Dune

I first read Dune when I was just entering my teens - and I loved it. I can't pretend that I understood it fully, and I certainly missed many of the key themes and messages within in as I learned on later re-readings, but it's a heck of a story despite following a fairly simple outline.

The Atreides House are awarded custodianship of the desert planet Arrakis from which a mystery ‘spice' called melange comes. This spice is needed to allow ships to navigate the vastness of space, so not only is it crucially important that it continues to flow, but there is great prestige in being the House who controls it. The other Houses are understandably annoyed by House Atreides gaining this control and House Harkonnen tries to assasinate the lot of them. The son of the family, Paul Atreides, is forced to go on the run, hide among the natives and discover that he is the chosen one... Pretty formulaic, no?

On the surface, it's a political intrigue, a thriller with a man on the run for his life, and an ecological allegory that's only more timely now than it was when it was written. And yet it's justifiably a classic of the genre (Science-Fiction in case you didn't realise) published back in 1965.

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

look, look at all the work I did!

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Blade Runner 2049

Arrival