I'm not quite sure what you mean by "not much", as later on in your comments you complain about many of the elements influenced by greek theatre, like your complaint that the characters aren't fully realised/realistic as human beings in their thoughts/actions/motivations (they're on purpose idealised, or villified or the writer's focus is only on some specific traits, like Leto) etc., the staticity/theatricality of it all, like the (famous) dinner scene in which it seems each character in turn makes an aparté to the audience to explain his/her motivations aloud etc. It's the theatrical effect the many bits of inner thoughts were meant to create. You noticed it seemed unnatural and called this "sloppy writing", but you obviously missed that those scenes were written to feel unnatural/fixed up/staged:



You might dislike the literary devices/conceits Herbert used for Dune, but they were very calculated effects - is it really fair to call that flaws or "unfortunate tendencies".

The echoes of greek choruses through the novel (the opening quotes are meant to evoke that, notably) could be added to those "theatrical effects" in Dune.

The blatant use of the house of Agamemnon was a clue to the reader about the real nature of the story he's reading, that it's more a gospel or myth than a factual account. Along the way, we are supposed to ask ourselves: "isn't that a bit wooden/stilted, a bit too theatrical or idealized? Is that the real story or a staged version of it?

You call Herbert's narrative sloppy but it's actually those stylistic choices that don't agree with you. To me, it's a bit as if you were saying about Book of the New Sun that Gene Wolfe was sloppy because in several places his narrator with a perfect memory seems to contradicts himself.

Like BotNS, Dune (at least the first one) is not a "naturalist" novel, with a reliable omniscient narrator and "realistic" characters depicted naturalistically. The whole novel is a politico-religious propaganda effort written by Paul's wife, mid-way between the tragedy, the panegyric and the heroic epic. Herbert told us of the Missionaria Protectiva and the machinations of the Bene Gesserit to influence human beliefs... the perspicacious reader was to question along the way (or the very least, by the end) if he was not reading such an fixed-up account of the rise of Paul Atreides, not at all neutral but heavily biased, and depicting the players in near mythico-religious ways. The gospel of Irulan.

The exaggerated care taken by Irulan to highlight the motivations and thoughts of everyone in the novel as she interprets them or rather as she wishes her readers to interpret them isn't "sloppy"; Herbert meant with scenes like that to lift the veil a bit on the motivations of the narrator behind these more obviously stilted and staged scenes, make the reader conscious that none of these scenes was told in a natural/realistic/neutral way but all are very carefully staged recreations or inventions by someone who cared very much that her readers interpret the motivations of all the players in the "catholic", Imperial way. This all works as clues to the existence of this unreliable narrator who is not fully "revealed" before the end (and when it is, Herbert doesn't insist on this aspect much at all - it's up to the reader to catch up). Irulan is the most elusive of the main characters of Dune. She's virtually not in there, yet she's there in every scene and no other character has her influence on our perception of the story, and of Paul.

The inner monologues and stilted tone aren't so typical of Herbert's style, they're part of his "tool box" for Dune.



I guess you do well to put "ecological" in quote marks, as Dune isn't an ecological novel in the sense we'd give that expression today (even though Herbert was a proto-Green).

There's a very great deal of ecology in Dune but there isn't that much of an ecological message, at least not in comparison to some of Herbert's lesser-known novels with ecological themes.

Herbert's treatment of women certainly would raise eyebrows in the early 21st century.

At least by people who don't understand the characters in his book are depicted in near archetypal/mythico-religious ways. The women don't escape the ancient molds mythology and religion confine them to (witch, temptress, pure virgin/maid, mother, wise one etc.), but neither do the men in Dune.... men are just as confined to traditional roles as women are.

That doesn't make Herbert a sexist or a mysogyn, especially when his vision of religions and myths is very critical and even cynical. The Bene Gesserit isn't a critique of women in general so much as a reflect of Herbert's deep dislike for catholic nuns (and catholicism in general, IRRC)....

His treatment of homosexuality is even more troublesome for the modern reader.

Bah... that's only "troublesome" to readers who take everything in fiction as a social/moral commentary or as the reflect of the opinion of the author on a given issue. Herbert made no general homophobe commentary in Dune.


It's far more telling of how much "political correctness" has infected the "modern reviewer" that these issues are so often brought up about Dune. It's neither an especially sexist nor an homophobe book.

Pedophilia is a complete non-issue. The Baron is a fat ugly ogre who destroys youth and beauty and symbolically grows fat feeding on them - pregnant with his own death instead of a child, not a pedophile. Technically, his minions are teenagers and too old for his appetites to be labelled pedophilia. The only aspect of homosexuality Herbert was interested in was largely symbolic, in the fact homosexuality is an antithesis of the procreative drive. The Baron's death-courting behaviour is meant by Irulan to contrast as sharply as possible with Paul and Chani. The statement isn't moral so much as anthropological.

A more controversial and interesting aspect of Dune today deals with the justification of terrorism as the weapon of choice against culturo-economic imperialism. In the days Herbert wrote this, the opinion was still sympathetic to people oppressed by the old colonial powers (UK, France, Russia and so on). Published today, Dune would probably cause a bit of a scandal and be interpreted as a virulent critique of America, almost a glorification of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda....