God Emperor of Dune – Frank Herbert (1981)
The fans of ‘Dune’ and indeed the fans of Frank Herbert fall into two camps. There are those who are desperate for ever more tales of the universe in which Arrakis and its intricately structured interstellar society exists. Indeed, the likes of Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert are still churning out new ‘Dune’ material nearly fifty years after the first novel was published. Then there are those who feel ‘less is more’ and that ‘Dune’ should have been left as a quite extraordinary stand alone novel, undoubtedly a classic and arguably one of the top ten SF novels of the 20th century.
To be fair to Herbert, ‘Dune Messiah’ and ‘Children of Dune’ were not simply ‘more of the same’. They were stylistically pushing the boundaries of the first novel, but even so, lacked much of the complex structure and rich colour of the original.
This, the fourth novel, takes us three thousand years into the future. Young Leto, the son of Muad’dib. has entered into a symbiotic relationship with the larval forms of the giant sandworms. Having been encased within their bodies he has been slowly transformed over centuries until he is physically more worm than man.
Leto, being not only prescient but possessed of the memories of all his ancestors, is a difficult creature to assassinate, although people keep trying.
Where this novel fails is that the narrative is for the most part centred around Leto, and Leto is not a creature who is that mobile. Now and again he goes out on a cart, but not often enough.
Consequently there is a continual succession of scenes where characters are summoned to the Emperor’s presence, at which they have long – often meaningless – discussions, since Leto operates through the medium of riddles, or oblique comments which his guests and servants are expected to decipher.
Arrakis has been terraformed and there is now only one small desert left in which ‘Museum Fremen’ are allowed to dwell.
There is a shortage of spice – the ‘unobtainium’ that bestows longevity and gives the Guild starship pilots their ability to navigate hyperspace.
The Ixians, the Tleilaxu (who have provided a new Duncan Idaho for the Emperor after he killed the last one) and the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, are all suspicious of each other.
As with ‘Dune Messiah’ there is a sense of doomed Shakespearean inevitability about it all, particularly in view of the fact that Leto can – to a certain extent – see the future and knows what is going to happen.
There are some interesting points made both obliquely via the narrative and through Leto’s conversations and journals about politics and religion. However, Herbert is covering old ground here since ‘Dune’ had already examined quite subtly and in exquisite detail the complex overlapping boundaries of religion and government.
One would have to clarify, having said all that, that this is not a bad novel. It’s just not a good Frank Herbert novel. Herbert was a writer whose name figures largely in the pantheon of SF saints but, like Anne McCaffrey and Fred Saberhagen, seems to be doomed to be remembered for one book that spawned an industry of sequels and franchise, leaving his other work sadly neglected.
Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert (1969)
‘A holy war has made Paul Atreides the religious and political leader of a thousand planets. The malign sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit, unable to dominate the man they have made a god, set out to destroy him.
Paul, who is able to foresee the plans of his enemies, resolves to adapt and shape them to a goal that is as shocking as it is unexpected.
‘Dune Messiah’ – long awaited successor to double award winner ‘Dune’ – is an epic of imperial intrigue that spans the universe, rich and strange in its evocation of the history, institutions and people of a far future age. ‘
Blurb to the 1972 NEL paperback edition
The second book in Herbert’s ‘Dune’ sequence takes us forward twelve years to where Paul Muad D’ib Atreides is now undisputed Emperor of the Galaxy. The Fremen have adopted him and his sister Alia (not, it has to be said, without their implicit consent) as Godlike figures which has prompted a jihad in which the Fremen have pillaged and occupied most of the worlds in the Dune galaxy.
Unlike the first novel, which was undeniably an epic and featured varied exotic locations around the galaxy, this book is much shorter and keeps its narrative firmly rooted on the planet Arrakis.
Muad D’ib finds the burden of Empire a heavy one to carry, particularly in view of the fact that his prescience (boosted into full awareness of the future due to the effects of the spice melange) seems to allow him no way to stop the jihad which is sweeping across the galaxy in his name, killing billions in a wave of religious fervour. He thus becomes something of a Shakespearean figure, locked into a destiny in which the concept of free will loses all meaning.
We are immediately introduced to the Bene Tleilaxu, a Guild similar to that of the Bene Gesserit, in that they are dedicated to selective breeding and the manipulation of genetic material to a specified end, but their methods are far different.
The Tleilaxu believe in directly modifying themselves and have become ‘Face Dancers’ (shape-changers) who pride themselves on their ability to reshape their flesh and mimic people to such an extent that their closest friends and family can be fooled.
They are also masterful cloners who are attempting to perfect the art of creating a ghola; a cloned copy of a dead individual which retains not only the original’s physical attributes, but their memories and personality. As part of their scheme to destroy Muad D’ib, the Tleilaxu, conspiring with both the Bene Gesserit and the Spacer’s Guild produce a copy of Muad D’ib’s old friend and mentor, Duncan Idaho, reborn as a mentat philosopher and offered to the Emperor as a gift.
