Hi BigHappy,
Welcome to Chrons first, BTW.
I agree with the opening sentence of
@Toby Frost 's post - it sounds like it is just not your cup of tea. It is over 50 years old now and does have roots and references from that time period that perhaps someone new coming to it would find obscure now. That you don't quite like it, I have heard a lot from Booktubers who have been recommended to read
Dune as the 'greatest SF of all time' in the 2018s, say, for the first time. But having said that, some Booktubers also struggle with
Lord of the Rings and its style.
However compared to say, Arthur C. Clarke, a writer I adored as a child in the late 1970's, but I now feel creaks a lot under modern scrutiny, or something like
Day of the Triffids (which I find too staid and cosy, and really from a bygone age) there is a richness and depth that continues to give
Dune a current relevancy. Of the other books you mention, I think
1984 is a great book, but it's streaked through with solid slabs of political exposition - which I found fascinating - but I know don't gel with others. (Orwell is clearly having a massive amount of 'fun' building the ultimate tryanny!)
It's been a while since I've done a read of main six novels of the series (yes, I like Heretics and Chapterhouse Dune too, or at least find value in thinking about Frank Herberts six Dune novels as a whole - others mileage will vary
) so I'm a bit rusty, but I will try and answer a few things that you bring up, from my perspective. (I'm going to cut and paste a few thoughts you had from one point to another, because I think there better explained in other areas, not trying to misquote you!)
This makes the reader have to imagine half the world in his head for himself, which was disappointing, given the world building qualities that people say this book has.
I think I am just going to have to agree to disagree with this statement. A masterful worldbuilding by an author, is done by stimulating my imagination and making me think, rather than having it set out for me by the author in pages and pages of exposition or nonsensical dialogue. ("As you must surely know, master Atreidas, the reason we don't have shields is..."
). A little fragment here or there, a mere thought from a character can tantalise as well as illuminate and paints what feels to be a real world, IMO. Sure I don't mind at all exposition (if interesting) and heavy description where necessary; but as you said, this book is close to the character's thoughts - they aren't going to think about things that are mundane or ordinary to them, they are going to focus on what is important for them at the time. It's up to us readers to piece together the larger picture as it comes to us.
As for the mechanics of the worldbuilding:
There is a consistency and interplay between the various elements of the worldbuilding that come together. The various political parties and groupings and how they scheme with and against each other: the Fremen, the Bene Gesserit, the Emperor, House Atreides, the Landsraat, House Harkonnen, the Spacing Guild, then later on in the series, Ix, the Bene Tleillax and the Honored Matres, all fitting around the protagonist and his family's journey. How they react is dependant on their 'skillbase' and 'power' and how they can wield and control others. Add to this the biology of the desert planet Arrakis - what is the relationship with the sandworms and the spice, for example?
Anyway a crucial thing that Herbert does is build a world of checks and balances.
- There is interstellar travel, but the technology requires navigators who can use prescience to adjust to avoid obstacles, otherwise interstellar travel is impossible...
- ....so Spice is used to 'awaken' prescience in humans, so that the navigators above can actually fly their heighliners, but it also prolongs a human beings longevity, as well as being highly addicitve, so other groups crave this drug for their own purposes...
- ....but only one world produces this rare substance. "Who controls the spice, controls the universe"
Which sits at the centre of the politics.
But I do think there are layers and layers of this. For example, the technology of Dune:
The societies in Dune are ones that have lasers, force fields, personal anti-gravity devices, and spaceships that can travel between solar systems, but at the same time live like they were in the middle ages, fighting with knives to prove themselves to their tribe and trekking across the desert landscape. I know that the idea is that technology has turned against humanity, but if AI technology has turned against them, surely the powerful weapons such as lasers and force fields have as well?
...The fact that Jessica could command people with her training seemed like an excuse for them to go around getting people to do what they want.
The fundamental issue with Technology is the Butlerian Jihad. The point of this event, that takes place far in the past of the events of
Dune, was that humanity was being enslaved by artificial minds. After a bloody fight that killed billions of humans, society religously banned constructing machines that copied human minds - computers or even calculators were destroyed and anyone that built them killed.
