HackerNews Readings
40,000 HackerNews book recommendations identified using NLP and deep learning

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Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman, Patrick Egan, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

523 HN comments

The Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition: Your Journey to Mastery

David Thomas, Andrew Hunt, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

396 HN comments

Dune

Frank Herbert, Scott Brick, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

379 HN comments

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson, Jonathan Davis, et al.

4.3 on Amazon

368 HN comments

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

349 HN comments

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

Matthew Walker, Steve West, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

326 HN comments

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

Don Norman

4.6 on Amazon

305 HN comments

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

4.5 on Amazon

290 HN comments

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

4.6 on Amazon

284 HN comments

Cryptonomicon

Neal Stephenson, William Dufris, et al.

4.4 on Amazon

283 HN comments

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Robert M Pirsig

4.5 on Amazon

270 HN comments

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

David Kushner, Wil Wheaton, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

262 HN comments

The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" (Incerto)

Nassim Nicholas Nicholas Taleb

4.5 on Amazon

250 HN comments

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

247 HN comments

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Eric Ries

4.6 on Amazon

243 HN comments

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Sorted by relevance

davedxonJune 14, 2021

Foundation is great. Dune (original 6 books). All of Iain M Banks sci fi. Alastair Reynolds’ books. Dan Simmons’ Endymion series.

radicalbyteonMar 29, 2020

Glad to see another manga fan.

One Piece, Monster and of course HxH have all impacted me.

For books, most people have already mentioned Dune, HHGTTG and The Culture series, so I'll have to add Flowers for Algernon.

manojldsonAug 5, 2021

Feels more like a statement about make sure you read Dune before reading anything else, than about content.

nkgonDec 12, 2018

I've also read Dune this year. It deserves the status it has in the sci fi world!
I don't know whether I should read the sequels or not. If it is not as good, it may spoil my feelings towards the 1st book.

downer56onMay 11, 2018

This is the best write-up of Dune that I’ve ever read. Some of gwern’s stuff is kind of overcooked to a fault, and with intense focus, misses the broader prevailing drift of the topic at hand, but gwern’s got me on this one. It’s a good read.

gorbachevonJuly 15, 2018

I thought the Dune series was most excellent.

Also any Asimov books.

I also quite enjoyed Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.

As for lighthearted...you can't go wrong with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

dvh1990onMar 29, 2020

- War and Peace - Life changing book for me. Tolstoy is a genius. You'll find a piece of yourself in every character, and maybe even get an answer to some profound questions.

- Dune - Came for the sci-fi, stayed for the politics.

- A Song of Ice and Fire series - You know GoT. The books are better.

RUG3YonNov 18, 2016

Books I've give away this year:

- "In the Garden of Beasts", Erik Larson: An excellent history of diplomatic relations between the US and Germany leading up to WWII.

- "Dune", Frank Herbert: Most of you are probably familiar with this book.

RUG3YonSep 8, 2016

I read Frank Herbert's Dune by flashlight when I was 11. The book absolutely blew my mind. I started at bedtime and turned the final pages at dawn and then went to school. Dune is still my favorite work of fiction, I've read it many times.

tangueonFeb 11, 2017

for those who're seeking something else I would recommend Frank Herbert's Dune -which doesn't get much love on HN but fits perfectly in an AI post truth dystopia

slowmovintargetonFeb 10, 2015

I plan on reading "Goodnight Dune" [1] to my daughter.

Funny that the article's author wrote of Dune as one of the books to be read over and over. I used to do that. I've only read it 7 times, though, not 100.

[1] http://goodnightdune.com/

masterleeponJune 4, 2015

Absolutely the only thing that needs to be done in California is allowing water markets to function. We do not need to be reading Dune except for entertainment.

tnecnivonAug 8, 2016

Those are all great. I've also given Dune, the Forever War, and The Stars my Destination.

will_work4tearsonJuly 1, 2014

Dune is great, but don't stop there. Read the rest of the series (I don't care for any of his Son's books though, so not going to recommend those, but there are those that like em).

awjronAug 21, 2014

Have to agree, Dune is an amazing book and stands well on it's own. One of my favourite ever. Even the film/TV interpretations are pretty good :)

NeonViceonFeb 7, 2018

I've listened to a handful of fiction audiobooks, and Dune was the only one that I've listened to that had multiple voice actors. I'm sure there are others, but it's uncommon.

lostloginonMar 9, 2017

But don't be forgetting Dune or Dune II. It was so fantastic.

__david__onAug 21, 2014

That was phenomenal. I've always loved Dune and it's complicated, detailed storyline. Herbert's comparison to a fugue is incredibly apt.

apionApr 20, 2017

I loved Lynch's Dune. Whatever the cause, the end result was a film that felt as weird and surreal and alien as Dune itself. The retro-futurist aspect of the tech only added to this.

ieatkittensonDec 24, 2016

Dune.

I mostly read non-fiction myself, so, just like you, I looked for something else amd randomly chose Dune. Loved it.

Brilliant world building and a story arch that keeps on giving. And there are 7(?) books in total.

dan-gonFeb 26, 2014

If you're talking about any sort of science fiction, I (and I'm sure countless others) would recommend Dune by Frank Herbert -- the best-selling sci-fi novel of all time, and for good reason. It's not as light-hearted as Ready Player One, though.

bottlerocketonDec 27, 2010

Just wanted to chime in that Dune & Foundation are excellent (and my personal favorite) sci-fi series.

I really enjoyed Ringworld by Larry Niven as well.And of course, the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy in 5 parts :)

monroepeonSep 14, 2015

Dune - Frank Herbert. Just an amazing book.

babuskovonSep 14, 2013

My favorite is still Frank Herbert's Dune series.

thebillywayneonJune 9, 2020

The Dune series is so rich in ideas and imagery. I've read it (print and audio) more than 20 times.

pier25onJune 9, 2020

- Sapiens

- The Lord of the Rings

- Siddhartha

- Chaos: Making a New Science

- The Death Gate cycle books

- Neuromancer

- Head First Design Patterns

- Valis

- Dune

- The name of the rose

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones off the top of my head.

adambyrtekonJune 2, 2018

Dune II came before both of them, but as far as I remember it wasn't a pure RTS, it had an adventure aspect as well.

MarketingJasononFeb 4, 2017

Just finished Daemon and about to start Freedom. Great read, and it's amazing how quickly it ramps up near the end! I hadn't been hooked to a book like that since "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Dune"

ihukonJuly 12, 2020

The part about Amazon reminded me of one of the best quotes from Frank Herbert's Dune:

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

brandonmenconJuly 4, 2015

> it's also the kind of book that should never have had a sequel

The first two books are meant to be read as one. I recommend, at minimum, Dune and Dune Messiah.

aazaaonNov 12, 2019

> Shortly after, Lynch directed his own version of a space opera / sci-fi film: Dune (1984)

jgwil2onMay 12, 2020

For science fiction, Dune is a must, and Children of Time is probably the most mind-bending sci-fi I've read since. Both create imaginary worlds that are so detailed and plausible that they make you see our world in a new light.

MefisonDec 11, 2018

Dune by David Lynch. A true masterpiece.

JamesCoyneonNov 24, 2018

To anyone else who would enjoy reading more about the creation of Dune (the original novel) I would recommend The Road to Dune.

TeeMassiveonJuly 24, 2021

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.". ― Frank Herbert, Dune

unmoleonJuly 16, 2018

Dune undoubtedly is a masterpiece. But, it's neither fun nor light-hearted like OP requested.

DowwieonAug 3, 2021

My Summer scifi has thus far included "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir and "Dark Matter" by Peter Straub. Both are fast-past and engaging until the end.

I wouldn't recommend either if you haven't read Dune, book 1, though. Read it.

mabynogyonJuly 27, 2018

I find Lynch's Dune good even if he disowned his movie. I like watching it from time to time like Alien.

ReraromonJan 9, 2020

Interesting how Robot/Foundation novels from the 1980s are more sexual than earlier ones, like with Dune novels from the 1980s.

animal531onOct 21, 2020

Think of it being well-written, but turning far more metaphysical. For myself, I recently re-read Dune (it still holds up amazingly well), but I found myself not really enjoying the sequels.

AtavismonAug 12, 2019

I wish there was a reading of Dune by him. He liked to talk about how he wrote it to sound like oral history and to build with a verbal momentum but I don't know how that would sound if read as an audiobook.

e40onSep 7, 2011

"A Fire Upon the Deep" is one of my favorite books of all time. Ranks up there with "Dune" and the Foundation trilogy.

JallalonDec 16, 2019

Dune is great. Really great, especially the first part. While many books get a lot of praise/hype, Dune is one of the few that lives up to expectations.

thisoneonMar 23, 2016

agreed. I liked them as well. Though probably heresy, the Sci-Fi series of the first two books were how I got into Dune.

I went on to read all the Frank Herbert written Dune books and I still like the Sci-Fi series.

j_colonSep 9, 2011

Dune number one, yay! I love all six books.

NursieonJan 6, 2013

Brian Herbert is a hack. IMHO, of course.

I would love to see a production of Dune with the budget and values of LoTR, even just book 1.

But yeah, I would definitely find some things to be annoyed about :)

dragonwriteronJuly 8, 2020

> The book itself has kind of a perfect 3 act setup

Standard 3-act structure has a natural breakpoint at the midpoint twist of Act 2, not that my recollection of Dune is detailed enough to confirm that it maps naturally to 3-act structure in detail.

dorian-graphonDec 19, 2017

I finished Dune about 2 months ago, and I'm currently a quarter through Dune Messiah. It so far is a great compliment and progression, and I constantly fight the desire to look up what happens because I want to know now.

partiallyproonApr 20, 2017

Dune is a beautiful film by Lynch, but the story pacing and deadpan-ish acting really hurts it. Lynch sometimes needs to be reined in. A reined in Lynch can make the difference between an amazing "Elephant Man" or weird as hell "Rabbits."

matthewmacleodonApr 20, 2017

Lynch's Dune is so weird – It's deeply, irredeemably flawed, from the perspective of someone who started with the rich world of the novels. But it's paradoxically beautiful and I can't help but enjoy it.

slartibardfast0onDec 7, 2018

This is a wonderful story, assuming you've played Dune II. Please take the time to play Cryo’s Dune also, it deserves nothing less than a VR remake!

anotherevanonOct 12, 2014

I loved the first book, and hated the rest. I got as far as half-way through Heretics of Dune when I suddenly asked myself, "Why are you still reading this?" and stopped.

I've since re-read Dune three or four times (most recently by way of an excellent audio-book version).

jesusloponJuly 31, 2021

In "Road to Dune" there are a couple of cut chapters of the first 2 books and the original ending of Dune Messiah

Andrew_nenakhovonSep 10, 2020

Thing is, Dune is literally a book about religious extremism, it is one of it's most important themes.

So changing this term gets massive thumbs down from me.

slothtroponMar 29, 2020

I could have written the same. Would also include The Name of the Rose, The Remains of the Day, Dune, the Master and Margarita, Candide. Probably others.

jackmottonApr 20, 2017

I like David Lynch's Dune as well. It is weird, but interesting.

high_5onOct 16, 2020

I would pick the same books but Dune (now I'm intrigued).

Especially 1984 is much more than just about surveillance technology which I think most people tend to be focused on.

ScalesteinonDec 19, 2017

Oh man, I feel like Dune Messiah (dune 2) is such a fantastic compliment to the original. It is about half the length and has such a different tone that makes the original even better.

fatalissonJuly 1, 2014

If you are looking for some good SF read I can't recommend "Dune" enough, this thing is a masterpiece.
As far as right now goes, I just started "The girl with the Dragon Tattoo", too early to give an opinion.

DrakimonSep 2, 2019

The 4th book in the series is the one that either makes you hate Dune or love it. Up until that point it could pass for some interesting sci-fi fantasy, but after that point, either you'll put down the book in boredom or find yourself utterly mindblown.

I highly recommend it.

therealdrag0onDec 30, 2017

Why? That's like saying I only read Of Mice and Men, Dune, and Wealth of Nations.

There's so many other options to explore!

BandrsnatchonMay 12, 2020

I picked up a copy of Dune at the Harvard Coop as a teenager and I was amazed. I learned to develop an inner dialog of reasoning. It also started me thinking in terms of systems and the importance of efficiency. Loved it.

unkeptbaristaonDec 19, 2016

I'll counter with:

1) Dune - Frank Herbert

2) Mote in God's Eye - Niven & Pournelle

3) The Lord of Light - Roger Zelanzy

4) Xeelee Series - Stephen Baxter (Or the Manifold: books)

5) The Well World Saga - Jack L. Chalker (Stick with the first 5 books)

navaitonJan 26, 2014

>...Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Dune, Foundation series by Asimov...

It's the most influential books ever written, not a list of books the HN crowd is most likely to have read. I think there's an argument for HG wells, but Dune? really?

asjwonJuly 3, 2020

I've seen it, several times, and I am both an Jodorowski's huge fan and an avid reader of the books

I'm a dreamer and I really hope that Villeneuve's Dune will bring some of those what ifs to life

Knowing that Jodorowski's work gave us Alien as we know it it's a gift nonetheless

cuboidGoatonSep 20, 2018

Sounds fun, Frank Herbert's "The Green Brain" is on very similar themes. Is also an excellent book. I suspect it would be much better known, if it wasn't so overshadowed by his Dune series.

octopusonFeb 26, 2014

I've read the entire Dune series more than 15 years ago, one of the best Sci-Fi series I've ever read.

stareatgoatsonJuly 12, 2020

If you per chance never read Dune (maybe everyone hasn't ...), and have a plan to do so; be warned that this post reveals several of the plot twists that made the book a memorable read.

dahdumonMar 29, 2020

Dune was my favorite series until TBP. Dune degrades quickly after the first book while I thought each TBP was better than the last.

dangerlibraryonAug 22, 2016

Dune II was a fantastic game - I still remember the little three-pixel sprites for the light infantry wiggling around on the screen.

ccozanonJuly 16, 2019

Can you tell me where to find these? especially "Dune".

I try to bring my kids to quality SF and this could be much easier than the actual Dune books, as they are not quite easy.

ozimonMar 12, 2018

I read Dune as how that grand manipulation went wrong because of multiple coincidences. So i would not agree there is no coincidence at all in Dune.

gostsamoonJune 14, 2021

Dune (first book only), The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur Clark, Robert Heinlein (Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land), Uplift Series by David Brim, The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanly Robinson, Ann Leckies books are really interesting new sf.

joshfinnieonOct 2, 2014

Read: Dune by Frank Herbert

Reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I have been trying to get back to science fiction after leaving it for so long. It's great so far!

dbasedweebonMay 12, 2018

I enjoy Dune a lot, but what you describe is absolutely the basis for any science in the story. It’s less science fiction and more high fantasy.

hyperman1onDec 8, 2018

My copy of Dune II also had a different subtitle than "The building of a dynasty", and I never owned a Megadrive. "Battle for Arrakis" is probably what it said, but I'm not 100% sure.

I bought my copy in France, at bargain bin, so maybe the international version had a different subtitle?

gambleonNov 28, 2011

There are a lot of books that are only available through piracy. You can download 1 GB torrents containing more books than anyone will ever read in a year, and yet there are still major books like Dune that aren't available to Kindle users. The selection for older, out-of-print titles is even worse.

nlonAug 8, 2016

I read a lot when I was a young teenager (pre-internet, and didn't have a TV, so I went through around a book a day). Much of it was SciFi.

I never found Dune all that great.

brandonmenconSep 24, 2015

> My dad can give me a book he read in college

My dad is in his 60s and lends me books Kindle-to-Kindle.

Easy long-distance sharing, and talking about those books while he's alive, is more meaningful than looking at the dusty old one-of-identical-millions copy of Dune I jacked from his bookshelf.

aaron695onSep 16, 2013

I was also pretty miffed to learn in Dune II the enemy could cheat and see outside the fog.

But until I learned that it was a lot of fun, the AI possibly would have sucked without the cheat.

slickrick216onMar 7, 2021

Dune is such a great book.

For real though. I’ve had anxiety attacks and tried to put myself outside the situation like an observer. Just let the emotion wash over you but don’t react to it. It’ll pass and you’ll feel better and come to terms with the issue that induced the fear.

dkuntz2onApr 23, 2013

All of my computers are named after characters from Dune (thus far only the first book). Three of them were named after one character, with multiple names.

someusername99onJuly 11, 2020

“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

nazgulnarsilonMar 19, 2008

Dune is fantasy >_>
God Emperor of Dune was my favorite even though it was the most preachy. I thought the original Dune was a bit preachy being so strongly allegorical and all.

I prefer Herbert's other novels like Whipping Star/The Dosadi Experiment

jameskiltononAug 21, 2014

Fantastic documentary, but to be fair, Jodorowsky never actually read Dune. The story and message were completely different from Dune the book.

100konJuly 4, 2015

This Immortal is terrific. And Zelazany in general. Dune and Lord of Light (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light) are a few of the only SF books I re-read on a regular basis.

cwbrandsmaonMay 22, 2015

Better are books that can be read on their own...and are part of an expansive series

* Foundation
* Dune
* Discworld
* Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
* Hyperion

Even worse are 5 book sets (Belgarion and Eddings novels)

physicsyogionJuly 15, 2018

Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash were great. Others you might:

- The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (superb short story that Arrival was based on)
- The Three Body-Problem (Cixin Liu)
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler)
- Lucifer's Hammer (Larry Niven)
- The Kundalini Equation (Steven Barnes)

rsynconMar 29, 2020

Agreed.

I don't put it on-par with Dune, but there are definitely concepts in the TBP trilogy that are simultaneously difficult and mind-opening. Some of them are quite haunting, actually.

Most of the deeper exploration of these ideas takes place in the third book.

padseekeronJan 26, 2015

Dune - IM not-so HO its the best sci fi novel ever.

mojoeonDec 19, 2016

Thanks, I haven't read 3-5, I'll definitely check those out! Dune is incredible, although it always felt a little too much like epic fantasy for my tastes.

MattConfluenceonDec 16, 2019

The Dune movie isn't due until December 2020, but I figured I'd get started with Dune the book, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while. Maybe if I enjoy it I will get my hands on the rest of the Dune series.

the_afonApr 20, 2017

It's still SF though:

Human computers (mentats), drug-assisted spaceship navigation, genetic manipulation and cloning (the Tleilaxu), ecological reshaping of planets, complex ecological lifecycles, etc.

