Frank Herbert’s universe, created in “Dune,” was not entirely foreign. He skillfully borrowed events, characters, and settings from many wonderful books written before his time. The tactic he used in his work would later be faced during the process of adapting it into a film. George Lucas had directly drawn from “Dune” to create the “Star Wars” universe. Herbert was aware of this and, fearing a lawsuit, Lucas was relieved when Herbert, instead of suing, formed a humorous society named “We’re Too Big to Sue Society.”
In 1959, someone strolling through the sand dunes near Florence, Oregon, might have encountered a robust, bearded man in Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses and practical military surplus attire. This man was none other than Frank Herbert. Known for his interest in ecology, this independent author was researching the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s program to stabilize shifting sands using European beachgrass.
Strong winds from the Pacific were pushing the dunes eastward, burying everything in their path. Herbert rented a Cessna light aircraft to observe the landscape from the air. He noted in his diary, “These sand waves could cause damage akin to a tsunami and even lead to deaths.” However, what fascinated him most was the idea of greening a hostile desert landscape and engineering an ecosystem.
Meg Spencer, Director of the Siuslaw Public Library, says, “As you can tell from his books, he was interested in everything: he flew over the sand dunes, took numerous photos, and walked on them.”
Herbert completed his article about Florence, but it was never published. Instead, he delved deeper into studying desert ecosystems and the interaction between humans and nature. Spencer adds, “His experience seeing the sand dunes here and the interactions with the local people really became the core of Dune and Arrakis.”
She knows this because the Siuslaw Public Library hosts an archive containing many of Herbert’s original materials gathered while researching “Dune.” This includes books on modern ecology, such as “Sociology of Nature” from 1962 and a historical psychology book from 1961 titled “The Changing Nature of Man.”
The library has a dedicated Herbert section. Herbert began writing at age 19 and experienced ups and downs throughout his career, culminating around age 40. Raised near Tacoma, Washington, Herbert had a challenging childhood but enjoyed fishing and spending time on boats. He later worked for various regional newspapers in the Pacific Northwest and sold short stories to magazines. After serving as a photographer in the navy for eight months during the relatively peaceful war years, he was discharged for medical reasons.
Later, Herbert spent a peculiar period in Washington as a speechwriter for a Republican senator. This was his only long-term stay on the East Coast, where he watched the Army-McCarthy hearings led by his distant relative, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was vigorously trying to root out communism.
Herbert was a typical representative of the Pacific coast culture, skeptical of central authority but also a proponent of utopian futurism. However, he was also perpetually financially strained. During the period he wrote “Dune,” his wife, Beverly Ann, was the main breadwinner, setting aside her own writing career to write advertising copy for small stores.
Herbert’s research on sand dunes evolved into a broader study of deserts and desert cultures. His article praising the heroic men of the USDA (“The Men Who Stopped the Moving Sands”) fell out of favor and was transformed into two serialized science fiction novels in prestigious magazines like Analog Science Fact & Fiction. However, Herbert reworked his two stories into one large epic. According to the publishing wisdom of the time, science fiction readers preferred short stories. Yet, “Dune” (the first hardcover edition was 400 pages, current copies are nearly 900 pages) was rejected by more than 20 publishers before being accepted by Chilton.
Chilton, known in Philadelphia for its vehicle and hobby magazines, published “Dune,” which, despite winning the prestigious Nebula and Hugo awards for science fiction, was not an overnight commercial success. It slowly built its audience over the 1960s and 1970s, appealing to those interested in global transformation and frequenting occupations, communes, laboratories, and studios. Fifty years later, “Dune” is considered by many to be one of the greatest novels in the science fiction canon and has sold millions worldwide.
“Dune” is set in a distant future where warring noble houses are restrained by a ruthless galactic emperor. As part of Byzantine political intrigues, the noble duke of House Atreides, named Leto, is forced to move his family from their paradisiacal home planet of Caladan to the desert planet of Arrakis, known among the locals as Dune. The climate of Dune is incredibly hostile, and water is so scarce that its residents must wear tightly fitting suits called stillsuits that capture body moisture and recycle it into drinking water.
