As I said, Herbert reverted to more traditional storytelling for the other books.



Whereas in Dune you missed it. It's all right. Most readers fail to take notice of the implications behind the fact Irulan, Paul's propagandist, is the fictitious author of the first Dune book.

It's even sometimes presented as a failure of Herbert not to have made the biased nature of the story presented in Dune more obvious.



It's not a conflicted document though, it's a biased document.

This is not an "original theory" of mine, let alone an apology of the novel. It's Herbert's own description (taken from a commentary on the poor reception Dune Messiah received among his readers). He was baffled at first that the readers were angry at him for "destroying" Paul. It was clear to him the Paul presented in Dune was not a real man but a politico-religious myth created by Irulan.



Are they meant to be so much more than ciphers considering the nature of the work, though?

It's only with the second and third books that the iconic figures of book 1 become more than icons. To an extent. I grant you characterization never was Herbert's greatest strength and certainly not a great attraction to his books. His often brilliant ideas, his settings, his complex themes and interactions almost always overshadow his characters., and often the plot (like is the case in Dune, where the Atreides tragedy is fairly secondary to the ideas and concepts) Readers who fell in love with Jessica and co. are often those who react very strongly to archetypal characters.


Dune's characters are more memorable than some in part because they are archetypal - but to me there's really only two fascinating characters in Dune, Leto II - and Odrade. Of many of his other novels I have extremely vivid memories - I could still discuss some of the themes though I've read those books last in the late 80s, but except for Fanny-May in the Whipping Star that is kind of unforgetable (and makes me remember McKie of the BuSab by incidence), I'd struggle to remember any specific character in Herbert's non-Dune works, whereas I'll always remember Ship (the spaceship that decided it is God) or Pandora (it rivals Arrakis as a "character", and it's even harsher).



These are themes Herbert returned to in his series with Bill Ransom that has never been republished in English (though Tor has reprinted a very great deal of the novels, perhaps that series is coming. Another "must" would be the collections of novellas - Herbert has a few quite outstanding ones), and in a fashion he also explored it with the toxic planet Dosadi, where people must live under dome.



But then, Dune presents an ultra conservative and even retrograd universe and the book is written as religious propaganda. That Herbert through Irulan turned everyone into archetypal figures isn't very surprising. This gets massively toned down with the latter books.



The comment about nunneries was about Fremen women?

Fremen women are a toned down version of arabic women. The Fremen are a terribly traditional society, with very defined social roles. I don't think Herbert offered this as a role model for women anymore than he was an advocate of an aristocratic society.

I'm just surprised you picked on this. I've discussed Dune with many women over the years, some of them can definitely be called feminists, and none of them ever seemed to have raised an eyebrow over Herbert's female characters.




Yeah, Eco's Lector in Fabula was part of my college curriculum too.



I'm just quite baffled that in a fairly short review and general review of Dune, the "depiction of homosexuality" is something you thought to stand out enough to be worth so many words.

It feels as if you tried to find signs the book has aged and came up with two fairly minor issues.



I don't know... I don't make this association myself, and the fact the Baron was homosexual (actually, he was rather bisexual, and impotent beside) never stood out to me as a central characteristic of the character. The guy to me is just a serial killer, his gender preferences are irrelevant. To him sex is death. His partners are young and beautiful because himself is fat, old and ugly, and he seeks to destroy what's young and beautiful. He is an Ogre, really.

I never saw him as a general and negative commentary on homosexuality.

Mind you, that's already better than the old accusation that the Baron Vladimir was intended as a very offensive allegory of the USSR.



It's not homophobic, it's just biology. Gay sex is sex that can't lead to conception and is thus dissociated from reproductive impulses, it's just a simple fact. Here, it is used negatively (House Harkonen is sterile and self-destructive), but it's not always so. Elsewhere (not in Herbert) it's presented as an idealized form of sexuality, totally free of the pressure of the procreative drive, a "purer" form of love.



I simply disagree with you that there are issues for "modern readers" in the depiction of women in Dune, and I think you really went out of your way a little to find an issue with the fact the villain is bisexual.

I've read a great deal of critical material about Dune since the 90s, and I must say I've rarely seen the "modern reader" take issues with depictions of women or homosexuality. In the 90s, some people were arguing whether Dune had lost its relevance as spec fic with the end of the cold war and its polarized world with the two sides salivating over control of the middle-east. The gulf war later put an end to that. Since 9/11, virtually all the "issues" I've seen some "modern readers" take with the book concerned the depiction of freedom fighters and terrorism, now that Paul is less readily seen as a kind of adolescent Lawrence of Arabia and far more obviously identifiable with leaders of the Bin Laden type. With the big changes in geopolitics since 1965, has Herbert's depiction of jihadists turned into something subversive?

On the other hand, there are those who argue Dune was above all a lesson about the dangers of oppression and the power of religion that can be manipulated and channelled that resonated in the neo-colonialism and clientelism of the cold war years, and in the post-9/11 world i'ts the consequences and the religious factors (the manipulation of muslim beliefs by the islamists) that have become even more tangible and relevant.