Anyway you dice it, Dune is a genuine work of SF with a rennaissance/medieval flavor.

doc_gunthroponOct 7, 2017

Dune 2 was a fantastic game. It's essentially the progenitor for RTS games like the Warcraft and Starcraft series.

rnernentoonFeb 16, 2015

Dune - Frank Herbert

There's something mystical and very powerful about this book and the theme of conquering fear. It also reads surprisingly well considering how dense some of the political and technical descriptions are.

rajacombinatoronOct 12, 2019

Re-reading Dune many years later I found it to be pretty cringey. Laurence of Outer Space basically. Maybe the 2nd book was better ...?

barrkelonAug 8, 2016

Dune is very close to a revenge fantasy. I read it for the first time a year or two ago and was not particularly impressed.

potta_coffeeonApr 9, 2020

The remaining Dune books are quite different from the first book as well as from each other. They explore lots of different ideas.

cskauonNov 30, 2012

For anyone interested in playing Dune II natively I highly recommend Dune Legacy[0] - an open source implementation which
I personally found much better than OpenDUNE, which the link is based on.

[0] http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/dunelegacy/index.php?t...

cde-vonFeb 16, 2018

Not who you were asking, but coming from someone how has read the Foundation series and Dune multiple times (only books I have ever reread):

The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey

The Culture series by Iain M. Banks

baneonAug 21, 2014

The best part about Dune is that it's really one of those books that reveals different things every time you read it. It should be part of every serious literature course.

lemonberryonFeb 11, 2018

I like Nietszche, Emerson (especially 'Self-Reliance'), Walt Whitman and the Tao Te Ching. For fiction Zorba the Greek and Dune are two of my favorites.

aw3c2onJune 12, 2010

I am currently reading Dune and I promised myself to never watch the movie so I can keep the images alive in my head. Did the same with His Dark Materials. And even though the movies were good epic movies, I miss my own Lord of the Rings.

scouttonMar 22, 2019

I don't argue that it can be useful for online debates, but damn, how boring would be Frank Herbert's Dune dialogues if we follow this principle?

Specially with pearls like this: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/91393/dune-explain...

iterationxonNov 3, 2010

Dune is the best science fiction book ever written.

pronoiaconJune 8, 2019

https://twitter.com/LeaKissner/status/1136691523104280576

> Zanzibar was not the original name of the system. It was originally called "Spice". I have read Dune more times than I can count and an access control system is designed so that people can safely share things, so the project motto was "the shares must flow"

stevekemponDec 20, 2017

I bought my wife pretty much every book written by Brandon Sanderson. (Mistborn, Stormlight Archives, etc).

I've also donated a couple of copies of Dune, Zelazny's Amber books, and The Martian over the course of the year to various local friends.

jeremyrwelchonMar 19, 2012

Exactly. Reminds me of a favorite quote from Frank Herbert's Dune "There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."

radu_floricicaonMay 12, 2009

Dune is a ridiculously good book. I never understood why it's relatively obscure. Other then perhaps the fact that I tend to grit my teeth when I hear people talking (or making movies) about it with only superficial understanding.

fbn79onOct 8, 2020

Am I wrong or the technology can be used one day to create Stillsuit (https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Stillsuit) as described in Dune by Frank Herbert?

BiltersonJuly 27, 2020

Some suggstions on my end would be:
Ready player one - Ernest Cline
Mistborn trilogy - Brandon Sanderson
A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson
Dune - Frank Herbert

c0rianderonSep 19, 2010

I was also read Dune aloud as a kid! Though I think I must've been older by then -- 12+. Definitely missed most of the subtext, though... Just like watching Forrest Gump.

salusinarduisonApr 9, 2015

Currently reading:

* Machine Learning - Peter Flach

* Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond

* Dune ( for the third time, I love it :) ) - Frank Herbert

I usually read some of pg's, sama's, avc's or some other prominant essayist in the bath each week.

wombatpmonMay 8, 2019

Dune (which was based on the concept of a hydraulic empire)

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." - Frank Herbert, Dune

csmattryderonNov 18, 2014

Currently Frank Herbert's "Dune", which is quite good from what I've read so far.

My problem is, I can never actually muster up the motivation to sit down and read it.

I'm coming to Dune from "Fahrenheit 451". I'd give it 8/10, I've found it's a little slow to kick off, but the plot soon picks up.

richk449onAug 11, 2021

Every time I hear these types of comments, I think that someone read the first Dune book, but not the rest of the series. In this case, it’s a bit too on the nose.

sonofhansonApr 21, 2020

Yes, very worth it. I've read all Frank Herbert's books and short stories. The last two Dune books, IMO, are the best things he wrote. It seems like he figured out that the Bene Gesserit were the most interesting thing he created, so he geeked out on them for two books.

LanceHonAug 21, 2014

I've read the first six. Rereading, I stopped at God Emperor.

I tell people who are thinking about reading it that if they found Dune to be slow and difficult that they should just stop at the first one. It's a lot of world building and politics as it goes on.

crispyambulanceonApr 20, 2017

Jodorowsky's Dune was a phenomenal documentary.

This film that never got made is the stuff of nightmares for project managers and money people, but damn, Jodorowsky's contagious inspiration was (and still is) off the charts. We need more Jodorowsky's in the world.

nottorponJune 2, 2018

The adventure game (with minor RTS elements) was Dune (no II) by Cryo. This one is Dune II by Westwood, which was a pure RTS.

Funny enough, they were developed at the same time.

brandonmenconFeb 10, 2015

Exactly.

I read the entire original Dune series a couple of few times a year, always in bed at night - I imagine, much like people read their Bibles.

Having done it so many times, it's become "low impact" reading - appropriate for situations where reading something new is "too much."

potta_coffeeonJuly 12, 2018

I've read Dune at least 8 times, maybe 10. I could go on and on about how much I love this book.

I've read the Lord of the Rings 3 - 4 times, which I feel is a lot for a pretty thick series.

Lord of the Flies: 3 - 4 reads

1984: 3 - 4 reads

A Clockwork Orange: 3 reads

Brave New World: 4 reads

I really like dystopian fiction I guess.

505onMay 18, 2016

I first encountered this word reading Frank Herbert's Dune, so it was a bit odd when I encountered it in other literature. Later I realised one of the great things about Herbert's SF - he uses many real-world cultures as sources for his world building

dansoonDec 23, 2015

I re-read Dune for the first time since I was a kid. Boy that did not hold up well. The world and lore building, which is what I guess I fondly remember, were still fantastic. The constant inner dialogues, not so much.

tcopelandonOct 11, 2014

Dune was on the Army MCoE book list for a while too:

http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/search?keywords=...

It's not on their most recent list, but Starship Troopers is.

IgorPartolaonMay 20, 2014

I am reading Dune and this is very similar to the advice Leto gave to Paul. Which came first, I wonder?

realsimplesyndonMar 6, 2021

In Frank Herbert's Dune, the main hero, Paul Muad'Dib, name means "the little mouse"

elmaronJuly 27, 2017

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." - Frank Herbert, Dune

playing_coloursonNov 6, 2016

Just finished Dune by Frank Herbert. Now I need to decide if I should go on with the next books in the original Dune series.

mwerdonAug 21, 2014

Jodorowsky did read Dune according to the documentarian:

"The truth is that he had not read it when he had the idea to make the film. At that point, someone had told him it was good. Hilarious. But once he embarked on his mission, he of course read it as he did the screenplay adaptation before anything. His film would have been remarkably loyal to the novel, of course with some of his own genius in the mix."

http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2csd3c/frank_pavich_...

brlonFeb 14, 2009

Lynch's Dune doesn't belong in the 'mindfuck' category, but perhaps it needs a category of it's own. Something like 'Random nonsense about leather boys and sand worms interspersed with recognizable incidents from science fiction novel of same name'.

Andrew_nenakhovonMar 9, 2020

Dune is a great movie. It's just not completed. The first part, up to the meeting with the fremen,is great. Set, costume design, music are all top notch, and actors are all great. But it would be 6 hours long to fit all the book, and the producers didn't know they can split movies in two parts like "It" or "Kill Bill"

simonklitjonApr 21, 2020

Man! On book 4 of Dune myself, and it's been going a lot more slowly than the first three. About 30% in, is it worth it?

thatinstantonJan 20, 2019

I have been rereading Frank Herbert's Dune so when I read this interesting article, I thought it could have also been titled "A Historical Who's Who of Mentats." I am definitely looking forward to Parts 2 through N...

boryasonFeb 16, 2015

How big of an expert on deserts do you have to be that Dune stops being interesting? Unless you still find it valuable emotionally or philosophically and just reject is as 'science fiction' I think it's a bit sad to just flat out get rid of such an interesting book!

sateeshonOct 28, 2013

Nicely put. Yes, programming is part art and we are not like machines that can work no matter in what state we are. But often we mask our procrastination/laziness blaming it on lot many things and waiting for a right moment to magically arrive get the work done.

I am reading 'Dune' now and I found this advice from Halleck to Paul so relevant :

'I guess I'm not in the mood for it today' Paul said.

'Mood ? Halleck's voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield's filtering.

'What has mood to do with it? You fight when the need
arises - no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or
making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting'

-- Dune, Frank Herbert

argimenesonApr 22, 2015

#1. A 10 part mini-series of Frank Herbert's "Dune" (finally done right by HBO). And after that, the rest of Herbert's Dune saga.

#2. Frank Herbert's "The Eyes of Heisenberg".

#3. Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination".

#4. "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller.

#5. Arthur C. Clarke's "The City and the Stars".

yumaikasonAug 8, 2016

I enjoyed the first Dune book, solely on the amount of world building in the book. But I never read any of the others other than the 3rd one, as Herbert seemed to get a bit long in the tooth with all the grandiose plans involving the god emperor after a bit.

ianaionApr 5, 2017

And Dune hasn't been remade either. I want them to do that one as dark and crazy as the books.

georgeoliveronJuly 11, 2021

I had a very weird moment of cognitive dissonance reading the headline, having just finished rereading the novel Dune yesterday.

subelskyonDec 27, 2010

Damon (plus the rest of that trilogy), Dune - those are two recent favorites off the top of my head

blonde_oceanonSep 23, 2020

I haven’t read Dune, so when I saw “mentat,” I immediately thought of mentats from Fallout (a chem to boost intelligence stats for a brief period).

amrbonDec 24, 2020

The first Dune book.

stevekemponMay 14, 2014

I reread Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Amber, and Dune, at least once a year. I guess that I've read each of them at least 20 times each.

The only other book that I've read more than ten times has to be Stranger in a Strange Land.

teekertonApr 14, 2021

Studied is a big word but (on the fiction side) most things by Greg Egan keep me reading with ease. Also Harry Potter :). But also the Commonwealth Saga 1 and 2 by Peter F. Hamilton, the 3 books after that I never finished. Dune kept me going for 5 books until I stopped. On the non-fiction side, Richard Dawkins is a good writer.

taneqonAug 8, 2016

I read most of the Dune books back when I was a teenager, and despite being a usually voracious reader I found them very hard to get into. Worth the effort, mind you, but it's definitely a series which requires some investment.

LinuxBenderonSep 9, 2020

I was seriously excited when I heard they were rebooting Dune. It is one of my favorite books and movies. Modern graphics, sound, music, actors would have been wonderful. Then I found it was may have fallen victim to being "woke". All of my favorite franchises are being wrecked. Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who and now Dune. In this case, Liet Kynes has changed gender and ethnicity. It doesn't even make any sense. The original Dune already had plenty of diversity and arguably some of the most powerful female characters in all of SciFi. I wish I knew how to fix this.

DuncanIdahoonOct 3, 2010

Reading first and second Dune trilogy would give you a lot of what you are asking for.

Also I would recommend reading Alamut from Vladimir Bartol.

For more serious works - I would offer Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy.

todd8onFeb 23, 2021

I’m looking forward to Apple’s upcoming TV versions of Dune by Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. These are such big stories that they can’t be squeezed into a movie without losing their allure.

jerfonOct 9, 2019

"Show, don't tell" strikes me as a video proscription more than a writing one, even if it has worked its way into writing since. It's fine for it to be more complicated in a writing medium. You probably don't want "just tell", but "show and tell" can work fine there. Dune is definitely a "show and tell" book and it works great.

patrickkonApr 9, 2015

"Dune" the classic sci-fi novel for the first time and I've just finished the Fountain series. Before that was Snow Crash. On a classic sci-fi reading bender right now.

ekianjoonJuly 4, 2015

Erm. Let's not forget Dune the adventure game by Cryo as well, which was some kind of Adventure game mixed with real time strategy in the later parts of the game. Very well done.

deathanatosonMay 20, 2014

Having not read Dune myself, I was rather hoping you would quote the relevant passage, so that I and those like myself can compare it to the aforementioned military quote, and perhaps derive some insight from it.

squadm-nkeyonDec 31, 2020

Hate brando sando? O.o

I also read Dune this year and loved it and gave up on Dune Messiah. Will power through if things get better.

I really enjoyed Asimov's Foundation Series and Le Guin's Hainish books (specifically Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness) this year, check them out of if you haven't yet.

RobertoGonOct 16, 2020

>>"[..] some people I've recommend it to don't seem to have had the same experience as I had reading it. "

I'm reading Dune again at the moment. I think that when you read a book in your life is pretty important too. The cynic (and more knowledgeable, I suppose) me of today, would be more difficult to affect than the naive young of yesterday.

dmichulkeonAug 8, 2016

"Economics in one Lesson" by H. Hazlitt (conveys the same as "Atlas shrugged" in much much less pages)

"The Selfish Gene" (R. Dawkins)

"Dune" (F. Herbert)

"Walden II" (B. F. Skinner)

almostdeadguyonSep 10, 2020

Totally agree, this looks like it'll be missing everything that's weird and wonderful about Dune.

Lynch's Dune can be bewildering coming at it without the context of the book, but that aspect of it is frankly just something you get used to with Lynch's works, and like you said its filled with so much oddness and detail. The hulking Heighliner spacecrafts, the mutated ghoulish guild navigator, the fascinating cave-like imperial palace set, the manic cyst-covered Harkonnens. I've never understood why it gets a bad rap, I think it's a hugely underrated film that did a wonderful job capturing the strange universe of Dune.

sagarjauharionApr 9, 2015

Currently reading

  * 7 languages in 7 weeks, Bruce A. Tate
* Coders at Work, Peter Seibel
* Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
* Neuromancer, William Gigson

Just finished

  * The Island of Doctor Moreau, H G Wells
* Brave new world, Aldous Huxley

Recommend

  * The Martian: A Novel, Andy Weir
* Dune, Frank Herbert
* 2001: A space odyssey, Arthur C Clarke

GatskyonJan 27, 2021

I didn’t mind Consider Phlebas, but I found Excession, Player of Games, The Algebraist and Surface Detail to be more interesting. Against a Dark Background was also good although strictly not a Culture book.

Other sci-fi I have enjoyed which has a very different feel: Dune (amazing), The Diamond Age (also amazing), Ancillary Justice (pretty good).

Thanks for other recommendations!

Incidentally, that goodreads review you posted is self-indulgent prattling at its worst.

petercooperonJuly 7, 2020

Dune 1 is probably the most atmospheric 90s DOS game I've played. There are few games that will sweep you into a world like that.

crdbonSep 29, 2017

If you enjoy literature and have not read the Hyperion Cantos yet, I beg you to stick to just the first book.

What Simmons did to conclude the Cantos is on par with Star Wars episodes I-III. Sometimes it is better to preserve the magic by omission.

As for a movie, I do not think doing it justice is possible today. The only adaptations that came close to a suitable spirit were Dune (1984) and Beowulf (2005). It is SF only by name and requires a very strong and independent minded writer and director, both of whom should be relatively well read as well.

InduaneonAug 8, 2016

Gödel, Escher, Bach
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Enders Game
Speaker for the Dead
A Brief History of Time
I Am a Strange Loop
Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (5 or 6 book trilogy)
Dune

WarOnPrivacyonAug 8, 2021

Dune II was first (and one of the few) PC game I really stuck with.

tom_mellioronOct 12, 2019

I wouldn't have put it like you, but I too was unimpressed by Dune. All the religious/mystical stuff didn't appeal to me at all. I wonder if it's partly an age thing: I only read Dune in my 30s. The more "typical" nerd journey would have been to read it in my teens. I don't know if I would have liked it back then, but I'm sure I would have viewed it differently, both then and now.

alphabetamonAug 21, 2014

I haven't read their _sequels_, but I have read their _prequels_ before reading the original dune and I found them decent. Not exceptional, but not bad at all. Slightly different from the original, though, which might be why they are off-putting to many people who have read Dune first.

(I am reading them in the order suggested here: http://www.amazon.com/Dune-Saga-Chronological-Order/lm/1COAD...)

JKCalhounonJan 31, 2021

Only if you walk away from the experience thinking about it, processing it, perhaps thinking differently yourself.

Few television shows did that for me — "Connections" is a HN favorite and changed my way of thinking.

Several books by Kurt Vonnegut (and Dune as well, FWIW) also changed how I think about the world.

Content is important is my point.

gisborneonMay 27, 2018

Dune (and the sequels through God Emperor).

I’ve never found a writer who could discuss humanity writ large — both in masses, and over enormous spans of time — like Herbert. Dune is the easy to read, fast moving approachable yarn that gets you in. The real masterpiece is God Emperor, where we get to see humanity over thousands of years, and we really learn Herbert’s most important lesson: beware the charismatic dictator.

alphadevxonJuly 30, 2014

I just finished reading The Martian recently, inspired to write a review: http://www.alphadevx.com/a/453-Review-of-The-Martian

Currently reading Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, which is about High Frequency Trading in Wall Street which is interesting for the technology involved.

Favorite book of all time is Frank Herbert's Dune, the six books are great in fact.

morganteonAug 8, 2016

I recently read Dune (again). In my opinion, it hasn't held up well with the times.

2sk21onDec 22, 2016

A Butlerian Jihad perhaps? Frank Herbet was really on to something in his Dune series.

notJimonDec 3, 2020

I'm generally a fan of miniseries, but I wonder what pressure the producers are putting on creators to lengthen them. I loved the Chernobyl miniseries for example, but I also think it was maybe 1-2 episodes longer than it needed to be. The first and last couple were amazing, but it kind of lagged in the middle.

I'm reading Dune now (no spoilers please!) and I'm really surprised they're making a movie rather than a miniseries.

cghonMar 23, 2016

Dune is probably the bestselling science fiction novel ever. By 2000, it had sold more than 12,000,000 copies[1]. It also won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It's true that it hasn't penetrated popular culture like Game of Thrones but I think the reasons why are obvious.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/03/tv/cover-story-future-myth...

AvshalomonSep 20, 2010

No, I actually read Dune myself. I thought it was a book about political intrigue, crazy sci-fi and guerilla warfare, great stuff to a 9 year old. I was told later that it was in fact about US foreign policy with regards to the middle east.

