Winter Book Club: Why You'll Love 'Dune'

As a kid, Ramtin fell in love with Frank Herbert's 1965 epic sci-fi novel, Dune. Today, he joins NPR's Books We’ve Loved https://www.npr.org/2025/10/11/nx-s1-5569487/books-weve-loved-a-new-limited-podcast-series-from-book-of-the-day crew, Andrew Limbong and B. A. Parker, to make the case for why he thinks you'll love it too. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:18Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone, it's Ramtin here. So if you've been listening to the show recently, which I hope you all have, you know, we've been running episodes as part of our Winter Book Club series. And it just so happens that I was recently a guest on another NPR show where I got to talk about an actual book I really, really love. So we're going to share that conversation with you all today. Here we go.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I saw myself projected into the future, or it felt like a world that somebody like me could live in.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  You're listening to books we've loved from NPR, the book show where we reread old favorites and tell you why they still matter today.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  I'm Andrew Limbong.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  And I'm BA Parker.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  This is a big one. This is a hefty, this is a hefty, flipping through this, right?

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Andrew, so much.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Hefty boy.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  It's so, it's so much, and it's our guest's fault. And, I mean, I did it. I, 617 pages.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Uh huh. Is that not counting the appendices and all that?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I, oh, mm, okay. So like, almost 700 pages.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Who do we have with us that we can?

• 1:35Speaker 03

  Thank you for this. We have here Ramtin Arablouei from NPR's Throughline. Ramtin, what's up?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Hey, how y'all doing?

• 1:41Speaker 03

  Thank you for this assignment. Thank you.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  We're about to get through this heavy book.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  The book we're reading today.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  In many ways, it's heavy.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  The book you brought us today is Frank Herbert's Dune.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Woo!

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  All day, all day. I've been waiting, I've been waiting decades for this.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  This is your vote.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  It's all gonna pour out here, okay? I've been waiting for years to talk about this book, which I would tell you that, and Yogg might be completely disturbed by this, had a major part in building my worldview.

• 2:09Speaker 03

  No, I believe it.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  What?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  I get it, yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  How old did you?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  I was 13.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I was in middle school when I first read this. Reading came late for me, I struggled with it a little bit.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  I mean, partly it's because of my second language. And I moved here, I'd just gotten out of being a toddler when I moved to the US. And so it was hard to learn English. And so I kind of was delayed a little bit in reading. But once I started reading, I really got into sci-fi books.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  And I had a teacher who was like, hey, if you really want to get into some deep stuff. Dune. So I read it and I became obsessed. I read it like twice in a summer.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  For listeners who haven't read it, I'm just gonna run through. I read this quick synopsis. We've been doing these like quick like, you know, summaries of the book. This is by far the longest synopsis.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Oh!

• 2:53Speaker 03

  For, but here, I'm gonna try to get through it. This is, here's, here's Dune summed up. It goes, so Paul Atreides is a 15-year-old boy, next in line to lead the Atreides family, who they rule over their water planet Caladan, right? And Paul's dad, Lido, gets a call from the Emperor, says, "Brrr, brrr, guess what? You're now in charge of this desert planet called Arrakis." Arrakis kind of sucks there. It's dry and it's hot, but it is rich with this drug resource called spice. Turns out, you find out midway through the book, that the Emperor was working with the Harkonnen, who are rivals to the Atreides family. There's a big attack, and now Paul's dad is dead. And Paul and his mom Jessica are alone in the desert.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  There, Paul and Jessica intermingle with the Fremen, who are the indigenous people of On Arrakis. And it turns out, turns out. It just so happens that Paul is this savior figure that they've been waiting for. Paul falls in love with a Fremen woman named Chani, and he eventually leads the Fremen to defeat the Harkonnen and then like overthrow the emperor in a marriage, in some sort of, I can't quite understand the deal that's made there, but Paul's at the top of the castle at the end. Is that a fair once-over?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  I mean, Ralton has a better understanding of what, he's read it more than once. I read it once, and I thought Arrakis and Atreides were the same thing for First 80 Things. So I, I was like, wait, did they name the planet after themselves? And I was like, nah, girl.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  There's different stuff, yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  So I trust, I trust Ralton.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's, one of the things I think that I loved about the book, but I think is a weak spot of it, is it's like basically mostly context and world building.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  It is building this world that is then expanded upon in the next five books that Herbert himself wrote.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  But I think that part of it, from my mind at that time, I was super into this kind of context, world building. What does it say about our world? What does it say about geopolitics? I was in that place, and so it has that. But there's a ton of names and a ton of concepts, and things are returned to, and there isn't like narrative driving it the way that like a typical sci-fi novel would. So I can understand why you get those two mixed up.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  But I'm thankful for the glossary in the back of the book as we move forward.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  So Parker, like, since you weren't, were you like a sci-fi kid growing up? Were you reading sci-fi?

