Dune

So, I’ve just done what I always seem to end up doing every few fortnights or so, which is to tear through a science fiction novel as quickly as possible. I know it doesn’t do justice to a classic, but I seem to have a thing with picking up books and having to finish them. This behavior doesn’t extend anywhere else… erm, except for tearing through webcomics. Maybe it’s just a story related thing; I start a story, and I need to finish it to maintain mental continuity in the easiest way possible by never popping out of it. Anyways, it’d be helpful if I could stop doing it with stories, and do it with projects or homework, since something might actually get done then.

So, if you couldn’t tell from the title, I read Dune this time around. First impressions: for being half a century old, it seems amazingly modern in respects, meaning there aren’t too many obvious anachronisms that show up in the course of the story (versus, say, any story that assumed we would have or even want flying cars by now). However, I don’t like the use of ‘atomics’ in the story: it dates it to a time when nuclear power was considered formidable, which could prove to be interesting when the next few generations grow up with even more destructive power. Yes, these small things don’t negatively affect the story much, but if Frank Herbert had instead come up with a analog to atomics similar to his invention of Hemholtz fields, the story (in the details, at least) could last longer without causing people to double take.

The novel can also be considered fundamentally anachronistic, since it’s a reflection of the feudal structure in the European Middle Ages, much in the same way that Foundation paralleled the fall of the Roman Empire, with the obvious twist: what would happen if someone saw the fall coming, and took measures to change the aftermath? However, Dune is somewhat more of a traditional story, a revenge story that could be an isomorphic fit to a revenge story in the middle ages (I immediately thought the Count of Monte Carlo would be a good fit, but it turns out that the Count doesn’t have prescient visions, and doesn’t head a horde of Mongols). So, the story structure is familiar, although it’s a bit sparse in narrative, similar to the story telling of Foundation. I swear, these authors must have been copying each other or something! (ha) Even the faux historical quotations heading each chapter fit. And they’re both pretty good stories: just enough detail in the story to keep you involved, in the right places, with a particular de-emphasis on battle scenes, similar to how Ender’s Game describes only the formative or deciding battles of Ender. It makes you wonder how the science ficton genre has gotten so disjointed, with an emphasis on battles in cinema, and a general plot/sci-fi detailing on the page.

Although the Foundation is pretty similar to Dune, the book I immediately thought of when reading about the ecological emphasis was Mother of Demons, a relatively obscure science fiction novel by Eric Baen (which is also made freely available on the internet, as of 2009). Both introduce a new alien life form most people don’t bother to imagine (if they can): Dune introduced the sandworm, and Mother of Demons introduced an intelligent mollusk-like life form. The extremity of environments was perhaps more innovative in Dune, since (I guess) the collective mind usually thinks of a alien planet being filled with growth, instead of being barren and hostile to life, even though it makes sense that only those places hostile to life produce life that can survive for long (which is a theme Dune tries to drive home. I guess it worked on me). While I speak of themes, another theme shared by both novels is that occassional defeat is good for the growth of an entity, be it a person, corporation, or army (Orson Scott Card obviously did not subscribe to this thought).

While there are another 6 or so books in the Dune series proper, I think I’ll have to pass on the rest if they tend to be like other classic science fiction series: good series starters, and diminishing returns on the sequels/prequels. I noticed it happening in Ender’s Game and the sequels/companion novels, where there wasn’t a drop in quality, but rather a repetition of themes and thoughts. I know they aren’t all the same, but there’s only so much of another universe I can introduce into mine. I also know that the other Dune books have a different emphasis, introspection on defeat despite prescience rather than victory; maybe another day.