Dune at 50: Good Night, Don’t Let the Sandworms Bite

Dune has never been good at endings..

According to one interview, Frank Herbert originally planned it as a single massive book. Publishers like sequels, though, so Dune: Messiah was teased into existence. An editorial rewrite changed the last pages of the book to open up the possibility of a trilogy, and the world grew once again. The series would have been just fine if it ended with Children of Dune, but still the saga rolled on, adding three more books to its canon in just a few years.

The only reason the story ended (the first time, anyway) is because its author passed away. By most accounts, Frank Herbert intended to write a seventh book, one that would end the series in earnest. That never happened, and Chapterhouse: Dune became the finale by default, a truncated, disorienting finale that raises more questions than it resolves. Kind of a fitting end for the series, once you get over the shock of that last page. (And of course, nothing ever really ends, and Dune lives on in prequels and sequels by other writers).

Proper ending or not, there exists a timelessness to the story of Dune. A superficial look at the plot reveals elements shared by epic tales throughout history. Swap a few names, change a few details, and suddenly you have Star Wars, Beowulf, King Arthur. It’s Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces sprinkled with spice, and it’s a legend we’ll continue to tell in various permutations for generations to come. Maybe next time it’ll have giant sand turtles.

But tucked into the frame of Dune’s plot is an engine that drives something truly unique. Frank Herbert constructed a world that is human to its core. He stripped out the details of the decades and focused on the constants that have fueled us since the beginning. Humans rely on external objects and substances to gain a competitive advantage—just ask the first person who picked up a rock and used it to crack open a nut. Fast forward a bit, and we’re using found substances to keep ourselves warm at night, fertilize our crops for increased yields, and insulate our spacecraft to travel beyond the atmosphere. We rely on things more than any other species, and those things include other humans.

A tool as useful as spice would not be overlooked in our time, or in any time throughout history. Frank Herbert gave an advanced fictional society this tool and asked, “what would core-humanity do in this situation?” We would fight to take it, conspire to control it, and kill to maintain it. What if one person could foresee this pattern and change its outcome? He would be feared, looked upon as a god. What of the dissidents, the competitors, the victims? What of the far-reaching consequences of those actions? Dune answers all of these questions with six books of inspired storytelling that resonate to this day.

Dune leaves us with a message of self-sufficiency. Why use a stone to crack open a nut if you can harden your fist and accomplish the same thing? You’ll never be without a nutcracker, even if stones vanish from existence. Why follow a leader when you can get guidance from within? From its earliest beginnings, with a “thinking machine” revolt, to its last line, about gholas, Dune is the story of mankind charging away from, and falling back into, itself. We can’t escape who we are, so we might as well strive for improvement, whatever that may be.

After 50 years, we’re still captivated by our own inner nature, no matter where it’s expressed. Frank Herbert’s vision of mankind was familiar then, it’s familiar now, and it will remain familiar for as long as we are human.

This is the last article in a 12-part series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Frank Herbert’s Dune. View the article index here.