So Herbert imagines this event, then suggests what might happen afterwards to societies - Mentats develop techniques and ways of thinking that replace 'calculating machines'; the Bene Tleillax turn to the human body and alter our genetic code to manipulate bodies and minds; the Bene Gesserit have explored methods of training over thousands of years so that their bodies seemingly have superhuman powers - such as the Voice (not the programme with Tom Jones, but a method of controlling other people by using particular tones and sounds
), and a long list of other techniques; the Space Guild fly interstellar ships, but the minds of the navigators are in control, not any computer. Also there are the people of Ix - a system that seems dangerously close to replicating artifical thinking machines again. Their usefulness of their technology to others is the only thing keeping them as a power (or even alive), as they are skating a thin line with heresy.
Here Herbert paints not a black and white universe but a grey one. It's a fluid moving thing that resembles the sort of real worlds we see.
As for a lot of the rest of technology Herbert again gives them strengths and weaknesses. Personal shields exist that stop fast moving projectiles, hence guns with kinetic projectiles are not useful, but instead 'slow moving' objects can penetrate (a shield that stops air coming in would suffocate a user!) - hence knives and blunt weapons replace hand guns and rifles. 'Lasguns' do exist, but Herbert makes it that if a laser is fired at a shield 'sub-atomic fusion' occurs and a nuclear explosion will occur, either at the shield or the lasgun (said explosion occurs at a random spot in his universe). Hence this stops lasguns being credible weapons. And so he builds a fictional universe with a different 'set of rules for combat'.
Now you could like or dislike any one of these worldbuilding elements. I do think Herbert's ideas on genetic memory are just a bit too 'far out man' for me - genetics was still trying to find itself in the 1960s and there some crazy ideas at the time at what all this DNA we carried actually did. Also prescience definitely goes to fantasy side of things for me - but one of the things Herbert liked to do was explore the idea of prescience. What if someone, the Kwisatz Haderach say, actually could see the future 'properly'. What would it be like, what would they do? What actually limits such a vision?
(Also there is a fascinating interview with Frank Herbert where he says he experienced something like prescience. Essentially he was at a girlfriends house, where - bored I assume - they got a shuffled random pack of playing cards and she challenged him to predict the cards as she turned them over. Apparently he got all 52 correct. She shuffled them again, and he
did it again! That freaked them both out and they stopped...)
...so when the Atreides family were going from Caladan to Arrakis any vague description of the spaceship they travelled in was completely skipped, and it felt like Herbert was just trying to keep the fantasy style by ignoring the things in the book which had sci-fi themes...
Why come up with a description of something that really had no impact on plot or characters? All that was necessary to know is that there is a monopoly on interstellar travel by the Spacing Guild and that they really need spice to operate. Why isn't it a SF theme to explore an alien world and the life cycle of a sandworm? Not all SF is Star Wars or Star Trek aboards spaceships!
Also the way that Paul and Jessica just seemed to roam around the desert until they overpowered the first Fremen they saw with a few words didn’t really make sense, like the whole of Arrakis moved around them so that they could survive.
Well, Paul arriving on Arrakis is starting to 'awaken' his terrifying powers of prescience as he started to injest spice and Jessica is an extremely capable reverend mother with a wealth of techniques and knowledge. They are powerful. How they got onto the desert and escaped is somewhat luckier, but that requires explaining the Emperor's plan, the Baron's role and how they stabbed House Atreides in the back....
But the question you have to ask yourself is that, of course Paul is main protagonist and central character of the first book. But is he a hero?
And at times it felt like the narrative was just an endless stream of thoughts, and the world outside the characters’ heads hardly existed.
That feels a lot like the universe I inhabit
Anyway, I've rabbited on too much. People I find, can get sucked into
Lord of the Rings, because of the crazy detailed lore, the story, characters and the volumes of notes available to pore over. And I think there's a similar drive in a way for that of
Dune, which although is nowhere as in-depth as LotR, is still extremely rich and complex.
