t read it, I suggest reading it. It’s long, and sometimes tedious, but well worth the read.

I’ll continue today discussing more that I liked about Dune.

– Omniscient POV: I mentioned this in one of my mid-way posts. I love the omniscient point of view. This is where the narrator sees everything from the narrator’s perspective, and can get inside the character’s heads to know their thoughts. The omniscient narrator sees what he sees, what each character sees, what each character thinks, and can even tell you what the narrator thinks. Herbert leaves off the latter, but does all the former. In one paragraph he sees what Paul-Muad’dib sees and what he is thinking. In the next paragraph, in the same scene, he sees what Jessica sees and what she is thinking. Omniscient POV has gone out of fashion. At writing classes, new authors are cautioned against using this POV. Go with third-person limited, they say, or even just third person. Too much chance of making a mistake with omniscient.

I just can’t agree with that. Most of the books I have liked–the sagas of Wouk and Michener–are in omniscient POV. To my way of thinking, this gives the reader a richer experience. We are not limited by what one character sees in a scene. We know what all characters see and what all characters think. That’s what I like, and Frank Herbert gave it to me in Dune.

– Violence is downplayed: I am not a big fan of violence, and I hate shoot-’em-up books and movies. In Dune, there is violence, but it is written so skillfully and so downplayed that I almost missed some of it. When Paul and Jessica were captive in a ‘thopter, looking for a way to escape, Paul winds up killing one of their captors. I didn’t realize he had done so until a little later in the scene there was only one captor left. I had to go back and re-read the earlier description, and then I saw it. Maybe I read right through it. Certainly we saw pieces of battles when the Harkonnens returned to take back Arrakis. But to me the violence was kept to a minimum. You knew some of it was going on in the background. It was foreshadowed a lot, but actual scenes of violence were few, and subtly written.

– The spice: Arrakis, as a desert planet, has little value to the universe, except for one thing: the spice, melange. Mildly addictive in small quantities, this stuff can be found on no other planet. Consequently men go to great lengths to find it, mine it, transport it, black-market it, etc. Apparently the giant sandworms manufacture it, though how they do this was not made clear, or at least I didn’t fully get it in the read. It turns the whites of eyes light blue, and the iris/pupil dark blue. At first I thought the Fremen having these eyes was genetic, but by the end of the book I understood it to be environmental, for Paul and Jessica’s eyes were beginning to change after a few years living as Fremem. I’d like to know more about the spice, as I’ll mention in another post.

– Paul & Jessica’s escape: I’m out of time and can’t write much, but this was superbly written. Over several chapters P & J are drugged and bound, taken before the vile Barron Harkonnen, taken off to be dumped in the desert, escape from those guys, are found and helped by Duncan Idaho and Liet Kynes, must go into the open desert again, must dodge sandworms, and eventually must convince a group of forty Fremen they are not enemies to be killed for their water, but friends who need help. Their adventures were a highlight of the book for me.

More coming. Next will be the things I didn’t like about Dune.

I am at work, intending to write the next post in my review of Dune, but discover I do not have my notes with me. Let me just plunge in then, and do what I can without either the book or my notes at hand.

For today, a few things I liked about Dune

– the desert life descriptions: While Herbert did not go into great lengths to describe the deserts of Arrakis, he did show how the scarcity of water affected everything in that desert world. I loved the concept of the dew harvesters, with their swishing sickle-type contraptions. So effective was Herbert at this, that I cringed when Duke Leto, at his first state dinner on Arrakis, dumped half his glass of water on the floor, and his guests had to do the same. What a waste. I believe Leto was planning on making a point about this in future dinners, but of course never had the chance.

– the Fremen culture: This was another great achievement of Herbert. How much thought he must have given to a people who live in the desert without an oasis, who must dodge monster sand worms and yet do so expertly, who must avoid being enslaved by whatever family currently has the planet as its fiefdom, having developed a culture that accomplishes all of this. Such things as the still suits and tents, the sietches, riding the sandworms, etc. are quite well developed and written. Again, Herbert does not spoon-feed us with elaborate explanations of how this culture came into being. Enough information is given on most of these to understand them from the context.

– reliance on Arabic: Obviously much of the names and terms in the book are derived from the Arabic language, even using directly such words as jihad and hajj in the Arabic meaning. As one who lived five years in the Arab world, and who knows a smattering of Arabic, I found this enjoyable. Some terms, such as the words of greeting (can’t type it in since I don’t have the book here; will edit tonight) are close to the Arabic. I imagine some found this difficult or tedious. I found it enjoyable.

– the downplay of technology: In Dune, the technologies are assumed, not described. Space travel is a given, and no information is given on spacecraft. The ‘thopers, for atmospheric travel, are never really explained. Suspensers, poison snoopers, shields, and many other technological advances that are not in our 21st century world are not explained; they simply are. I found this good. The book was long enough without adding too much explanation of what they are and how they worked. Perhaps this is the way of all science fiction writing. Since I don’t read it much (the last was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and the two sequels back in the 70s), I wouldn’t know. But I liked it.

I am out of time, and probably have a long enough post. I’ll continue soon.