Everyone seems to have a hidden agenda though, and the Tleilaxu are hoping that if the ghola does not destroy Muad D’ib, then the psychological pressure imposed upon him will in any case awaken the real Duncan and make their experiment a success so that they win either way.
‘messiah’ for me fails because it tries too hard to be a different sort of novel. The original was a triumph of contrasts, from the intensity of the Bene Gesserit disciplines through to the moral solidity of the Atreides and then the gross and decadent mores of the Harkonnens. There was the contrast with Caladan and Arrakis, between educated society and the Fremen, between water world and desert world. It was a riotous mixture of tastes and flavours.
Herbert, in concentrating on a somewhat claustrophobic and, has been suggested, Shakespearean sequel, has lost a little of what made Dune such a marvellous novel.
One cannot fault the plotting. Herbert has a mastery of the use of political intrigue, double-bluffing, double-crossing and paranoia.
It does seem, however, that the Bene Tleilax – who as far as I recall were not mentioned in ‘Dune’ – were brought in to add that flavour of spice (for want of a better word) to what is a rather cynical view of Humanity and religion.
As in ‘Dune’ religion (or rather the concept of belief) is used as a political tool, but by this time Muad D’ib has realised that the Godhood which has been bestowed upon him is merely a monkey on his back. It now controls him and he seems powerless to control the religious mania which has taken over the galaxy, or indeed his own future since he walks into traps fully knowing the consequences but also cogniscent of worse consequences should he take another path.
One suspects that this was meant to be a longer novel. The philosophy and the aims of the Bene Tleilax for instance are never fully explained and much of the colour and spectacle of the original are missing.
Some characters are underused. The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam was, in ‘Dune’, used sparsely but to great effect. Here she is simply used, and might just as well have never appeared in the novel at all.
Similarly, the Spacers’ Guild, who in the original are an exotic and mysterious human mutation are here reduced to the status of ‘man in a tank’.
The relationship between Alia and Hayt (the cloned Duncan Idaho) could have made a fascinating sub-plot but failed to materialise into something of solidity.
The Tleilaxu are the most fascinating element and the character of Scytale is the only one of the conspirators whose behaviour and actions hold any dramatic interest. The Tleilaxu were instrumental in the plot against Muad D’ib since they produced the resurrected body (and possibly soul) of Duncan Idaho. This is another Shakespearean motif in that Hayt can be seen as performing the same symbolic and dramatic purpose as Banquo’s Ghost, or that of Hamlet’s father, a former close associate returned from the grave. It may be significant that the Tleilaxu gave the reborn Idaho steel eyes which would naturally reflect the face of anyone he spoke to. Is it then his function to make the Mahdi Muad D’ib see himself for what he is?
Essentially, this novel reads as a first draft. Although well-written and packed with Herbert’s stylish inventiveness and his talent for designing societies and institutions, one can’t help feeling that the main characters are under-developed and are never given the opportunities (rather than the space) to show us their personalities the way they did with such panache in ‘Dune’.
The denouement in particular seems very rushed, as if Herbert were under pressure to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion.
Bug-Eyed Monsters – Anthony Cheetham (Ed) (1974)
Fronted by a beautiful and apt Bruce Penninton painting, this is a wonderful selection of stories devoted to ‘the alien’. Cheetham has compiled a nicely balanced selection with not really a bad apple in the barrel. One of my favourite anthologies, this. Highly recommended.
Invasion From Mars – Howard Koch (1940)
Not only Dead Men – AE Van Vogt (Astounding Nov 1942)
Arena – Fredric Brown (1944)
Surface Tension – James Blish (1952)
The Deserter – William Tenn (1953)
Mother – Philip Jose Farmer (1953)
Stranger Station – Damon Knight (1956)
Greenslaves – Frank Herbert (1965)
Balanced Ecology – James H Schmitz (1967)
The Dance of The Changer & Three – Terry Carr (1968)
This is a curious little collection. It has seemingly been revised since its first publication (this is the 1974 reprint) as the unnamed Bertram Chandler novella mentioned in the introduction has been replaced by the Van Vogt story (Annoyingly Van Vogt has been spelt Van Voigt in both the contents and the story heading.)
No previous publishing details are given apart from the original date of publication so any errors in names of magazines etc. is purely down to me.
Despite the slipshod manner of its publication this is rather a decent collection – in chronological order – of quality work (with the possible exception of the Van Vogt) featuring alien intelligence of one sort or another; in a few cases First Contact situations.