IgorPartolaonDec 21, 2019

Yes they are all analogies and metaphors, I don’t dispute that. My point is that even so they are very applicable to the kind of problem solving you might do when actually maintaining a motorcycle. It didn’t teach me to fix stuck bolts, I learned that later. But everything I do with any kind of construction or maintenance is in fact influenced by the philosophy of this book. By contrast, I rarely think of Star Wars or Dune or Of Mice and Men when problem solving, especially problem solving that involves tools.

rocaonJan 9, 2020

IMHO, Asimov was a terrible writer of fiction. (I haven't read his non-fiction.) Some interesting ideas, but nothing like the imagination of, say, China Miéville. Terribly thin characters and plots, and very mediocre writing.

He had the good fortune to get into sci-fi near the beginning and crank out a lot of readable material, and get some good ideas out there first. The rest is confirmation bias. Had he appeared 30 years later he would have been writing Star Trek or Star Wars novels.

I've got nothing against classics per se. "Dune" for example is still very good. But some classics were only considered great because they broke new ground, and they do not stand the test of time.

dejvonJuly 4, 2015

Dune was first scifi book I read at age of 12 and reread couple of times. Other scifi of the era was all about spaceships, colonies and what so ever. I still love these classics from gold era of sci-fi, but Dune is different, it is still relevant and don't age at all.

It is all about "religion" fundamentalism, movement/revolution creation and philosophy. Really great book, highly recommend.

DowwieonMar 29, 2020

I finally read Frank Herbert's "Dune" this year and I'm so happy about the decision to finish the book. In the book are several references to what is known as the "Litany Against Fear". You may have come across references to it in pop culture, where the beginning is often cited. For instance, Elon Musk references it often.

The Litany in its entirety:

> "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Learning how to manage fear is something I think we can all benefit by.

anotherevanonNov 6, 2019

Currently:

Through a Camel's Eye by Dorothy Johnston although admit I'm having trouble getting into it. Will give it another 50 pages before I decide.

And today started listening to Dune Messiah on audiobook. I loved the first book which I've reread many times, but didn't enjoy the following books at all when I read them years and years ago. Decided to give them another try.

Recommend:

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North for beautiful prose, charming writing and an inventive story. Her first and best book under that pseudonym.

Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard and The Moons of Barsk by Lawrence M. Schoen for making me care about anthropomorphic elephants.

Children of Time and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky for almost making me care about non-anthropomorphic spiders.

I Am Not a Serial Killer and sequels by Dan Wells for tricking me into reading a horror novel when I at first thought it was a thriller, but really enjoying it anyway.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper for being similar but so far a lot better than Through a Camel's Eye.

d2161onMar 30, 2020

Dune is soft sci fi. TBP is hard sci fi. They're very different formats of stories. Good hard SF generally doesn't have character development. In fact character development is a kind of subgenre called bildungsroman. I don't know why ppl these days expect characters to change as though it's some inherent part of a book. Some books are thought experiments or about world building. Part of reading for me is to try experiencing something novel. But on your hate for TBP, I'd say the huge fanbase, the Hugo committee and Obama would disagree with you on that one.

teekertonJuly 31, 2015

Currently reading Dune (I'm at 50%): I work a lot with Bayensian models and I keep seeing the way Paul Atreides can "feel" the future as a perfect implementation of Bayesian thinking. He weights every minute detail in a intuitive way and computes most likely outcomes. Also, the religious parts are very nicely worked out as planted by Bene Gesserit with a very detailed, worked-out plan. I love it. Having such consistent, logic based aspects to fiction makes it feel much more like you can be the hero yourself. It teaches you something real from a story that is fake. I love books that change me rather than just entertain me. It's true philosofy.

Some of my favorites and their lessons:

Enders game -> Understanding an "enemy" makes you see their beauty, makes you not want to be enemies (dehumanizing the enemy is extremely important in warfare and in propaganda; we boycot evil Putin, we don't think of honest Russian people who "love their children too", trying to make the best out of life.).

Atlas Shrugged -> The importance of not ignoring your own wishes in a group context, the morality of rational self-interest.

Brave New World -> You can either spend time creating or you can spend it consuming.

1984 -> All the metaphors it provides just makes any discussion regarding government over-reach so much more efficient.

Little Brother -> Why privacy is more important than security: Your rulers can be wrong with catastrophic consequences.

txmachineryonDec 7, 2020

Shantaram is incredible, I can only think of the original Dune novels by Frank Herbert as comparable in depth, scope and revelation of what it is to be human.

Shantaram's author claims use of artistic license in names, character descriptions and details, in order to protect those described from repercussions. Reading the extraordinary story and arc, and subsequently learning of the fact that later in real life the author later went on to marry into Czech royalty, it's easy to believe it as a fundamentally true account.

crowbahronApr 2, 2018

I'm reading Sci-fi stories rather than something drier or that needs more digesting, so I understand this point of view.

I didn't find it that hard to listen to Dune compared to listening to, say, Peter F. Hamilton's works. For me it all is something that becomes entirely attention consuming.

Your mileage may vary!

FnoordonDec 22, 2016

Data and Goliath - Bruce Schneier (very good, preaching to the choir in my case though)

Dune - Frank Herbert (been waiting more than 20 years to read this. If you haven't seen the movie from 2001 highly recommended, else not)

The Psychopath Code - Pieter Hintjens (psychology book, highly recommended, allowed me to understand a whole lot more of the "toxicity" in society)

Python for Informatics - Charles Severance (too easy for crowd here, and for me, but quite good for newbie programmers. Note: Python 2.x; not 3.x!)

Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick and William L. Simon (good humor, great suspense, likeable main character)

Kingpin - Kevin Poulsen (a less likeable main character but nevertheless suspenseful)

And a bunch of cookbooks which I won't bother you with, I didn't fully complete any of them either.

I'm very happy that all the books I read were a hit, but did not read nearly as many as I wanted to. To restate, I can recommend all of the above. But they're not all new from 2016 (if that was the intention I apologise).

johnchristopheronJune 9, 2015

> But to Gibson's credit, many of his inventions were ill defined and had a chance to mutate just like Herbert's terminology and tech. I won't get into the details because I am sure that you already know the obvious ones.

Yes, I also note that - as he stated it himself - the tech and the world he describes in his novels come to look more and more like our own until the blue ant serie where both meet and are the same.

> Anyways, I am really interested in checking out Dune now. I heard the first book is fantastic, but almost unreadable because Frank's writing style was atrocious and it got better over the years ... is this true?

I only read the translation (and almost a decade ago) so I won't comment on the style but the plot line still stands on its own as well as the characters, the themes and the ambiance.

I don't remember improvements regarding style over time I'd chalk it up to the translation.

edit: From Herbert I only read Dune and that other book about the God school or factory. I only read Dune because of the Dune I game.

JHonakeronDec 31, 2020

I'm about halfway through both of these, but I think they're both great.

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson (Book 4 in the Stormlight Archives series)

Love him, or hate him, BS is prolific. He somehow maintains a superhuman level of efficiency in writing. This is the 4th of a planned 10 book epic fantasy series. I can't possibly summarize the 3.5 books I've read in the series so far, since each is approximately 1200 pages. Really they're about 3-4 of an average sized trade paperback each. That's not to say they are too long either, with the exception of the first book (a common/unavoidable problem the with epic fantasy genre, there's just a lot you need to say to get people fully invested), they pick up from the first word on interesting storylines and just keep churning.

and

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert (Book 3 of the Dune series)

Dune is one of my favorite books of all time. SOmehow, I've never read the rest of them. I re-read Dune this year, and decided to continue the story. I really wasn't a huge fan of Dune Messiah. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but let's just say it's probably because flaws of the main character are too humanly frustrating to watch unfold. Children of Dune is, so far, as good or better than Dune in my opinion.

simonhonDec 27, 2016

> Watership Down was the first book of its size that I read and it had a profound effect on me that has significantly directed my life.

It's on a fairly short list of books I've read more than twice, along with LotR, Dune and Hitch Hiker's Guide. There may be others I've forgotten but those four really stand out.

userulluipesteonOct 29, 2013

"Reproducing these conditions, even with advanced technology, could be extremely challenging or impossible, which could create enough demand to justify physical transportation of goods. (This is essentially the plot to the science fiction novel I'm writing.)"

That was the main idea in Frank Herbert's Dune - "the spice". It's a good strategy to follow a tested winning idea, good luck with your writing!

kerr23onMar 23, 2016

Lynch's Dune is one of my all time favourite movies. I watched it a lot growing up and it didn't make a lick of sense to me, but I still loved the world it created. Later on I saw the extended edition (on laser disk baby!) and it became a lot more clear. And then finally I read the book and it all made sense to me.

Yes the SyFy Mini-Series is more true to the book, but their pronunciations make it unbearable to watch for me. "Hark-e-nin" vs "Har-ko-nin" drives me up the wall.

Another thing I love about it is how surreal Lynch creates the future. To me it's one of the most immersive sci-fi movies that really takes you out of this reality and into it's own and it does it with minimal flash and special effects.

The Guild navigators are gross and amazing. The Lynch Baron Harkonin is possibly my favourite Sci-fi villain of all time.

mattmanseronMay 29, 2010

I have read amazing books with boring stories. I have read amazing stories with poor writing. Both are good for very different reasons.

Tolkien still stands out in my mind as one of the best story tellers I have ever read. He was such a good story teller that people are retelling them in every way they can imagine in books, films, role play games, computer games, all sorts of media. D and D, warcraft, Diablo, all Tolkien rip-offs. Even Harry Potter.

The awe inspiring bit is the ambiguity, the hints of all the other stories untold, the heroes with bit parts, mentioned in passing. He didn't just write a story, he wrote a whole universe. What he did is rare, I can think of only a handful of other works that pull off the immersion convincingly, Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Ian M. Bank's Culture, Lucas' Star Wars (if they'd have just left it at 4-6) and Herbert's Dune (just). And none of them quite touch the awesomeness of middle earth.

He wasn't just good, he was amazing. Pure fluke perhaps, as the article hints at, but what a great one.

GroxxonSep 2, 2019

Let me also throw in a recommendation to check out his other books/series, if you enjoy his style of writing (personally he's my favorite). He's remarkably good at that "powerful mental images in very few words" quality that e.g. the first Dune book in particular absolutely nails (partly because it's the first, so everything is new).

CurtMonashonDec 6, 2015

I think this is a fair critique, if a bit hyperbolic.

One point overlooked is that the predominant form of science fiction was, for some decades, short stories. Salvor Hardin was as richly imagined a character as Bayta Darell, but he only appeared in short stories (or novellas); he was the hero for about half of Foundation. The sequels were novels; the women were accordingly more memorable; and by the way, I found grandaughter more memorable than grandmother anyway.

Another point overlooked is the happy introduction of the vivid, lovable rogue. Nicholas van Rijn is an excellent example, even if by profession he is a tycoon. Lazarus Long is another; I found him a lot more vivid than the article's author evidently did. Fafryd and the Grey Mouser are Exhibits 3A and 3B, although that's fantasy, and even Lord of the Rings had vivid characters, so perhaps the criticism never applied to fantasy at all.

On the other hand -- as much as I adore Zelazny, his heroes are pretty much all the same. They're jaded and cynical, witty in their cynicism, and usually very altruistic even so. Usually they're quasi-immortal demigods too, with the most important counterexample that part probably being the poet in A Rose For Ecclesiastes.

Dune deserves a mention as being fairly early in the genre for having great characterization. Also Ann McCaffrey's Pern books, but those are really fantasies with a thin SF veneer.

Getting more modern yet, I agree that characterization is the norm rather than the exception. My favorite is probably Miles Vorkosigan. I have no idea how that series could win so many Hugos and Nebulas and still seem to be relatively unknown.

stuxnet79onJune 9, 2015

Fair enough. Haven't read any of the Sprawl trilogy in a while and don't recall the fax machine or Case and the rest of the crew relying on email to communicate. However, now that you've turned my attention to these obvious anachronisms they seem quite jarring.

But to Gibson's credit, many of his inventions were ill defined and had a chance to mutate just like Herbert's terminology and tech. I won't get into the details because I am sure that you already know the obvious ones.

Anyways, I am really interested in checking out Dune now. I heard the first book is fantastic, but almost unreadable because Frank's writing style was atrocious and it got better over the years ... is this true?

By the way, why was this post down voted? Valid insight IMO.

waterhouseonSep 15, 2013

Isaac Asimov's robot series (start with "I, Robot" and "The Caves of Steel") is good, as is his Foundation series. Ender's Game is also good; I've heard other people complain about the other novels in that universe (Speaker for the Dead and sequels, Ender's Shadow and sequels), but I liked them fine. Cryptonomicon is rich, fascinating, and entertaining. Dune is rich and pretty fascinating. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Time Enough for Love" are somewhat scandalous, but I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Outside science fiction: P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels, as well as what of his other books I've read, are hilarious and brilliant; I would suggest "Right Ho, Jeeves" as a starting point.

SwellJoeonAug 7, 2016

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. I've given it to just about everyone I've known who seriously wanted to be a writer, journalist, etc. as well as some folks who just wanted to write better. It's a small, beautiful, book about writing better. This is the book I've gifted the most.

Several scifi books have also been gifted to friends, mostly Asimov (both the Foundation and Robots series), Herbert's Dune, and Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama.

Also, gifted a copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad, which is my favorite book about my favorite bands (and the American punk scene of the early 80s). The recipient was too young to remember the scene from that era, but was open to understanding why "punk" isn't so much a style of music, but an ethos.

Every book I've gifted is because I really love the book, and really like the person I'm giving it to.

mgbmtlonMay 12, 2020

I agree that books 3-4 are pretty slow and uninteresting, but one of the major aspects of Dune is the rise and fall of tyrants, and our obsession for saviours, which only really shines in the Heretics/Chapterhouse books, where the empire really falls.

It's difficult not to see modern politics in that light afterwards, with its cult around personalities rather than ideas.

DominikDonDec 13, 2020

I like the idea a lot. In terms of the results, it seems to me that many more data points are needed. My bubble escape route contained a lot of authors and titles I know of, I've read, or I'm very familiar with.

FWIW my sample trio were Dune/Starship Troopers/Sword of Destiny and results included a bunch of graphic novels (Preacher mostly) and mangas that I consumed in the past, a Harry potter series and a bunch of crime books that I also tried (and, often, didn't find interesting). But there were some genuinely interesting picks too so, again, more data will probably help.

jones1618onApr 22, 2020

It's not explained well but this allows you to own the "original" photo/painting/document, etc. in a provable way.
An artist could offer a limited edition digital "print" and you could collect it, exhibit it and resell it because your ownership is certifiably authentic.

If you don't think that's valuable, consider the value that humans put on first edition books, signed original works, ownership of exclusive editions, etc. Everyone can own a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Dune" for a few dollars but signed, first editions goes for thousands of dollars.

TheOtherHobbesonSep 2, 2019

One of the more entertaining things about Dune is that it's been relatively bad at attracting fanfic and cosplay.

It's so ambiguous, rich, and open to interpretation that it's a daunting universe to visit as a casual tourist - and it's so stark and amoral that it's hard to feel comfortably at home in it, even if you're a fan.

Which is why it's such a challenge for directors. The visuals are critical, but it would take an uncanny imagination to make them work as metaphors as well as images.

IMO Lynch was a bit too literally imperial and historic. The movie feels more pedestrian and earth-bound than the books do, with some of the grandeur squeezed out by obvious signifiers and references.

The Jodorowsky version would probably have been amazing. I'm looking forward to the Villeneuve version, but I think Jodorowsky's Dune would have been a real game changer for SF movies - and all the characters would have been strikingly but plausibly weird, the BG included.

shabdaonAug 21, 2014

> The Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson novels are more like poor fanfiction than sequels.

Thank you. I read one book by Brian H. and every chapter filled me with rage, for destroying the magic of one of my most loved books.

One of the most enjoyable things about Dune is that all factions/entities have shades of grey and plans within their plan. The way Brian H. books change them to a linear story and put entities in a black/white divide is infuriating.

webmavenonOct 20, 2020

> Who cares? Is there a word for this sort of writing in which current sensibilities are applied to older works in an attempt to "educate" people about a book that everyone read?

The post is basically saying "book that was massively popular at the time and is still popular actually holds up quite well when examined with current sensibilities in mind".

It's also saying "don't jettison one of the things that make it great even when examined with contemporary sensibilities".

It's the opposite of a takedown, and given that this sort of judgement is the exception rather than the rule[0], it's nice to have confirmation that I can continue to recommend Dune to new readers.

So, I care.

[0] I still love the LotR for example, but it is rather racist, quite overtly in places.

rhino369onAug 8, 2021

I happen to be reading Dune today, and AI is referred to as counterfeiting the human mind

mslaonJan 16, 2020

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is related to General Semantics, which was developed by Alfred Korzybski. General Semantics isn't bullshit like NLP is, but it does have some useful insights.

For example, General Semantics says that the map is not the territory, which isn't the most absolutely ground-breaking thing in the world but is helpful to keep in mind, whereas Neuro-Linguistic Programming might as well be "NLP: Language is Magic!" for all of the grandiose claims it makes about controlling people using crafted speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics

GS also came into the SF world:

> During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, general semantics entered the idiom of science fiction. Notable examples include the works of A. E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A and its sequels. [48] General semantics appear also in Robert A. Heinlein's work, especially Gulf. [49] Bernard Wolfe drew on general semantics in his 1952 science fiction novel Limbo. [50] Frank Herbert's novels Dune[51] and Whipping Star [52] are also indebted to general semantics. The ideas of general semantics became a sufficiently important part of the shared intellectual toolkit of genre science fiction to merit parody by Damon Knight and others; they have since shown a tendency to reappear in the work of more recent writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and Robert Anton Wilson. In 2008, John Wright extended van Vogt's Null-A series with Null-A Continuum. William Burroughs references Korzybski's time binding principle in his essay The Electronic Revolution, and elsewhere.

ewzimmonJuly 7, 2015

Herbert said his whole point in writing Dune was to criticize the tendency of people to rely on Messianic figures for salvation, to show how our reliance on charismatic heroes and saviors can destroy us. Ironically, there's so much propaganda in favor of these things in fiction that most people read his criticisms as support. He also wanted to explore the idea that reading about characters who operate with advanced levels of consciousness might inspire readers to expand their own thinking, especially into thinking about long-term consequences on our environment, to get people to think about living more sustainably as neo-peasants, which he attempted to do himself. So the characters are meant to be inspiring, but their flaws ar meant to be obvious enough that we can avoid the mistakes they make while thinking more broadly and surpassing them.

rdlonFeb 9, 2014

They did a bad job on sci-fi, I think -- while I liked Dune, it certainly isn't the one SF book I'd include.

