About this title: The first volume of a series co-written by Frank Herbert's son, examining the prehistory of the legendary planet of Arrakis, more commonly known as Dune.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780425080023ISBN:0425080021
Description: Good. No Jacket. Good. No DJ Issued Good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover has some light edge wear and creasing. Spine has a few light crease lines. Pages are a bit toned with a creased corner or two. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Nice copy! INT: slightly tanned pages, name inside front cover, no rips, tears, bent page corners, or markings of any kind. EXT: edge wear, indentations on cover. read more
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780425080023ISBN:0425080021
Description: Fair. No Jacket. Fair. No Jacket Fair. No DJ Issued Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Cover creasing and some staining inside the covers. A creased corner or two among the pages. This is the promotional tie-in version to David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Spine is well creased. Covers show wear at the edges and corners. Good Grade C average reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine has some creases. Covers show wear at the edges and corners. Good Grade B reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Ace 17263 (1965) paperback, cover art by John Schoenherr, CONDITION: GOOD, general cover & spine wear, sound SERIES-Dune Book 1. read more
Description: Ace 17261 (1965) 544 pages, paperback, cover art by John Schoenherr, CONDITION: GOOD, interior toned & spine somewhat curled, top spine corners moderately rubbed, good plus condition SERIES-Dune Book 1. read more
Description: Ace 17261 (1965) paperback, cover art by John Schoenherr, CONDITION: FAIR only condition, pages toned, quire worn but appears fragile but sound SERIES-Dune Book 1. read more
"the best science fiction book of the last century. herbert draws you into his world full of spice, prescience, witchcraft, revolution, and everything else you can imagine. it's elegant and lively, stimulating and suspenseful. i've read it probably a dozen times and don't plan on stopping anytime soon."
"Sitting here on the desert planet -- uh State, Arakkis -- I mean California, I'm staring in amazement as water actually falls from the sky.
This grand sprawling book has a lot to offer: genetic engineer witches, religion as premeditated social engineering, amazing heroic islamists -- I mean Fremen battling the decadent western -- uh Harkonen imperialists, ecology, jihad, water conservation tips, really crazy drugs, vermiculture on a grand scale and a Messiah. At age 11 when I first read this book, I missed some of this. But as a So Cal girl living through water rationing, I REALLY identified with the Fremen, and their handling of water. I wanted a stillsuit. The drug addiction part made lots of sense to me too, as did the ecology. The other aspects of the book were more obvious in subsequent readings, and sometimes I rolled my eyes. That said, the book is amazing."
"There's a characteristically witty essay by Borges about a man who rewrites Don Quixote, many centuries after Cervantes. He publishes a novel with the same title, containing the same words in the same order. But, as Borges shows you, the different cultural context means it's a completely new book! What was once trite and commonplace is now daring and new, and vice versa. It just happens to look like Cervantes's masterpiece.
Similarly, imagine the man who was brave or stupid enough to rewrite Dune in the early 21st century. Like many people who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I read the book in my early teens. What an amazing story! Those kick-ass Fremen! All those cool, weird-sounding names and expressions they use! (They even have a useful glossary in the back). The disgusting, corrupt, slimy Harkonnens - don't you just love to hate them! When former-aristo-turned-desert-guerilla-fighter Paul Muad'Dib rides in on a sandworm at the end to fight the evil Baron and his vicious, cruel nephew, of course you're cheering for him. Who the hell wouldn't be?
So that was the Dune we know and love, but the man who rewrote it now would get a rather different reception. Oh my God! These Fremen, who obviously speak Arabic, live on a desert planet which supplies the Universe with melange, a commodity essential to the Galactic economy, and in particular to transport. Not a very subtle way to say "oil"! They are tough, uncompromising fighters, who are quite happy to use suicide bombing as a tactic. They're led by a charismatic former rich kid (OK, we get who you mean), who inspires them to rise up against the corrupt, degenerate... um, does he mean Westerners? Or only the US? And who is Baron Harkonnen intended to be? I'm racking my brains... Dubya doesn't quite seem to fit, but surely he means someone? Unless, of course, he's just a generic stereotype who stands for the immoral, sexually obsessed West. This is frightening. What did we do to make Frank al-Herbert hate us so much? You'd have people, not even necessarily right-wingers, appearing on TV to say that the book was dangerous, and should be banned: at the very least, it incites racial hatred, and openly encourages terrorism. But translations would sell brilliantly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and a bad movie version would soon be made in Turkey.
I honestly don't think Herbert meant any of that; but today, it's almost impossible not to wonder. If anyone reading this review is planning to rewrite The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, you'd better make sure you get your timing right. Who knows how it will be interpreted five years from now?"
"Let me tread carefully here. I fully understand why so many reviewers are so taken with this novel, and I cannot blame them. The idea behind the story is a good one, maybe even a great one, and I can only imagine that if Herbert were working in Hollywood today, he would be the creator behind some pretty amazing shows (and I'm not talking about that travesty of a film version). But what bothered me about "Dune" is that the writing did not hold up to the level of the idea. Throughout, Herbert utilized a bizarre device in which a character's thought would appear in italics, usually set up with the phrase "s/he thought," which to me just screams of the amateur. Isn't the big advantage of the written word the fact that the reader can know the character's thoughts without it having to be presented in voice-over narration? Then, the main character, Paul, was pretty much a cipher up until the last chapter or two, and even then he was...not much. At times Herbert revealed the ability to turn a phrase beautifully, which only made it more frustrating that the writing elsewhere was so....not what it should be. I really wanted to know how the book would resolve itself, and so I carried through to the end. I guess I could say that the infrastructure of the book is quite good. The world-building, the political intrigue, the religious complications, were all interesting and deftly woven. It's just that the actual writing of the thing was too much of a distraction for me to really enjoy myself."
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