I was standing in line at Universal Studios back in 1984 and I saw a trailer for a movie. It was odd and striking. The name was Dune. I soon discovered that the movie was from a book by the same title. I was twelve years old at the time. It introduced a universe full of manipulation, politics, religion, ecology, economics, and assassins. I've reread the book dozens of times over the years and it still tells a fascinating and compelling story.
I still have my dog-eared paperback that I bought way back then. My sig line is a tribute to this book and amazing series it started. The Spice must flow! The book is set about 10,000 years in the future and humanity is a feudal society spread among across hundreds of planets called the Imperium. House Corrino rules the Imperium, but the planets are ruled by Great Houses. The Great Houses together form the Landsraad. Combined with the Spacing Guild, which has a monopoly on space travel, these three institutions form the tripod governing humanity via the Great Convention. There are other institutions which influence the course of humanity, the most critical being the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.
It is against this backdrop that the story takes place. House Atreides has been ordered to take up rule over the planet Arrakis, also known as Dune. It is the only place in the universe that makes the spice. And House Atreides is comprised of Duke Leto Atreides and his son, Paul. He has a bound concubine, Lady Jessica who is a Bene Gesserit sister.
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
Paul is the central character of the story. It is who he was born to and the events in the book which change the course of history. Paul is the product of a centuries long breeding program conducted by the Bene Gesserit and yet, he was not meant to be. His mother disobeyed orders and bore a son instead of a daughter. And with that one choice the adventure begins.
My mother obeyed her Sister Superiors where the Lady Jessica disobeyed. Which of them was the stronger? History already has answered.
I could go on and on about the story itself. How House Atreides and its feud with House Harkonnen plays out. Lots of cool stuff actually, but it is all the themes and elements which makes this a singularly outstanding work - and eventually - series.
To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
The spice is an addictive drug; it never tastes the same twice. It grants and extends life and enhances the mind. It gives the Spacing Guild navigators the ability to see the future and guide their ships through the safe courses.
The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.
The spice gave the Bene Gesserit their great abilities as well. The ability to read the genetic memory of their female ancestors, enhanced truth sense. But there are other abilities the incredibly fine nerve-muscle control that they can move a single muscle at need. They have the Voice, the ability to read a person and speak in the perfect pitch to control them and influence them. But many of these come via the Spice.
"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory — in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past . . . but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot — into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug . . . so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."
But above all the spice in this universe is an allegory to oil. How addictive it is, how there is only one source, and how he who controls it rules. The Spacing Guild would cease to function without the spice. Millions of people would die of withdrawal without it. Therefore there is only one real rule in the Imperium:
The Spice must Flow!
Another feature of the book is how religion is used as a major force. The Bene Gesserit are masters of manipulating religion to their own purposes. There is an entire group of the Sisterhood dedicated to spreading religion among populations to manipulate them should they ever need help. Dune is home to a vast, hidden, underground population called the Fremen. It is here that the Bene Gesserit spread their myths of a messiah and with it changed the course of the future.
When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.
The Bene Gesserit have used their breeding program to search for the Kwisatz Haderach, but have also used that program to play politics. They have sisters in most, if not all, Great Houses. Their first loyalty is to the Sisterhood first, the Great House second. But they are not overt in their manipulation. They have very long term goals of which the power plays in the short term merely serve plans within plans.
The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences
One of the other fascinating things that Dune taught me was about the
Law of the Minimum. Dune being a desert planet, water is highly limited and very precious. Funny how that planet holds the single most valuable commodity in the Known Universe but prizes water more.
Sometimes it is hard to remember that Dune is a story about a boy born to a noble family and forced to move to world very different from his own. His family is deposed by their enemies and he flees into hiding with his mother. It is among the outcast population that he learns the most about who he is and his destiny. From his exile he uses the power of myth to inspire a people and with them he becomes far more than anyone anticipated. However, there is a caution in the tale. Paul took up the mantle of a religious figure. He assumed the title and with it he fully embraced the myth. And there are significant consequences for that action. His Bene Gesserrit mother warned him.
So yes this book changed my life. I started to see everything in life in different ways. I was twelve, but from resources, to money, to power, to religion, things started to be a question. It was not overnight, but the simple change in perspective for a kid was key. I was fourteen when I got to the fifth book in the series, Heretics of Dune. And one of the best pieces of wisdom I have ever read I got from the final book of the original series, Chapterhouse Dune:
Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
Dune is fascinating as a story on its own, but once all the layers are peeled back what is laid out is, to me, right up there with Machiavelli when it comes to politics.