The Handmaid's Tale is far better, but is listed as "Feminist Speculative Fiction"; if I'd read the category first, I would have skipped the book, but the book is great, along with her other writing.

In a list of 100, I'd probably include 3. The Handmaid's Tale is fine; Snow Crash or maybe a Heinlein or a "golden age of sci-fi" choice.

(Edited to fix incorrect title, thanks)

franczeskoonSep 8, 2019

Earlier this year I decided to catch up with sci-fi classics and Dune was by far one of the best books I've read in the genre. The construction of the world was solid and I had a lot of fun reading through it. Didn't manage to read the other books though - not a big fan of spin offs, but I know many people who liked them.

UnbugMeonMar 31, 2020

Thank you for the recommendation, will look into it.

Do you know of any epics close to Hyperion? I have been searching for a long time and have not found anything on par with it.

Dune (often named) and The Expanse were not meant for me and have been ruined for me by the movies/TV shows. The old Asimov stories are... old.

I read many larger volumes such as the Commonwealth Saga, Three Body Problem etc. but nothing caught the way Hyperion did for me.

Funnily, from the many books and series I read, the ones I remember most fondly were on the other end of the spectrum of Hyperion: Bobiverse and The Murderbot Diaries - both short, much less beautiful language and more on the funny side but original and thought provoking.

NikolaNovakonAug 19, 2020

1. I feel that was addressed in my post as one of the potential reasons he made the claims

2. Read Ender's game or Dune or live through a civil war as a child or... whatever it takes to agree that a 22 year old can and should be regarded as a responsible, accountable human being. Otherwise really who can?

pmoriartyonOct 11, 2014

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was a minor work of Philip K Dick. The movie inspired by it, "Blade Runner" (the original version, not the director's cuts) was far, far better.

"Minority Report" was also a pretty forgettable short story, and this time the movie made of it was mediocre.

"A Scanner Darkly" was yet another minor PKD work that was made in to yet another movie. It seems this list of scifi books if partial towards books made in to movies. But just because they've been made in to movies doesn't make the original book good, much less great.

As far as PKD books go (which is quite far, as he is one of my favorite authors), I would recommend "Ubik", "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", and "Martian Time Slip".

And of his short stories, I'd recommend "Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Woof".

Gibson's "Neuromancer" is alright, but "Count Zero" is better. Avoid the rest of his work.

"Brave New World" is an incredibly overrated, heavy-handed propaganda novel, written without a shred of talent. Avoid.

"Dune" is great, though I prefer the last few books of the original (Frank Herbert) series: "God Emperor", "Heretics", and "Chapterhouse". Definitely skip "Children" and "Messiah".

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is utterly brilliant, and is deserving of a place on a top-10 scifi novels list.

I enjoyed "Foundation" and "I Robot" as a kid. Not sure if I'd still like them now, decades later. Likewise for "Farenheit 451" and "Ender's Game".

I haven't read "Atlas Shrugged", but I did read "The Fountainhead", which amounted to a very long-winded statement of Ayn Rand's philosophy with two-dimentional characters serving as mouthpieces for it. It could have easily been stated in 30 pages, but instead was stretched out over 600.

cooperadymasonApr 8, 2020

Er... no?

I've only read the first Dune book, but the background premise is largely medieval Europe in space. Together with feudalism, prison colonies, and genocide.

I'm trying to figure out what might make it advanced or different. Their distrust of computers? The Fremen dedication to group survival rather than self? That might be close I guess.

humanistbotonJune 9, 2020

Dune by Frank Herbert. This is a book I first read as a young teenager, but every time I re-read it every few years at a somewhat different point in my life, I get a different sense of it, maybe more based on where I am in my life and what is going on in the world. That for me is what makes a book endlessly re-readable: you always find something new in it. It is packed with all kinds of references and allegories to so many parts of our world, but in a way that still seems like its own world.

AndrewStephensonNov 25, 2018

Dune is visually great but the script and performances are terrible. So much of the novel is concerned with the inner motives of the characters and the wheels within wheels of plots and counterplots.

Lynch tried to capture this with ridiculous voiceovers that slow down each scene and don't really help anyone who hasn't read the book anyway.

I don't make films so what do I know, but I have always thought that the only way to film Dune is to ignore all the background and make a rip-roaring adventure film with giant worms and wizzing ornithopters.

The Lord of the Rings films were successful in keeping the general tone and most of the plot of the source material while jettisoning elements that grind what Lynch made to a halt.

gonzo41onNov 24, 2020

I agree with you.

I've been thinking lately a bit about the scale of the problem we face. We essentially need to create enough carbon sinks that balance out all the oil and coal burned since the industrial revolution. Hopefully we do something with it all like build a giant coal brick pyramid.

It's really handy the sun shines light on us for free. I sort of have this crazy idea of turning large parts of the center of Australia into rain forest by using solar power desalinization plants to pump fresh sea water inland. But alas. Australia has carry over credits from Kyoto. She'll be right.

I'm going to reread all the Dune books in the holidays.

fokinseanonDec 12, 2018

- A Random Walk Down Wall Street: I got much more interested in personal finance this year, and definitely recommend this book as a stepping stone for learning about investing.

- Frankenstein: Highly recommend! It is nothing like it is portrayed to be in pop culture and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

- Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in America: It is literally unbelievable. It follows Katy Tur, a reporter tasked with following Trump leading up to the election. If you aren't already fed up with Trump, then give this a whirl.

- Dune: 5/5 sci-fi

- The Society of the Spectacle: I had trouble with this one. I think some things get lost in translation, and the philosophical arguments are so abstract it was a bit hard to follow along. I had a few key take-aways but to be honest it was kind of a chore to read.

- How Not to Die: Argues for prioritizing a plant-based diet, and definitely changed my relationship with food.

- East of Eden: My wife's favorite book and is now one of my favorites.

- Sapiens: Very enjoyable, but some of it can feel pseudo-sciency and gets a bit nihilistic in the end.

- Man's Search for Meaning: Also very enjoyable, a good reminder to appreciate the people and things around you.

- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: Very accessible intro to Stoicism

- Red Notice: A True Story of Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice: Very interesting and reads like a fiction thriller. TLDR Russia doesn't fuck around

octygenonJuly 4, 2015

Dune and the Foundation series are by far my favorite SF series. The reason? Both have unparalleled universe depth. To today I still recite the Dune fear prayer to myself once in a while, I still think about how the Foundationeers used technology as a means to control the Galaxy after the fall of the Empire, I still think of spice as several natural resources on Earth today, etc.

I believe all the books in the Dune series are valuable and even enjoyed the prequels since they gave a background to the story that was just lightly touched in the originals. For me, they completed the Universe and helped me answer the "Why did they do/think...?"

P.S. The Dune 1 game also ruled! It was the first game on my 486 and boy did it help me get a lot of ladies :)

larrykwgonSep 29, 2017

It is a SyFy show. They have a reputation of producing the worst garbage, while simultaneously blocking the option. Thats why they are generally disliked by various fanbases, that would rather see their worlds given proper justice to. Examples are A Wizard of Earthsea and Dune. But honestly, good book adaptions are just crazy rare anyhow.

RBerenguelonFeb 9, 2014

Dune is more profound, but as far as predictability goes, it's almost a one-way street as a book. Which is not to detract that it is very good, and that Stranger in a Strange Land is similar, once the "church" is formed. I found SiaSL as giving interesting insights into what a completely weird alien species might be (much like Asimov's The God Themselves, a personal favourite.) I think that since these two are good, classic books picking one over the other is just a matter of preference, although Dune will be in far more antologies and SiaSL will be more an underdog. Do you have any SciFi recommendation, by the way?

TychoonFeb 16, 2011

i think the original plan for Dune was that it would encompass the events of the first three novels, but there was some scope creep that prevented this. Therefore, the long-term impression/memory of Paul is probably a lot different than it would have been if the original Dune had contained all these events. It's a 'rise and fall' kind of thing and Herbert himself was mostly interested in the 'fall' part, philosophically.

BadassFractalonApr 20, 2017

After decades Lynch's Dune is still my favorite movie of all times. I was very young when I watched it and I didn't have much of a reference for what movies were even supposed to feel like at the time, so Dune seemed like a perfectly normal place to start. Suspect the experience is quite different if you already have decades to movie going by the time you see it.

Besides Star Wars and Blade Runner I can't think of another SF movie that has as much impact on me.

lghhonDec 16, 2019

Leisure Stuff:

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga Of Oklahoma City, It's Chaotic Founding... by Sam Anderson

Midnight In Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (tried it this year and stopped, want to give it another go)

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just finished Exhalation and I think it's great)

An Ursula K. Le Guin novel, have not picked one out yet

A book related to basketball (possibly Dream Team, but IDK yet)

Less Leisure Stuff:

Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

The End Of Policing by Alex S Vitale

Either Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power by Chomsky

The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold

Work:

Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws by Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto

Finish Writing An Interpreter In Go by Thorsten Ball

If I can get through all of these, I will be very pleased. Throw in a book or two at recommendation from friends and I think I'm full for the year.

woleiumonDec 24, 2020

Same! Also Herbert's Dune

markconJan 6, 2021

I've read lots of SciFi over the years, some of it challenging. I can read hard books.

Back in the 80's I started seeing so many raves for TBotNS that I went out and bought them all at once.

About 80 pages into the first one, I was turned off, bored really. They sat on my shelf for a decade at least, before I just gave them away.

My question is this: how long did it take you to "get into" this series. Should I have plowed on further? Or tried a restart? (I read the first 100 pages of Dune about 3 times before it clicked, and I loved it all after that)

Or is it a taste/style thing, and if someone doesn't like it within 80 pages, they're not likely to enjoy the rest?

DiabloD3onDec 9, 2015

When I was a kid I read stuff like Dune or the Foundation series (and everything else Asimov), or the part of the Ender's series that was published back then, or everything Robert Heinlein, or anything Author C. Clarke, or Neuromancer, or Snow Crash, or 1984, or Fahrenheit 451, or H2G2, or everything Philip K. Dick, or A Fire Upon the Deep, or Brave New World, or the Mars Trilogy.

I read all the "good" stuff before I was in high school.

If I have a kid, he/she is reading allllllll of that. If I had a 12th grade reading level when I was in like 5th or 6th grade, so can they.

biotonJan 23, 2012

You beat me to it. :) Some background on Command & Conquer in relation to Dune 2:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/183584/features/command...

  "The first time we showed that game internally it had wizards
and castles," recalls a smiling Castle. "We were working with
Virgin at the time, and they said that they had this great IP,
Frank Herbert's Dune, and Brett loved the books. So we took
the game we were working on and recreated it in the Dune
universe.

"It solved one of the fundamental problems we had with making
an RTS, which was that we wanted to have a central resource
that everybody was fighting over. Dune has spice, which made
perfect sense - and it was also used when we came to the idea
of tiberium. It became the anchor of the C&C universe...".

raztogt21onJune 11, 2020

Just finished Dune last month, that book was on another level. Ahead of its time.

andrey-ponOct 11, 2014

Dune was an amazing read. I'd recommend reading it if you haven't. The setting is unique and mindblowing in scale.

However, if you're planning on going through the entire series I'd suggest stopping at God Emperor. The books afterwards seem to lose their direction, the plot starts to feel a bit contrived. The focus shifts from action to endless discussions between characters that could've been used to develop character and story, but seem to tread the same ground. At the same time details that were mentioned in a sentence suddenly balloon into massive plot points, and bizarre deus ex machinae pop up all over the place.

YMMV, of course. I stopped after finishing the original series, and read the Wikipedia synopses of the rest of the books in order to get some sort of closure.

TharkunonAug 23, 2019

There's a battle sequence in Frank Herbert's Dune (probably Chapterhouse, maybe Heretics) where a commander (Miles Teg) directs the battle by giving real time commands to individual soldiers, where the deepmind you mentioned resides in his head.

It's a great little sequence, worth a read if you're into that sort of thing.

5555624onJuly 12, 2018

"The Count of Monte Cristo" "The Man of Bronze"

What's interesting -- to me, anyway -- are the responses that are (a) books you might not be able to pay me to read or (b) books I enjoyed, but have never considered rereading.

I made it a couple of chapters into "The Lord of the Rings," tossed the book across the room, where it fell down behind some furniture and sat for years. I have never thought about reading it again.

I might need to go back and read both "Dune" and the Amber series. I enjoyed them; but, I've never thought about rereading them at all.

terlisimoonOct 12, 2019

When I first read Dune and sequels in my teens, I too thought that the later books were kind of boring.

I have re-read it in my late 30s and now I actually favor the later novels. I consider all 6 novels as one work.

The deconstruction of a hero (Paul) was in my opinon necessary and logical progression of the story arc. I think Herbert wanted to say that heroes inevitably end up being harmful to the society.

My opinion is that if the sequels were written in the same manner as the first book, we'd end up with an excellent but still run-of-the mill epic saga like Star Wars, LoTR etc. In my view, Herbert's Dune stands above all precisely because it's not just another (great) SF novel.

Herbert said he set out to write a book on philosophy and religion, but didn't want to approach the subject academically since it would probably be only read by scholars. He wanted to reach a broader audience and so he wrapped his ideas into science fiction so it's more easy to swallow for the average bookworm.

ErlangolemonMar 11, 2018

Dune is based on notions of grand manipulation over thousands of years; there is really no coincidence at all. I love Star Wars, but the writing is not particularly good.

Coincidence in fiction is ultimately a contrivance, and I don’t mean the initial conditions. 19 talks about coincidence being fine to get characters into trouble, but not out of it.

ryanSrichonJune 14, 2021

Others have recommended Three Body. I’d second that. Amazing trilogy.

Rendezvous With Rama is one of my favorites.

I’d also recommend Children of Time and Children of Ruin by adrian tchaikovsky. It was one of those random ones I picked up with low expectations, and it turned out to be amazing. It’s well regarded now, but this was when it first came out.

Dune is one I recommend reading even if you’re aware of the story or the movie. It’s an amazingly creative work that lays the foundation of many modern science fiction concepts.

I’d also highly recommend Fire Upon the Deep.

Last ones I’ll recommend are the space odyssey books. I’m a huge fan of long timelines (if you couldn’t already tell) and this series spans 1000 years.

igraviousonNov 13, 2013

I had to Google this. Here's a Wiki P link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

It's from Frank Herbert's Dune :( Sad because I read this series (all six, I kid you not!! 1,2,6 are good 3,4,5 not so good) 25 years ago nearly and I had forgotten this specific detail. Time is indeed a cruel mistress and thanks for making me feel old :)

ivankonSep 27, 2018

Riding Solo to the Top of the World (2006) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903013/

The Atomic Cafe (1982) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083590/

At Sea (2007) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1829648/

The Vietnam War (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1877514/

Lessons of Darkness (1992) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104706/

Tim's Vermeer (2013) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089388/

Weiner (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5278596/

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/

Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379357/

The Art of Japanese Life (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7002974/

The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief (2006) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493420/

The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115398/

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4299972/

cornstalksonJuly 7, 2020

> How familiar with the books do you need to be to play this?

Assuming this game is like the Dune II computer game: you don't need any familiarity. For example, House Ordos (one of the three major houses in the Dune RTS games) isn't even in the books if I recall correctly. I grew up playing (and loving) Dune II (and all its sequels) long before I ever read Dune.

capisceonFeb 9, 2014

Stranger in a Strange Land was a bit too predictable for my taste although it was an entertaining read to some degree - but I found Dune much more interesting and worthy of praise.

First time I tried to read Catcher in the Rye I found it dull and didn't get far, but the second time I got into it and really enjoyed it. I ended up feeling a lot of sympathy for the main character.

jakamauonAug 21, 2018

Dune - Frank Herbert

It's one of the few books that resets my frame of mind. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or chronically distracted the sands of Arrakis always seem to strip my mind of clutter and set me back into a state of flow.

woahonOct 20, 2020

Dune is a story about a chosen son of nobility, coming from a very Europe-like planet to rule over a very Middle East-like planet where everything has Arabic-sounding names. He is somehow instantly accepted as a messiah by the local band of noble savages and, along with his family’s mercenaries, leads them in a “holy war” against his personal enemies in an effort to climb the political ladder.

It’s got some cool imagery, but it’s not like some kind of profound wisdom that needs to be safeguarded.

sownonFeb 8, 2009

I re-read Dune on my Sony reader and it was what I wanted. I agree, though, the problem is with any kind of books that have diagrams, code listings, two column formats don't render nicely on it.

What I worry about the iRex is that things will be scaled down by a third which I won't like, either.

The Plastic Logic reader isn't coming out until 2010, btw. :( I think someone else will come along in that time.

anatolyonSep 9, 2011

I only read Dune last year (I'm in my thirties), and really disliked it. Your comment, however, emphasizes a virtue I did not sufficiently acknowledge at the time. It _is_ true that Dune was able to weave a lot of background into the story without resorting to technical infodumps. And at the time it was a rare and impressive achievement in SF, deserving of praise. But I don't think I'd agree that things haven't changed since; nowadays careful weaving of background isn't rare. The first two examples that pop into my mind are Banks' books (the Culture series or _Fearsum Enjinn_) in SF and Martin's _A Song of Ice and Fire_ novels in fantasy. It may be reasonable to say, however, that Dune has been foundational in teaching later authors the necessity of doing this.

(Ultimately, I just couldn't handle how bad the writing was. All the characters are utterly cardboard flat. Cliched tags follow them around the book. One character has an inkvine scar on his jaw that eventually ripples in any scene he's in... and then again in the next scene... and again... I felt like instituting a drinking game based on the rippling of the scar. The main hero's mind is filled with a _terrible purpose_ whenever the author feels the need to emphasize a clue or a plot point. And the author just can't handle the flow of information (who knows what how, and whether the reader also knows that and how). This leads to the I'm-going-to-spell-out-precisely-what-I'm-about-to-do syndrome you mention, but goes deeper than that, creating plot holes and distortions, and causing most of the characters to learn most of the important knowledge they need basically by staring into space and having a revelation).

FnoordonSep 2, 2019

I played Dune 2 first (in ~1993), then saw Lynch's Dune, then played Dune 2000, and then saw the Dune miniseries and Children of Dune (which, in a fan move, I posted on Usenet and got me my first and only DMCA warning from the MPAA :^). 10 years or so later, I bought the book Dune, and a few years later I finally read it. It is a legendary book indeed, but I wish I read the book first.

If you can, please read the book first before seeing/doing anything else in the universe. Don't let your imagination be spoiled!

(I'm not very interested in reading the sequels. Children of Dune was a terrible movie, IMO.)

Which makes me wonder what I missed with regards to J.R. Tolkien and George R. Martin.

crooked-vonJune 9, 2021

If the survival of a single person is "high stakes" in fiction, then what do you even consider "low stakes"?

