Dune (franchise)
Dune is an American science fiction media franchise that originated with the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert and has continued to add new publications. Dune is frequently described as the best-selling science fiction novel in history. It won the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Hugo Award in 1966 and was later adapted into a 1984 film, a 2000 television miniseries, and a three-part film series, with the first film in 2021, a sequel in 2024 and a confirmed third movie coming out in 2026. Herbert wrote five sequels, the first two of which were adapted as a 2003 miniseries. Dune has also inspired tabletop games and a series of video games. Since 2009, the names of planets from the Dune novels have been adopted for the real-world nomenclature of plains and other features on Saturn's moon Titan.
Frank Herbert died in 1986. Beginning in 1999, his son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson published several collections of prequel novels, as well as two sequels that complete the original Dune series, partially based on Frank Herbert's notes discovered a decade after his death. As of 2024, 23 Dune books by Herbert and Anderson have been published.
The political, scientific, and social fictional setting of Herbert's novels and derivative works is known as the Dune universe or Duniverse. Set tens of thousands of years in the future, the saga chronicles an intergalactic human and transhuman civilization that has banned all "thinking machines", including computers, robots, and artificial intelligence. In their place, this civilization—which, for most of the narrative, is organized as a complex technofeudal polity called the Imperium—has developed advanced mental and physical disciplines and technologies that adhere to the ban on computers. The harsh desert planet Arrakis, the only known source of the spice melange, is vital to the Imperium. Humans ingest melange to be able to perform the computations needed for space travel and other advanced tasks.
Due to the similarities between some of Herbert's terms and ideas and actual words and concepts in the Arabic language, as well as the series' inspiration from Islamic culture and themes, a Middle Eastern influence in Herbert's works has been widely noted.
Premise
The Dune saga is set over twenty thousand years in humanity's future. Faster-than-light travel has been developed, and humans have colonized a vast number of worlds. However, a great reaction against computers has resulted in a ban on any "thinking machine", with the creation or possession of such punishable by immediate death. Despite this prohibition, humanity continues to develop and advance other branches of technology, including extrasensory perception and instruments of war. At the time of the first book's setting, humanity has formed a feudal interstellar empire known as the Imperium, run by several Great Houses that oversee various planets. Of key interest is the planet Arrakis, known to the native population as "Dune". A desert planet with barely any precipitation, it is the only planet where a special life-extending drug, melange, can be found. In addition to life extension, melange enhances the mental capacity of humans through prescience, allowing the Spacing Guild pilots to navigate folded space and travel the distances between planets; and triggers some of the powers of the Bene Gesserit, a religious group that secretly seeks to control the direction humanity takes. Melange is challenging to acquire due to the harsh environment of Arrakis, and the presence of giant sandworms that are drawn towards any rhythmic sounds on the sands of the desert. Feudal control over the fiefdom Arrakis, its spice production, and the impact on humanity's development become the centerpoints of a millennia-long conflict that develops through the series.Plot arc
The Dune universe, set in the distant future of humanity, has a history that stretches thousands of years and covers considerable changes in political, social, and religious structure as well as technology. Creative works set in the Dune universe can be said to fall into five general time periods:- Butlerian Jihad
- * Legends of Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
- * Great Schools of Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Anderson
- Corrino-led Imperium
- * Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Anderson
- * Heroes of Dune series by Brian Herbert and Anderson
- * The Caladan Trilogy by Brian Herbert and Anderson
- Rise of the Atreides
- * Heroes of Dune series by Brian Herbert and Anderson
- * Dune by Frank Herbert
- * Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
- * Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
- Reign and fall of the God Emperor
- * God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
- Return from the Scattering
- * Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
- * Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert
- * Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Anderson
- * Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert and Anderson
Butlerian Jihad
In Herbert's God Emperor of Dune, Leto II Atreides indicates that the Jihad had been a semi-religious social upheaval initiated by humans who felt repulsed by how guided and controlled they had become by machines. This technological reversal leads to the creation of the universal Orange Catholic Bible and the rise of a new feudal pan-galactic empire that lasts for over 10,000 years before Herbert's series begins. Several secret societies also develop, using eugenics programs, intensive mental and physical training, and pharmaceutical enhancements to hone human skills to an astonishing degree. Artificial insemination is also prohibited, as explained in Dune Messiah, when Paul Atreides negotiates with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, who is appalled by Paul's suggestion that he impregnate his consort in this manner.
