Dune is one of the most famous sci fi books ever. The story of Paul Atreides’ rise to power
is widely read, and been made into movies and TV shows. But this book is not the whole story
of Dune – Frank Herbert wrote six Dune books, and it’s only in these sequels
that the true meaning of Dune is revealed. The Dune sequel books get weird. Paul’s son
transforms into a worm god and rules for thousands of years. Duncan Idaho gets resurrected hundreds
of times. There's an invasion by dominatrixes from space, and genetically modified cat-people,
and chairs made out of living dogs. And each book is full of secret plots and abstract philosophical
ideas. It would take many videos to fully explore these books. So first, what’s the basic story?
What happens in Frank Herbert’s six Dune books? In Book 1, House Atreides takes over the desert
planet Arrakis, land of sandworms and spice. But they’re attacked by the Harkonnens and
the Emperor. Paul Atreides unlocks a powerful [prescient] mind that can see into the future.
He becomes a religious leader to the native Fremen, and falls in love with Chani. He defeats
the Harkonnens and defeats Emperor Shaddam, and Paul becomes Emperor of the Universe.
So Book 1 seems to be a classic story of a hero fulfilling his destiny and defeating evil.
But in Book 2, Dune Messiah, Paul being Emperor is a disaster. The Fremen kill billions of people
in a holy war. And Paul can’t stop the violence – his religion is out of his control. A conspiracy
of powerful people plot to destroy Paul – led by Gaius Mohiam, and by Paul's wife Princess Irulan,
with a Spacing Guild Navigator [Steersman], and a Tleilaxu Face Dancer, and Paul’s own Fremen
High Priest. These guys have an elaborate plan to destroy Paul using a cryptic dwarf called Bijaz
who manipulates a resurrected version of Duncan Idaho who is now a Mentat [cyborg] philosopher
with robot eyes. Paul knows there’s a plot against him. But he allows some of their plan to happen
anyway because he's afraid of even worse possible futures happening instead. Seeing the future is a
curse, it’s a trap that takes away Paul's free will. Paul gets blinded by a nuclear weapon,
and relies on his visions to see – like Neo in The Matrix 3. Chani dies giving birth to twins,
Leto the Second and Ghanima. Paul wants to escape his grief and politics and destiny so he walks
into the desert to die. So in Dune Messiah, Paul's rise as a heroic leader turns out to’ve been
a terrible mistake. He loses everything he loves, and gets billions of people killed.
The message is that religious and political leaders are dangerous. Blindly following a
messiah or a vision or plan can lead to disaster. Book 3 is Children of Dune. Paul's sister Alia
rules the universe on behalf of young Leto and Ghanima. But Alia’s mind gets possessed,
taken over by the memory of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Turns out that the Baron was Alia and
Paul’s grandfather, and his personality corrupts Alia’s mind and leads her government into decline.
It turns out that changing the environment of Arrakis to have water and plants is a disaster,
because without desert, there’s no sandworms and no spice, and Fremen desert culture starts to die.
Paul turns out to be alive still as a mysterious desert preacher. He criticises
the Atreides religion and government, but ends up getting stabbed to death by his own priests.
Wensicia Corrino, the daughter of the old Emperor Shaddam, plots against the Atreides. She tries to
kill Leto and Ghanima with Laza tigers. So Leto fakes his own death and gets super high
in the desert to unlock his mind. And Leto sees a possible future that could save humanity from
extinction, a plan called the Golden Path. Leto transforms his own body so he'll become part
sandworm and will rule the universe for thousands of years. Jessica deals with the
Corrinos by converting their heir to the Bene Gesserit, and marrying him to Ghanima. Alia
kills herself to kill the Baron within her. And worm boy Leto becomes Emperor. So Leto’s plan
will apparently save the human species. But to be the saviour he has to give up his humanity,
and become a monstrous tyrant. Dune rejects the heroic messiah Paul and
instead turns to a darker more complicated leader. Book 4 is God Emperor of Dune, set thousands of
years after the previous books. Leto rules the universe with an iron fist. His plan, the Golden
Path, is to oppress humanity for thousands of years, to teach the species to want freedom to
grow stronger, and to think for ourselves. Leto also breeds the Atreides bloodline to create Siona
Atreides. Siona has a special gene that makes her invisible to people who can see the future. So
Siona’s genes will free humanity from the control of prescient people [like Leto and Paul]. Leto
falls in love with a woman called Hwi. Trapped in his monstrous worm body, Leto is tormented by the
loss of his humanity, his tragic self-sacrifice to save the species. Over the centuries,
Leto resurrects Duncan Idaho over and over, and he allows Duncan and Siona to rebel against him.
