Revisiting DUNE

I have modest hopes for Denis Villeneuve’s forthcoming series of Dune movies. Author Frank Herbert considered himself “The Anti-Campbell” (as in Joseph Hero-With-1G-Faces Campbell). Surveying Villeneuve’s work to date there is little doubt he fashions himself similarly.

"Could be a pip."

A passage from Dune Messiah:

“What little information we have about the old times, the pittance of data the Butlerians left us, Korba has brought it for you. Start with the Genghis Khan.”
“Genghis . . . Khan? Was he of the Sardauker, m’Lord?”
“Oh, long before that. He killed . . . perhaps four million.”
“He must’ve had formidable weaponry to kill that many, Sire. Lasbeams, perhaps, or . . .”
“He didn’t kill them himself, Sil. He killed the way I kill, by sending out his legions. There’s another emperor I want you to note in passing — a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days.”
“Killed . . . by his legions?” Stilgar asked.
“Yes.”
“Not very impressive statistics, m’Lord.”

This passage brought me up short when I read it over 35 years ago. Paul Atreides — now Paul Maud’dib, benevolent overlord of the Fremen — the character I’d kinda-sorta been rooting for in the first Dune novel, compares himself favourably to Hitler because Hitler was an underachiever. Paul goes on to site his own stats the way self-satisfied gamers do: “Killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. Wiped out the followers of forty religions . . .” Frank Herbert’s tactic, however clumsily staged, achieved its desired effect with me. I’d gone from feeling ambivalent toward this “hero” to wondering why I should trouble myself with the next (at that time) three sequels awaiting my attention.

I made it through God Emperor of Dune, but after that I was done. The prose was just too stilted, finally.

Still and all, the overall concept is remarkably ambitious. And Herbert achieved an astonishing cultural penetration for an Anti-Campbell.

This recollection was inspired by Haris Durrani’s Twitter thread: “Do you think #Dune is a white saviour narrative? Well, you’re wrong.” 

I would say that when I picked up the first novel, as a Canadian suburban adolescent in 1977, I was probably unconsciously hoping for a white saviour narrative, even if I couldn’t possibly have named it as such. I knew Dune influenced Star Wars, and I loved Star Wars. But as a sci-fi nerd I’d also read widely enough to know better than to expect a cowboy show when you crack the covers on a beloved SF classic.

Dune was finally, to my eyes, a hippie book. I bought it in a hippie used-book shop on the west coast. The only people discussing it were long-hairs who stank of patchouli and something faintly skunky. Thus: hippie book.

Twelve years later, when I put down God Emperor of Dune and picked up Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers (and probably stank not a little like Calvin Klein’s Eternity For Men) I identified Herbert’s saga as post-psychedelic religious reconstruction — of a piece with Cohen’s mischief, and RAW’s, and PKD’s, and a bazillion lesser luminaries penning the freakier comic books and pulp paperbacks I was into.

To that end I wonder if Herbert would not have been best served if the studios had just left David Lynch to follow his whims. But here we are; Villeneuve should do just fine.