Alternate Realities: A Scifi Book Club discussion

I love Dune. I enjoyed my second reading of it more than my first. I have recommended this book and the 84 Lynch movie to a number of people that have also loved the book. I have also recommended the book/movie to people you just didn't get it. I know people that are huge science fiction fans that hate it. So my question is, Does Dune Deserve the accolades. I think the book creates a vast world with interesting characters and mythology.

Yes it deserves it. It is one of the best series ever and has such an engrossing world. The fremen are kickass.

It's great. I understand why sci-fi lovers might hate it – with all the mythology and quasi-religious organisations and gratuitous swordplay it steps wide into the fantasy territory (I certainly found this element of the book burdensome).

But it has a great plot and characters, and the terraforming and environmental issues it raises make it look quite modern even today.

I have read Dune 3 times (in my teens, my 20s and my 30s), hoping that each time it would *click* with me. It never did. I just didn't care about the universe Herbert created or its characters.

I know I'm in the minority here (which is why I kept trying!) and I'm okay with that. Given it's remarkable popularity and enduring legacy though, it certainly deserves being in the pantheon of greats.

I love the first one, but can't come to like Children of Dune, or Dune Messiah. I haven't even attempted any of Brian Herbert's stuff.

Dune is one of my favorite "come-back-books" - I like to revisit it once in a while and get surprised how interesting and relevant it is today - still.
I have read through the rest of the series and found the book tedious and boring and Brian Herbert's stuff horrible.
But Dune still stands as one of my favorite books. ever :-)

I don't think the mythology/religious aspect in Dune has much to do with fantasy.
Most of it has been deliberately created by the Bene Gesserit and serves their purposes - a quite effective form of propaganda if you will.

You're certainly right about the way it was created and purpose of it inside the world of the book.

But I was talking more about the form of these myths and they do look like something you'd more likely see in a fantasy setting.

Absolutely. Individual opinions notwithstanding (and I can certainly understand how some people wouldn't enjoy it) the book has immense depth, breadth and inspiration to it. It is literally the book that made a generation of readers learn to take science fiction seriously again. Few books have managed to do that.

I think Dune totally deserves the accolades. Herbert had such an amazing sense of story. I thought the convincing world-building was right up there with J.R.R. Tolkien. I can see, though, where a lot of sic-fi fans wouldn't have the stomach for it, because there were points where I would start to get frustrated with Paul's---or his kins'--- sometimes-disorientating struggle with his prescient ability. Especially in the second book, where Paul seemed to do nothing BUT struggle with his future-seeing ability. But I shouldered through these moments, feeling that it possibly intentional that I become disoriented at such moments, seeing as how this echoes the characters' plight.

The creativity was at a very high level. I could cite many examples, but how about the Spacing Guild, which has an unshakable monopoly on space travel, and whose pilots navigate through folds in space via temporary spice-induced prescience?

The creepy Bene Gesserit witches, featuring one of my favorite female heroines of science fiction: The Lady Jessica?

What about Lord Leto II? Giant immortal prescient slug! "Ask and you shall receive!"

The books just kept getting weirder and weirder, and though I enjoyed the first one best, I think the whole series is worth the occasionally-grueling effort.