Reading Dune again this year it's remarkable how much of the extra detail really stands out.
The first time I read it was in my teens, the second time was last year, when looking for a commercial model to emulate for my own writing, so it was as much research of the style: use of Point of View (POV), etc.
This time I've really appreciated all the extra cues and the depth of the story being built up.
However, one of the best aspects of Dune, IMO, is the use of conflict.
The first few chapters - up to the actual capture of Duke Leto - are a superb use of conflict. Often a story will open with a "first cause" statement to establish the conflict - a killing to be revenged, for example, and so on, and usually quite short and introductory. With Dune everything is so much more focussed yet also sustained. The fact that, from the beginning, the main characters know that they are walking into a trap is a superb way to build up the conflict, and this is played upon by the suspicions of Thufir that Lady Jessica is in fact a traitor.
However, looking more deeply at it all - use of conflict is one of the ways that you can make or break a book. A book requires conflict of some kind to drive the characters and the story with them. With Dune Frank Herbert achieves that quite masterfully by ensuring that so much of the actual conflict is internal, rather than external.
A lot of writers make the mistake of externalising conflict - I would say that, as a sweeping generalisation, a lot of fantasy can falls under this by implying a statement of kind that anyone who fights the "externalised evil" must therefore be "good". Dragonlance bucked the seeming trend nicely by their use of Raistlin, but overall conflict within fantasy is overwhelmingly externalised in the form of a "rising evil" - Tolkien, Feist, Eddings, and for the most part Dragonlance, too. And, of course, many others. Sometimes these writers can involve internal character conflict in a very accomplished manner, but too often there is the danger that young fantasy writers fail to realise that the story is never about the external detail, but the internal character-driven conflict.
The use of internal conflict in Dune is the real prize engine of that novel. This is characterised brilliantly by the use of what can otherwise be a tired old cliche of a plot device - the Messianic figure. All too often this construct can lack dimension and originality, and even the opening chapter of Dune skirts close around this flaw with the Gom Jabber test.
However, it's how we see the conflict unfurl in the prescient experiences of Paul Maud'dab that really open the tension - the constant struggle he has against a genocidal future that he foresees and is desperate to prevent.
The use of conflict here in itself is very well used, but what I find sublime is how he develops this conflict further by pitting the clear designs of his mother against Paul's developing vision, and brings them firmly into a tense and uncomfortable alignment.
Dune is a novel that pushes with a pace that not many novels can match, and although they are not always the best developed characters, Frank Herbert always makes sure that, for the most part, there is still some good painting of them to communicate something of a eral personality to the reader.
But overall it's the use of tension that frames the story - tightly, and with purpose. IMO that is what really makes and drives the entire Dune engine: without it Dune would be just another uprising. Instead, the significance of the conflict Paul struggles through without the book defines an unwritten future for the novel that the reader is left to savour for themselves.
I don't like uncertain endings, but Dune has none of that. There is future, there is uncertainly, and there is a remaining tension. But, perhaps, that is where it should have ended.
I have tried reading something of the sequels, but IMO Dune Messiah failed to continue any of the original tension. Thus the sequels and prequels are nothing more than garrulous appendixes, and unnecessary at that. After all, all they can do is fill in the details of a story. But never can they replace the epic of the original.
2c.
The first time I read it was in my teens, the second time was last year, when looking for a commercial model to emulate for my own writing, so it was as much research of the style: use of Point of View (POV), etc.
This time I've really appreciated all the extra cues and the depth of the story being built up.
However, one of the best aspects of Dune, IMO, is the use of conflict.
The first few chapters - up to the actual capture of Duke Leto - are a superb use of conflict. Often a story will open with a "first cause" statement to establish the conflict - a killing to be revenged, for example, and so on, and usually quite short and introductory. With Dune everything is so much more focussed yet also sustained. The fact that, from the beginning, the main characters know that they are walking into a trap is a superb way to build up the conflict, and this is played upon by the suspicions of Thufir that Lady Jessica is in fact a traitor.
However, looking more deeply at it all - use of conflict is one of the ways that you can make or break a book. A book requires conflict of some kind to drive the characters and the story with them. With Dune Frank Herbert achieves that quite masterfully by ensuring that so much of the actual conflict is internal, rather than external.
A lot of writers make the mistake of externalising conflict - I would say that, as a sweeping generalisation, a lot of fantasy can falls under this by implying a statement of kind that anyone who fights the "externalised evil" must therefore be "good". Dragonlance bucked the seeming trend nicely by their use of Raistlin, but overall conflict within fantasy is overwhelmingly externalised in the form of a "rising evil" - Tolkien, Feist, Eddings, and for the most part Dragonlance, too. And, of course, many others. Sometimes these writers can involve internal character conflict in a very accomplished manner, but too often there is the danger that young fantasy writers fail to realise that the story is never about the external detail, but the internal character-driven conflict.
The use of internal conflict in Dune is the real prize engine of that novel. This is characterised brilliantly by the use of what can otherwise be a tired old cliche of a plot device - the Messianic figure. All too often this construct can lack dimension and originality, and even the opening chapter of Dune skirts close around this flaw with the Gom Jabber test.
However, it's how we see the conflict unfurl in the prescient experiences of Paul Maud'dab that really open the tension - the constant struggle he has against a genocidal future that he foresees and is desperate to prevent.
The use of conflict here in itself is very well used, but what I find sublime is how he develops this conflict further by pitting the clear designs of his mother against Paul's developing vision, and brings them firmly into a tense and uncomfortable alignment.
Dune is a novel that pushes with a pace that not many novels can match, and although they are not always the best developed characters, Frank Herbert always makes sure that, for the most part, there is still some good painting of them to communicate something of a eral personality to the reader.
But overall it's the use of tension that frames the story - tightly, and with purpose. IMO that is what really makes and drives the entire Dune engine: without it Dune would be just another uprising. Instead, the significance of the conflict Paul struggles through without the book defines an unwritten future for the novel that the reader is left to savour for themselves.
I don't like uncertain endings, but Dune has none of that. There is future, there is uncertainly, and there is a remaining tension. But, perhaps, that is where it should have ended.
I have tried reading something of the sequels, but IMO Dune Messiah failed to continue any of the original tension. Thus the sequels and prequels are nothing more than garrulous appendixes, and unnecessary at that. After all, all they can do is fill in the details of a story. But never can they replace the epic of the original.
2c.
