My History With Dune

Hey everyone! I was going to wait until next week to do this post, but with Denis Villeneuve's Dune being released today, I decided this was the most appropriate time for this to come out. Today I'm going to be going into my history with the 1965 novel, Dune, written by Frank Herbert, as well as some of it's sequels and it's many adaptations. Apart from the first book by Brian Herbert (the son of Frank Herbert) and Kevin J. Anderson, who is one of my favourite Star Wars novels from the '90s, I'm not going to delve into the sequels mainly because Hunters of Dune is the only one I've read. So let's get into it.

 Dune was originally published in Analog magazine, which is a Science Fiction magazine that published the works of Sci-Fi writers as a test to see if people liked it enough to buy the book, from 1963 to early 1965. The novel was published as two serials within the magazine, with the first one called Dune World which was three parts, and then the second one, The Prophet of Dune, which was five parts. The first serial makes up the first section of the book, called Dune, and then the second serial covered part 2, Muad'Dib and part 3, The Prophet. The book was published in book form in August, 1965.

 I was in high school by the time I became aware of the book. My parents actually had the first five books that Herbert wrote for the series before he passed away in 1986, but I only ever read the first one as it's the one I wanted to keep during the Great Purges of 2015, where my parents and I got rid of a whole ton of books, CDs, movies, toys, comics, collectibles, and furniture in anticipation of our move, which wouldn't actually happen until 2016. It's still in my collection today. I didn't end up reading it until last summer, because what else was I gonna do since we were in the middle of a global pandemic, there was no vaccine yet, and we were all in lockdown still. I had actually tried reading it back in either late 2016 or early 2017 but I ended up not finishing it at the time.

To be honest, I didn't like the book all that much. I found it incredibly complex, with characters that just felt bland to me. I'm autistic and so I'm not very good with subtext, nuance and hidden meaning. And Dune has alot of subtext, nuance, and hidden meaning. I mean ALOT of it. Because of that, I didn't understand what exactly was going on aside from the surface level stuff like a family is on the run because of a Galactic Empire over a high demand commodity. Which is nothing we haven't seen before in other books, movies, TV shows etc outside of the Science Fiction genre. I just wasn't getting it. That doesn't mean it's a bad book or that it was written poorly, because it's very well written and it's a great story, but if you're not able to understand the layers of the story and how Herbert expertly crafted the story or if you're not into slow political thrillers, that take their time to build the story, you're not going to get very much out of this book.

I discovered a YouTuber named Wonder Meg while scrolling through Twitter yesterday. I checked out her channel, and she has a series of discussions on the book and goes chapter by chapter. I've watched the first two parts so far, because they're REALLY long and I did not want to stay up all night watching the videos, but they're really in depth and has helped me to understand the book a little bit better, which is something other reviews that I've watched on YouTube haven't done. Check out part 1 here because it's worth a watch if you're like me and have difficulty understanding this sort of thing, or if you're a fan of Dune and want to pick up on stuff that maybe you haven't before. 

However, back in 2007 I got the paperback edition of the seventh book in the series, Hunters of Dune, which was written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson based on notes written by Frank Herbert for a seventh entry in the series, probably in the mid-'80s prior to his death in 1986. I got it either as a birthday present or Christmas present, I don't remember which. I read it and was extremely confused because I hadn't read the previous six books, or any of the prequels that were out at the time, which also totalled six books. So this was my first introduction to the world of Dune and I liked this book okay, but I never read it again after that. Then I got rid of it probably during the Great Book Purge of 2015 or maybe at some point before that because I hadn't picked it up since I finished reading it in early 2008. 

I'm planning on upgrading to the newer mass market paperback edition of Dune in the near future because my copy isn't falling apart yet, but the back cover is close to falling off and the front cover is almost there as well, but not as soon as the back cover is. In her second video on the book, which covers chapters 2, 3, and 4, Wonder Meg recommended this edition to the viewers. I thought about getting the most recent hardcover edition which includes an introduction by Brian Herbert, but it looks really big and I'm finding that as I get older, big, thick hardcovers and trade paperbacks of novels are harder for me to hold for long periods of time, which slows down the amount of time it would take for me to finish the book in. It's one of the reasons I want to get rid of my trade paperback copy of Stephen King's It and replace it with a smaller mass market paperback edition because that book is huge and extremely hard to hold. So, this edition is the one I'm going to get.

The first movie adaptation of Dune, directed by David Lynch, came out in 1984. It stars Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides, Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck, and Sting as Baron Harkonnen's nephew. The movie bombed at the box office but has become a cult classic since then, most likely through it's numerous home video releases over the years.

I haven't seen the movie yet but I do own it on DVD. I got it in a four movie collection with Flash Gordon (1980), The Last Starfighter (1984), and Battlestar Galactica (1978). I actually keep meaning to watch it but I just haven't gotten to it yet. Part of the reason I was interested in seeing the movie, aside from the fact that Patrick Stewart did this movie a few years before he was cast as Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, is because of the mixed feelings about it from film fans and fans of the source material. Plus it's a piece of film history.

There was also a TV miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel in the year 2000. I also have never seen this adaptation of the book, but I've heard it's really good. I'm not familiar with anyone in the cast of this miniseries, except for William Hurt, because he plays General Ross in the MCU films starting with The Incredible Hulk (2008). I've heard people say this miniseries is extremely hard to find as it's not even streaming anywhere and the DVD goes for a ridiculous price on eBay and other online markets. So I probably won't get the chance to see it, but you never know.

And that brings us to today when Denis Villeneuve's film, Dune, was released. With a few exceptions, I'm familiar with the main cast of this film as they have been in a few other movies that I've seen and enjoyed. Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Chang Chen, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Sharon Duncan-Brewster are actors I've never encountered before. In fact, until they were announced as having been cast in this movie, I'd never even heard of them as I'm not as steeped in film culture as other people are. I'm probably not going to watch this movie. At least not for a very long time. The pandemic is still at a place where I'm not comfortable with going to the movie theatre, and I don't have access to it since I don't have Crave and HBO Max isn't available here in Canada. Honestly, I'm a bit wary of the way movies adapt books and comics these days, especially if the adaptations are being made by Warner Bros. because their track record as of late hasn't been very good. 

I'm glad that people are excited for this movie, though it looks like some people have too high expectations for the movie because I've seen some disappointed people on Twitter this last week, with the press screenings happening. And that's because WB had a poor marketing strategy for this movie and some people, probably people who have never read the book, were expecting an action film with space and ground battles that rival those in the Star Wars franchise, but that's not what Dune is at all. Plus this movie is only the first half of the book so we're only getting half of the story, similar to what WB did with the more recent movie adaptations of Stephen King's It and what was done with the movie adaptations of the last Harry Potter book, the last Hunger Games book, and the last Twilight book to name some of the book to movie adaptations of the last ten years. 

And that's my history with Frank Herbert's Dune. Nothing too juicy given I only talked about two books and haven't seen any of the adaptations of the first book. But, I still wanted to do something in honour of the movie since alot of people are really excited about it and most of the reviewers that I follow on YouTube, a podcast or blogs, have seen it and enjoyed it. So cheers to those of you who are excited for this movie. As for me, I will definitely be back at some point with another post. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.