Reading Dune with a Notebook
A series this large punishes the reader who relies on memory alone. By the fourth book you have more names, more institutions and more history than most people can hold, and the books are…
The New Cycle Begins
The recent television work has done something the films never quite managed, which is to put the Sisterhood at the centre. The newest series begins before the first novel, in the years when…
Chapterhouse and the Wall That Was Never Finished
The last novel Herbert finished ends with a device vanishing into a void and a message that says the walls are being broken. It is a good ending for a book and a terrible ending for a…
Jihad, Honkai, and the Weight of Prophecy
The later cycle, the books written after Herbert's death by his son and the collaborators who finished them, divide readers into two camps. One camp finds them gripping, and the other finds…
The Long Middle
The four novels between the first book and the last one Herbert finished are the part of the series most readers treat as an obstacle, and they are the part I would put in front of a…
Sand and Silence
The 2021 film made a deliberate argument about how to adapt this material, and the argument can be stated in one line: withhold the explanation and let the world do the work. Almost…
The Miniseries That Refused to Be Short
The 2000 miniseries is the most faithful screen version of these books and the least convenient one, because it is roughly eight hours long and it was made for television, which is a…
What the 1984 Film Changed
The 1984 film is a magnificent object and a permanent source of confusion, and the confusion starts with a simple fact: for most people who love these books, the screen came first.
Landsraad, Guild, CHOAM
The politics of the first novel is not confusing, it is merely unfamiliar. Once you accept three institutions and what each of them owns, every bargain in the book becomes legible.
Herbert's Ecology Is the Real Subject
Strip away the politics for a minute and what remains is a book about a living planet being consumed. Herbert was explicit about the warning he was writing, and it is not hidden under the…
The Bene Gesserit and the Long Memory
The Sisterhood is usually described as a school of women who fight with sticks and think better than anyone else. Both descriptions are true and neither explains the organisation. What the…
Paul Atreides and the Trouble With Certainty
Every reader of these books has a favourite character, and for a great many readers that character is the boy from the first novel. It is worth noticing that this is the part of the story…
The Desert as an Economy
Take the desert out of the story for a moment and the plot becomes much easier to see. What survives is a supply chain. One substance, produced in one place, needed by everyone, worth more…
Reading Dune in Order, and Why It Matters
Almost everyone meets this series through a screen, and that is fine, but it is worth knowing what the doorway does to you. The 1984 film compresses six hundred pages into two hours and…