Re: I guess we'll have a few disagreements here, Dom 
- Edit 1
- Edit 1Before modification by DomA at 22/04/2010 04:32:19 AM
Herbert saw Dune Messiah as a kind of coda to the first book. He had been convinced that Dune was a more powerful book if it stopped when Paul became Emperor, without his downfall.
Dune and Dune Messiah had originally been envisioned as a single book. The Anti-Hero of Paul Atreides was not at all desirable by the publishers, which along with the length of the text was why it was split up.
Yeah, I know.
In the French edition of Dune Messiah (that unlike the original American edition is merged with Dune - with no alteration to the text of any kind, though), the foreword explains that Dune Messiah is a kind of coda to Dune that originally was to be the third part of the novel, but that Frank's publishers didn't wamt him not to include, and in the end he was convinced it was for the best. IIRC, in America DM was first published (or the first part of it only, I don't remember) not as a novel but in a SF magazine.