• 5:17Speaker 02

  No, I was reading like Raw Doll and like John Cheever's short stories.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  So like, what was your impression of Dune? Like, did you know about it?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  I know it existed. I saw, I've seen the two movies, the Timothy Chalamet movies. I've never seen the David Lynch Dune.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Well, I'm just curious, because like, so I, when I was a teenager, I was big into sci-fi. I was reading like Ender's Game. I was reading like Philip K. Dick. I was reading, you know, Ursula K. Le Guin, da-da-da. I remember, I gave Dune a shot because I knew this is like a big book in the genre.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  And I have this sense, my, I remember being in the backseat of the, of the car, we were driving to church, and I'm, I'm reading my copy from the library, and I get like 30 pages into it, and I'm like, nah, bro. I'm done. I'm done. I'm out.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  What, what, what made you want to be like, I'm out?

• 6:02Speaker 03

  I just think I got confused. I was like, I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know who was who, and there was no, at the time, I just like couldn't grab onto anything driving me through like the rest of the book. And so I was wondering like, Maybe it is possible that you were just built different, right, as a kid. But like, do you remember as a kid being like, oh, I don't really know what the world of the emperor is and like his, his big corporation thing, but I'm very attracted to this one thing that is driving me.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why I read it twice, because I also obviously was like, what is going on at times? I didn't understand that to keep going back, which is obviously not a, what you want as a writer, I think, to have people doing that. But at the same time, for me, it was personal. What this book had for me, that appealed to me personally, is like one of the first books, sci-fi books that I read that projected the modern world into the future in the way that it did. Specifically for me, Islam was a big part of the book. I mean, very quickly into the first like hundred pages, there's Arabic words coming up, Islamic concepts. And I'm, I was raised with Islam.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  They're like celebrating Ramadan, right?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  They're going on Hajj.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  I was like, what is happening? Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  For me, it was like, wow, I saw myself. And because you're a kid, you're a narcissist. You're, you're really into yourself at that point. I saw myself projected into the future, or it felt like a world that somebody like me could live in.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  That's so lovely. I feel so bad for like growling and, and being so mad while reading this.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. Because that's legit too. Like, I can hold both things, right? Like, at the same time, I understand that the book's weakness is, is it's just not as narrative driven, like what you're saying, Drew. That totally makes sense. There isn't a thread that pulls you all the way through. It's not per se a like classically well-written book. But what it has is the level of detail and research that went into it. If world building and if sci-fi for you is a way to understand the world today, it has, in my opinion, a lot to offer there. Meaning the way it projects, you know, economics, ecology, religion, gender dynamics, all of that into the future, I think is, is really prescient in a way that a lot of other sci-fi books aren't.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  All right. I just want to take a quick break right here and then we'll get into all of that.

