The oil crisis of 1973 was not the first oil crisis. It was merely the first oil crisis that could not be coped with by expanding American oil production and export. The first crisis from a consumer point of view, perhaps, but not from a geopolitical point of view.
Dune did have a metaphor for oil, but it wasn’t spice, it was water. See his essay “Dune Genesis” on the official website.
Well, suffice it to say that I think he’s writing wonderfully with the device, which is really not that much different from something like the therapy sessions in the Soprano’s. Those sessions are nothing but big Tells about Tony’s life, but they’re woven into the story so well that that doesn’t matter. Seems to me that Irulan’s excerpts work similarly.
This introduces the last chapter of Dune. Paul’s victory over the Emperor is complete, it appears that Good has vanquished Evil, but the ending of the novel makes it clear that Our Great Hero failed to stop the Fremen wave of death. The genocide happens anyway.
This is not a book with a simple moral lesson.
Irulan’s descriptions of Paul are an obvious example of the “unreliable narrator”. By the end of the book we know that Irulan is his wife in name only, that he’s a psychopathic mass murderer and revered as a living god.
I think the quotes are obviously not supposed to be taken at face value, but rather as what someone in Princess Irulan’s position would actually be allowed to write. We’re told (and shown!) over and over again how awful the Harkonnens are, and they surely are awful. And we’re invited to believe that the Atreides are nice people at the beginning of the book, through standard science fiction motifs…they fight honorably with swords, they have loyal retainers, dishonorable enemies, they’re like fairy tale royalty from a thousand previous fantasy stories. Firm but fair, you know? But we slowly learn that isn’t the case.
To bring it back to earth, the Harkonnens are Saddam Hussein, the Atreides are Ayatollah Komeini. Just because they’re deadly enemies doesn’t mean one is good and one is evil. Which one would be worse to live under is a matter of personal preference. Is Komeini better because people sacrificed their lives and freedom willingly to him, but grudgingly to Saddam? The Baron liked to sexually torture slave boys to death, Paul kicked off a galaxy wide genocide with his religious fanatic fremen. Which one was good and which one was evil again?
To be fair to Fatty Vladdy, that was from the movie rather than the book: in the novel he drugs one slave boy who looks like Paul Atreides because he doesn’t feel like wrestling, and he kills the one who’d unwittingly been sent to assassinate him, but no actual sexual torture was suggested. And Paul had prescient visions of a Fremen jihad, but they horrified him.
Jessica’s voice cracked across the room like a whip. “Sit!”
Thufir recoiled in horror as, if in a trance, he found himself recumbent in a chair. Great Mother! With all his Mentat and assassin training, he had been unable to resist her command! What manner of power was this?
Jessica smiled grimly. “Now you’ve seen something of the fist within the Bene Gesserit glove. Few glimpse its strength and live.”
“But”, Thufir stammered, struggling to regain his composure, “With such power to command, why are you not out laying the smack on the Duke’s enemies?”
Jessica smiled sadly. “Would you have me spoil the plot? There are yet four hundred pages to go, and we must fill them with treachery, betrayal and death. No, Thufir, there can be no swift end to this struggle.”
“Great Mother”, Thufir muttered “Why didn’t I do Starship Troopers like my agent suggested? Heinlein was right next to Herbert in my in-box!”
Jessica smiled ruefully. “We of the Bene Gesserit can see many possible futures, and it is foretold that the movie of that book will suck. Not all fates are decided. Come, Thufir! Take comfort that there are yet five more books in this series, not counting sequels. Your skills will be much needed ere we are done.”
“And the movie of this book?”, Thufir asked resignedly. “Is there hope there?”
Jessica smiled wearily. "There are many possible futures, Thufir Hawat, and some are more clouded and harder to see than others, even with all my training. But take courage, man. For though you sought among the “H"s, yet you did not choose Harry Harrison.”
snort
My keyboard just had a close brush with death by nose-spray.
Late to the party as usual, but if you consider the 75 hours you spent reading Dune wasted, at least you’re now set up to get all the jokes in Doon. Excerpt below; I can post more if anyone wants it.
They were interrupted by a commotion at one of the entrances. A woman in hootch clothes was confronting a small group of then-arriving Freedmenmen. She had a generous mouth. Jazzica recognized a small figure in their midst.
Pall!!
Her son!!
Her trained awareness confirmed the fact that the boy, Pall, over there, to whom the woman was speaking, was her son. Yet she instantly permitted herself not to experience anything.
The woman was pointing to Pall. “This outranked my Janis?” she demanded. “This… boy-child?”
“He be more than that, Harrumf,” Spilgard admonished with newfound respect in his attitude.
“Man-child,” she said grudgingly.
“More.”
“Boy-man.”
“Less.”
“Baby-man. Man-boy. Boy-boy.”
Pall stepped foward, and Jazzica heard the regret-overtones and I’m-terribly-sorry harmonics in his voice. “I…”
“Teen-boy, youth-guy,” the woman Harrumf said with narrowed eyes. “Guy-man.”
“You’re close,” Spilgard said. “Let’m be known as a teen-man, and there be an end to’t.”
I’m continuing my reread, and I just don’t buy this “Princess Irulan’s quotes are supposed to be retarded” stuff.
Whatever FH’s intentions, they are laughable and pitiable writing.
At this point the book gets…
Ideas: A+
Story: A
Writing: C
I’m greatly enjoying the book, but as yet the prose is far from top notch.
I’d say that most of the claims for Dune having more depth, complexity and ambiguity than a simple tale of noble Atreides vs. villainous Harkonnens rest on the sequels, which regrettably I have no intention of reading, because the original novel is still just a fairytale with trimmings. I’d be interested to know when Herbert said that he’d envisioned the books being read as an integrated series, since authors and directors are always coming up with those kind of revisionist claims, usually after the first one sells better than expected - George Lucas, of course, being the prime example.