Thoughts
From reading articles and talking to people I’ve come to know that Dune is a huge cultural phenomenon in the US. Most people have read it and on many online forum people say that it is one of the most transformational books they have read. Yet, I hadn’t heard of the book while in India (first couple of decades of my life). I’d read many sci-fi novels, mostly Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clark, Douglas Adams and HG Wells. Most of the people seem to have read Foundation, Rama series, and H2G2. The sci-fi authors I discovered after coming to the US are - Frank Herbert, Willam Gibson, Dan Simmons, Philip K Dick, Robert Heinlein and Ursula K Le Guin. I’m sure there are more that I’m not recollecting currently. Michael Crichton, James S.A. Corey, etc.
Dune is powerful because it is a lot of things - a coming-of-age story, a story of revenge and family honor, a story of living in a close relationship with nature, a story of heroism, a story of optimism, a love story, a story set in the future (10 thousand years!), a story of prescience and fortune telling, a story of women’s power, a story of politics and strategy, and so forth. It didn’t live up to the hype when I first read it. But it grows into you the more you think and makes you want to read it again.
Quotes
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”