• 8:19Speaker 04

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• 9:18Speaker 00

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• 9:30Speaker 03

  All right, we're back before Ronteen just laid out the big ideas that Herbert was working with in Dune. I'm just going to run through some quick bio stuff for Herbert to understand this interesting guy that we've been working with, that we've been thinking about. So really quick, so he was born in Tacoma, Washington, so he's a Pacific Northwest guy. He was growing up, I believe, during the Great Depression. Yep. His parents are alcoholics, so he ran away from home. As an adult, he was a journalist, a photographer, a speechwriter, and he was writing sci-fi on the side. And he was originally working on a magazine article about the US Department of Agriculture's efforts to stabilize sand dunes in Oregon. He never finished that article because he got too obsessed with this image of the sand dunes and how to like live and survive in a desert world.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  So he spent six years world building and he was just like working on this draft. It was originally published in serial form in sci-fi magazines. The full novel was rejected by 20 Three publishers before Chilton Books accepted it, which is a company, a publishing company mostly known for auto repair manuals. I also read that the guy who worked at that company and bought the book for the publisher company, the book was such a flop that he got fired.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  It's a bother dude. But eventually, you know, the book was published in 65 and became, it won the Hugo and the Nebula, which are the big sci fi awards to this day. And it is, I think, up there in the sci fi canon. From since you were like a big fan as a kid, have you seen Dune's influence throughout the years? Are there any things that you saw in culture be like, that's Dune, that's Dune, that's Dune?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, I think for me it was retrospective, right? Like after I read the book, I was like, let me go back and read like where the idea for Star Wars came from. Like immediately.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  We gotta talk about Star Wars, okay.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Right, that's the big one. I was like, yo, this is one to one concept. I mean, I think it goes beyond inspiration. So you could argue Herbert was inspired by the Foundation series, by Asthma. Like there is a lot of previous books and all art is a remix of some other art, in my opinion. It's influenced by something else. But some of the like Jabba the Hutt and the worms.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  The desert planet.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Oh, like the Baron.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Luke's story, Paul's story, like it's just a rip off in a lot of ways. And of course, you know, it's hard to prove that or whatever.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Frank Herbert, I think almost, he's been on the record to be like, he ripped me off. And he, I don't think he ever sued, but he definitely like.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Lucasfilm's ain't got a chick?

