DUNE by Frank Herbert
About a year ago, I shared an article (in Turkish) with you about the Dune movie. But now I have written a small roadmap for you to understand the Dune universe. I hope you enjoy reading it.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Arrakis is also known as the other, Dune. The deepest universe I’ve ever read. Herbert tells about Christian traditions, Hebrew literature, Islam, wars, people’s beliefs, and their thoughts about the good and bad sides of another planet, Dune, about 8000 years after today. Dune is one of the main masterpieces of science fiction, although it is a somewhat dense, difficult book.
At first glance, it seems like the story of a young hero named Paul. But Dune is not only telling the story of the hero. It deals in politics, religion, philosophy, mysticism, and much more from dozens of different dimensions with dozens of different characters. Like our lives.
There are small but important points that distinguish Dune from other science-fiction novels. While we all think that the future will be full of technologies that we cannot even imagine right now, we cannot see “machines that think like humans” in the Dune universe after the Butlerian Jihad, which was a religious war between humans and machines. Instead of them, there are mentats (human computers) who undergo intensive training, or there are Bene Gesserit schools that were established only for girls after the Butlerian Jihad and provide intensive physical and mental training. In addition, although the events in the distant future are told in this universe, you can find deep traces from the present and even from the past. So much so that Frank Herbert deeply processed the feudal state order that we encountered even after eight-thousands years. Noble families, empires, and people in a bad situation.
In order to better understand this work, dictionaries, maps and terminologies were added to the end of the book. There have been many quotations from Jewish, Christian, or Islamic religions and their books, often without modification. For example, the indigenous people of Arrakis used the Fremens’ Lisan al-Gaib, which means “Voice from the outside world.” or Shai-Hulud is derived from the Arabic verb ‘huld’ which means “long time”, and means “Old Father of Eternity”.
The petrol wars that are still going on today are being replaced by “spice” wars in the Dune universe, in 10191. Because spice is the most important ingredient for space travel. And the only place where this substance can be collected is, Arrakis. Also, Arrakis is a planet where the daytime temperature can rise by fifty degrees in just ten minutes. That’s why water is so much more important for human life. Frank Herbert predicted that even technology would not find a solution to the war between man and nature almost 60 years ago, and he emphasized the importance of water for humanity conspicuously in Dune.
The question we hear the most in our lives is probably “Who are you?”. The question that makes sense of life. How are we going to know who we really are? Probably with the challenge or “test” that we are facing. Just like the “Gom Jabbar” test that Paul was subjected to. According to the dictionary behind the book, Gom Jabbar is a handheld needle tipped with meta-cyanide poison. Along with this needle is a box full of “pain”. And you have to endure the pain inside this box or you won’t have a life to find out who you are. Therefore, you must take the threads of fear into your hands to combat this pain. So you must first fight your fear and its strength. When you fight your fear and emerge victorious, when you are the only remain, you will have discovered who you are.
The only thing is to fight fear because fear is the mind-killer.