> I admit I'm limited to the sample I've experienced personally but it's over 90%.

You need to read a wider selection of books, then. Try, say, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Of Mice and Men, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, A Christmas Carol, The Grapes of Wrath, The Time Machine, Dune, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Foundation series, anything by Ray Bradbury... there's a very long list of books that are not driven by simplistic good vs. evil conflicts.

cesarbsonAug 21, 2014

> Finally, if you make it this far, Chapterhouse and Heretics are once again quite fun reads and re-reads. But it can be hard to get this far in the first place.

I loved reading Heretics just a few weeks ago. It is definitely my second favorite book in the saga (the first one obviously being Dune). What I liked so much about it is that there's suddenly a change in setting: more technology, cities, etc. The characters are also great - Teg is by far my favorite character in the whole saga.

Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune really drag the story and it was hard getting past them on the first read, but the second time you read them - especially God Emperor - you see how packed with insights those books are.

Chapterhouse was ok, but that cliffhanger at the end...

kkylinonJune 14, 2021

In addition to everything everyone else said, I have loved all of Ted Chiang's short stories. And almost everything Neal Stephenson's written, with the exception of REAMDE (which I personally found rather forgettable).

I would also recommend Dune, but unlike some of the other commenters, I would recommend the entire series. At the very least, read Dune and Dune Messiah together. (I found the first 100 pages or so of Dune a bit tough going, but once you get into it, it's fantastic.)

themolecularmanonAug 5, 2021

> I wouldn't recommend either if you haven't read Dune, book 1, though. Read it.

Why is that? I read Dune when I was a kid but don't remember the particulars -- do I need them for some reason?

hiidrewonJuly 23, 2021

I recently listened to KSR on Exponential View, Ministry of the Future has an intriguing premise and hope to read that soon.

Recently began a fiction kick after starting my full-time job for the first time, nice way to break screen-time instead of gaming. There's something nice about visualizing worlds instead of seeing worlds built by someone else.

Currently reading the first Dune book and love it. Reminds me of GOT on Mars.

roymurdockonJune 11, 2019

Yeah seconded, this really is an excellent list. Very pleasantly surprised to see "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" as first on the list, it should be required reading as a guide to what we're seeing playing out in American politics currently (after it is rewritten into a more coherent and concise/accessible book, in its current form it's clearly the work of multiple undergrads/grad students stitched together by Prof. Gordon) - but the ideas in it are really powerful.

Also really pleased to see The Road to Serfdom by Hayek on the list. Eager to check out the book on Climate vs. Capitalism as I haven't seen this topic given full treatment in a book yet beyond questioning the sustainability of growth economics and efficacy of carbon taxes in broad terms.

The Mankiw textbook is used in intro undergrad classes everywhere.

I would also love to read a book by a contemporary Chinese economists on their thoughts of the Chinese market, although something tells me a good academic/unbiased book on this topic is impossible to find.

Only two books I would add would be:

The Age of Diminished Expectations (Krugman)

Dune (Herbert)

1812OvertureonDec 23, 2015

Dune by Frank Herbert- I'm one of the few people on Earth who enjoys the David Lynch adaptation so I finally had to get around to reading the book. Kind of awkward stylistically and structurally but a lot of fun.

Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen - It's seemed to me that there are political philosophies that focus on economic needs and those that focus on personal freedom. This is the best I've read at uniting those concepts.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - A blast to read and great insight into the thinking of a great mind.

The LA Quartet by James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz) - Really the pinnacle of dark gritty noir. If you like that I can't recommend highly enough.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett - I like a lot of Hammett's other work but this seemed to have a lot of wheel spinning.

City of Quartz by Mike Davis - As an Angeleno this gave me so much insight into the city I love. I have no idea if it would be of any interest to an outsider.

Antifragile by Nassim Taleb - Nassim Taleb is great and I've definitely been influenced a lot by his ideas, but he's getting too in love with the smell of his own farts.

Various books/textbooks on programming and databases - Nothing thrilling in this category. Gotta eat your vegetables.

cmrdporcupineonNov 2, 2018

When I moved to Toronto from Edmonton -- back in the 90s .com boom -- I did it via Greyhound. Under $100 to make it across the country, with all my vinyl records and a few other possessions in boxes under the bus. 50+ hours, reading Dune while popping sleeping pills and muscle relaxants to stay sedated and comfortable, most of that in the wide swathes of northern Ontario... lakes, trees, rocks, lakes, trees rocks, repeat.

Can't say it is the best of memories, but pretty profound ones. It was my future wife (then a good friend) who met me at the bus station off Dundas Street.

rdtsconJuly 4, 2015

I saw that movie, I thought it was very good.

Just curious, what did you like about it that it changed your life. Did you mean the how it was shot (i.e. impressed by director's work), Jodorowsky as a person, his story how he worked on Dune with other people (the complexity, dedication, the obsession), or Dune itself?

I found interesting how Dune influenced all these other blockbusters that came after, most importantly Star Wars. It was also fascinating how Jodorowsky never actually read Dune.
EDIT: that is not correct as someone pointed out by Nemcue, I (and others apparently) misremembered. It was both the financier, Michel Seydoux and the illustrator Chris Foss who hadn't read it.

Or say, why anyone thought Jodorowsky, based on his previous track record of making surrealist films, would be a good candidate to make Dune. I just don't see the obvious connection from "Holly Mountain" to blockbuster "Sci Fi" for the masses. Now, of course in a funny twist, David Lynch, another surrealist author, actually made the American (Universal Studios) version, and it was terrible I thought.

isoosonSep 2, 2019

Tim O'Reilly: Frank Herbert (online version)
https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/

"I wrote Frank Herbert over a period of about two years, and it was published in 1981. In the course of writing it, I read all of Herbert’s novels, stories, and essays, as well as a lot of his newspaper writing (which, by coincidence, included a stint at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the local paper for the region in which I now live.) I interviewed him several times, and, in a small way, we became friends. His ideas came to influence me deeply. I had always loved Dune and Dune Messiah, and especially the idea that predicting the future too closely can lead to a kind of paralysis. But the deeper I went, the more substance I found. Ecology, mysticism, and a kind of hard-headed insistence on the relativity of human perception and the limits of knowledge combine into a richer mix than is found in a lot of science-fiction. There’s some really cool stuff here!"

(Yeah, that's Tim O'Reilly from O'Reilly Publishing...)

It is a must-read for all Dune fans.

Robin_MessageonJan 11, 2021

I like one of the Bene Gesserrit maxims in Frank Herbert's Dune series:

Seek freedom and be a slave to your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

brianloveswordsonMar 11, 2008

I second Euler's equation.

Also, two books that really rocked my world (though I guess it's not really an answer to the question) were Dune and House of Leaves.

jerrysievertonSep 2, 2019

> One of the more entertaining things about Dune is that it's been relatively bad at attracting fanfic and cosplay.

well, unless you consider the "prequels" and two subsequent novels as "fanfic", which I do, and am apparently not alone since they seem to want to change canon so much.

> I think Jodorowsky's Dune would have been a real game changer for SF movies

even as far as he got was an amazing game changer for SF movies. the teams he put together, his story boards, and almost every aspect of what he created went on to define the sci-fi genre at the time. it's no coincidence that so many of those involved in Star Wars had been involved in Jodorowski's Dune adaptation.

DanTheManPRonApr 20, 2017

I first saw it as a teenager, right after I had finished reading the Frank Herbert series. It was so different from what I expected - I HATED it! But over the years, it has grown on me, and has really made me appreciate the difficulty that creators face when they are adapting something into a different medium. Lynch is a master filmmaker, and he was ruthless in his re-molding of the source material to make it work on the silver screen. The books are very focused on the internal lives of characters, and the grand designs of powerful people - and I think Lynch instinctively knew that a lot of that wouldn't translate well. Indeed, the awkward inner thoughts that you hear all through Lynch's Dune are one of the worst aspects of the movie... despite being faithful renditions of Frank Herbert's Dune.

What finally won me over was the realization that Lynch's movie in no way devalued the books. Sure, it left out a lot... but it more than made up for it by giving me some visual glimpses of what a Dune universe might be like, how live-action representations of these characters might behave. The aggressive weirdness helped give it that otherworldly feel that I felt when reading the books. I would never recommended it as a substitute to reading it... but as a companion work, it's excellent.

I hope the scuttlebutt about a new Dune movie is true. The more the merrier!

jfengelonOct 20, 2020

Thanks for the recommendation. I will take a crack at it.

It's a little surprising to me that readers would be demanding what they expect from the books. The whole point of Dune is that politics is a multi-layered process of wheels within wheels within wheels. It should come as no surprise that everything would turn out to be a head fake -- that's so much of the enjoyment of it.

dsnuhonOct 31, 2018

The book aesthetic was important because it is a religious text, and also because anything like what we would call a "computer" is not only banned, but seen as unholy. The story of Dune is one of religion, ecology, the fallibility and fatality of prescience, scatterings and exoduses, failures of humans, how mankind matures and develops over a 10,0000+ year period. The actual technology mentioned is often in passing, is often intertwined with some human ability, and almost never a plot device like in so many sci-fi stories (Death Star anyone?).

hirundoonSep 2, 2019

> While the story remains unfailingly interesting, Blanch’s detours into the habits of the Russian aristocracy and European power politics, and the memorable personalities that populate the period occasionally detract from the book’s narrative momentum.

For me a part of the brilliance of Dune is that Herbert does not commit this sin. He maintains the momentum with only few and relevant digressions. I read the book again after three decades and was amazed that the depth I remembered came from a sparseness of words. I had spun off mere suggestions in the text into baroque textures in my head.

It reminds me of the cartoons of James Thurber, who could evoke more with the curve of a line than most artists can with any number.

I think this is part of what makes Dune so hard to adapt to film. There is less elaborate description to go by compared to Herbert's more verbose colleagues from Victor Hugo to George R.R. Martin. The imagination of each reader has more room to diverge.

slowmovintargetonFeb 11, 2015

I don't think I could get through all 6 books again. I did read all of the prequels and "Dune 7" but they were utter crap (not written by Frank Herbert but based on his notes).

Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune are worthwhile. But the sex-witches-fleeing-the-machines combined with everybody's a Kwizatz Haderach got a little tiresome. (I now picture Oprah gleefully shouting, "You're a Kwisatz Haderach... and you're a Kwisatz Haderach... everyone gets to be a Kwisatz Haderach!"

0xff00ffeeonApr 21, 2020

Meh. Since this article is largely anecdotal, I might as well add my 'dote to the anec:

I'm on Book 5 of Dune (Heretics of Dune), averaging roughly one a week since this started. I read my weekly issue of The Economist throughout the week with breakfast.

For my "project" I'm studying up on STM32 low-power states, something I've wanted to do for ages and now have more free time. So I'm going back and fixing some of my projects to be more efficient. I've also finally figured out how to use Eclipse -- efficiently! -- on Linux with the ARM GCC toolchain. So that's a plus. Now I'm studying Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio. These are things that have been backing up on my project list for almost a year.

Also grinding through the Linux Networking Drivers book, but that's an effort.

So, I'm reading a lot, both technical and (pulp) literature. Granted, Herbet isn't Pynchon, but it's still reading.

EDIT: Yeah, this is a not-humble-brag, but what the hell!

cousin_itonJuly 4, 2015

I think Dune was successful because it was a straightforward hero story, whose plot meshed together many interesting sub-themes like politics, religion, ecology, colonialism, drugs, eugenics, AI etc. The sequels failed because they abandoned the simple entertainment that a hero story could provide, and instead put the sub-themes front and center.

rentononDec 13, 2018

Ask the Dust - John Fante

Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Delta of Venus - Anais Nin

The Star Diaries - Stanislaw Lem

Maus - Art Spiegelman

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Japanese Destroyer Captain - Tameichi Hara

Elementary Go Series #1: In the Beginning - Ikuro Ishigure

Dune - Frank Herbert

Biohacking Manifesto - James Lee

The Trumpets of Jericho - Zurn

Slow_HandonJuly 31, 2021

What element of Dune do you think would suffer by not having an ‘R’ rating? It’s not as if the book is reliant on anything exceptionally violent or obscene. Probably the darkest element is the reference to The Baron’s rape of young people. Frankly that’s better off as something to be implied and not depicted.

I think you can get away with enough in a PG-13 to suit the tone of this story. Watching the recent trailer you can catch a glimpse of what appear to be prisoners of war strapped upside down on troughs that will collect the blood from their slit throats. That’s pretty dark. And seemingly it’s an addition by the filmakers. It’s not an element from the book.

jlourenco27onSep 2, 2019

In this summer, for my vacations, I've decided to re-read several of sci-fi books, with some popular new ones, and opted for a ebook reader (kindle) to avoid carring several pounds of books to the beach. Started with Isaac Azimov's Foundation triology (all), made a jump to William Gibson's Neuromancer and now, just ended Frank Herbert's Dune (1st volume only).

Coincidence is seeing this article just after returning from the vacation's, still imagining riding on a Shai-Hulud.

The only true comment that would like to add to this thread regarding Blanch's "The Sabre Paradise" is something that I've heard from an old teacher: most, probably all the books are derived from Homer's Odyssey; which created most of the writing styles, characters constructions and interactions, world creations, etc. After, there's not a single book that brought anything new to the writing, except the way you mix or the characters that you replace.

But even with this idea in mind, we cannot say that reading Homer's Odyssey means that you've read ALL the books, and there isn't not even that this is the best of books. To be honest I like the imagination created by it, but it's real "drag" if you try reading it...

At the end, for me at least, what counts is the mood: I prefer Dune over "The Sabre Paradise", the same way that I prefer J.R.Talkien's Lord of the Rings over "All Quiets on Western Front", even if both are based on the developments of the Great World War (I).

If you have time (and mood) read'em all... But still, keep away from "Odyssey" (there are a lot of more fun versions of the same story)! :)

PS: My next books in line are the (new for me) "Hyperion" and "Three Body Problem" from Liu Cixin. And recommended detours? :)

IgorPartolaonMay 20, 2014

I am almost through it and I have to say I am not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. I read books like this mostly because of their significance to the SciFi genre and while I think this books has some really great elements, the fact that Paul is basically infallible irks me. Nobody is that perfect in my experience and I wish I wasn't sure that he'd be successful with everything he starts.

I did read a critique of Dune recently that suggested that Herbert initially wanted to show how dangerous superheros are. This explains a bit about why Paul is a superhero: he has to be to make Herbert's thesis. However, then I'd be rooting for him to fail and I don't like the stories where the protagonist is evil in some subtle way and you are supposed to root for them to fail.

ArwillonFeb 8, 2017

I'm wondering if/when will signs of something like the Butlerian Jihad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad show.

In Frank Herbert's Dune books, the objection of humanity against "thinking machines" was not that the machines took jobs, but that intelligent machines shaped humanity too much. And signs of that can certainly be seen today. Business models and customer experiences are built around solutions that are easy to implement with computers. As AI gets used more, and AI will do the jobs of humans, human experiences will be shaped by AI. There will be a point where lawmakers will declare on certain things "no you can't do that with computers, you have to do it yourself".

My guess is that new laws will be made against specific uses of computers and AI. And that the issue of jobs will be regulated in those laws.

For example this recent law looks like something fitting in that category: http://ew.com/article/2016/12/16/obama-law-ticket-bots/

Cthulhu_onMay 12, 2020

But take Dune with a grain of salt; I read them, but the books after the first get a bit, I dunno, wishy-washy? Vague? Philosophical? I wanted to like it because the universe it describes is compelling, but the stories themselves lose a lot of luster.

Interesting to see what they'll do in the upcoming movie / series, whichever it was though. It's great in terms of worldbuilding, and it's influenced a lot of other stuff (like Warhammer 50K).

ARothfuszonNov 7, 2018

Darn, now I'm going to have to go back and re-read Dune considering the worm as a metaphor for the surveillance state. Walk without rhythm!

caconym_onMar 29, 2020

Dune holds up way better if you pretend it's just one book (the first one). It stands alone very well and IMO is completely worthy of its status in the classic sci-fi pantheon.

On the other hand, I finished TBP, but I disliked it enough that I didn't go back to the other two volumes. What makes them better than the first, in your opinion? (purely for my own curiosity re: whether I should go back and read them)

FnoordonJune 11, 2019

Before I opened this page, I was thinking about Dune 2 and the book Dune (Atreides used ornithopters).

maps7onMar 30, 2020

Has anyone listened to Dune as an audiobook and would you recommend it?

yeurekaonJuly 4, 2015

Dune is one of my favourite books and I actually enjoyed David Lynch's film.

I would love to see a modern cinema adaptation, but with the current political climate it might be impossible to make a movie about a messiah leading religious fanatics on a jihad against an empire for control of the commodity on which all civilization is dependent.

RadimonSep 9, 2011

Indeed, God Emperor is by far the best of the Dune series. I've re-read it many times and it never fails to deliver.

Goes to show different people like different things? Apparently, I'm more into the psychology and exploration of large-scale social patterns. People who like the other Dune books are presumably more into "action" sci-fi. Nothing wrong with that.

xupybdonNov 21, 2018

Dune is the book that got me sold on audiobooks https://www.audible.com/pd/Dune-Audiobook/B002V1OF70

4x5-GuyonMar 30, 2020

There are so many. Just a few.

- Flatland - An old book, but opened up the other dimension idea for me a lot.
- The Mote in Gods Eye - The idea that you can't always count on your preconceptions to be true, and some people will always look out for themselves first.
- Dune - For all the reasons others have mentioned.

DanTheManPRonAug 21, 2014

When I first read the Dune series in High School, Messiah seemed dreadfully boring - almost enough to quit reading it. After re-reading the series about 15 years later, I was very surprised by how much my opinion of Messiah improved - to the point that it's almost my favorite of the series. It really provides a stark (but satisfying) 3rd act and ending to Paul's story. I almost feel like it's Dune Part 2, rather than a separate novel.

baneonApr 20, 2017

Lynch's Dune does have many problems, but I still enjoy it. The set design and world that the film describes is often quite beautiful and has in many ways set the tone for all depictions of the universe after. The books don't offer much in the way of visual specificity, so even the later Scifi Channel's mini series took on various inspirations from the Lynch film.

I think the real hatred for the movie comes from not just cutting down the original material to fit within a film, but then needlessly adding new material that wasn't at all in keeping with the book, so it loses "trueness" from both ends. There's also some unevenness in the pacing and gravity the movie tries to get across. Dune is by no means an action story, but the movie can be a bit plodding at points that don't call for it, and faster paced parts sometimes don't work or come off poorly or cheesy.