Herbert died in 1986, leaving his vision of the events of the Butlerian Jihad unexplored and open to speculation. The Legends of Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson presents the Jihad as a war between humans and the sentient machines they had created, who rise up and nearly destroy humanity. The series explains that humanity had become entirely complacent and dependent upon thinking machines; recognizing this weakness, a group of ambitious, militant humans calling themselves the Titans use this widespread reliance on machine intelligence to seize control of the entire universe. Their reign lasts for a century; eventually they give too much access and power to the AI program Omnius, which usurps control from the Titans themselves. Seeing no value in human life, the thinking machines—now including armies of robot soldiers and other aggressive machines—dominate and enslave nearly all of humanity in the universe for 900 years, until a jihad is ignited. This crusade against the machines lasts for almost a century, with much loss of human life but ultimately ending in human victory.
Corrino-led Imperium
The ancient Battle of Corrin—occurring 20 years after the end of the Butlerian Jihad—spawns the Padishah Emperors of House Corrino, who rule the known universe for millennia by controlling the Sardaukar, a brutally efficient military force. Ten thousand years later, Imperial power is balanced by the assembly of noble houses called the Landsraad, which enforces the Great Convention's ban on the use of atomics against human targets. Though the power of the Corrinos is unrivaled by any individual House, they are in constant competition with each other for political power and stakes in the omnipresent CHOAM company, a directorship that controls the wealth of the entire Empire. The third primary power in the universe is the Spacing Guild, which monopolizes interstellar travel and banking. Mutated Guild Navigators use the spice drug melange to successfully navigate "folded space" and safely guide enormous heighliner starships from planet to planet instantaneously.The matriarchal Bene Gesserit possesses almost superhuman physical, sensory, and deductive powers developed through years of physical and mental conditioning. While positioning themselves to "serve" humanity, the Bene Gesserit pursue their goal to better the human race by subtly and secretly guiding and manipulating the affairs of others to serve their own purposes. By the time of Dune, they have secured a level of control over the current emperor, Shaddam IV, by marrying him to one of their own who intentionally bears him only daughters. The Bene Gesserit also has a secret, millennia-long selective breeding program to bolster and preserve valuable skills and bloodlines as well as to produce a theoretical superhuman male they call the Kwisatz Haderach. When Dune begins, the Sisterhood is only one generation away from their desired individual, having manipulated the threads of genes and power for thousands of years to produce the required confluence of events. But Lady Jessica, ordered by the Bene Gesserit to produce a daughter who would breed with the appropriate male to make the Kwisatz Haderach, instead bears a son—unintentionally producing the Kwisatz Haderach a generation early.
"Human computers" known as Mentats have been developed and perfected to replace the capacity for logical analysis lost through the prohibition of computers. Through specific training, they learn to enter a heightened mental state in which they can perform complex logical computations that are superior to those of the ancient thinking machines. The Bene Tleilax are amoral merchants who traffic in biological and genetically engineered products such as artificial eyes, "twisted" Mentats, and gholas. Finally, the Ixians produce cutting-edge technology that seemingly complies with the prohibitions against thinking machines. The Ixians are very secretive, not only to protect their valuable hold on the industry but also to hide any methods or inventions that may breach the anti-thinking machine protocols.
Against this backdrop, the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy chronicles the return from obscurity of House Atreides, whose role in the Butlerian Jihad is all but forgotten. The Imperial House schemes to gain full control of the Empire through the control of melange, precisely at the time that the Bene Gesserit breeding program is nearing fruition.