He teaches Duncan and Siona so they grow strong enough to eventually destroy him. In the end they
kill Leto by using the blind obedience of Nayla, a fanatic of Leto’s religion. Leto’s dying body
rejuvenates the sandworms and spice on Arrakis, and humanity is finally freed from his control.
After millennia of oppression, humanity bursts out across the universe in The Scattering, a mass
migration into space. Humanity expands and evolves to save it from stagnation and extinction – just
as Leto planned. His Golden Path gives humanity a universe of infinite possibilities.
Book 5, Heretics of Dune, is set another thousand years in the future. The Bene
Gesserit control much of the Old Empire, but a new threat comes from the Scattering.
The Honoured Matres are a wild offshoot from the Bene Gesserit who use sex to enslave people.
The Bene Gesserit train a girl called Sheeana who can control sandworms, and they hope to breed her
with a new resurrected Duncan Idaho, and to use her as a religious force to control people. But
there’s also a plot by the Tleilaxu, a bunch of religious genetic scientists who look like creepy
grey elves. The Tleilaxu secretly modified this new Duncan, giving him special sex powers – which
terrifies the Honoured Matres. Bene Gesserit leader Taraza uses Duncan to lure the Honoured
Matres into destroying the planet Arrakis. Cause by killing the planet’s sandworms, they destroy
the remnants of Emperor Leto’s consciousness and end his influence on the universe. The Bene
Gesserit take the last sandworm to make spice on their own planet called Chapterhouse. Taraza is
helped by Miles Teg, a legendary Atreides soldier who sacrifices himself and dies on Arrakis.
In Book 6, Chapterhouse: Dune, the Honoured Matres rampage across the Empire, hunting to exterminate
the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Gesserit go into hiding on the planet Chapterhouse,
under the leadership of Darwi Odrade, an unusually rebellious and emotional Reverend
Mother who wants her Sisterhood to change and evolve to survive this crisis. Odrade creates a
young clone of Miles Teg who is her father. And she trains a captured Honoured Matre,
Murbella, to be a Bene Gesserit. Murbella and Duncan fall in love. Teg leads an attack on the
Honoured Matres. But the Matres defeat Teg with a secret weapon, and they kill Odrade. So Murbella
infiltrates and takes over the Honoured Matres from within. Then she merges the Honoured Matres
with the Bene Gesserit, assimilating to create a new stronger Sisterhood. Murbella has changed
so much that Duncan decides to leave her. He and Sheeana steal a spaceship and escape,
along with the last living Tleilaxu Master, and a secret group of Jewish people and some sandworms
and a Van Gogh painting. Together they start a new journey, free in the infinite universe. In the
final chapter, we see a mysterious elderly couple called Daniel and Marty. These two are apparently
advanced Face Dancers from the Scattering who escaped the control of the Tleilaxu.
But Daniel and Marty also seem to represent the author Frank Herbert and his wife Beverly.
As they work in their garden, they break the fourth wall, chatting about Dune’s characters
and the unfinished plotlines like the Tleilaxu. They admit that the characters got away from them,
beyond of the author’s control. The book ends with a loving tribute to Bev, who died the previous
year. The year after publication, Frank died. So Frank never wrote a neat final conclusion
to the Dune series. But this open-ended last chapter fit the central themes of Dune – the
characters get freedom and self-determination, not even the author controls them any more.
And Daniel and Marty in their garden show the simple human warmth that is the emotional heart
of Dune. Dune was never really about the plot as much as it’s about the ideas. A philosophy
of the mind, of thinking, politics, technology, of how to live in a chaotic universe. So we’re
making a video called The Philosophy of Dune, exploring the themes and big ideas of the series.
We're also gonna cover the new Game of Thrones TV show, House of the Dragon,
which is based on a book called Fire & Blood. Fire & Blood, and the entire Dune series are
available on audiobook. You can get any one of these for free right now, at audible.com/asx.
Sign up for a Premium Plus trial membership, and you can choose an audiobook to keep,
even if you cancel the trial. You could get the Dune Audio Collection with readings and commentary
by Frank Herbert himself. Membership also includes unlimited access to thousands of audiobooks and
shows in the Audible Plus Catalog. Sign up at audible.com/asx, or text asx to 500-500.
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