Dune

I read Dune (and the rest of the series) a couple of times as a teenager and loved it then. I decided it was time to read Dune again to see what I think of it now.

First, it is much more of a boy-coming-of-age story than I remember. In the case of Paul Atreides, coming of age doesn't mean just becoming a man or stepping into his father's position, it means becoming a Messiah figure for the people of his adopted planet, Arrakis. The focus of the book is really on Paul. I thought I remembered Jessica, his mother, being more of a central figure, but she is central only to the extent that she is focused on him.

Second, the world of Dune is developed in such detail, with a history and political order, an ecology, philosophy and accompanying religions. It's really impressive. However, the character development is disappointing. Jessica, Paul's mother, has something like a personality which shows in the care she takes with bringing up her son, the love she has for Paul's father, Duke Leto, and her fidelity to her Bene Gesserit training (as well as in the instances when she is disobedient to her training). Paul himself, though, is curiously impersonal and cold as a character, even though we spend a lot of time hearing his thoughts. Other characters fare even worse, with the possible exception of Liet Kynes, a planetologist raised to his position on Arrakis by his planetologist father.

It was interesting for me to notice that the sexual politics in Dune were about what you'd expect from a novel written in 1965. This isn't something I would have noticed as a teenager. Men are the leaders and women are pretty much there to bear the children, look pretty, and serve their men. Among the Fremen there's more of an expectation that women will also have occasion to kill their enemies in battle, but they still have delightful customs like women being the prize for challenging a leader and killing him. The exception to all of this is the Bene Gesserit, a female organization somewhat like an order of priestesses, where girls are brought up to master physical and psychic power to be used in service of a secret agenda that involves combining bloodlines to produce a ... what? Kwisatz Haderach, whatever that is. Women who have been trained by the Bene Gesserit are both valued and feared for their skills. Men consistently refer to them as witches, and not in a good way.

The bottom line is, I enjoyed being immersed in the world of Dune again, but was disappointed to realize that the characters were not as rich and the universe not as welcoming to females as I remembered them.