I’m a big fan of the Dune universe. Perhaps not so much of the novels which originally comprised it — my opinions on them tend to change since I’ve read them so many times, and right now I’m sort of thinking God Emperor of Dune (1981, USA) is the best of the six. Because, of course, only the Frank Herbert-authored books count. But I’m also a fan of Willis E McNelly’s The Dune Encyclopedia (1984, USA), which I think did more with throwaway elements of Frank Herbert’s world-building than, well, Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson have done in, to date, seventeen novels and three collections. One of which is Paul of Dune (2008, USA), set in the years immediately following Dune (1966, USA) and before Dune Messiah (1969, USA).
Part of the problem is Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson are really bad writers. Rumour has it Anderson was quite good once upon a time, but he made a career decision to privilege quantity over quality. It has served him well over the years — but you can’t focus on output at the expense of quality, and then be surprised when people point out your books are shit. I mean, Frank Herbert was not a great writer — I consider him the most thoughtful of his generation of science fiction authors, but that doesn’t mean his prose didn’t vary from bad to mostly inoffensive, and only occasionally did it drift into good. He managed to write a couple of novels with some fine lucid prose, but Dune wasn’t one of them. The opposite, in fact: Herbert based his descriptive prose in Dune on hastily-penned haikus, and the end result… does not work.
But. Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. I credit them with re-igniting interest in the Dune universe. Although Frank Herbert’s novels were readily available, the boardgame published by Avalon Hill in 1979 was long out of print. There’d been David Lynch’s 1985 movie, of course, which did badly at the box office, and later became a cult hit. But Herbert Jr & Anderson’s Prelude to Dune trilogy (1999 — 2001) put Dune back on the bestseller charts. There were also two SyFy Channel miniseries in 2000 and 2003, although response to them was mixed.
Herbert Jr & Anderson kept up the pressure, following the Prelude to Dune trilogy with the execrable Legends of Dune trilogy (2002 — 2004), and promoting a long list of future works set in the universe. If their sales began to flag some time around 2010 or 2011, their tireless work and deathless prose at least kept Dune in the public eye long enough for Hollywood to attempt a new film adaptation, first by Peter Berg, then by Pierre Morel. These never came about, but by 2016 Denis Villeneuve was in talks to direct a Dune movie…
Which, of course, was released in 2021, although only the first part of Herbert’s novel; part two followed in 2023 — my unpopular opinion is the first film is better than the book, and greatly superior to the second.
Except. Now Dune is fucking everywhere. Dune is no longer collectable, because it’s impossible to keep up. Twenty years ago, there was a single role-playing game based on Dune, Last Unicorn Games’ Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium. A test print-run of 3,000 was sold at Gen Con 33 in 2000, and copies now change hands for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. (I’ve heard conflicting reasons why it was pulled.) A couple years before that, Last Unicorn Games published a CCG. It lasted a year. The Avalon Hill boardgame was reprinted in 1984 in a tie-in edition with Lynch’s movie, plus two expansion sets, The Duel (1984, USA) and Spice Harvest (1984, USA).
But after Villeneuve’s movies, there’s now a veritable host of Dune-based RPGs and tabletop games. And, of course, the ever-growing amorphous word-swamp of novels written by Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson.
I used to collect supplements for the role-playing game Traveller, which was originally published in 1977 by GDW in three small books in a box. The game went through several generations, but in the last five to ten years the number of editions and supplements and adventures of the game has skyrocketed, thanks to the involvement of Mongoose Games (who as of last month, now own the IP, as it was donated to them by its creator, Marc Miller). Keeping up with Traveller — and I was doing really well back in the early 2000s, having found copies of all the 1970s and 1980s supplements and adventures, by licensees such as Judges Guild, Paranoia, Group One, Cargonaut Press, Seeker, DGP, and so on, and even harder to find fanzines that only lasted half a dozen issues…
But Mongoose are now churning out new Traveller material at an astonishing rate. There’s clearly a market for it: five or six years ago, a Mongoose kickstarter for a Traveller campaign box set had a target of £10,000 but quickly reached £150,000. (Yes, I was one the backers; yes, it’s a very impressive-looking box set.)
The same is now true of Dune. It’s no longer possible to collect. The two Villeneuve movies have pushed interest in the universe to the next level, the books are bestsellers once again, and everyone wants a place on the bandwagon… Dune is lucrative. I own lots of Dune-related material from the 1970s and 1980s. Including the 1978 Dune calendar (yes, really). And even some merchandise from the David Lynch movie (I drew the line at bedding and paper plates; although I do sort of wish I’d bought the action figures).
