Every few years or so, I reread Dune (1966, USA), which I think I first read back in the late 1970s. Well, perhaps every decade or so. It’s not the book, science fiction or otherwise, I’ve reread the most. But, every now and again, I reread Dune — usually with the intention of reading right through to the final book penned by Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune (1985, USA). Sometimes, I stop after the first book, other times I manage the original trilogy. Much less often, I make it through all six books.
I suspect it’s because I’ve always felt intimidated by the size of God Emperor of Dune (1981, USA), the fourth book of the series. And yet, at 496 pages, by modern standards it’s not an especially large book. And rereading it this time, as an ebook, proved pretty much painless.
At the end of Dune, Paul Atreides has determined humanity’s future needs to be safeguarded — chiefly, it is implied from stagnation caused by the imperium’s autocratic rule and restrictive society. One solution he calls the “Golden Path”, but the personal cost is high and he’s unwilling to pay it. Nonetheless, he unleashes a crusade — it’s called the Great Jihad, but it’s not really a jihad — in order to mix up the human gene pool. It’s not enough, so his son, Leto, at the end of Children of Dune (1976, USA), chooses the option Paul refused…
Leto Atreides has become the god emperor, part-human and part-sandworm, with a lifespan measured in millennia, and a prescient ability a great deal more powerful than his father’s. By the time God Emperor of Dune opens, he has been in power for some 3,500 years, and the imperium has changed a great deal under his rule. As has Arrakis. Leto II controls the remaining supply of spice, and uses it to keep the Guild, the Bene Gesserit and the Tleilaxu in line. He has an entirely female corps of soldier-priests, called the Fish Speakers, who enforce his rule. The Golden Path now, however, has a different objective: developing humans who cannot be seen by prescience. As personified in Siona Atriedes, the product of very long breeding programme overseen by Leto II, the daughter of the god emperor’s current major domo, and a rebel. Leto II has had a vision in which humans hide from killer machines who use prescience to seek them out.
It’s a scene straight out of The Terminator, which it predates by three years… although Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker stories had been around since 1967. One of the major elements of Dune was that computers and AI were banned, and had been for a very long time, ever since the Butlerian Jihad, an uprising against “thinking machines”. When Herbert flipped the Golden Path to engineering humanity to be invisible to prescience— an ability which had only existed, in a very limited form, in the Guild Navigators, until the appearance of Paul Atreides… Since Leto II’s breeding project had an objective, it needed a reason for that objective. So Herbert needed a new enemy: he resurrected the thinking machines of the Butlerian Jihad.
Frank Herbert died before he could complete the Dune series, and Chapterhouse Dune ends with a weird scene in which a man and woman seem to look in on the Dune universe from somewhere else. Naturally, this inspired a great deal of speculation on how Herbert would end the series. Who were this mysterious Marty and Daniel? There is some speculation in God Emperor of Dune, by Leto II, that the Face Dancers have become, or are developing, a hive mnetality or gestalt intelligence. And there has been speculation by fans that Marty and Daniel were evolved Fance Dancers.
But.
If Herbert laid two trails in God Emperor Dune — and he clearly does — that is, the return of the machines, or evolved Face Dancers… the plot of God Emperor of Dune is still about breeding a prescience-invisible human, and that doesn’t fit with the evolved Face Dancer future. Clearly, Herbert was planning to bring back the thinking machines.
Except… could he have changed his mind by Chapterhouse Dune?
When Frank Herbert’s son Brian, with the help of Kevin J Anderson, decided to complete the Dune series, they reportedly based their two sequels on notes left by Frank Herbert in a safe deposit box. Fans were sceptical. Mostly because the Legnds of Dune trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, written to lay the background for the introduction of the thinking machines as the enemy, are really bad. Really really bad. Nor did it fit in with speculation about the Face Dancers.
Myself, I’m not sure. God Emperor of Dune makes it clear Leto II is working to save humanity from future eradication by thinking machines. But later books in the series — which I admit I have yet to read on this particular reread — seem to confuse matters.
There have been doubts expressed about the existence of the notes found in the safety deposit box. Partly, I think, because fans didn’t trust Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson after the Legends of Dune trilogy — and, when the sequels eventually appeared, Hunters of Dune (2006, USA) and Sandworms of Dune (2007, USA)… Well, I can sympathise.
I’ve always felt Frank Herbert was one of the most thoughtful sf writers of his generation, but the Dune series was not an especially good demonstration of his strengths. With Dune, he had put a lot of work into the world-building, to excellent effect, but had also tried to make his writing more poetic, usually by writing haikus and then building up his prose from them. It didn’t work. Some of the writing in Dune is really quite bad. If you want to see good prose by Herbert — and he was indeed capable of it — check out some of his other novels, such as The Green Brain (1966, USA) or The Santaroga Barrier (1968, USA). Dune and its sequels have cast a long shadow over Herbert’s career. And it’s going to get worse — as the new film premieres, and the TV series goes into production, and all the related merchandise starts to appear…
Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson did not do Dune, as an intellectual property, any favours… but they kept it alive for the time it took for Hollywood to fnally get its act together. Again. I consider Dune one of science fiction’s premier works of world-building. Herbert was a much better writer than the Dune books suggest, but he was also very much a writer of his time. After my most recent read of God Emperor of Dune, I’m inclined to think Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson did indeed write a Dune 7 that was close to what Frank Herbert intended.
I’m just not sure that was a) a good idea, or b) what he finally intended when he finished Chaperhouse Dune.
