Dune may also owe a lot to the work of Cordwainer Smith (Paul Linebarger) and his Instrumentality of Mankind stories. For example, in this far-future setting you have the life-extending drug Stroon, from the desert planet Norstrilia. This world was settled by ranchers from the Australian Outback. They are collectively the wealthiest people in the universe, largely due to being the only source of Stroon, which is extracted from sheep who contract a local disease and grow to gigantic size. (Smith’s work is more whimsical than Herbert’s, though still serious.) However, they maintain the simple lifestyle of their ancestors.
I wrote “may” because the first mention of Norstrilia was in 1964 and Dune was published in 1965. It could simply be coincidence, two writers being inspired by the same seed of an idea at about the same time.