Watch out, here comes Dune! House Atreides’ arch-enemy is the lascivious House Harkonnen, whose leader, Baron Vladimir, is so obese that he must use small anti-gravity “suspenders” to move around. The Harkonnens controlled Dune despite its terrible climate and the nomadic desert people because the Great Southern Desert is the only place in the galaxy where “melange” or “spice,” an extremely valuable substance, is mined.
Spice has many beneficial properties, such as enhancing the space-time perception of spaceship pilots. Without it, the Empire’s entire communication and transportation system would collapse. It is highly addictive and turns the user’s eyes deep blue. Spice mining is dangerous not only because of sandstorms and nomadic attacks but also because the noise attracts hundreds of meters long giant sandworms that travel through the sand dunes like whales in the ocean. We will cover all this in detail, so for now, we are just setting the stage.
The process of adapting Dune to cinema became one of science fiction cinema’s great ‘what if’ stories with the visionary Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to bring this work to the silver screen. Jodorowsky’s extraordinary collaborators included visuals prepared by Moebius and HR Giger, with spaceships designed by British illustrator Chris Foss.
Orson Welles would have played Baron Harkonnen, with Salvador Dali as the Emperor. Pink Floyd and Magma were contracted for the film’s music. However, Jodorowsky’s progressive and fantastical project was terminated before it could begin by risk-averse Hollywood producers. After this process, David Lynch made a version in 1984, but it was so despised by Universal that Lynch had his name removed from the credits.
Lynch’s film is actually much better than its terrible reputation suggests, but the images of Sting in armor and Toto’s film music could never reach the potential greatness of Jodorowsky’s unmade epic film. We will take a detailed look at this in the Dune and cinema section.
In fact, a great Dune film was made. Its name was Star Wars. In the initial drafts, a desert planet, an evil emperor, and a child with a galactic destiny were included, along with warring noble houses and a princess protecting something called ‘aura spice.’ The Star Wars universe was filled with quotes from Dune; from the Jedi’s mental powers similar to Bene Gesserit to the mining and ‘moisture farm’ on Tattooine. Herbert knew his ideas had been stolen, and he thought Lucas had used other science fiction writers’ ideas in his profitable series. He and a few colleagues even formed a humorous organization called “We’re Too Big to Sue Society” aimed at George Lucas.
The roots of Dune! Essentially, Herbert’s universe was not alien. He skillfully borrowed events, characters, and settings from many great books written before him. It is thought that Herbert owed much to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars stories, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books, and Elmer Edward “Doc” Smith’s Lensman space operas, which were popular in the 1940s and 1950s. This structure criticized the idea of altered states of consciousness primarily being used by white and righteous subversives to eliminate aliens and others with undesirable traits.
Herbert was not a friend of large governments and had used peyote (a type of cactus containing a psychoactive substance) and read Carl Jung. In 1960, a sailing buddy introduced him to Zen philosopher Alan Watts, who lived on a houseboat in Sausalito. Long conversations with Watts helped Herbert transform his fast-paced adventure story into an exploration of time, the boundaries of personal identity, and the relationship between the mind and the body.
Every fantasy reflects its time and place. If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism and the trauma of World War II, and Game of Thrones is a fairy tale of neoliberal cynicism and an ensemble of insecure, entrepreneurial characters, then Dune was the paradigmatic fantasy of the Age of Aquarius!
What is the Age of Aquarius? It refers to the period of Aquarius, one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac in Western astrology.
Concerns such as environmental stress, human potential, altered states of consciousness, and revolutions in developing countries against imperialism were combined in a vision defining an era of personal and cosmic transformation.
Frank Herbert began constructing the fantastic universe in his mind over a period of more than 10 years starting in 1960. While laying the foundation of this universe, he extensively utilized sources from Eastern and Western mysticism, Islam, and Christianity. Additionally, he carefully incorporated concepts such as fate and free will, power and suffering, humans, nature and ecology, religion and control, and human potential into the layers of his narrative. In a 1969 interview, he explained his writing technique as follows: “I build any fact or concept on a layering technique, and of course, you can play religious ideas against each other.”