• 12:02Speaker 03

  No.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Nah, they did not, Lucas denied it. He said like, you know, of course I read it like everyone else, but like no way I was sitting down thinking about while I was, you know, writing this idea.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Stu Osmosis.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, I will say this, it makes me happy that, or sad, that Herbert didn't live long enough to see the rebirth and rise of Dune as a film and as a like a franchise and the death of Star Wars.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  All right, come on now. I argue.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Hot takes.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Star Wars has just gone too far. It's wow. Like the Disneyfication of Star Wars. Whereas, you know, Dune is in the hands of like a great filmmaker like Denis Villeneuve. So I just think Herbert got the last laugh.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Hot takes. I will say, when the first Dune, the part one came out, I had a friend and I was like, this is the only time I will let you mansplain something to me. I need you to explain Dune to me before I see this movie. And he was like, well, it's basically Star Wars for gods. And it's about, it's about like this spice and imperious.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  And I was like, okay, okay. And then I got in and saw the movie and then I was like, oh, I understand even less. But beautiful gowns, great score.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  And everyone's hair was fantastic.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Macabre, yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, awesome. The movie is from a production standpoint, all that's A plus plus. I really love that the film has made it like a franchise. Like it's entered the popular parlance. Like people are using those words.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  There's an HBO series about the Ben and Jerry.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  The Sisterhood, which I watched, which I thought could have been better, but it was.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  So wait, are you thinking we're close to the Marvelification of Dune?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  I hope not. I hope not. I mean, it could. It could go that way.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  I, can I ask you, like, have you read all of the Dune books?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I've read all of them.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Like even the ones that's like POV of the sandworm?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yes. I've read all of them. I mean, the first six are considered canon because they were written by Herbert. The rest were written by his son. But I'm just here for the universe, if I'm being honest with you. And I loved the first book because I, again, the themes, one of the things I love is culture follows ecology. That is really explored in the first book. The themes of. How to view leadership, how to view someone proclaiming that they are Messiah, to basically be suspicious of all leadership. The fact that this was presented also in the context of the 1950s and 60s in America, a time where, you know, the US has essentially presented itself to itself as the Trades family.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  And that the Soviets are the Harkonnens. It's a warning, a complex warning. And what I find really fascinating is the reason why Herbert went on to write, apparently he didn't want to write all those additional books. He wanted to go in a different direction, but he felt like critics and the fans really misunderstood the first book.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  OK, on that note, so I've got here this interview from 1982, who's on NBC. So he's a few books into the Dune series. He says a couple of funny things in this interview. First off, he says, I want to write sci fi for the non sci fi audience.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  And I was like, that's an interesting, that's an interesting approach.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  For a guy who wrote this.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  It's a guy who wrote this, yeah. And then he's asked about like, OK, what is like your goal with these books? What did you want to accomplish? This is what he says.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  Don't trust leaders to always be right. I worked to create a leader in this book who would be really an attractive, charismatic person, for all the good reasons, not for any bad reasons. Then power comes to him, he makes decisions. Some of his decisions made for millions of people, millions upon millions of people, don't work out too well.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Here's where I struggle with this book, which is that that is an interesting concept, that back half of that deconstruction of the hero myth. None of that really happens in book one. All of that happens, right? As I understand, all that happens, I'm like, kind of interested in like buying Dune Messiah. And I'm interested in like, but none of that, if we're talking about specifically just about Dune, this first book, it's all about the come up and nothing about the crash. So it's like, is he successful if that is his goal with this book?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Well, I think this is my interpretation, was trying to do the illustration of the visions that Paul is having about the future, once he, you know, goes through the kind of the ritual of basically inculcated with the spice in his purest form. He sees that there's like multiple different futures, that there isn't one. And some of the futures he sees are horrible and it's haunting him and it's scaring him. And I think Herbert thought people would then extrapolate like, yeah, he came up, but now he's got an army of like fanatics basically wiping out the known galaxy in his name and he's not, he understands the darkness of this, but then gives up to like, it's inevitable. I can't do anything about it, et cetera. So I think he assumed that, but people misread it.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  People sometimes, and I think even with the movie, saw it as like a white savior story, et cetera. But I think he meant it as the opposite. From what I understand, he had real problems with the hero journey itself.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  The hero's journey, which I do. And this is what I said about its worldview. I think it is picking apart that fundamental, kind of deep, I would say, European sense of story.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  All right, quick break, and then we're going to get into how Dune approaches technology.

• 17:37Speaker 04

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• 18:12Speaker 00

  This message comes from the podcast Morrison Mysteries. Dateline's Keith Morrison brings his signature storytelling to the haunting works of Edgar Allan Poe. Search Morrison Mysteries to follow now. This message comes from Pushkin Industries. In his new audiobook, The American Way of Killing, Malcolm Gladwell asks where America's gun violence epidemic came from, from the Second Amendment to shooting ranges to ER doctors. Get it wherever audiobooks are sold.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  All right, we're back. I want to talk more about Herbert's approach to technology. I watched a couple interviews with him and read some stuff. And he was interested in technology. He said, "You can't run away from it. You have to engage. You have to interface." So he wanted to write, again, this is the thing that's driven me up. He wanted to write about technology. But the story he chose to tell is like after these people have eradicated technology, sort of.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yes, but the idea is humanity itself is a technology. The ideas are a technology. Like, I don't mean to get all like weird and academic here.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  That's it, that's good, yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I think what he's trying to express is that we tend to think of technology as something we build, something that physically exists in the way that like a telephone will or a computer. But what I think he's saying is that when you don't have those things, you're forced to develop the mind as a technology. So the book, the world of the book depends on human beings and their mental capabilities to do things like travel from one star system to the next, right? And so, two things. The human mind is a technology and natural resources are a technology. The ecology becomes a technology. So the spice melange is the technology that fuels space travel. It fuels long life.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  It fuels the ability of people to like, Mentats, basically. They're all spice melange addicts, right?