I think also there's an unnecessary attempt at adding mystery to a story that didn't really have or need it. The book explains many of the strange parts of the universe quite well, but the movie has characters uttering odd phrases and strange events happening without comment or description -- reading the book fills in most of this strangeness, but it shouldn't be necessary as the film should stand on its own.

Still, the new cuts of the film are good watches and make for an entry into a nice thoughtful sci-fi weekend that might include movies like Bladerunner.

pmoriartyonJune 30, 2018

"Personally I found 2nd and 3rd books the worst."

I absolutely agree. Children of Dune and Dune Messiah are by far the worst. The series picks up with God Emperor of Dune, and my favorites are the last two: Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune.

The original Dune book was also good, but overrated compared to the last two in the series.

metroholografixonMar 29, 2020

I found all 3 books to be vastly overrated and mediocre at best. I would bet money that in 10 years, few will even remember them.

The translation doesn't help, but the issues with the books go beyond it. It's obvious that Cixin Liu is not a good writer. The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts and his pacing and framing of ideas awful. I feel that there is merit in his imagination but it'd be better presented in a different format than science fiction.

To truly see how bad he is as a writer, compare him to the greats:

Stanislaw Lem, Gene Wolfe, Iain Banks (Culture Series), Strugatsky brothers, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Heinlein, J.G. Ballard, Ursula Le Guin, William Gibson ...

Since Dune was mentioned in this thread, I find the first two books to be absolutely in a different league than TBP as they're complex socio-political SciFi masterpieces that have stood the test of time. I've read Dune more than 9-10 times already (as I've read and re-read most of the books by the greats I previously mentioned). Can you imagine doing that with any of the TBP books?

gamblor956onOct 12, 2019

Dune is a book. The movie is just a horrible adaptation of that book.

argimenesonNov 23, 2017

- "The Art and Craft of Drawing", by Vernon Blake (1924)

- "Mindstorms", by Seymour Papert

- "Dune", by Frank Herbert

-

xzelonMay 18, 2020

I'll use the "fear is the mind killer" [1] quote when I'm upset or anxious quite often. I really should add this one to my arsenal as well. I've never thought of Dune as a self-help book but I might now. Weirdly enough I'm also currently re-reading it, after watching the miniseries due to quarantine, and I'll try to find more things like this during my reading.

[1] “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

acabalonOct 23, 2012

It's endemic in the industry. With a few exceptions, try downloading any book printed before, say, the year 2000. A good example is the Kindle copy of Dune that Amazon sells. Spend $15 ($3 more than having the print version delivered to your doorstep!) on one of the most famous science fiction books of all time only to find that it's riddled with spelling errors, grammar errors, and word omissions. (Or just read the Amazon reviews that tell you as much.)

Another good example is the older Dark Tower books. I bought book 3 a year ago and it was in the same unreadable state. I also returned it for a refund.

New books aren't a problem, they're designed with ebooks in mind. It's just older books that the publisher quickly OCR'd and spammed Amazon with to make a quick buck.

politicianonSep 21, 2017

Dune is often described as being about oil [1]. Similarly, TBP is mostly about Chinese nationalism and the politics involved with being economically intertwined with the United States while retaining an opportunistic military posture.

The message of TBP is hopeful in that the US and China are ultimately locked together against a universe of unknowns.

It totally goes off the deep end there at the end though, but this would be a hard book to write while living in China. The CPC wouldn't allow this kind of propaganda to be sold to the West if it didn't basically follow their party line. I mean, the author basically telegraphs this situation with the subplot about how the Terrans learn how FTL travel works.

[1] https://futurism.media/dune-and-oil-the-real-world-influence...

siegecraftonApr 5, 2017

You should check out Jodoorowsky's Dune if you haven't - a documentary about an unsuccessful attempt to make a Dune movie in the 1970s.

qbrassonNov 5, 2018

One person recommended two of his stories. Dune and The Jesus Incident.

tincoonJuly 4, 2015

If I would attempt a re-reading of Dune, would it be advisable to skip those two sequals? It's been over 10 years since I read Dune and among the few things I remember is that I found it a painfully slow read full of details I wasn't interested in and words I couldn't bother to learn.

My English is a bit better now, and I like to think I've become a bit more patient ;) So perhaps I could attempt it again and see if I appreciate it more.

mathwonApr 20, 2017

Lynch's Dune shares some names of people and places, and some basic concepts with the book. Very little else. There's a lot of change for change's sake in it and most of that is in illogical ways (some of which are pointed out in the article).

I've seen it a couple of times, but I see no reason to do so again. I can just read the books again!

kkylinonSep 2, 2019

Yes, with the additional advice to try to get through the first 100 pages of Dune before judging -- it took me that long to really get into the story. Also I think Dune and Messiah were originally meant to be one book, and for whatever reason they ended up being two books.

Otherwise I thought the entire series worth reading, Messiah and God Emperor included.

gknoyonMay 22, 2015

I've read great short fiction, but nearly every time I read something Really Awesome or Interesting, I end up wanting to read more exploring interesting things in that world. Parallel events, precursors, Lore, etc. I dislike when there's a constant "To be Continued...." (Wheel of Time, Game of Thrones), but love when there's a series of related books that each can stand alone, but also enrich a shared lore. I absolutely devoured nearly everything in the Dragonlance novels and Star Wars extended universe books, for example.

Whenever I read the first book of a book like Dune, or Foundation, or Earthsea, or Anne Leckie's Ancillary Justice, or the Diamond Age (or Snow Crash) I end up wishing for more from that same universe of Lore. Sometimes this ends up being something amazing, like the Foundation series, other times the sequel fails to hold me, or goes off the deep end like some fantasy serieses seem to.

I think I end up gravitating towards trilogies. I know there's more to the story arc than just one book, and but enough written that I (in theory) won't be left in the lurch. :-)

Then again, I also read all [at the time] of the Honor Harrington series, because I loved the characters and political story arc(s), but ended up getting burned out and never reading the more recent novels. I don't even know or recall if it was a feeling that it jumped the shark, I just didn't feel I had the energy to devote to it.

hagan_dasonFeb 11, 2015

Lots of books I want to reread but hard to justify when I already have more books on my "to-read" list than I can read in a lifetime. I do, however, try and re-read Dune once a year.

Off-topic but since I've got books on the brain: I recently started reading the Foundation and am kicking myself for not reading it sooner.

roelschroevenonSep 2, 2019

> In my experience, people who like Dune generally will enjoy at least through Children of Dune.

When I was very young and first found the Dune books, I liked Dune, but failed to finish Dune Messiah, let alone the rest. A few years later I re-read Dune, plus Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. I needed some maturing I suppose.

I stopped after that at the time because my parents only had the first 3 books, the book's front matter listed exactly those 3 books, and there was no internet yet to tell me there were 6 books instead of 3.

> Anyone who enjoys God Emperor of Dune is insane (maybe why it might be my favorite).

Some more years later I was browsing the sci-fi section of a bookstore and to my surprise found 3 more Dune books. Read them all, enjoyed them all, even God Emperor of Dune.

I read one or maybe two of the prequels; enough to decide that continuing reading the _other_ Dune books was not a good idea.

gibspauldingonDec 13, 2018

My list has a lot more fiction than others here, but I enjoyed myself!

Just For Fun - Linus Torvalds (Highly recommended, Tells of Linus's early life and how Linux came to be. I'm surprised I haven't seen this recommended more often.)
Into The Plex - Steven Levy (The history of Google, definitely worthwhile)
Dune - Frank Herbert (I enjoyed it, but not enough to pursue his other books)
The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett (Kinda interesting, but rather odd)
Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of The North - Bernard Cornwell (The first three books in his Saxon series. These are what The Last Kingdom TV series is based on. Worth a read if you liked the show or like English history.)
REAMDE - Niel Stephenson (Very fun! Lots of crazy action while still being almost believable)
Seven Eves - Niel Stephenson (Typical Stephenson Sci-Fi. Very interesting take on an Armageddon type scenario)
The Hardware Hacker - Andrew Huang (Talks a lot about manufacturing tech in China. Neat to see some of the processes behind the devices we use every day. Also interesting if you like the idea of open hardware.)
The Art of Wheel Building - Jobst Brandt (I've built a few bicycle wheels so this was interesting to me.)

jbgtonApr 21, 2020

God emperor is amazing. The vision!
I can't remember if it's Heretics or Chapterhouse when Miles Teg gets accelerated...

I like the first three for the continuity of the Atreides story. But I love the latter three for the depth. I re-read them several times each.

A pity Dune 7 never came out. And then the Brian Herbert pulp...

electromagneticonSep 13, 2010

I do find it hilarious that the "I Don't Read" landed higher than all the erotica, Fahrenheit 451 and 'The Holy Bible'. It appears the books that don't work on more than one level are least useful to your intelligence (assuming SAT is relevant to intelligence).

I do find it highly interesting that many of the books with a wide score-range are books known to work on multiple levels; Dune, Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland, Lolita, Catch 22, etc.

shazeubaaonJan 27, 2021

Or maybe Frank Herbert’s Dune was?

krzykonJan 6, 2021

I read just the first book in the "Book of the New Sun" and found it quite boring.

And my books are quite similar to yours with few exceptions:

- Martian Chronicles - interesting concept but eventually it goes into some ecological + anarchist sci-fi which I'm not a fun of

- Earthsea - good, but it is mostly for teens, young adults (I read it as a teen and loved it, reread it years later and it was so so)

- Dune - the whole series, each book is unique in its own way

- Kurt Vonnegut - never read anything by that author

- Hemingway - I read just The Old Man and the Sea (or actually was forced in school to read it) - and this was a short novel about basically nothing, boring as it can be

And books I really liked that are not on your list:

- Cixin Liu - Three Body Problem and the rest in the series - I loved it, never read anything like it

- Anything by Naomi Novik (so just two books right now)

- Vernon - A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep

- N.K. Jemis - Stone Sky and the other two in the series

- Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice (but only this, the other book was worse)

- (Almost) Anything by Philip K. Dick

That's from my recent reads (so few last years).

BjoernKWonJuly 31, 2018

39. Recently, I've read Dune again after having read it for the first time some 25 years ago. One notion I came across this time (probably did so back then, too but didn't attach much importance to it) and that particularly resonated with me was this - I'm paraphrasing here: Life is its own tool for ever more efficiently making use of the energy available within a system.

jds375onJan 4, 2016

With all of the happenings in the middle-east, I'd have to say Dune [0].

[0] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/234225

huomrionSep 2, 2019

Dune has often been interpreted as a story that contains metaphors to nodern politics such as how the spice dependence is similar to our oil dependence and undertones of how authoritarian regimes try to control the fates of peoples. A lot of the events in the books can be drawn as parallels to our history and modern day situations.

BillSaysThisonSep 9, 2011

This thread points out the problem with Top 100 lists, of SF or other large bodies of things judged subjectively, which is that there are far too many good ones to stop at 100. In the real world of course one would hope to have the time to read far more than 100 SF novels; fortunately for me I've read several thousand over the past 40 years.

Personally, though, I wouldn't put Dune or any Gene Wolfe on my Top 100 SF novels. Could never get past the first pages. Banks, Stross, PFH, MacLeod, Rudy Rucker, Kage Baker, of the recent vintage, would all be there though ;)

weeksieonNov 24, 2018

I've always held that the David Lynch version of Dune was an underrated masterpiece. Tastes vary, but the film was visually stunning and I can't think of another director from the time that would have done justice to the novel. Obviously Dune is a big deal but I'm frequently surprised at just how little attention it's gotten in pop culture beyond the odd references to Butlerean Jihads and the odd pumpkin spice joke. What I wouldn't give for an expansive HBO season-length treatment of the first book.

BzomakonFeb 16, 2015

Some which I have re-read recently and still enjoyed:

  William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy

Frank Herbert's Dune series

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series

Frederik Pohl's "Gateway"

Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a harsh Mistress"

Some which I remember liking when I read them many years ago as a teenager:

  E.E. Doc Smith's Lensman series

David Brin's Uplift series

Peter F. Hamilton's Greg Mandel trilogy and The Night's

Dawn trilogy

  Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"

George R. Dickson's "Dorsai!"

domadoronDec 29, 2019

I loved this game! Having said that, the main change I'd make to this and other similar games is to have an option to limit and adjust the number of actions the AI player can perform on each turn. There always came a point where the AI player would do tons of things each turn. Not only would the AI's turns take ages, but on my own turn it'd take me a long time to catch up, figure out what the AI did and play accordingly. Another, additional option would be to limit the number of units and/or cities the AI player (or maybe all players) can build. It became tedious to attack or deal with the dozens of cities created by the AI players.

On a different note, I loved the quotes in the game that referenced a various fictional books and speeches. Something similar happens in the book "Dune", with quotes to nonexistent books set in Dune's future that referenced the events in the Dune. There's something to be said for when a work of fiction makes references to fictional works of nonfiction within the real work of fiction's fictional universe. (Another book that exhibits this is "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", a fiction book that makes references to the nonexistent, nonfiction book after which the real book is named.) I like the illusion of that the fictional universe is much larger than I can see, and the desire to read the fictional works of nonfiction the author lets me peek into.

On a final note, I loved the parody books titles mentioned at the end of the game. Has anyone found a list of the original book titles being parodied, or does someone know all those cultural references? I'm referring to titles such as "Boreholes I Have Known" or "I'm OK, You're a Drone" (the latter of which parodies "I'm OK, You're OK". Yet I don't get what book title the former is parodying, and there are others whose references I don't get.)

the_afonApr 20, 2017

No, sci-fi is not "anything set in the future", which is why I didn't use the word "future" in my post at all. By that token, SF is also NOT "filled with blasters and droids and space battles"... that's space opera! ;)

It's true there are no clones in the first Dune book, but there is genetic engineering (that's what the Bene Gesserit breeding program is, after all). There is drug assisted navigation -- how else do you think the Guild Navigators manage to do it? That's a main plot point and why Arrakis and melange are so important. The mentats go beyond being "highly trained" people (they are the "human" response to computers after the Butlerian Jihad), and they claim the drugs they sip (called "sapho juice") assist them in their mental powers -- but if they were merely highly trained people, that would still be firmly within the realm of SF and outside Fantasy :) This is all from the first book, by the way.

Dune has plenty of SF, as myself and others have already mentioned.

blumkvistonJan 26, 2014

Agreed. Mein Kampf, Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead and Strike towards freedom deserve mentions too. Also the list shows a striking lack of science fiction. Neuromancer, Do androids dream of electric sheep, Lovecraft, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Dune, Foundation series by Asimov, Jules Vern's works, Time machine by H.G. Wells are some very influential titles.

Shakespeare's work is missing also.

stevekemponAug 17, 2014

Book recommendations and tastes are very personal.

I suspect that if you're not specifically looking for technical books you'd be better off looking at the common lists of 100 most popular books, or similar.

Me? I'd say "Dune", but that is only useful if you have an interest in sci-fi. If not then the Count of Monte Cristo is a glorious tale of revenge and plot. Beyond that recommendations become vague: Steven Brust, Zelazny, Tolkien, Pratchett & etc.

jasonkesteronSep 9, 2011

Try again in a year or so. Dune is one of those books that takes a few tries. I think it was my 3rd attempt before I really got hooked and made it through (and savored every page from there on out).

It's kinda like Lord of the Rings in that respect. If you're in the right frame of mind, it's awesome. If not, it's the most boring piece of dullness you've ever seen in print. But once you're in, you're in for good.

latchonApr 1, 2012

Non-developer specific good sci-fi books:

-Dune

-Hyperion + The Fall of Hyperion

-The Book Of The New Sun

-Ilium + Olympos

-Takeshi Kovacs trilogy

-The Culture Series (meh..)

-The Demolished Man

More dev-oriented:

-Reamde (which I hated, but I seem to be in a minority)

-Neuromancer

I'll always have a special place in my heart for Calculating God (not science fiction), because its the book that got me into reading seriously.

SwellJoeonMay 28, 2015

Counterpoint: I've re-read it every five years or so since I was about 22, when I first read it (actually, I'd read some of the first one when I was much younger, maybe 6th grade, and got overwhelmed with the span of time and number of characters, but never finished it until I was about 22). I've loved it every time, and I'm just about due for another re-read and I'm looking forward to it.

There are some weaknesses, sure. Asimov himself was even aware of some of his weaknesses as a writer and talked about them occasionally in his memoirs and such. But, aside from HHGTTG and Dune, I can't think of anything that I've re-read more often, or that has been a more satisfying part of my reading life (and I read a lot). Asimov remains my favorite author after all these years. Admittedly, some of that is the "old friend" factor. But, nonetheless, I believe it is very solid sci-fi, and recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it.

walterstuccoonOct 8, 2017

There's a flaw in the original comment, and I wanted to make it clear through a provocation.

You don't replace social media with books, there are books I never get bored by, I've read Dune almost 20 times, and I'm sure I will read it again sooner or later.

Social media content is based on engagement, not on enjoyment.

You don't enjoy the content, you enjoy scrolling through the content at the point that once posted, the content is lost, unless it gain real traction, you won't be able to find it again.

Books never run out of battery, when you watch TV you are not actively skipping through ad, you passively ignore them.

Think about it: when was the last time that you interrupted reading a book for watching the TV or a movie?

But how many time you've watched your phone while doing something else?

The addictive nature of the "you might miss it" content is the real danger and it's what the article talks about.

We are at a point in history where going to a bar and drink it's healthier for you mental health than staying home with your phone.

adamhepneronJune 20, 2018

Actually, the whole Dune series, and risking to be controversial - the extended universe with the abomination of books by Frank Herbert's son. Yes, they break the rules, yes, they are rushed and yes some explanations plain don't make sense, but ohmygod the additional tens of thousands of years added to the story just put on so much more grandure... But why I like it: I open random page, and I just enjoy falling back to the epic story and remembering small details, discovering new ones, pondering upon the small artificial quotes before the chapters. Those books have so much going on for them, and thanks to the time spans involved you can actually pretty much jump in at any moment.

Other one is Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison, those are very funny and don't attempt to take themselves too seriously, and have the same principle - you can jump into the story at any moment and just enjoy rapid pace of events splashed with humorous commentary. Plus the protagonist is a very much self made man in a world where it doesn't come easily, so there's that bit of hope for you.

Thirdly - Discworld. I guess it does not need comment, does it?

bdibsonSep 9, 2019

Dune was released in 1965.

cocoyonMar 19, 2008

Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune by Frank Herbert are my favorites. the sequels God Emperor, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse were good as well but I like the 1st three the most.

Dune was about how people shouldn't let supermen lead. it was complex. it was an ecological novel. they had quotable quotes like "thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind". people say it's the lord of the rings of science fiction. the characters are rich, the plot thick. i highly recommend Dune.

gwernonFeb 16, 2011

> As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree.