All this leaves me conflicted. I like the universe. Frank Herbert’s novels have their moments but are not especially good, yet I consider the universe Herbert created as one of the best in written science fiction. Modiphius have done an excellent job with their Dune RPG, and continue to add to it. I’m not convinced we need quite so many Dune boardgames (the original Avalon Hill one, by the way, was rereleased in 2019 by Gale Force Nine), but I welcome being able to choose.
On the other hand, it would be nice if the same were applied to the fiction. Let other authors have a go — a Dune Expanded Universe, if you will. Instead of just Herbert Jr & Anderson mining the universe’s history for their frankly shit novels. Novels set after Frank Herbert’s second unfinished trilogy, for example, might be nice. There’s so much to explore in the future of the universe he left behind, please don’t let Herbert Jr & Anderson be the only ones to document it.
Because — and this is supposed to be a review of a novel — because Paul of Dune is bad. Really bad. Every time I see a new Herbert Jr & Anderson novel, I want to buy it and read it because, well, it’s Dune. Dune. Dune. Dune.
And then I read it.
And then I want to gouge my eyes out.
Paul of Dune is set immediately after the events of Frank Herbert’s Dune, but also feature flashbacks to Duke Leto’s wedding (yes, really), and a subsequent War of Assassins into which House Atreides was dragged (yes, really). Paul of Dune retcons the shit out of stuff that would have been mentioned in the original novels if they had in fact actually happened. Duke Leto’s bride-to-be, for example, was assassinated at their wedding. You’d think this might crop up in conversation with Lady Jessica, but somehow or other Frank Herbert neglects to mention it. Paul being hunted through the jungles by an army of trained assassins? There he is, dreaming about Arrakis, and “tell me about the waters of your home world, Usul”, instead of having PTSD nightmares of Caladan indigenes being flash-fried by assassins’ incendiary bombs.
In the novel’s present, Paul sneaks off to witness his jihad at first hand, and reluctantly admit his troops are out of control. No shit. Meanwhile, back on Arrakis, a Swordmaster is building Paul the biggest palace/fortress evah in a matter of weeks. Then there’s an assassination attempt on Paul during a ceremony, and the assassin’s identity and motivation are… dumb. A second later attempt almost kills Paul, but Frank Herbert somehow fails to ever mention this.
After wading through 512 pages of lumpen prose, several questions occurred to me: why did I buy this book? why did I read it? why, in fact, does it even need to exist? The narrative immediately after Paul takes the throne adds nothing — the retcons are so inept, the book reads like it’s set in some cheap rip-off universe. The flashback narrative actually diminishes the characters. Not that the novel is strong on characterisation — for the major cast, it relies on Frank Herbert’s novels to give them depth; the rest, including the ones invented by Herbert Jr & Anderson, well, it’s one-note characterisation written in hemi-demi-semi-quavers.
I think it was in one of the Legends of Dune novels a chapter opened with the line, “Like a dragon empress, she surveyed her troops”. WTF is a “dragon empress”? Do they survey troops differently to, well, empresses? Or dragons? And WTF is a reference to a dragon doing in a Dune novel, a science fiction story set thousands of years in the future?
The writing in Paul of Dune is no better. The novel opens with Paul and family laying Duke Leto’s bones to rest in his shrine, and Paul then spends a “poignant, solitary moment with those who had loved Leto best” (p17). It’s not fucking solitary if he’s with people, is it? A Tleilaxu Master is described as having “probative little eyes” (p53), which raises all sorts of, well, legal questions. And an Atreides guard, who was exiled many years previously for failing to prevent the death of Paul’s older brother (remember him from Dune? No, me neither), apparently takes stoicism to a new level: “Like a wave-battered rock on the coast, Goire showed no reaction…” (p279). It does not say if he was wet.
Paul of Dune was intended to be the first of a quartet set during the years covered by Frank Herbert’s original trilogy. Paul of Dune was followed by Winds of Dune (2009, USA), but the remaining two novels were dropped and the quartet, now recast as a trilogy, was eventually completed by Princess of Dune (2023, USA) over a decade later. Between those two books, we’ve had the Schools of Dune trilogy, the Caladan trilogy and two collections.
There’s also a new television series, Dune: Prophecy, due later this year. From the trailer released so far, it looks pretty damn cool… but not really like Dune. But I’m looking forward to seeing it (let’s not forget the Foundation TV series was not much like Asimov’s novels; it was also much better than them). Villeneuve has promised a third Dune film, adapted from Dune Messiah. We’re suffering from a surfeit of Dune-y riches, and it would be churlish not to credit Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson with some responsibility for that state of affairs.
But I do sincerely wish they’d step back and let other people do the work of realising these new instalments in the Dune universe.
Because their books are shit.