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Is that what they are?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yes, that's why they have the certain, they have like lips that reflect a constant consumption of spice melange and eyes, obviously. The eyes of a bad, so.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Were they human computers?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Ha! Yeah, well, they're, and they turn into computers.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Okay, okay.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  So they're trained from a young age with the use of spice melange as like a.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Like a lawsuit, not Adderall.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. It's like next level Adderall. If you try to come off of, you die.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  So, so the idea is that humanity itself and our ideas and the way we develop our own mental state is a form of technology and that we should view it that way.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  You know.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Is that?

• 20:47Speaker 03

  No, no, I get it.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I probably sound crazy.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  And I, and I think what's interesting is like, I associate his generation of sci fi writer with like, right leaning libertarianism. That's like, kind of like easy to, you can generally like map onto like what Heiland is thinking about and da, da, da. I find what he's cooking way more complex and in an interesting and fascinating way.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's profoundly morally dubious, the book.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  It's morally complex. One example is the way the Fremen are portrayed, right?

• 21:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  He became very, I think, infatuated by Bedouin culture, Berber culture, Mongolian culture. And the way they're portrayed is at once, it shows that he has a sort of nostalgic view of like Marxism and collectivism, right? Like that, like people can live collectively and literally give their bodies back to each other. The water from their bodies to survive at that level. But then, at the same time, they are vicious and brutal and merciless towards each other and towards their enemies when they need to be. Meaning that like, the Fremen are basically like no nonsense people. They are not sentimental. They are very much about survival and they will kill enemies on the battlefield if they need to. If you're weak, they will drop you.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  And I think what it is, is a morally complex view and not like necessarily romanticizing any of the characters in the book. It's pushing the listener in a time of black and white thinking in the United States during the Red Scare and all of that stuff, to start thinking a little bit more complex about world affairs and understanding these things come from somewhere.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I want to move and start talking about religion here because

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  you, you could read this as an anti-religious book, right? You could say like, oh, messias are bad because like, you know, Paul is going to lead them all into like hell and like kill a bunch of people in the name of religion. And religion's sort of like, the, the psychology of religion and how people get swept up in these stories. They're all like brainwashed, you know, you can do the whole anti-religion thing. And yet he treats it with such dignity and respect. Like, there is a beauty to what like the Fremen people are doing.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  I mean, while reading it, I was distracted, like, wait, this is a quote from Ecclesiastes while we're going along. I think it also speaks to, I think in the book, there is a respect for death in a way that I found interesting. Like, there is a moment when Paul has to kill someone.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  And Jessica, his mother lady Jessica has to be like, you just killed someone. How do you feel about that? Like, it's not discarded.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  In a way that I feel like in contemporary art, it's kind of like you kill someone, like, isn't that cool? Go past, like, no, this is a life-changing thing that happens. And the Fremen treat it as such and respects the body. When you like pause, like, the ritual of getting the water from the body, there is like a ceremony and a respect to it that shows spirituality, called spirituality.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, for sure.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  That I was really drawn to and thought interesting.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  What I think is fascinating about that is Herbert read, like, in preparation for this, did years of research. That's what's interesting. Like, he took courses, I think, at University of Oregon, and read about Islamic history and military history. And one of the things, I think, is a commentary on is like pre-modern warfare. I mean, he's writing this on the heels of like atom bomb being dropped and of the horrors of World War II, where a lot of those deaths were happening either through a gun or a bomb. And I think what he's basically doing is harkening back to like pre-modern warfare. You had to kill someone with a sword or a knife.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  There's no distance to it.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so it conjured this sense of like honoring the person you killed, that like the death itself, it was so up close and so upfront that you had to develop some kind of mythology around it to justify it in your human brain. But I will say this, I think he's less anti-religious and more anti-determinism, anti-prophesy. It's like he respects faith systems.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  As so far as they serve us in our lives. Like, meaning you make sense of death through a ceremony. You make sense of the fact that you don't have any water around you by creating a religion around water, right? That all to him seems to make sense. But then when it comes to someone saying, I see the future, follow me, he seems really deeply suspicious of that, which makes sense in an era of Stalin and Mao and American mythology, right?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and really questionable of fundamentalism and being like,

