★★★★★ 5
Considered to be the best science fiction novel ever written.
Format: Mass Market Paperback
This book is often considered to be the best science fiction novel ever written and for good reason.
_Dune_ is a 1960s-era science fiction novel, published on the cusp of the Golden Age and the New Wave. Science Fiction of the time was in a transitional period influenced by the periodical _Galaxy_. SF at the time emphasized what some would call soft science fiction, a genre dealing with psychology, sociology, and sociopolitical commentary, with the bonus of one or more unique original ideas and a Sense of Wonder.
Within these domains, _Dune_ hits every note a book of its genre could possibly hit and does so brilliantly. This is not anything like what passes for science fiction today, as the genre has been heavily-influenced by the Modernist movement and is now characterized by meandering fiction with long atmospheric narrative descriptions and no idea content other than politically-correct gender diversity, as is often found in a Gardner Dozois Year's Best anthology.
This novel seems more nuanced and cogent to me today as an adult than it did when I first read it as a teen. The explorations of preternatural consciousness, mind control, economics, religion, and political intrigue are fascinating.
But _Dune_ was also revolutionary in its use of what was then called Ecology (now called Environmental Science) as a hard science. This book is a high mark in the achievement of hard-science worldbuilding. After all these years it is still the most well-thought out and well-fleshed out worldview in the entire SF canon. Its complex, logical worldbuilding is presented in what was the then-prominent Science Fiction protocol of revealing the world little by little through contextual clues rather than inserting infodumps of description. As such it takes more work to read than a more modern book with infodumps. Readers who find the book boring aren't reading it with Science Fiction reading protocols and apparently most of them are too callow to resonate with some the book's political, economic, and sociocultural commentary.
The genre was about ideas, not literary modernism, so you will not find the book filled with metaphors and literary allusions such as one might find in a Creative Writing MFA's workshopped short story, although Paul's story is clearly the Hero's Journey and he is obviously a Messiah figure as well as a military/political leader.
The characters may not be as well-rounded as in a Dostoevsky novel but in case you missed it, the main character isn't really Paul. The main character is the planet Arrakis. Read this book with that in mind and you'll be amazed.
For those expecting a Hollywood superhero comic-book style movie with action scenes and high-definition special effects, there is some of that in here too, but that is not the main point. This is a Frank Herbert novel of ideas, not a David Lynch film of striking visuals.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2018
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