Written: 2024-02-09
Revised: 2024-02-20

Dune review

I just finished reading Frank Herbert's Dune. I'd heard of it from other people, and seen Denis Villeneuve's Dune Part I. My brother read it and liked it.

I didn't like it.

I really enjoyed it for about the first two thirds. The political drama is interesting, there isn't a whole lot of action but I actually prefer it that way.

The character development is good; Paul starts as a highly intelligent, highly trained, but inexperienced heir. Over the course of the story, he grows, unlocks his future-prediction superpowers (which are just an extremely accurate version of normal extrapolation), learns his power's limitations, becomes a religious and political leader of sorts, and with that manages to fulfill his goal of freeing Arrakis from the Harkonnen and avenging his father.

The philosophy is also really interesting; there are ideas about how the environment shapes people, how to become better through training and discipline, how people can shape the environment, nuanced views on the harm of cynical skepticism and the harm of blind superstition and so on.

There are several things that usually bother me, but were well done enough that this time, they didn't: the polygamy (framed as a situation caused by the different cultures; Paul still behaves in a way that makes sense for his own upbringing), the Orange Catholic Bible (explained in an appendix, it's actually well-justified, especially the "nobody liked it at the time" part) and all the Bene Gesserit's cynical manipulation (clearly shown to be flawed).

The characters are interesting, the drama is interesting, the philosophy is interesting, and the writing is really good. So what is it that I didn't like?

With a superficial reading, I might have liked it. I actually did for a while. But it has a crucial blind spot missing from the middle of all its philosophy: a point. There's no point to the story! All the characters motivations and goals are shown to be fruitless; but you couldn't say "destiny will take its course" either, because it's clearly shown that there's no such thing.

It aims to show that humans are free to change the future, but anyone's plans are useless in the face of everyone else's. There's no God, Destiny, or human planning to guide the future. The closest thing is Paul's prescience, but even him can't control the future.

Maybe it's because, as in all things, the truth is not at the extremes, but usually in the middle; Dune tries so hard to stay at the middle (successfully, I should add) that it forgets to actually use that philosophy for anything.

It gives the impression that there's no objective good or evil, but then shows what happens when everyone tries to act in their own self-interest, and it's not something anyone likes. It shows how religion can be manipulative, but then praises loyalty, which is not that different. The heroes manipulate, the villains manipulate, and nobody is really right, or even better than the others.

And it does all that really well. It's the perfect illustration for an Atheist worldview: nothing is absolute, so everything is frustratingly empty and pointless. And it can't be argued against, because believing in anything would be, charitably, self-manipulation (according to this worldview, at least).

And that's why I didn't like Dune. It's a really well made illustration of a philosophy I don't like or agree with.