Dune Saga

Dune Saga

Finished the first Trilogy of the Dune Saga.

Reading these books has been a great stress to me. They have sapped all my attention and time these days. The one word description for these books would be "Grand". Frank Herbert has an extremely grand way of telling a story. Everything in the story is just epic proportional, and you can say the same about the reading pleasure you derive from it. Almost all sentences are worth reading twice. And that is exactly what I did.

Dune's world is one of the most complicated universes I have read. Asimov's Foundation world is much like ours,it is driven by science & technology, but minus all religions. The big difference being the curious science of psycho-history which predicts the behaviour of huge populations very effectively. Extremely enjoyable plots arise from this setup making Foundation series much enjoyable. A.C Clarke's universe is almost the present cleverly extrapolated( Odyssey series). Reading Odyssey is extremely enjoyable because I almost could believe all those things happened. Dune's world unlike these two is extremely cleverly and comprehensively crafted. Science and technology still plays important roles, but not as important as the people running the show. Religion is again brilliantly used to conjure the required plots. Utmost importance is given to people and their skills and their decisions, so that beautiful drama is derived from strange and fascinating situations. You can describe it as some sort of futuristic politics.

Spoiler warning (next three paras)!!

It is set in a far away future, where men have already fought a great war with thinking machines and won. It is now taboo to build a machine in the likeness of men. People have diverged out to fill up the gaps. A mentat can function as the greatest computer analysing logical data from real people-involving situations and provide you with brilliant answers. The Spacing guild has grown to monopolize space travel in such a way that all inter-stellar travel and even satellite monitoring is dependent on them. Shields have been developed to thwart projectile attacks. Result: people have to rely on poison, hand to hand combat with blades. Society has split to wealthy and powerful families known as the Major/Minor houses and those who serve them (their army). The world is still run by an Emperor and the houses have formed the Lansraad council to balance his power. Behind all these actors is the Bene Gesserit school of witches - highly trained women, brilliant, powerful, seductive and completely loyal to their common cause: to bring forth the Kwasich Haderach or the male Bene Gesserit. B.Gesserit Reverand mothers can turn back and recollect the lives of all their female ancestors, but not male. This K.H. superman can look backwards into both lines of creation as well as see the future through prescient visions. Hence, this school of women is conducting in secret, a great breeding program on all the humanity to produce this superman. Religion, superstition, politics, etc are used to achieve this. There are still more groups of stranger people who make interesting appearances in the books.

All of this complex world is somehow centered on the spice melanche produced from the planet Dune. Spice is what drives this world. Spice gives longer life to normal humans and can affect each of the above groups in a specific way. Everyone in this world is utterly dependent on it.

On this crafted world, the author has set a great struggle for power, which unfolds into the grandest drama ever. If you have the patience and are ready for some serious prose, you will enjoy reading those brilliant sentences again and again. The author has used the concepts of religion in a very effective way.

I have heard that the later books are slightly less interesting than these three. But they are said to provide a nice completion to the questions raised by the first three books. I hope to catch up with them at a later point, since it is almost impossible to read these books continuosly.