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  question everything, but also like have your rituals.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  All right, let's take one more quick break. And then let's talk about whether or not Herbert is a good writer. And then we're gonna give out some book recommendations, too. Stick with us.

• 25:33Speaker 00

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• 26:34Speaker 03

  Where I sort of want to almost wrap up here is ask, is Herbert a good writer? If we're talking about on a sentence level, right? There's the chapter where Kynes, who's like a C-tier character, he's in, he plays an important part, but he's not like a main character. But when this character dies, I don't know if that's, but it like sort of deviates really quick from like the main thrust of the narrative. And there's this like intimate conversation that he has, I can't quite tell if he's imagining it, but like with his father, right? As he's facing death. And I was like, oh, for, for all of my dogging on this book about like being too mired in like history and world building, this is like a moment of quiet beauty.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  If like, I can get like four more of those, you know what I mean? This would be a 10 out of 10 book.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Well, have you read all of, this is the only.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  This is the only one.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  I have never read a single one of these.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  I'm a science curious.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. So if you can get to God, Emperor of Dune, which I think is the fourth book.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Fourth?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Yes. If you can get there, or the third book, I'm sorry, third book. Children of Dune is the fourth book. The third book, that book is like. Philosophical banger after philosophical banger. The writing in that book, I think, is the best of the series.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  But there are moments of it in the previous book, which is what you're pointing out, where it's deeply thoughtful and philosophical and emotional.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  And just like beautiful. It's like a pretty section to read.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  100%. Or I mean, the litany against fear, which is in the first book, right? The, you know, fear is the mind killer. Like, that's the reason why. It's like people have it tattooed on their bodies or that it's like had this kind of extended life is because it's a beautifully written paragraph. But I agree with you. In this book, is he the best writer in the world? No. What makes the book special are the ideas in it versus the way that those ideas are expressed.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  I gotta get through like 1,200 more pages.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  This is like when someone recommends a show and it's like, oh, season one and two is ass. But like, season three, baby.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  It's like, there are 10 seasons.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't, you know, I hear you. I wouldn't go, I still do really love the book. And I think the reason why everybody should read it is that it will give you a better.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Why should we read this today?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  It gives you a better understanding of the world we live in now. Why the world is the way it is. Why certain wars are being fought, why certain resources matter, why we are in the place we are. And it gives you kind of a, both a, my opinion, meta view of that, but also deeply personal one. That in the end, all of us are living within circumstances that none of us decided. And every day we have to make decisions based on outside influences that are in our head, that are in our bodies, that dictate everything around us. And that we should be a little bit more forgiving of ourselves because we're living within that context. And we should be really suspicious of anyone that tells us that they have all the answers.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  And I think the final thing I'll say, for me, this is very personal, but I think its portrayal of Islamic thought is the most respectful. Even though it's flawed at times and shows some of his misunderstandings of it, it still portrays a deep respect from a white American author, writing in the 1950s and 60s and beyond. I think it's really important for people to understand Islam from this perspective, from one that doesn't otherize it, that paints it as an integral part of the future world. And so for that reason, I think it's really important for people as an exercise to read this book, especially when they're young.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think, I think this book is definitely worth reading today because, like I said, I've been like getting Dune-pilled. Like, my immediate reactions to it were a little rude. Like, you know, they texted the boys at the group chat who were all Dune fans. I was like, "Bo- boys, what do you want? What do you want?"