‘Invasion From Mars’ is not, strictly speaking, a short story, but the transcript of Orson Welles’ famous radio broadcast (adapted by Howard Koch) of HG Wells’ ‘War of The Worlds’ which famously sent many gullible Americans packing their bags and heading for the hills.
In ‘Not Only Dead Men’ a whaling ship encounters an alien craft and is enlisted in the hunt for the Devil-blal; a space-borne deadly creature, which has landed in the Earth’s ocean. Unfortunately, humans who learn of the existence of galactic society have to be silenced – permanently.
‘Arena’ is the original story on which the Classic Star Trek episode of the same name is based. Sadly, due no doubt to logistical and budgetary issues, a man in a Godzilla-like rubber suit. replaced the spherical rolling tentacled alien of the story
Humans find themselves at war with hostile aliens, so alien that no co-existence is possible. A highly advanced gestalt being intervenes and sets one individual of each race against each other in an arena, where they have to battle to the death, using their strength and intelligence. The loser’s civilisation will consequently cease to exist.
Excellently written, it still stands as a classic short of the genre.
‘Surface Tension’ was later incorporated into Blish’s ‘Seedling Stars’
In ‘The Deserter’ we are once more in a war between species. This time Humanity is fighting for its existence against huge Jovian creatures, one of which has deserted and is being held in a military facility in a vast refrigerated tank.
One man, once a prisoner of the Jovians, is recruited to interrogate the monster and find out what it knows. As it happens, prisoner and interrogator turn out to have a great deal in common.
‘Mother’ is one of the most memorable stories I’ve come across and is – apart from a darkly humourous SF tale – a satirical look at a dysfunctional mother/son relationship.
‘Stranger Station’ takes us to a far darker place where, despite the best efforts of both sides, humanity and the alien race which has given them a longevity drug, cannot communicate or bear to be in the same vicinity.
‘Greenslaves’ is an ecological warning and is no doubt far more relevant today that it was in the Sixties. In South America, a project which aims to eliminate unnecessary insects produces a violent reaction when the remaining insects begin to mutate, some of them forming a gestalt and developing the ability to physically join together to mimic human beings. This I suspect was the basis for Herbert’s novel, The Green Brain.
‘Balanced Ecology’ takes a similar premise, whereby a sentient ecosystem, managed as a family business dealing in rare timbers, takes matters into its own hands (or leaves) when threatened with destruction. A little too juvenile and cute in sections, it nevertheless cleverly examines the nature of ecosystems and symbiosis.
In ‘The Dance of the Changer &Three’ Carr attempts to translate an element of the history/mythology of the energy beings who live in the forbidding environs of a gas giant. It’s an attempt to examine a possible alien mind-set or point of view, but despite it being a memorable and readable tale, Carr never really succeeds in doing so.
Children of Dune – Frank Herbert (1976)
‘Old Paul Atreides, who led the Fremen to domination of the human galaxy, is gone now, and Arrakis itself is slowly changing; ecological change has brought vast areas of greenery and even open water to the desert planet. But all is not well; the altered climate is threatening extinction to the sandworms which are essential to the planet’s economy, and the continued rule of the Atreides family is being challenged by fanatics and their worst enemy, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
These are problems potentially far more deadly than any Paul had had to contend with. How the Children of Dune faced up to them creates an impressive climax to one of science fiction’s greatest achievements.’
Blurb from the 1980 NEL paperback edition
Herbert’s saga moves on in this disjointed sequel which suffers from its political complexity more than anything.
Paul Muad D’ib has disappeared into the desert, presumed dead, leaving his unstable sister Alia to start a religion in his name, although her sanity is being undermined by the memories and personalities of her ancestors. Paul’s children, Leto and Ghanima, also became aware of themselves and their ancestral memories while in the womb, but determine to devise a solution to combating the threat of ‘possession’.
Paul’s mother, the Reverend Mother Jessica Atreides of the Bene Gesserit, is sent back to Arrakis by the sisterhood to check the children and the rumours of Alia’s state of mind.
A preacher has appeared, one who speaks out against Alia and her Muad D’ib based religion, and who may or may not be her brother, Muad D’ib himself.
Meanwhile on Salusa Secundus, the daughter of Shaddam IV, the previous emperor, is grooming her son Faradin for the throne, and devising a plot to kill the Atreides twins.
Frank Herbert must have felt a lot of sympathy for Muad D’ib since, if one considers it in that way. the Dune universe constrained him to his own form of preordained destiny and I do not doubt that publishers put a lot of pressure on him to continue producing sequels. Essentially, in the real world there’s nothing wrong with that, and a working writer is obviously grateful for a success like this, but as Conan Doyle discovered, it can very quickly become an albatross.
‘Children of Dune’ is compelling enough, but for my money it reads like a first draft. There’s little of the poetry, panache and descriptive beauty of the original novel and some puzzling plot-holes and dubious character actions which no doubt puzzled other readers long before myself.
