Books: “Dune” by Frank Herbert

Dune was my first introduction into sci-fi at seventeen, even before Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. While I do not think I will reread all six books (I recall dragging through the last two…), the excitement and love for the characters in the story was just as I remembered. Think: Shakespeare’s Hamlet on a Galactic scale, powerful Houses fighting for control of a desert planet with massive sandworms. Need I say more!? Oh, but I will!

Poison, intrigue, betrayal! Professional Machiavelli’s with computer-like capabilities in logic and strategical calculation, the Mentats, and a female order of Bene Gesserit, who are trained to read a person’s motives from the slightest change in tone, seeking control by breeding and whispering in the ears of their high-powered husbands. Ruthless Imperial army-men. Sandworm-riders.  

But there are forces deeper than calculation and chess-moves that shape the course of Galactic history. Often masked as mysticism or called ‘destiny’, it is but the force of circumstance, of environment, and of its people. What native culture (i.e., narrative) emerges from a desert planet that provides but one resource, the life-extending, communal-consciousness inducing, space-time warping drug? Answer: a culmination of all religions that teach brotherhood, temporal time, and the sanctity of water. And if that ‘spice’ is the most lucrative commodity in the galaxy? Expect the power-hungry’s need to control it. And so it is, that far into the future, man will still be questioning what it is to be man, of the consequences of the legends that unite them, and of our ancient motives that fulfil myths’ prophecy.

“The mind can go either direction under stress – toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyper-consciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.” 

“Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty.  All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.”