Dune - classic sci fi or classic space fantasy?

Jo Zebedee

Jo Zebedee

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Now, I am a space opera bunny- big time! I loved Star Wars, grew up on Blakes 7 and Buck Rogers and adored Sapphire and Steele (name that genre in one) and Dune.


Dune is held up as a sci fi book. But is it? Paul has psychic powers - from the Bene Gesserit; the means of flying through space are decidedly non-sciency and Dune itself is a weird planet. And that's before Paul's kid morphs into a worm.

So, is Dune quintessential sf or sci fantasy? If the latter what does that say for the genre that a fantasy is (along with Star Wars and Trek) our popular hits. Can pure sci fi be popular without the escapism of fantasy?
 
These are some profound questions. You raise a lot of issues that have been argued about for a long time. Is science fiction a branch of fantasy? Is it all just "speculative fiction" of various kinds?

There is very little "hard" SF which is popular with the general audience. Among very popular forms of speculative fiction, one can easily point to those which are pure fantasy (Lord of the Rings), but the reverse is not so easy. Something which "feels" like science fiction, such as Star Trek, is full of things which contradict what we think we know about the way that the universe works. Faster than light travel, time travel, humanoid aliens, extrasensory perception; although these concepts have been used in science fiction for a very long time, they aren't very scientific.

The best I can do is to ask myself whether a work fits better as "science fiction" or "fantasy" or that most difficult of all genres to define, "science fantasy." I tend to think of Dune as science fiction, for example, because it has that "feel" to it. I tend to think of alternate history stories as fantasy, unless there is some kind of science-like explanation for time travel or multiple universes. If your story just takes for granted that the Confederacy won the American Civil War, that "feels" like fantasy to me. The Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs feel like "science fantasy" to me.

It's a matter of personal opinion. I think Star Wars is leaning to the "science fantasy" side of things more than Dune or Star Trek, for example.
 
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Yes very interesting topic, and one that's been discussed for a long time and will be for a long time to come I expect.

As to the initial question, I think Dune is a fantasy set in space. But I also agree with Victoria that it feels like SF and I'm happy to put the book on the shelf nestled among other SF books. A lot of SF is really fantasy in space I guess, if you're of a mind to define them clearly. The books that keep to the brief of pure SF most closely are "hard SF". These tend to limit (or exclude) things that 'cannot be' according to our understanding of natural laws. The only other requirement being that they extrapolate these known laws to the future or to incidents that haven't happened (e.g. strange 'thing' appearing in the sky). A lot of Arthur C. Clarke's work fits the bill of being genuine SF without fantasy, as do works by Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson and others. If there is faster than light travel in the story, then its crossed the line, strictly speaking. However, this seems to be one exception of breaking physical laws that has become acceptable, and yet still allow the book to be SF. Without this particular allowance, it would be tricky to write about anything outside the solar system I guess. "The Songs of Distant Earth" is a rare example of interstellar travel without breaking any laws of nature.
 
Incidentally, on the film front: Bladerunner would fit the bill of hard SF that was highly popular, without having any fantasy elements (a technological stretch yes, but not breaking any natural laws). At least, it would if it wasn't for reference to off-world colonies and attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. So close... :)
 
My vote is Science Fiction. If you assume that faster than light travel is impossible, you have to assume that we know all the science that we, as a species, will ever know. I'm inclined to believe that we are still just children with much more to learn over the coming centuries. Dune does have a mystic feel to it but the back story is that the science and technology was driven away at some time in the past. Much of it was relegated to the machine planet Ix(sp?).
As to Star Wars the first trilogy treated the Force as a substitute for God which definition makes it Fantasy. The prequel trilogy gave the Force a scientific definition (midi-clorians). Science Fiction by definition (just not near as good).
 
steve12553 said:
If you assume that faster than light travel is impossible, you have to assume that we know all the science that we, as a species, will ever know.
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Well, I take your point, but that's not true. I can believe there are a great many things we are yet to discover or invent, and yet still think that faster than light travel is more fantasy than reality. I'd love to be wrong, space ships seem pretty cool.
 
Of course it's fantasy - it's all about religion!


Joke, joke - I take it back (before anyone replies angrily :))!


Actually I don't like this term springs, Science fantasy, Sounds like the sort of thing Hugo Gernsback would have called some schlock he was trying to peddle in the 1930's. I'm 1960's old school so:

If it's epic in scale (preferably across the galaxy) and has a science fiction setting, it's Space Opera.

If it's definitely not fantasy, then everything else with SF elements is just Science fiction.

Dune the book is in my mind straying into Science fiction (but near the border), but Dune the six book series is definitely Space opera.

I don't really like ghettoising fiction too much. :p
 
I am not entirely in love with the term myself, but Space Opera doesn't (apparently) cover this type of book adequately ie books which not only stretch scientific reality as ftl travel etc does but also include significant fantastical elements - like psychic powers. So, I think in terms of genre definition is is well recognised, if perhaps clunky! Lots of good points here.
 
The psychic powers are not the only issue. The passing down of memories in the genes is something else that shouts "Science Fantasy" to me. To be fair, I don't recall this being in Dune itself. (My, admittedly patchy, memory is telling me it first appeared in God Emperor of Dune.)

On the other hand, there are more science-sounding aspects to the original Dune series than there are fantasy ones, so I'd still count it as SF.
 
springs said:
I am not entirely in love with the term myself, but Space Opera doesn't (apparently) cover this type of book adequately ie books which not only stretch scientific reality as ftl travel etc does but also include significant fantastical elements - like psychic powers. So, I think in terms of genre definition is is well recognised, if perhaps clunky! Lots of good points here.
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I don't know, the psychic powers described are not traditional 'magic' i.e. telekinesis, fireballs, etc.... but I'd argue come from a 'science' place

The navigators imbibe spice to help them travel ftl (well, something has to, to get them from A to B in the book!) but they also need huge spaceships with huge engines, the navigators are just guiding the journey of the ships with their highly augmented ability to do very complex maths.