Tolkien: I hate Dune! JRR Tolkien, the legendary author of The Lord of the Rings series, had a very special but very negative view of Frank Herbert’s Dune. At one point, Tolkien’s Library reported that Tolkien wrote in an unpublished letter to John Bush on March 12, 1966: “It is impossible for a still-writing author to be fair to another author working in the same vein. At least I find it so. In fact, I somewhat hate Dune, and in this unfortunate situation, the best and fairest thing for another author would be to remain silent and refuse to comment” (Article:964).
However, there is a detail that must be mentioned, or it would be unfair to both authors.
Both The Lord of the Rings and Dune eventually formed communities of their own fans. When this topic was brought up in a forum by a group calling themselves the Tolkien Society, the following note from a guest member caught attention (I include this note here because Tolkien never explained the reason for his hatred, and this response relatively includes the reasons):
“Scott Mauldin: Hello, I am the author of the article ‘Why Did Tolkien Hate Dune?’ Thank you for describing the article as ‘strong’ and sharing your thoughts on Tolkien’s perspective. I just want to defend my choice of words. When Tolkien penned his comments in the 1960s, and especially at the beginning of the century when he developed his unique language use and semantic impressions, the word ‘hate’ did not have the same meaning it does today. This word has undergone significant semantic inflation and carries a much weaker meaning than it used to. A person born in 1892 would likely use the word ‘hate’ to express a level of emotional intensity for ‘dislike,’ not even needing to say ‘absolutely dislike.’ I have not extensively studied Tolkien’s personality, but even an ordinary fan knows he was a man of values, and as the proverb goes, ‘to tolerate everything is to value nothing.’ Tolkien was not ‘hateful’ in the modern sense, but he certainly had strong opinions about things society should value (charity, nature, selfless service) or reject (greed, materialism, egotistical pride).”
You understand the implication, I’m sure.
Before comparing these two master authors, let’s take a closer look at their works. Also, let’s add that this will not be a comparison, as it’s impossible to weigh two different flavors, like apples and oranges, on the same scale.
The Lord of the Rings versus Dune!
Tolkien is often referred to as the father of modern fantasy literature. The “Lord of the Rings” series, set in the comprehensive universe of Middle Earth, is one of the most famous examples of the high fantasy genre. The series focuses on the struggle between good and evil, heroism, sacrifice, and friendship. Tolkien’s works are filled with languages and legends he created, providing them with a deep mythological foundation. When writing his works, Tolkien drew inspiration from the folklore and mythologies of Europe, particularly Northern Europe.
Herbert’s “Dune” series is often considered one of the masterpieces of science fiction. “Dune” addresses complex political intrigues, ecology, religion, and human consciousness. While Herbert provides a detailed depiction of the desert ecosystem of Arrakis (Dune), he also delves deeply into human nature and power dynamics. “Dune” was a pioneer in addressing environmental awareness and sustainability in science fiction, offering a dystopian view of humanity’s future.
Both (magnificent) works create comprehensive histories and social systems within their universes, but their themes and messages are very different. “The Lord of the Rings” centers on the classic battle between good and evil and the mythological past that shapes the characters’ destinies, while “Dune” explores human psychology, the management of natural resources, and the complexity of decision-making processes. Tolkien’s work features a legendary and fairy-tale-like language and narrative, while Herbert’s language focuses on technical issues and philosophical matters.
In terms of literary influence, both authors set standards in their respective genres; Tolkien in fantasy literature, and Herbert in science fiction. However, while Tolkien’s works appeal to a broader audience, Herbert’s works target a more niche/specialized audience and are more appreciated by science fiction readers.
In conclusion, Tolkien and Herbert transformed their magnificent imaginations and deep thematic understanding into classic works of their genres. Their works, “The Lord of the Rings” and “Dune,” continue to be among the most loved and most discussed in their respective genres.
In 1965, “Dune” barely found space in science fiction magazines, but it was the sound of an approaching storm! As you can see, things are starting to heat up, the excitement is just beginning—hold on tight.
