Thoughts on Frank Herbert's God-Emperor of Dune

Paul Atreides drowned the galaxy in blood in order to slake his thirst for vengeance, set himself up as the ultimate tyrant, and became the final expression of human potential along the way. But for all his power, he died a disillusioned and embittered failure. Power robbed him of humanity, and clairvoyance robbed him of choice. Seeing no further value in life, he succumbed to traditional fremen mysticism and wandered off into the desert to die. Such is the bleak fate of heroes in Frank Herbert's universe.

Leto II's life follows a similar trajectory. Like his father, he escapes a palace bloodbath while he's still a young man, and spends his adulthood pursuing political power and the realization of his full potential. However, he goes considerably farther in both directions than his father ever did. Where Paul ruled the galaxy for a few years, Leto rules for several millenia. Where Paul knew some of the future, Leto knows almost all of it, and most of the past besides. Where Paul loses his humanity in a metaphorical sense, Leto actually ceases to be human. Where Paul despairs, Leto goes insane.

The major theme of Dune, and of God Emperor of Dune, is the folly of hero worship, which Frank Herbert seems to have regarded as a congenital defect of the human race. He grew up while the horrors of Nazi and Soviet repression were being perpetrated by quasi-pharonic regimes in Europe, so it's not hard to see where he might have gotten that idea. In God Emperor of Dune, this theme is made even more explicit than it was in Dune. Leto's "golden path" is to set up a tyranny so complete, so repressive, and so hateful, that humanity will never again fall prey to another messiah, savior, mystical hero, god-emperor, fuhrer, or whatever. Leto will grind the faces of all humanity generation after generation, century after century, millenia after millenia, until someone, somehow, finds a way to get rid of him. After that, people will finally understand. The idols must be destroyed, at whatever the cost.

Frank Herbert was an author with courage and vision, and in a way this is the most courageous and visionary book that he wrote. I think he deserves to be read for that, if nothing else. God Emperor of Dune has a genuinely thoughtful core of ideas behind the story - which isn't something you can say about every, or even most, works of science fiction. In a way, it's the most ambitious of the Dune books.

That being said, this book has serious weaknesses. His characters are not very believably drawn. That may or may not be a drawback, depending on what you look for in a work of science fiction. I don't find his characters particularly believable. Real people usually aren't dominated by a single passion, or a single idea, the way Frank Herbert's characters are. They falter, they contradict themselves, they flail around, they change their minds. By comparison, every Frank Herbert character is an intensely focused monomaniac, who plays the darwinian game of survival with gusto, and who is never weakened by a moment of hesitation or self-doubt. In a way he's not really playing fair with the audience by depicting his characters in this way. Since, as he's so keen to tell us, there are no heroes, it would have been nice to see these people falter a bit, instead of acting so... well... heroically.

Then there's this whole business of resurrecting Duncan Idaho over and over and over again, which is neither funny nor believable nor interesting. Really I have no idea why he kept doing this - it's an albatross around the neck of the entire series. Every time I opened a new Dune book, and this guy showed up for the ten thousandth time, all I could do was groan. It's the most bizarre aspect of the entire series, and it's definitely a distraction.

The world building is still there, and there's still plenty of political intrigue and scheming. But, alas, the thrill has worn off, and Frank Herbert never quite recaptures the magic of the original in this respect. It was believable in that book because the galactic civilization he was portraying was based on real midi eval models. The Navigators are stand-ins for the hanseatic league, the Fremen for the arab tribesmen who overran the middle east in the 7th century, Paul for Muhammed, the Padishah Emperor for the Byzantine emperor, etc. Conceivably he could have done the same thing with God-Emperor, going back to Pharonic Egypt or Persia under the Shahenshahs for his models. History offers plenty of examples of real God-Emperors that he could have studied, and they were constantly surrounded by conspiracies. A much better book could have been written about Leto III - the hapless wretch who has to manage Leto II's galactic empire without the benefit of his omniscience. Then we could have read about some really interesting conspiracies, as the resurgent noble houses and guilds etc. rush to fill the void left by the God-Emperor's passing.