Then the Bene Gesserit powers are described as products of training and genetics - Other memory, the Voice, Truthsay and Simulflow are exaggerations of what we can "do" today. Ok, probably impossible some of these things as described. But... what is Other memory but multiple personalities with a belief in past life regression :). Also you can learn to control people just with the power of your voice, it is possible to hypnotise someone in an instant; some people can pick up liars - or are very good at it today. The Bene Gesserit have had thousands of years of practice to improve and understand the human mind!

The only power that is problematic, is Paul's ability to see the future. However if you wanted to keep it squarely in science, maybe Paul was just deluded and he thought he was able to see the future. :D


There may be other psychic powers in the books that I have forgotten.

EDIT: Ursa - from memory Alia is taken over by the personality of the Baron in the second book, so the passing down of genetic memory is important there. Again though - she was a screwed up kid, maybe she just believed she was the Baron!
 
Stephen Palmer said:
I'd put Dune into the SF bracket, leaving ambiguous whether the F is for fiction or fantasy... :D
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Good call, my thinking as well (can't stand Sci-Fi and it's variants),

also SF leaves it open to whether the S is speculative or science - opens up all sorts of possibilities I feel.
 
I still have to believe that if the author believes it is science regardless whether the science is good or bad, it is Science Fiction. 10,000 years into the future, we may have evolve the ability to predict or see the future. Or maybe see the possibilities of combinations of events that could lead to a particular event. Consider a chess player who see 35 moves into a game based on the likelihood of his opponent reacting as predicted. In the land of the disciplined Mentats who's to say. Herbert cast enough Science around to eliminate the Fantasy element.
 
Dune doesn't have enough fantasy elements to slip into science fantasy for me. It's a solid bit of SF that wasn't too far afield for its time. Lots of SF had psychic powers and assumed we would develop them at some point. That Dune uses a fairly solid fantasy plot doesn't make things any easier.

Instead of Paul being an orphan at the start of the book, he's partially orphaned durning the book. Instead of not knowing who his parents really are, he doesn't know who his grandparents really are. Travel to the underworld, meet the wise older man, struggle against the foe, overcome and overthrow... Etc. It's a fairly stock fantasy plot in the broad strokes.
 
Arthur Clarke said that "science fiction is first entertainment and next scientific extrapolation" ( Starlog 200 ).
If we think that there is a factor that measures the level of extrapolation we could call it EF.
So if EF is high for a particular work, we are tempted to say that we have a rather fantastic work with little scientific explanation. But, we could say that the Greek were certain of many scientific phenomena while other concepts they would disregard as deviations of the reality. Either we assume that scientific advances occur more strong during early periods and and then tends to stagnate or we could inspect that will just never stop.
Thus, we can define the levels of EF in terms of our perceptions of the now, thus Dune has more of extrapolation than reality. But this EF cannot tell about plausible far futures.
There are many works in SF that assume a certain phenomena to be true and then everything is built upon this assumption. I am not really a big fan of things in my favorite stories that are restricted to having a low EF. After all I am personally reading for leisure. In the works of P. K Dick for example, I like to think they all pertain to different and alternative realities. Where certain things are required to be taken for granted.
But...
Dune was intented to be fully scientifically explained, no matter how high its EF is.
Still, there are huge differences between Dune and hard science fiction, but I would rather read works of Vance, Moorcock, Herbert, Dick, Zelazny, LeGuin than your hardcore EF == 0 that some fans of the genre aim to search for.
I remember to read on Isaac asimov Magazine someone telling that our gratest mistake is to ignore that there is a science of the future, and no matter how much we try to see it, it will be just a simple glance or guess. I wish I had saved the literal quote.
 
Paul Atreides is not forseeing the future, he rather look at many possibilities and can look at which one he should follow. But I agree that is a rather impossible thing. I think Herbert meant to substitute the computer inteligence for something different, so he gave these "powers" to the mentats or Paul ..
 
Stephen Palmer said:
Science fantasy was an old term for a particular type of SF that alas we don't see much of any more - very far future SF where the science blurs into Clarkeian magic. I miss it.

I'd put Dune into the SF bracket, leaving ambiguous whether the F is for fiction or fantasy... :D
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I'd call it Social-science Fiction. Each of the great houses seems wrapped up in its own set of mores and folkways. Hardware based computers have been outlawed, so that aspect of technology isn't available for a plot element except in the negative sense (And Herbert's kids didn't do anything worthwhile to flesh out that aspect of the story). Paul's Jihad (first time I ever saw the word was in this book in the 1960s) aims to establish a new social order.

Desert planet. Giant worms. Personal force fields. Miniaturized assassin drones. Anti-gravity belts. Doesn't seem to fall into the stereotypical "mages, elves and heroes" mold. Certainly no heroes. The book gets accused of lionizing the 1960s drug culture, but I don't really see that either. Use of the spice seems a logical result of having no computer technology available, yet still engaging in FTL space travel, record-keeping without resorting to paper files and predictive models based on "current" realities.

Perhaps it really doesn't have to fit a category. It's not a dilemma for me.
 
Actually, I think Dune and its sequels are in their own sub-genre of SFF...









...namely: Spice Opera. (Sadly, I find I'm far from the first person to suggest this.)
 
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