Frank Herbert's Dune

This book was my first adult science fiction I laid my hands on. I was eleven at that time- and the only reason I bought it was because it bore resemblance to a computer game I had played years before.

The first time I read it, it was a nightmare. Dune was a confusing, bewildering goulash of high-class words and concepts that were beyond my mind. Remember- I was only eleven, and had only finished reading the entire series of Hardy Boys and Enid Blyton. I read it three times through before everything clicked- and damned be it was superb. Heck it won the first scifi award.

Nobody can size down Dune in a single blog post. I’ve tried.

A small excerp as a teaser.

A predatory look filled the old woman's features. She lifted her hand away from the box and poised her hand close to the side of Paul's neck. He saw a glint of metal there and started to turn to it.

"Stop!" she snapped. He swung his attention back to her face.

"I hold at your neck the gom jabbar," she said. "Its a needle with a poison at its tip. Ah ah! Dont pull away or you'll feel that poison."

Paul tried to swallow in a dry throat. He could not take his attention away from the seamed old face, the glistening eyes, the pale gums around silvery metal teeth that flashed as she spoke.

"A dukes son must know about poisons, eh?" she said. "Its the way of our times. Musky, to be poisoned in your drink. Aumas, to be poisoned in your food. The quick ones and the slow ones, and the ones in between. Here is a new one for you: The gom jabbar. It kills only animals!"

Pride overcame Paul's fear. "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he demanded.

"Lets say, I suggest you may be human."

The main main main plot (for there are many main plots) revolves around the Spice, melange, a greatest substance in the history of humankind. It is a geriatric substance that changes the whole DNA make up of a persons body. It amplifies every higher senses, heightens the body’s immunogenic system, extend the human life span by hundreds of years, gives access to racial memories and enables space travel.

It enables interstellar travel by allowing Navigators to ‘see’ into the space-time continuum, and predict possible outcomes. The ship will not wallop into a star or asskick into a nebula.

Aha! But Spice can only be found on the Dessert planet Arrakis.

So he who controls Arrakis, controls the Spice, controls the future, controls humanity, controls the universe. And that’s what the whole plot is mainly about. Spice. And remember, this book was published circa 1965, so this concept was regarded as very new, and very amazing at that time. It astounded people, and it astounded me.

It wipes out most science fiction books out there on a stellar scale. Go get it in your local bookstores today! This is VERY WELL an advertisement.

Ps- I have read it fifteen times now since eleven. Not including the rest in the chronicles. Yes. Im a fanatic. And im reading it again, after SPM. Let the Spice flow!