It's not just LOTR & fantasy; SF has problems of its own. I mean, there's obviously _The Iron Swastika_, which everyone knows was written explicitly as a parody.

But Frank Herbert says over and over again in interviews and whatever* that in _Dune_, Paul was a terrible horrible no good thing to happen to the human race and we were not supposed to be rooting for him - but fans do anyway. Paul is supposed to be a deconstruction of the superhero myth, but instead, even the fans swallow it hook line & sinker. It's no surprise that _Dune Messiah_, which really rubs our nose in this, is one of the least popular Dune books.

* He says this explicitly in 2 or 3 interviews, and repeats himself in the mini-essays on the backs of the vinyl LPs of him reading excerpts from the Dune books (which I saw today in the SF public library)

aduriconMar 23, 2016

It would have been amazing if Jodorowsky's Dune actually got made and released. He really was too far ahead of his time for the studio.

I feel that in order to make a roughly 2-hour long film on as complex a subject as what the novel portrays, the only way to illustrate that complexity properly is to ascribe to surrealist elements. That is the only form that can provide the necessary density, if done properly. Lynch knew this, which is why he took on the project, but was later pressured by the studio and his vision was lost. He did a pretty admirable job considering.

Lynch's pedigree speaks for itself:

Blue Velvet: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_23
Lost Highway: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_16
Mulholland Drive: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_14
Twin Peaks...
etc...

EnsorceledonNov 15, 2019

Reminds me of this scene from Frank Herbert's Dune:

“Because of an observation made by my father at the time. He said the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable– except when you see it happen in the drawing room.” Paul hesitated just long enough for the banker to see the point coming, then: “And, I should add, except when you see it at the dinner table.”

latchonSep 9, 2011

Dune is great..in fact, the original 6, except maybe God Emperor, are all great.

Hyperion is a good book, as is the 2nd in the series The Fall of Hyperion. However, the two last books are really quite bad. Personally, i found Ilium+Olympos to be his best work.

I found the Culture novels disappointing. Except for Consider Phlebas and maybe Excession, you quickly realize that they are pretty much gods and that there's absolutely 100% no risk...it makes it all quite dull/pointless.

I hated Stranger in a Strange land..maybe I should re-read it. All I remember (and it's been about 10 years)..was that I liked the start, an then it turned really weird...all about drugs and sex and cults.

mentatonSep 30, 2010

I'm a little disappointed with the approach this article takes to it's main thesis, which is that the "majority" don't remember what they read. He writes "anecdotal evidence suggests" twice in the only part that justifies his own experience. Is this really the case? (Not that I'm going to get better than anecdotal evidence here.) There's a false dichotomy there too where either you retain everything or nothing.

For me I still remember the plot lines of books I read 20 years ago and why they were formative to my character. Is that really that unusual? Given these were mostly fiction and science fiction books, but the conceptual spaces they opened up for me are so key to who I am now it would be bizarre if I just "forgot" them. Just to cite one instance, the Dune series of books got me thinking about the intersection of politics, economics, the expansion of consciousness, ecology, the point of human existence, and other subjects. Surely other people here have had those same experiences and remember them?

IgorPartolaonAug 21, 2014

So I finished reading Dune recently. I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would. My main problem with it was how predictable it was: gifted kid succeeds in everything he does. A question I have is whether I should read the two immediate sequels. Do they actually explore the whole "superheroes are bad" theme more? Would I get a better sense of the context for what Dune really was about?

My first exposure to the Dune universe was actually the DOS game Dune II, which is funny since it had nothing to do with the storyline. Honestly, I found the game more enjoyable than the book.

BobbyHonApr 5, 2009

I love sci-fi, but rather than recommend "sci-fi" books, I would recommend "speculative fiction" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction), which is "a fiction genre speculating about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways".

Good sci-fi is speculative fiction, but bad sci-fi is just "a story told in a sci-fi setting".

This is a good way of distinguishing between Dune by Frank Herbert (which speculates about many things, including the kind of universe that exists after a computer AI suppresses the human race and is then overthrown) and Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, which is a crap book that speculates about very little in a sci-fi setting.

If you think about it, starting a company that makes a new product is basically speculating about a world that is unlike our current world because of your product! Also, you should be speculating about how other technologies and products will affect our world, so you can adapt your company before it becomes extinct...

fileoffsetonSep 29, 2020

30 copies of Dune

smogcutteronAug 21, 2018

Come on, the Song of Ice & Fire books are particularly long, but you're still comparing an entire series with a single book. Dune is a series too, and I'll argue that the quality drops off much more sharply after the first one than ASoI&F does.

For what it's worth, in SF & Fantasy short fiction is still hanging in there:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com
http://dailysciencefiction.com
http://www.analogsf.com

stormkingonJan 26, 2018

The Dune series, especially "Dune Messias", made me a vocal critic of organized religion.

Books by Vernor Vinge made me a liberal (european meaning, pro free markets and individual responsibility).

Ken McLeod made me aware of the rich history and valid points of communism and socialism, even when I'm still not a fan.

Iain M. Banks showed me that an AI-enabled future doesn't have to be a distopia. He also made me aware of how pale and boring the often cited "Star Trek Utopia" really is.

enraonSep 14, 2013

After reading Game of Thrones I wanted to read more book series, so went with science fiction ones:

  Started with: Dune, by Frank Herbert (+ 5 books in the series)
Continued to: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (+ 3 sequels)
Now reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov (+ 5 books)

All those are pretty great in sense of that they take set in span of thousands of years, and touch bit different ideas around society, myths, religion, morals, physical and mental technologies.

Other than that, been been enjoying some classic literature, Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, James Clavell, Haruki Murakami and books about Richard Feynman.

_qulronOct 20, 2020

Not sure if we still need a "spoiler alert" for 1969, but if you've read Dune without also reading Dune Messiah, you've unfortunately missed the whole point. The first book is merely a setup. If I may be allowed to mix my sci-fi metaphors, "It's a trap!"

The first novel was never intended by Herbert to be "self-contained", but the second novel never achieved the same popularity as the first — perhaps for obvious reasons, if you've read it. It's not the sequel one expects.

asharkonApr 20, 2017

> I've read elsewhere on the Internet that Dune the novel actually is an inspiration for the Star Wars universe, even if the Star Wars cinematography predates and must influence (even if through intentional avoidance of such appearance) Lynch's treatment of Dune...

Probably more of a common influence on both by the Lensman series, I'd guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series

[EDIT] I'd add that a bigger cinematic influence on Lynch's dune was probably Lawrence of Arabia, which is fitting since if you've read Seven Pillars of Wisdom it's hard to believe it wasn't sitting at the top of a pile of books on Herbert's desk while he was writing Dune.

perseusprime11onJune 30, 2017

I've already read Dune

harshrealityonFeb 9, 2014

I agree, and you made elsewhere the good point that Dune has one foot in the fantasy realm, without much hard science fiction backing it up.

The Hyperion cantos (Simmons) is sadly not taken seriously by very many authors of top-100 lists. It's usually Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land or Ender's Game or Forever War. And heaven forbid they include Neuromancer or Snow Crash or Altered Carbon, or an eco-scifi book like Stand on Zanzibar or Zodiac.

Dune could be a nod to the classic science fiction aficionados who don't care for any of the newer stuff, who love Asimov, Niven, Clarke, PKD, Bester. Is Heinlein too politically charged, perhaps?

malokaionJune 30, 2014

I also started Gödel, Escher, Bach. Have yet to finish the preface.

Discover Meteor: a book for the Meteorjs framework. Good book if you want to learn the framework.

I read a lot of fiction I guess.
Now I am reading American Gods, and before that, Dune. Before Dune I read the 2 released books of The Kingkiller Chronicle.

JanezStuparonDec 29, 2012

Here is my short list:

Frank Herbert, Dune - Changed my outlook on politics and complex systems full of complex issues.

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Got me to understand why West is so different to the East and what is the true root cause to our current Western problems.

Sun Tzu, The Tao of War - If there was one and only one book I could have, this would be it.

stratfordfellowonJuly 26, 2017

Dune - Frank Herbert

cragonDec 9, 2012

Other than Tatooine (which isn't a desert planet, by the way) and a sand worm (which appears in many stories), what parts of Dune you see lifted for Star Wars?

The whole point of Dune was the vulnerability of the empire to a single resource; spice. Similar to the [our] real world's relationship with oil.

I've read Dune many times. But only watched SW once or twice. I didn't "see" Dune, I was thinking of the old space opera stories - or something like Buck Rogers.

aboweronJune 9, 2020

Adam Hall's Quiller series. Good to revisit every few years and the mechanism of building to a crisis, then starting after the resolution and backing up is fun. Not for everyone though as it's cold war vintage spy stuff. Feels real though, not like Hollywood versin of Bond.
Banks of course, Use of Weapons is great.
Just hit 51 and finally reading Dune now, so keep that in mind, but would also suggest Cryptonomicon as i have started it several times, put it down and then come back and had to start again several times.... but i find it interesting enough to keep trying!

cgriswaldonSep 24, 2020

My standard advice for people reading the books with the movies/mini-series mixed in:

Read the first one. It's not for everyone, it's a little dry, POV is all over the place, and it's very political and thoughtful. It can be a slow read, but it's worth it.

Watch the Lynch movie. (Lament that this could have been Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune if so inclined.)

Watch the Sci-Fi Channel's Frank Herbert's Dune.

(Probably watch the Villeneuve Dune due out in December this year.)

If you happened to like it, read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. You'll probably like these books as well. (If you didn't like Dune, it's okay to stop here.)

Watch the Sci-Fi Channel's Children of Dune.

If you happened to like those, try God Emperor of Dune. Be warned it is extremely different from the previous books. It's become my favorite book in the series after multiple re-readings of the entire series (previously was Dune Messiah), but it is certainly not for everyone. It's okay to quit here.

If you made it through God Emperor, read Heretics of Dune.

If you enjoyed it, read Chapterhouse: Dune. (If you didn't enjoy Heretics, don't bother).

Lament that it is over.

If you must, read Sandworms of Dune which is written by the son, but is supposedly based on the father's notes. It is the least bad of the books I've read by the son. Don't read anything else.

Edit: Formatting

crtlaltdelonNov 8, 2019

i've been back and forth on this.

for a while i was very much into ebooks for many of the reasons others on this thread have sited, but eventually started purchasing physical copies again. part of this was uncovering a well-worn copy of Dune in a box. it was printed sometime in the early 1970's and everything from the cracked spine to the yellowed pages to the "sale, 10¢" written in a flowing script the inside cover brings a nostalgic value i couldnt possible replicate with an ebook (for painfully obvious reasons). furthermore, on uncovering this book i found the bookmark to be the receipt from the bookstore that i purchased it from a decade ago. other books on my shelf contain similar personal items such as a postcard welcoming my daughter to kindergarten, a $1 silver certificate i found in my change years ago, a receipt from a store that i used to frequent as a teenager whose proprietor has since passed away...

[edit]: correcting a typo

wordpressdevonMay 29, 2018

I present you, the litany against fear..

"I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

---

from Frank Herbert's Dune series.

thedanbobonApr 6, 2021

You're reading more than I intended into what I wrote. When I first read Dune I was too young to know anything about politics besides the simple facts of interactions between nations. Dune helped me understand why a nation might react to a particular situation a particular way; the motivations behind the actions. So when I learned about real international politics later, I was better equipped to understand what was going on.

Obviously I know that Dune politics are not real-life politics.

stevekemponJuly 12, 2018

I've read the classics, Dune (+sequels), Lord of the Rings, and the Amber books by Zelazny at least 20 times each over the past twenty years.

Other favourites include the Vlad Taltos novels by Brust which I've read at least ten times each (still thinking "WTF?" over Vallista though!) and Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

My tastes tend towards SciFi & Fantasy, but I have no shame about my love of romance either.

(The last set of books I read were the complete Bond novels by Ian Fleming. I don't think I'd read them again, very dated, very different to the films, and not that great.)

I've read most of Terry Pratchett's books a few times each, some more than others, along with other "comedy" writers such as Jasper Fforde, and Tom Holt (his "Portable Door" series is my favourite.)

TzunamitomonApr 3, 2012

This makes me want to go and read Dune again.

rcarmoonFeb 6, 2019

I can name

- The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (there is absolutely nothing quite like it, and it taught me to laugh - or at least giggle - at anything)

- Dune (the notion of mental discipline, at least as idealized by Frank Herbert, made an impression on me)

- Sherlock Holmes (focused awareness and logic)

- Godel, Escher, Bach - The Eternal Golden Braid (multiple takes on awareness, logic and creativity)

There are more, but I tend to avoid Malcom Gladwell style books (and Freakonomics uses a lot of the extrapolation-by-slingshot-logic approach) and the like because they play upon our biases and are often quickly disproved.

_qulronOct 20, 2020

This is so silly. In the book, spice was a metaphor for oil. Herbert said so himself. Dune was set in the far future, but it was very much about the (1960s) present too. The Middle Eastern themes were there for a reason.

Just wait until they read the passage in Dune Messiah where Paul compares himself to Hitler and Genghis Khan, while Stilgar and Korba refuse to believe it.

pmlnronApr 9, 2017

I recently saw a documentary on the early years of Kraftwerk; it was one of those when you start watching it without expectations just to get your mind blown and busy for weeks after watching it.

I'd love to see a collection of these; the visionaries of the 70s and 80s, and I might include Jodorowsky's Dune at the end.

jbmorgadoonApr 20, 2017

Look, I'm a big fan of the original Dune series (not of the mess Frank Herbert's son did after his death in order to make money out of his father vision - those books actually ruined a bit of the originals for me, I actually suggest that you don't read those).

Anyway, first time I saw Lynch's Dune I didn't really liked it because it was too different from the books. But after some years (and reading the all series from Frank Herbert) I actually started to like the film.

See, for me, Lynch's film, was the best possible one. A lot of Dune is about thoughts, mental plans, counter plans. A mental chess game that goes on the mind of all the main characters and I don't think you can actually put all that on screen (at lest not without extending the film for several hours).

Sure you could have a grander vision of the books with better SciFi and a lot more money, but other than visually for an higher budget, I don't think any director can really do much better than Lynch.

Well, it's my take at least. I might be wrong (and would like to be proven wrong by a new Dune movie that exceeds my expectations) but until I see a movie that does better, I actually vouch for Lynch's Dune.

eesmithonMar 30, 2020

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I couldn't stand the insistence on the strong distinction between romantic and classical attitudes.

I think the best way to understand "Dune" is in historical context. Few SF books before then considered the ecology, or used Middle Eastern influences. These fresh ideas bowled over a lot of people at the time.

I re-read Dune when I was about 30, and thought it was nothing special, and a bit simplistic. Thing is, its existence helped change SF to expect more complex stories.

jljljlonJan 26, 2014

It feels a little early to make this call. Dune has influenced a certain vision of the future, but it's influence has been limited to a specific genre of literature and art.

It also remains to be seen whether Dune is influential beyond the current cultural zeitgeist, since it hasn't even been around for a century yet. It's entirely possible another book or movie will come around that changes the entire aesthetic of speculative fiction, leaving Dune as a book that was popular for a particular culture as a particular time.

snowwrestleronMay 31, 2021

A bunch of classic “golden era” science fiction novels feature characters with unexplained mental powers, like Asimov’s Foundation series, Dune, Niven’s Known Space series, etc.

Those seem like obvious fantasy now, but from about the 1950s through the 1970s, a lot of serious people believed that there were undiscovered powers of the human mind that science was on the verge of discovering or confirming. Mental powers are therefore a common anachronism of sci fi from that era.

Most science fiction stories are going to feature some elements that are essentially unexplained and therefore act like magic in the story. I think most folks would consider 2001 to be science fiction but the powers of the monolith are at least as crazy and unexplained as what the Jedi can do.

slionFeb 7, 2018

I was taken aback by the price of audiobooks until I listened to the first Dune book (my first "real" audiobook) during a roadtrip and realized they use proper voice actors, score (admittedly very small) parts of it, and generally have a way longer credit section than I previously assumed. I do wish prices would come down a bit, but I can't say I blame them.

To say nothing of versions where it's just one person reading it straight through, though. Surely those are much cheaper.

taejoonSep 29, 2017

Yeah, it sounds amazing, but I think it would have been a disaster. Jodorowsky never actually read Dune, and he had the grandiose, completely impractical ideas: Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, his girlfriend with no acting experience as Irulan, Jodorowsky's son who also had no acting experience as Paul (the main character). Jodorowsky saw himself more as a God than a Director, IMO.

orionblastaronAug 22, 2013

Never give up, don't end your life. Failure is a part of life, we humans learn from our mistakes. If you ever read "Dune" or watched the movie "Fear is the mind killer." and it makes a lot of sense that statement.

I am 45, and I am having a hard time. I am flat broke, disabled, and 100K in medical debt. No startups want to hire me, nobody wants to help me, and I did a great job when I was working and did two startups of my own.

http://www.greatdox.com/documentaries/ I want to do documentaries on various topics because I faced a lot of stuff in my life and I don't want to see others suffer as I have, as I have seen many others suffer. Know that you are not alone. I have software I want to develop as well. http://www.greatdox.com/software/

markwongonFeb 28, 2013

reminds me of Dune II

ethbroonJuly 13, 2017

I hear what you're saying. I'm gradually arriving at a model of "good book" that includes what a person's particular transgressions of suspensions of disbelief are, and what degree is required to trigger them.

For me, the biggest things are currently "must be at least this hard sci-fi" and "must have believably human characters." It sounds like one of yours is "must have book-spanning world-building." Which I get, but don't think bothers me as much.

I expect the unexplored deus ex machina will probably irk me when it shows up though! Though maybe not, I think a large part of my enjoyment of Dune is the somewhat orthagonal-to-Western world-building. Although the Islamic religious echoes are ham-fisted and shallow sometimes, it's still refreshing to even read something attempting it.

By my memory, Ender's didn't mull over consequences nearly as much as Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, & Children of the Mind. It was more "Oh my god, this was horrible" and less "We did a horrible thing, so what do we do now? And how does that inform our reactions the next time we're presented with the same choice?"

Side note: if you ever want to read something laughably bad, especially for how modern it is, read one of the Honor Harrington books from David Weber. I tapped out after 20 pages.

GrishnakhonFeb 4, 2016

It sounds like he set his story too near in the future. Set your story 25-50 years into the future and then you can make reasonable predictions and avoid political things ruining them, for the most part (until a couple of decades have passed). Scottish independence could still happen, just not in the next couple of years. But in 30 years, it's possible. That far out, the state of the entire EU is in serious doubt.

Look at 2001: A Space Odyssey for example. In 1969, it looked like a fairly reasonable prediction of what things would be like in 2001 (42 years away), given the rate of change at the time in aerospace technology. By 1974, it still didn't look too bad. It didn't start looking overly optimistic until probably the late 80s, 20 years later.

