Some of Herbert’s lesser works incorporate a lot of drugs as well. The Santaroga Barrier, for instance.
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Just bought a replacement copy of Dune this year. The old one (a 1984 paperback print I believe) had finally given up the ghost.
Dune is one you can read and re-read.
But yeah, the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson prequels/sequels/shoved right there in between books, are nowhere near as good, and are really only for Dune Universe addicts. (but, yeah, I’ve got all of them as well. Nobody’s staged an intervention yet, so I’m probably good…)
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The folding of space was an idea of the movie adaptation, the book treats it exactly the way Hank describes it. The settled outer space with the help of computers (and robots) but those as tools became too powerful and got in the wrong hand leading to a very bad war and were banned after that (the events leading to this are known as Butlers Jihad) and the spice trance was a workaround after that.
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No, but will a crysknife do?
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A cat-tail?
It‘s good that words like „Tolkienesque“ exist, because once they‘re uttered in a conversation, it’s perfectly obvious that it‘s time to leave and never return.
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Wasn‘t spice used for being able to see a tiny bit into the future, so that navigation at high speeds would become possible?
Edit: as @Hank already mentioned a few posts above mine.
My recommendation for anyone trying to make it through LOTR is start with The Hobbit. It’s a breeze to read and fun, if you want to read the actual LOTR trilogy use my method of: If you start seeing dense descriptions with no dialogue just start flipping pages until you see dialogue. Once you see a conversation back up a page or two and resume reading. This mainly applies to Book 1
The first LOTR book is challenging and really dry to get through because a lot of it is expository background information that doesn’t pertain to the story directly. The second and third book are much much easier to read. If someone ends up loving them and wanted to go back and fully read the trilogy i’d call that a success. I’ve talked to quite a number of people that started and gave up with the first book.
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Looking back, the books themselves just referred to “faster than light” travel needing spice, but presumably that would still involve doing something weird with topology to avoid violating the laws of physics even if the term “folding” is from the Lynch movie and the spice worked by giving prescience to navigators to avoid hitting things in the process. But unless I’ve been greatly misled as to how the Apollo project worked, I don’t think that’s needed for conventional space travel…
I agree with those here who feel this video entirely fails at its stated goal.
Dune is, at its heart, an adventure story for fifteen year old boys. Read any of Herbert’s books before Dune and you’ll see how Dune fits right in.
The reason it’s worth reading is because it transcends that humble purpose with layers of great stuff, including strong roots in proper drama by ripping off Hamlet.
The Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi has been scratching my Space Opera itch lately, in a way the Ancillary Justice series completely failed to. I’m really excited for the third book, it’s supposed to be hitting the shelves pretty soon now.
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I have no idea if it is supported by the source, but I really like the idea that electronic computers could fold space but then the severe backlash after the Jihad meant all computers were verboten so they needed humans to take on the role. But a normal human can’t work fast enough, so they need the spice, presumably in conjunction with Mentats.
Now I wonder if the Guild wasn’t at least partially responsible for the severe backlash against mechanical computers. It gave them a monopoly on space travel thanks to their ownership of Arrakis. Heck, we don’t even know if the Jihad was legit or was drummed up by the Guild to eliminate their competition. That would hardly be out of place in the Dune universe. This makes me want to read the books again, but then I remember how they’re not that much fun to read.
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IMO, the Ancillary series is much better SF, but Collapsing Empire is a lot more fun. Both are worth reading, but for different purposes. 
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I tried that - and if possible I cared even less for The Hobbit than I did for LOTR. It just didn’t connect with me whatsoever. Having grown up reading mythologies and legends of various ancient cultures, I fared a little better with The Silmarilion, but even that didn’t particularly grab me - having already read a lot of what it was inspired by, I was just more interested in the actual myths and legends, and more direct adaptations and interpretations thereof (like Robert Graves’ The Golden Fleece which was one of my favorite books as a child).
I tried and tried, but in the end I had to come out to my friends and admit that I’m just really not interested in LOTR. Which is funny because I do enjoy fantasy (albeit more the closer to “historical fantasy” the better, I’m not usually into high fantasy), I happen to have an MA in Medieval English literature, focusing on Anglo-Saxon literature, and I always had a fondness for Germanic myths and legends. I should be all over LOTR, but I just don’t find it interesting. (I did enjoy the first movie, though…)
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Nothing wrong with not liking it at the end of the day you gave it a try. Plus there’s all kinds of great books out there, I don’t have the patience to spend my time on a book I didn’t care for.
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I think it’s a fantastically rich novel that rewards multiple rereads but i hate hate the equating of homosexuality with paedophilia, incest and rape. To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe that was never the intent of herbert but it plays into the narrative of demonising non-hetero relationships that people have always have to deal with.
As for the sequels, i’ve read messiah and children but i couldn’t tell you what they’re about with any degree of accuracy. The first book is all you need.
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In a way book 2 and 3 are glue between the first and the fourth. But reading only the first book can give you the wrong idea, because on it’s own it is easy to think of it as another heroes journey when the series was actively deconstructing the trope.
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Maybe i’ll get around to the final three in herbert’s series eventually, i fully intended to originally but i did find 2 and 3 quite a slog to be honest. The self-contained nature of the first book does suggest that herbert intended it to be a stand-alone novel.
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Have friends who raved about Dune. Saw the Lynch movie. Some years later, read the book; it was okay but not great or memorable. Wondering if I was missing something, reread it a few years later, same impression, never had any inclination to read any sequels. Tolkien on the other hand: love LOTR, The Hobbit not so much, but The Silmarillion completely blows me away.
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The key to the series is that Paul is not actually the Kwisatz Haderach. Seizing the mantle of the messiah is the only way to assure his revenge on House Harkonnen and the Emperor for the death of his father, but it leads to a jihad that lays waste to the empire. Dune Messiah is about the everybody coming to terms with that being the case. Children of Dune is about Leto realizing and accepting that he can be the Kwisatz Haderach, and accepting the burden so that his sister will not have to. God Emperor is about what happens when your messiah’s concept of salvation is not what you expect. Heretics of Dune is about the surprising things that can happen when humanity is freed from expectations. I don’t think that Frank actually wrote Chapterhouse.
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