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  But then it's like, oh, I had a question. I was like thinking about, oh, let me go back and read more about what this question he poses. And let me go think about that thing. This week has been a lot of fun, just like thinking about this friggin' book.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  And just like unwrapping it and being like, wait, what is it saying? It's not saying nothing. But I was like, but then I gave it a couple of days. It's like, he's saying a lot.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  He's saying a lot.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  He's saying a lot.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  It's a lot. Maybe too much. I mean, that's why the critics is like, it's a lot of ideas mashed into it.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Parker, are you, how are you feeling?

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Okay. Earlier this week, I was really hostile towards the book. I will say I enjoyed, then I realized I enjoyed the first and second book. And then I felt book three inside of the book jumped the shock a little bit with the Abomination Child. And then I was like, what is this?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  The precocious doll.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  The precocious doll?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, running around like, like with a doll's voice, like biting people and killing people.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  I was like, all right, Herbert. But I will say, because I enjoyed two-thirds of it, I would recommend it.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Nice. We did it.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  We did it.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  I can say I read Dune. Now, when a guy at a party is like, "But have you read Dune?"

• 31:32Speaker 01

  No, you can say, "But have you really read Dune?"

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Have you really read Dune?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Do you understand that ecology drives technology and culture?

• 31:38Speaker 03

  All right, let's wrap up by saying, if you like this, recommend that. Parker, do you want to go first?

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Okay. All right. So this is full circle for me because, so our first episode was about prejudice.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  And-

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Which is related. I'm seeing a lot of threads.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  It is related. So years ago, I watched the movie The Jane Austen Book Club. And in it, there's a guy in the book club who is a big sci-fi fan and is trying to convince a girl in the book club to read Ursula Le Guin.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  And because of that- It got me to read Ursula Le Guin in my early twenties. And so I recommended like the very popular Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. I just, that wasn't that wasn't an excited, ah.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  I have never read.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. It's about like gender on different planets. And it involves like a guy coming onto a planet and not trying to be a messiah or anything, but just trying to understand the people in is stuck in such a binary mindset that he's trying to like navigate this world.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, mine is a comic book series. I brought it with me because I read it on the train called Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples. Um, it's, it is a, it is similar Montague Capulet, like two warring tribes. The two fall in love, have a child, and then they're just like on the run. And one of the people in the relationship is a pacifist. And that gets like tested a lot throughout the book about like how, how, how much he's willing to sacrifice. Who are his beliefs in, in pacifism?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been recommended to me.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  It's so good. It's when you're, when you think about like grand space operas, this doesn't have like as much of like the politics in it, but it is like a vast scape of like cultures and peoples and worlds that they're running away from.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. My turn?

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  So it's a completely different story, but for people who like the detail and the world building of Dune and the entire series, another very popular sci-fi book from a little bit later than this first book is Rendezvous with Rama, which Denis Villeneuve is actually apparently making a film out of.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  I've never heard about this, but what is this?

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Rendezvous with Rama. It's by author C. Clarke, another very famous sci-fi writer of that time. It's a short book and without giving too much away, basically what it's about is a, an oblong shape, what they think is a meteor kind of rock or something basically appears in our solar system. And so a ship is sent to intercept it, get on board and see what it is because it's behaving like a spaceship. And it's about the astronauts who board it, what they see, and it's very richly detailed. And it's immersive, right? You feel like you're there with them and you're in their heads the way you do in, in Dune.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  Damn, Rowntree. Thanks a lot. This has been a lot of fun.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Are you kidding me? I was waiting for this call. This is so much fun. I, you know, I really enjoy talking about books. So this is a lot of fun. Thank you.

• 34:50Speaker 04

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