Dune by Frank Herbert, 1965, The Berkeley Publishing Group, Special markets Hardcover September 2005, ISBN 0-441-01405-4

How does one go about writing a review of Dune? It’s a massive job. I shall need three days to say most of what’s in my head. Imagine, therefore, how much more difficult it was to write the book in the first place. The achievement of Frank Herbert is immense. To create the planet Arrakis, with all its culture based on physical characteristics, and the worlds beyond Arrakis is a staggering work, easily rivaling the achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien.

I began reading Dune on June 15 this year, and finished July 19. As I said in previous posts (here and here), I found the beginning very hard reading. Herbert did not spoon-feed his readers. We have to figure it out from the barest of clues. On the first page I was confronted with the term Kwisatz Haderach, planets Caladan and Arrakis, the Atriedes family, and the curious term “suspensor lamp”. Strange words, strange concepts, hard going. I didn’t realize I had a “Terminology of the Imperium” section in the back. I assumed I had to figure these out from context or later illumination.

The second page presented the gom jabbar, Bene Gesserit, CHOAM, Landsraad, etc. The first five pages, even the first fifty pages, threw up one difficulty toward full understanding after another. I like to understand what I read. If I can’t figure out something from the context or internal explanation, I consult a dictionary, or even on occasion an encyclopedia. But where to go to understand Bene Gesserit? Nothing to do but read on and hope to figure it all out from accumulated context. I did, eventually, stumble on the glossary, and made frequent flips there. It wasn’t the most helpful, but consistent with Herbert’s aversion to spoon-feeding. I read fairly slowly, trying to maximize my understanding. Possibly the need to understand caused me not to focus on some plot elements, or the depth of character development.

Once I was past the first fifty pages, the extent of new terms diminished. Some others started to become familiar. I consulted the glossary less, and enjoyed the book more. The mind fog over Arrakis started to clear (and in so doing, I hope, provided something for the dew harvesters to collect), and the plot stood front and center. About the time Jessica and Paul had to escape from their Harkonnen captors (or were they Sardukuar?) was when I began to see the big picture.

On the next two days–I think; it could take longer–I’m going to cover what I liked and didn’t like about Dune. Today I’ll simply mention that I like the fact the book had no swearing, no overt sex scenes, and little violence. Oh, there were wars, battles, and knife fights, but the covering of this was superbly done by Herbert, such that you almost didn’t know it was a violent scene. The violence was not gratuitous, and the book did not rise or fall on the violence. This, I feel, is a mark of good writing.

So I conclude today by saying put me in the camp of fans of Dune. Some day I will re-read this, and I don’t re-read many books. Thanks to my son for this gift, which has enriched me. More later.

Yesterday I reached, and today I passed, the halfway point in Dune, Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel. My son gave this to me for Christmas (or birthday; they’re pretty close together), and about three weeks ago it finally came to the top of the pile. My son gave it a good endorsement, saying it helped to define, or maybe it was change, the science fiction genre. I’m not much of a science fiction or fantasy person, but with that endorsement, and trying to please him, when it came to the top and it was time to read fiction, I plunged.

The first fifty pages were very hard reading. So many terms to learn, so many flips to the glossary. So much going back to re-read paragraphs that didn’t seem to make sense. Actually, this went on for closer to a hundred pages (my version is 540 pages, including appendixes). I found myself unable to read more than five to ten pages a day.

After a while, though, I fell into a rhythm, and began to find the work enjoyable. Some terms started to become familiar; others could be deciphered from context. The main plot line became clear, and the characters became real. The writing is stellar, and this book has one thing I really like in a book: omniscient narrator point of view. In all my writing instruction sources, they say omniscient is out of favor, and new writers should avoid it. As a reader, however, I prefer it, so why wouldn’t I write in it? Tonight I finished a chapter where Paul and his mother are the only characters in the scene. In one paragraph we are in Paul’s head; in the next one in Jessica’s. And I say, “Hallelujah!” What an exciting way to write. The caution against head hopping is, IMHO, way over stated.

Back to Dune, I can’t imagine how much time it took Herbert to create this. It seems more fantasy to me than science fiction. Possibly these two genres frequently merge when the science fiction is so far out there to make Earth invisible. His creation of the desert situations–the sand worms and the Fremen and stillsuits and the whole concept about water conservation is outstanding. The empire, with the tripartite arrangement between the royal house and the guild and the leading families, which has barely come out, is an interesting foundation of the plot. Back story is worked in expertly by Herbert.

I’m on a roll now, reading twenty pages a day or a few more. I’m anxious to learn how Paul and Jessica return to civilization; how Thufir Hawat learns who the real traitor is; what the emperor’s gambit is; etc. A few things I question, but imagine they will be explained later. For example, the last chapter I read this evening told of the death of Kynes, the Fremen planetologist who served as the judge of the change. Given that he died, and will have no more part in the story (unless he really didn’t die; we don’t have a corpus delecti yet, and I always maintain until you have the corpus delecti you don’t have a death), why did Herbert spend so much time on the death? Was it just to work in some of Arrakis’ physical characteristics, which Paul will pick up on later in this (or a subsequent) volume? The weeks ahead will tell.