Readers - Thoughts on Dune

Dune by Frank Herbert has been and still is an inspiration to me. That it should still be read by so many forty years after its publication is a testament to its greatness. I would suggest that a major factor underlying this success is how skillfully Herbert plundered history. He did not, as so many writers have done, merely break European Medieval history into a handful of pieces and reassemble them to make his story. Instead he took hold of a far greater spread of history both in time and space and, smashing this into fragments, put together a mosaic whose picture is wholly new.

His noble Houses with their Landsraad evoke Germanic princely states which contrasts with the rise of Paul Atreides from the desert which in language and sentiment resembles that of Mohammed in Arabia. This is not simply history thinly disguised. The Emperor rejoices in the Persian title Padishah, King of Kings; a title of ancient usage in Asia, a title adopted by the Ottoman Sultans. With their Sardaukar-like Janissaries, they not only fought the Germanic princes of Austria, but also held sway over Islamic Arabia. The Bene Gesserit with their Reverend Mothers have an odour of the Catholic Church, more specifically the Jesuits, but they are possessed of the Weirding way whose esoterica takes in not only the martial arts of the East but the sublime mystical powers attributed to Tibetan Lamas and Zen Buddhists.

This heady mix is enriched by the ingenious and central fixation with spice which parallels in its economic power petroleum which similarly arises from the sands of the land of the Prophet. Its cinnamon scent betrays the two thousand year old European obsession with the spices coming from the east as well as evoking Yemeni frankincense which bled the Roman Empire of its gold. That this should, as oil does, power the transport systems essential to civilization is a brilliant subversion, especially when one considers that in the book the Navigators effect this through an extreme addiction to the substance. This addiction extends throughout Herbert's world and eventually to the Messiah Muad'dib himself. Spice even takes on the role of cocaine and heroin.

Such brilliant restitching of history gives Dune a relevance today perhaps even greater than when it was first read. Herbert could not have imagined the means by which Bin Laden would attempt to recreate the Caliphate in Baghdad, but when one weaves a tapestry with such well chosen strands, the result can never lose its power.