Book review: Dune

Dune is a 1965 epic science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. It won the Hugo Award in 1966, and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel. Dune is the world's best-selling science fiction novel and is the start of the Dune saga says wiki. And that all seems fair enough. Read more there.

The cover I'm showing you here is the one I remember from my youth, not the one I've just read. Its notable for the rather implausible "ornithopter" but really, what was the artist to make of Frank Herbert's concept?

As to the book, I remember it making a great impression on me when young. Re-reading it now (I don't think I've re-read it since) its fairly clear that it strives for impressiveness, which weakens it from an adult perspective (minor example-of-a-type: often, people say "like wow, he just did that", to convince us-the-reader that the thing just done was like mega-impressive). Various aspects of the "economics" (the CHOAM stuff, say) which seemed rather well crafted to my youthful self now look crude. His interest in ecology fares much better - the sum total doesn't quite work, but much of the detail is believable, and the aura of it well done. and the story overall is good, if you gloss over the defects.

Don't miss my review of the film(s). See-also CIP's review.