The Thinking Man's Guide to Dune
A Reader's Guide from the Thinking Man Book Club
This time around, we’re doing things a little differently.
Neither of us have read Dune before. However, everyone and their nerdy teen brother seems to be watching the new Dune movie, and we kind of want to see what all the fuss is about. The only thing we know so far is that it is set in some kind of outer-space representation of the Middle East, and that at least one giant worm is going to make an appearance.
So, we’re not purporting to be any sort of authority on the book, and our weekly thoughts are going to be things that stood out to us about the book, along with our own (unanswered) questions.
Honestly, this seems like way more fun, anyway.
So here’s our ‘guide’ to Dune, which isn’t really a guide at all, but should be pretty interesting, anyway.
A Little Bit About Frank Herbert
I’m not gonna write a full biography of Frank Herbert here. If you’re interested in details such as where he was born (Tacoma, Washington), when he died (1986, at the age of 65), or how many books he’s written besides the Dune series (over twenty, apparently). If you’re interested, that’s what Wikipedia is for.
However, I am going to share with you a few facts that I know about him that I found particularly interesting.
The first two are from his author bio on the Macmillan website, and the third is from the short bio at the end of my copy of Dune (I think it’s the ACE books Special 25th Anniversary Edition from 1990).
As a child, Herbert was described as “a person having adult comprehension in a child’s body.”
He never graduated from college because he refused to take courses that didn’t interest him. He bounced from job to job as an adult and struggled to make a living as a writer for similar reasons—he only wanted to work on projects that interested him.
Although he presumably didn’t stay at any of these jobs for very long, his employment history is quite colorful. Among his numerous past job titles are TV cameraman, radio commentator, oyster diver, jungle survival instructor, lay analyst, creative writing teacher, and reporter and editor of several West Coast newspapers.
In other words, Frank Herbert was really cool, and I'm pretty excited to be finally reading Dune.
If you’re interested in following along, start reading. Each week’s discussion will cover seventy-five pages of the book.
You can follow along at your own pace below.