For instance, House Corrino’s brilliant plot to kill the Atreides twins is to train genetically modified tigers to attack children wearing a particular style of clothing. Then, several sets of this particular fashionwear is sent to the children as a gift and the evil tigers (who are remotely controlled in any case) are smuggled onto the planet.
For the plan to succeed one has to guarantee that the children a) will wear the clothing and b) will go outside while wearing the clothes, alone.
One also has to guarantee that the tigers are in the same area of the planet as the twins and ready to kill.
It seems a ludicrous plan, flawed by indeterminable variables.
Similarly, later, when Leto goes to the lost sietch of Jacurutu, he is held captive by Gurney Halleck, apparently under orders from lady Jessica, but in actual fact this is Alia. If Jessica and/or Alia believed Leto to be dead why send Halleck to the sietch? It’s all very woolly and (unless there were some plot elements I misread) not very well thought-out.
It suffers therefore from a surfeit of factions and subterfuge. The reader, after all, is expected to keep track of who is lying to who and why, and this gets very wearing after the first two hundred and fifty pages.
Bringing back the dead is seldom a good idea. Duncan Idaho had already been cloned, turned into a mentat golem and returned to Paul Muad D’ib as a murderous gift.
Muad D’ib himself has returned, somewhat figuratively, from the dead as The Preacher, and now from the ashes of the original novel comes Baron Vladimir Harkonnen to posses and control Alia. We don’t see enough of him, however. as Alia has to keep his possession a secret, the fat Baron’s role is a drastically minimal one.
All in all, a decent enough read, but as one of the sequels to ‘Dune‘ it should have been so much better.
Dune – Frank Herbert (1965)
A novel which broke the mould, reinvented the concept of Space Opera and begot a minor cult, as groundbreaking novels are wont to do.
It’s rather spooky to look at Dune again in the light of the events of September 11, since we have in this book a situation where a desert people are militarily outclassed and dominated by a Superpower which wishes to retain control over the desert’s vital resource.
It’s not a realistic comparison, since in no way can I compare the revolt of Herbert’s Fremen with the cowardly actions of certain terrorists, but there are no doubt conspiracy theorists who will find the comparisons attractive. In this case it isn’t oil which is being fought over, but the melange spice of Arrakis, just as vital to transportation between stars as oil is for transportation between cities.
One could possibly compare the USA with the Evil Empire of Shaddam (even that name has a spooky resonance, but with the wrong side) and the planet Arrakis with the Middle East, but one would have to examine Arab-American relations in the Nineteen Sixties to get much mileage from that.
Undeniably, the Fremen are essentially Arabic in flavour, but the rest of Galactic Society is based around a feudal aristocratic system of powerful Houses, presided over by the Emperor Shaddam. It is an aggressive and brutal system in which assassination and treachery are rife.
Interlacing this network of families is the Sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit, an organisation which has its own reasons for an intense interest in the melange spice, a strange organic substance which can endow its users with a form of prescience and telepathy.
Another major player in the politics of the galaxy is the Spacer’s Guild, a professional group of mutated humans who use the properties of the spice to sense changes in space and steer ships through hyperspace across the galaxy. They are also bound into the political web which is battling for control of Arrakis, since without the spice, which can only be found on Arrakis, the guildsmen would be useless, and traffic throughout the galaxy would come to a halt.
Herbert skilfully stage-manages the political manoeuvring and chicanery which may or may not be being controlled from behind the scenes by the Sisterhood. Thus it seems as though politics itself conspires to set in motion the events leading to the fulfilment of a Bene Gesserit prophesy.
Ironically, the religion which is integral to Fremen life contains elements implanted centuries before by the Bene Gesserit in order that the Sisterhood would be welcomed by their society. Thus, the Fremen, like the Sisterhood themselves, also know of the prophecy of the Kwisatz Hadderach.
It’s a clever trick on Herbert’s part, as the coming of the Superior Being can be seen simultaneously as the unexpected culmination of a long term Bene Gesserit plan and the true fulfilment of a long religious expectation on the part of the Fremen.
It’s not by any means an anti-religious book, although it is realistic about the nature of organised religion. It shows that religious systems are, by their very nature, political systems, or at least are tied into the political structures within which they exist.
Herbert’s universe of techno-feudalism is so well realised the reader feels quite at ease with the absurd and anachronistic ideas of Dukes and Barons wielding power over dominions of planets. There is a pervasive atmosphere of decadence and unhealthy opulence (particularly with regard to the House Harkonnen whose Baron is a corpulent gay monster who revels in the sexual gratification derived from the dying throes of his young victims) which is contrasted with the simple yet disciplined lives of the Fremen.
Gorgeous, complex, multi-layered. It’s a work of genius.
Death Robots From Mars 
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