Also, if Stross is one of those writers who makes multi-book story arcs spanning over a decade (like Herbert did with the Dune series), that's a sure recipe for total failure when doing near-term sci-fi. Stuff just changes too fast; Herbert's stuff worked sorta-Ok because Dune was set 8000 years in the future (IIRC), but even there one big premise was the idea of genetic memories, which were postulated when he started, but eventually disproven with greater knowledge of genetics, probably before he finished his last book.

This is stuff like Blade Runner worked well: it was a singular story, set about 35 years into the future. At the time, it looked like a somewhat reasonable depiction of 35 years in the future, though rather grim. Of course, now it's almost 2017 and things don't look anything like that, so it's interesting to watch from a historical perspective. It is a little disturbing that they now want to milk it with a sequel after all this time, when obviously things aren't going to look anything like that in 1 year, but I guess I can ignore it like I ignore the Matrix sequels.

pasbesoinonAug 3, 2013

People lie. People project onto others what they wish they had themselves. Advice not followed. Choices they wish they'd made. Past circumstances as opposed to current circumstances.

There's no getting around making your own decisions. And living with them.

TANSTAAFL. Google (Wikipedia) it. Maybe read some Heinlein. Realize that while Heinlein may have some interesting things to say, he too was writing fiction.

Physical health is the foundation of everything else. Don't compromise it lightly.

From Frank Herbert's "Dune": "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

My qualification: Fear is useful, in the short term. As are anger, and other "negative" emotions. Pay attention, and work to solve/resolve those situations. Left unresolved, they become poison.

There's a lot of good in the world, too. Nurture and trust your instincts. Don't put up with crap. Make it a priority to be in a position where you are not forced to do so.

Don't put other people in the position where they are forced to do so.

A good part of your strength and resilience come from your community (whatever that is -- not necessarily geographically defined). Take care of it, and it will take care of you.

People learn by example. Whether face to face, or in text -- the example has to ring true. Or rather, the example will ring true, whether what that ends up being is what you intended to convey, or not.

This is some random guy's advice. TANSTAAFL.

BlameKanedaonDec 13, 2019

- I've been participating in https://www.reddit.com/r/ayearofwarandpeace since January 2nd of this year. I've stuck with it and we're very close to the end of the book. It's true that the book's long, but nearly every chapter can be read in 15 minutes or less, which is how we've been able to stretch it out.

Books that I've started but haven't finished (primarily due to W&P):

- Dune (Frank Herbert)

- Men At Arms - Discworld (Pratchett)

- The Diamond Age (Stephenson)

- Neuromancer (Gibson)

- The Shadow Rising - Wheel of Time (Jordan)

- Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)

Books that I plan on reading in 2020:

- Little Women (Alcott)

- Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Evans)

- A Walk in the Woods (Bryson)

iwwronJuly 4, 2015

Dune is a fine work and stands on its own pretty well, but Kunzru gets fixated on the first one and misses out on the depth of the latter books. The first 3 (including Dune) explore the Muad'Dib's rise to power and his new imperial system, book 4 is his son's very long reign and books 5-6 explore the dissolution of that system over the centuries. The story arc spans thousands of years. The central theme as I'd see it is the domination of humans by 'oracles' -- creatures with access to resources that dominate by both predicting and shaping the future.

Paul Atreides is not merely a "white man who fulfils a persistent colonial fantasy", he didn't arrive in a vacuum. Fremen culture has been shaped by the oracles, their religion, traditions and prophecies were planted to suit the aims of the oracles. Paul recognized first that Dune is not merely a central position worth holding, but _the_ source of power in that universe, control over Dune means control over the universe. So it's very much a story of hydraulic despotism, of the natural resource curse. How do you break the curse? Herbert's answer is 'technology'. Technology created the problem but it's also ultimately the solution.

ghshephardonJuly 19, 2014

Perhaps my reading behavior is atypical - but "Hyperion", "I Robot", "Ringworld", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Dune" - none of the books I read were in the Kindle Unlimited List, and they were all in the Vancouver Public Library.

I love the concept - but I need at least a 50% hit rate on the books I read before i'll be willing to pay $120/year to use it.

shawndumasonDec 21, 2010

52. Dune – Frank Herbert

KirinDaveonSep 2, 2018

So after seeing this story I decided to learn basic Shavian and, about 4 days in, I can read like a 3rd grader. I thought this might be a problem for Shavian, as well, but after experiencing it; it's really not.

Go check out something like a copy of Dune (https://shavian.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/2/1/10212142/dune_fir...) and turn it on its side (or even flip it over). It's not really an issue to immediately recognize what the right way up is. If nothing else, a single proper noun will give the entire game up.

It's not like Shavian is unique in that different orientations of the text can resemble proper letterforms. Many scripts have that and they're just fine.

saturdaysaintonApr 20, 2017

So the creator of Eraserhead, Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet is being lectured to about world building? Dune is one of the few Lynch works I haven't seen, but given his oeuvre I'm willing to chalk up any lapse to him not being on his game for a moment.

As far as the title of this article is concerned, I doubt that Lynch is overly concerned with any genre so much as the ineffable, ill-defined language of human dreams and desires.

Anon84onDec 27, 2010

I've just finished Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga and it's definitely one of the best books I've read in a long time.

The first three Dune novels are particularly good. Dune has a tendency to get more philosophical in the later volumes (plans within plans within plans).

If I had to choose an all time favorite I would probably go with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red/Green/Blue Mars). An extremely well researched view of how Mars colonization and terraforming might proceed in a realistic way.

He also has a trilogy on the possible/likely consequences of runaway global warming (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting) but RGB Mars is definitely better.

Edit: "The content of Green Mars and the cover artwork for Red Mars are included on the Phoenix DVD, carried onboard Phoenix, a NASA lander that successfully touched down on Mars in May 2008. The First Interplanetary Library is intended to be a sort of time capsule for future Mars explorers and colonists." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy#On_Phoenix_spacecr...

bowlichonAug 21, 2018

I picked Dune/Song of Ice and Fire because they're thematically similar.

In terms of bloat, excluding the Tale of Genji or the Story of the Stone, I can hardly think of anything in the 1800s that pushes into the 1M+ word mark in order to tell a complete story. I mean, people used to joke about War & Peace being long and it's hovering around 1/2 a million words -- and at least when I read it, Tolstoy seemed to be using every last one of them.

TychoonOct 10, 2010

I agree with the other posters who said science fiction creates a 'universe' for the imagination to dwell upon, whereas other entertainments might just create some characters to remember. Also in creating a universe the author can leave many details out, creating the opportunity for debate amongst the fans. People still debate character motivations in normal entertainment etc. but they don't involve the same interconnectednesss and logicality usually (those things are apparent in Shakespeare though, which of course is endlessly discussed).

Anyway what's eveyone's favourite universe? Mine's probably Frank Herbert's Dune novels. I've been looking at them again recently and realised how much of he writing, especially the epigraphs before each chapter, went over my head. He's writing about the deepest trends in human history and behaviour. I thought it was just a bunch of cool scifi ideas. I also love the Marathon universe for its AI characterization though.

kenonJan 10, 2009

I really didn't get Shakespeare until I saw it performed. His plays are plays for a reason, after all. That's enough (for me) to blow away the "requires authorial control" theory: no two performances are the same.

Or any book: everybody reads it and has a different mental image of what's going on. (How many people read Dune and saw it as Lynch did?) In a book, you're given fixed words and given free reign on the visual and auditory axes. In a game, you're given fixed audiovisuals and given free reign on plot. I don't see how one could be inherently artistic, and the other not. Only a movie reviewer (where virtually everything is fixed) could claim that lack of viewer participation is the defining attribute of art.

lobster_johnsononSep 9, 2011

> Personally, though, I wouldn't put Dune or any Gene Wolfe on my Top 100 SF novels. Could never get past the first pages.

Try Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus and see if you might change your mind. It's very readable, and it's pleasantly short. It's half Borges, half Sturgeon, with a pinch of Ray Bradbury.

HavoconMay 5, 2012

I don't feel that the marketing or curation is problematic really. However:

Suppose I want to buy "A Song of Ice and Fire" for my Kindl - a reasonable enough proposition in my view. A quick check reveals two problems: Firstly those bits & bytes are somehow more expensive than the massmarket paperback - which is completely ridiculous. Secondly both the individual books and the set have warnings (either by amazon or reviewers) that clearly state that its a criminally bad OCR job.

So essentially the product is overpriced and defective. Doesn't matter under what genre you file that its a crap purchase.

Same thing for the Dune series. So in the mean time I think I'll just side-load books until Amazon sorts their shit out. Hell I'd even look past the overpriced bit if they fix the crap OCR jobs.

kenonJuly 26, 2019

Audiences have trouble with 'big ideas'. They're hard to put on screen, and besides, if people really wanted that, they'd be reading a book, not watching an action movie. Art these days has to have something fun to hook people and get them to try to accept something new. Sometimes, the fun part is so good that it overwhelms the interesting part.

That's why I'm frustrated by The Matrix. Stripped of the action, the first movie is basically mid-age wish fulfillment. You have a respected, well-paid, safe yet boring job you hate, and then somebody comes and offers you a way out. For the low cost of nothing, you can abandon your zero-attachment life, become a martial arts master in a day, and then superman, simply by deciding to be. You no longer need money. You can solve all your problems by punching, shooting, and running away.

The sequels start to delve into the idea that maybe being superman isn't all it's cracked up to be. As with the later "Dune" novels, the hero discovers his powers make him the object of worship, even though this is bad for everyone. He can pull strings, but ultimately has to sacrifice himself for humanity to be saved. (In Neo's case, of course, there's lots more punching first.) We see an inner circle who understand where their superman's power comes from, know that he's not a god, and get that this doesn't excuse you from needing to fight.

snowwrestleronMar 9, 2015

I would also highly recommend James Gleick's biography of Newton, which spends quite a bit of time on his alchemical work.

The short story is that we can look back with the filter of 200+ years of science to appreciate Newton's role in the founding of what we know as science today, so we focus on his work in math and physics. But Newton did not have that perspective; he was discovering then, for himself, what we now take for granted. Some of his work produced lasting results, some did not.

A much more recent example of a similar effect is the high levels of interest in ESP and mental powers in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Enormous numbers of very serious and educated scientifically minded people believed that it was possible that we would discover latent powers of the mind. We never did, and today that stuff is largely a punchline among the scientifically minded.

To get a sense of this, read "golden age" sci-fi from these decades and see how often mental powers are included. Asimov's Foundation series, Larry Niven's Known Space series, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, and of course Herbert's Dune series are just a few examples.

goatloveronMay 13, 2021

Almost all science fiction has some leap of imagination to make the story work. The Expanse tv show (and books) have the Epstein Drive and the protomolecule stuff. Obviously Star Trek is even more fantastical, so is Dune, or almost any space science fiction. Maybe Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars is an exception (one has to assume fully terraforming Mars in a couple centuries is in fact doable), but there's no movie or tv show for those books.

fatbirdonSep 23, 2020

SPOILERS BELOW:

It think this is an oversimplification. Mentats still had agency--both Piter de Vries and Thufir Hawat have their mentat schemes to kill the Baron Harkonnen.

One of the big points of the Dune series is the indeterminacy of the universe. Computers, being deterministic, couldn't think properly to handle the full universe, so humanity's subjugation to computers (i.e., "machine thinking", both as rule by computer and as habits of thought for humans) was a dead end. Dependency on computers also meant people didn't develop human skills.

After the Butlerian Jihad, the Guild, the Mentats, and the Bene Gesserit all became schools of human development. Mentats aren't just human computers who perform calculations quickly. They cultivate almost zen-like mental states that allow them to sift patterns of data into conclusions, among other techniques. The later books go into much more detail, but part of the point is that they're not deterministic thinkers; they're practitioners of very advanced modes of consciousness.

dragonwriteronMay 20, 2014

> the fact that Paul is basically infallible irks me.

It's supposed to.

> I did read a critique of Dune recently that suggested that Herbert initially wanted to show how dangerous superheros are. This explains a bit about why Paul is a superhero: he has to be to make Herbert's thesis. However, then I'd be rooting for him to fail and I don't like the stories where the protagonist is evil in some subtle way and you are supposed to root for them to fail.

Paul isn't evil and you aren't supposed to root for Paul to fail; insofar as the critique that Herbert is trying to illustrate that superheroes are dangerous is correct, it is correct in the traditional sense of "superhero" where "evil" is very much not part of the mix.

An evil "superhero" is a supervillain, and illustrating that supervillains are dangerous wouldn't be particularly interesting. Supervillains are useful dramatic tools because their danger is blatantly obvious.

sid6376onSep 9, 2011

While I am a voracious reader, I have just started reading sci-fi. (Just finished dune, Starting with stranger in a strange land).
Just in case anyone's interested, here's a list of the books mentioned in the article and some famous hackers and entrepreneurs who like the books:

Snow Crash - Sergey Brin

Dune - Michael Arrington

Stranger in a strange land -Michael Arrington ,Linus Torvalds

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - Michael Arrington

Ender's Game- Mark Zuckerberg

Anathem - Michael Arrington

Source: my hobby site http://vipreads.com

Links to individual people:

http://vipreads.com/sergey-brin

http://vipreads.com/linus-torvalds

http://vipreads.com/mark-zuckerberg

http://vipreads.com/michael-arrington

baneonJune 7, 2012

An old classmate of mine had an English professor in college who, upon questions of why there was no Science Fiction on the reading list for the year, derisively called it irrelevant trash prose or some such while making pew pew sounds.

He managed to overcome this by gifting the teacher a dog eared copy of Dune stating "it's an allegory".

The book went unread for some time, but a year later the professor looked him up to let him know that he had read Dune, found it intriguing in how many subjects it touched, from social issues to ecology to economics and called it profound. He asked for some more recommendations upon which he rapidly became a fan of Clark, Heinlein (who he had read before, but now again with new eyes) and a few others.

I was with my classmate one day years later at a grocery store and this professor saw him and walked up to say hi. A short conversation later and the professor mentioned how he had turned into quite a fan of the genre and regrets he had spent so long ignoring it. Some of the works, he said were "silly" but a few were some of the most profound descriptions of the human condition and where we're going as a species, coupled with some of the only explorations of the changes to the ethical landscape as technology transforms the world in literature...etc. etc. Before he left he said he had recently started reading some of the old Cyberpunk works and found himself sitting up at night with the realization that many of the things described in the books were coming true now, decades later.

It was really interesting to see a man, who must have been in his 70s by this point, catch the sci-fi religion like that.

keenerdonJuly 13, 2017

For me it is all about the world building, the practicalness of the universe presented. Dune had a decade of planning go into it before the first book was written. The rest did not have that amount of background effort and it shows. After the first book it all feels like he's making it up as he goes along, instead of drawing on an encyclopedia.

Children of Dune had the most egregious problem with this. Trying here to not spoil the plot for you, but at towards the end (page 329 of 408 in my edition) Leto discovers something profound. The backstory to introduce this was first mentioned on the previous page. It didn't use some bit of trivial from the first two books, and he couldn't be bothered to write it 300 pages earlier either. (Feel free to email me when you think you've reached that part.) The later novels are slightly better, then he's writing these new discoveries into the previous chapter.

Re-reading Dune has always been pleasurable for me. You can feel it is just the tip of an iceberg and tease out the history by reading between the lines. The other books lurch from one deus ex machina to another.

Ender's Game is also largely about consequences too. Humanity wins the fight and destroys the big bad, but this doesn't happen at the end of the book. There is still a third of the story left to mull over the consequences.

edit: Slight spoilers, but nearly all of the later Dune books essentially allow anyone to come back from the dead. He never once explores the ramifications of this. What happens if you try to bring back multiple copies of someone at once? Does every cell in our body really carry the full weight of our entire past experience? What about identical twins? What if you blended the nucleus of one person with the mitochondria of a second and the cellular plasma of a third?
Or does the procedure somehow tap into the soul? Is god annoyed that the natural cycle is broken? Does the process damage the soul? Never once delves into any of this, instead it is used only as a cop-out to avoid creating new characters.

larsbergonNov 29, 2011

I think the author is pointing out that the Kindle version of Dune is terrible. Horrible typos, bad formatting, etc.

Unfortunately, many middle-aged books have this problem, and unless you can wade through the Amazon reviews (which are not format-specific) and find out, you don't know whether the publisher just copy/pasted a text file and hit PublishNow! or actually had an editor sit down with it, mark chapters, fix typos introduced, un-break words if it was scanned, etc.

howard941onApr 20, 2017

Look, I'm a big fan of the original Dune series (not of the mess Frank Herbert's son did after his death in order to make money out of his father vision - those books actually ruined a bit of the originals for me, I actually suggest that you don't read those).

I tried to love the son's prequels but couldn't and therefore I second your comments. There were many mysteries within mysteries in Frank H's series that weren't present in the followons.

pestaaonAug 18, 2012

If you read Dune from Frank Herbert, you might recall Paul observing his father's soldiers doing their jobs in silence due to Leto (the father) giving little to no orders to them.

"If you command something once, you'll have to command it again all the time." (Paraphrased as I didn't read the English version.)

Apparently, Derek "uncommanded his soldiers."

yoz-yonJuly 26, 2018

To me it looks like the author had an idea, then the title and then was not able to actually find enough data to support the idea. They went with the title anyways.

I'd pitch two more examples:

In Dune by Frank Herbert the whole Tleilaxu population is male and nobody knows what happened to their women (this is explained later in the book). It seems odd to me that this was not mentioned in the article as I assume that Dune is more known that any of the books the author mentioned. Tleilaxu in the book have a sort of religious hatred for women.

In the The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld the initial antagonist is a race human women who have "since disposed of the useless gender" and merged with machines. This is stated as a matter of fact and is not a theme explored by the book.

peter303onAug 21, 2014

I re-read Frank's Dune books every decade and they still speak across a half century of time. In the 1960s pollution and over population were the environmental issues. But now others like global warming predominate. Plus there is a lot of Arabism in Dune and mid-East wars have been growing in the past 20 years.

blrgeekonOct 3, 2010

Want to blow your mind?

Fiction
Keep an open mind, and a sense of wonder when you read these for max effect!

Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. I was hooked at "The big yellow ships hung in the air just the way bricks don't."

Dune - what does scarcity do to a society?

Isaac Asimov - Robot series. Foundation series. All of his short stories, esp. The Last Question, Nightfall.

A.C. Clarke - 2001 - series, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise

The Little Prince, The Count of Monte Cristo, Catch-22, Siddhartha, Ender's Game, Sundiver, Wodehouse.

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