This author’s note originally appeared in the January 16th edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.
For my birthday last year, Mrs. Vasicek got me the first three books in the Dune series by Frank Herbert. I looove the new cover art, which is mostly why I wanted them, but I’ve only ever read the first book. Since the other books are on our shelves now, I pretty much have to read them, but it’s been years since the last time I read it.
So that’s why I’m reading Dune for the third time, and wow, it is so much better than I remembered. Part of that is because there is so much going on that you have to reread it two or three times just to get it all. The first time I read Dune, I thought it was okay but not all that great—certainly not on par with Lord of the Rings, which everyone compares it to. In reality, though, most of the story went right over my head. I read it again a couple of years later, after catching up on some of the lore, and that time I was much better able to appreciate it.
My own book Desert Stars takes place on a desert planet in a far distant future, but that’s basically where the similarities end. The politics of empire, with the emperor, the great houses, and the spacing guild; the Mentat human supercomputers and secretive Bene Gesserit with their megalomanaical breeding program; the Fremen, the spice, and above all else the transcendant leap in evolution, perfected in Paul Atreides, that allows certain people to see past this dimension into the future. Dune may just be the most perfect science fiction novel ever written.
Having said that, I should point out that Mrs. Vasicek doesn’t really like it. She feels that the characters fall flat, that their near-superhuman abilities strain credulity and make them much less interesting, and that the omniscient point of view makes the book too dense. In the seven months that we’ve been married, I’ve learned that I shouldn’t dismiss her judgment too quickly. Not only does it go a long way toward promoting marital tranquility, but more often than not, she’s actually right.
Then again, she’s only read Dune once. When I read it for the first time, I had many of the same criticisms. And while new things did stand out on my first rereading of it, including things about the characters, it wasn’t like they leaped off the page or the prose itself became any less dense. Mostly, it was all the other things that really stood out: the world building, the politics, and the statement the book makes about mankind’s ultimate destiny.
My new year’s resolution for 2020 is to read 100 books. When I told my sister that, she said “you should read at least 100 of them before the baby is born.” Dune is such a massive brick of a book that I’m already a couple of weeks behind, but I don’t care. It’s really, really good. I’m looking forward to the other ones!