Instead we get the conspiracy of the ten-thousand Duncan Idahos, which is both doomed and ridiculous. It has to be ridiculous, because Leto is so hugely powerful that Duncan can't possibly defeat him. You can't very well have a conspiracy against God. Or not a very effective one, at any rate. The really believable thing for Duncan to do - what all of us almost certainly would have done - is genuflect along with everyone else and then get on with our lives. Real people do that every day with regimes that they hate every bit as much, and which don't have nearly as much power as Leto's. But, as it turns out, Duncan is suicidally brave and Leto isn't exactly playing with a full deck, so Frank Herbert gets to have his cake and eat it too.

Probably the single biggest weakness of this book, though, is the way that he chose to symbolize Leto's dehumanization. Granted that it had to be symbolized somehow, the way that he chose to do it is fatal to the effect he's trying to create. Visuals matter, and instead of a visual that evokes a sense of grandeur and pity at the same time, which is clearly what Frank Herbert was going for, we get this absurd jabba the hut creature, who makes you want to laugh more than anything else. This more than anything else ruined the book for me, and I suspect for many other readers as well.

I'm not sure if I can really recommend this book. I suppose it depends on what you're looking for. If you want a book like Dune, with its weird mix of messianism, philosophy, and palace intrigue, you'll be disappointed. The elements are there, but they don't come together in the same way, and they aren't nearly as effective. However, if Dune challenged you to think about the world you live in, and you want to continue the conversation with a creative and thoughtful commentator, you won't regret reading God Emperor. Even if you end up not liking it, you probably won't forget it either.

Thoughts on Frank Herbert's Dune

Dune has long been considered *the* science fiction novel, and with good reason. It has everything science fiction fans typically expect in a good novel - an intelligent plot, plenty of action, social commentary, mind expanding ideas, and a fully realized universe.

At some point in the unimaginably distant future, humanity is spread across the galaxy in a vaguely midi eval galactic civilization ruled over by the Corinno emperor - or so it would seem. In fact the emperor is but one of dozens (hundreds?) of lords, guild masters, merchants, and technocrats who are constantly vying for power beneath the scenes. The equilibrium is fragile, and could shatter at any moment.

One of the most powerful of these aristocrats is the noble duke Leto Atreides. In fact, he's gotten so powerful that the emperor has decided he has to be crushed before he can launch a bid to unseat him and set himself up as the founder of a new line of galactic emperors. With the help of the loathsome Harkonens, who have their own reasons for wanting to get rid of the over-mighty duke, he lays a trap for him on the strategically vital (and eponymous) planet of Dune.

Briefly, the plan is to install the duke as the planet's new feudal overlord, and then, before he can get settled in, send in the emperors elite army of storm troopers to take him out. Leto has a big and well-trained army, but the emperor's storm troopers are in another league. Once they hit the planets surface Duke Leto's as good as dead.

However, the plan isn't completely successful. Although Leto and all his retainers are massacred, Leto's son, Paul, escapes to the desert along with his mother, Jessica, who is for all intents and purposes a powerful psychic. There they take refuge with the savage but upright fremen ("free men"), learn their ways, and receive their protection. Paul and Jessica quickly realize that, with a few parlor tricks and some creative myth making, the fremen can be turned into a powerful anti-Corinno army, with Paul as their divinely chosen warrior-prophet. Paul can play this role better than anyone else in the galaxy, as it turns out, because he has many of the same psychic abilities as his mother. In fact, he might not be quite human...

I left a lot out of that summary of the opening - there's an unusual number of moving parts in this book, which is part of what makes it so good - but that's the gist of it.

The universe frank Herbert depicts is realized in impressive detail, from the complex and wholly believable politics of his civilization down to the food these people eat and the instruments they play. Much of this veracity is attributable to frank Herbert's apparent fascination with midi eval and early Islamic history. Paul Atreides' life clearly parallels that of Muhammad, who, like Paul, fled powerful enemies in order to live in exile in the desert, only to return at the head of a savage and unstoppable army. Like Paul, Mohammed encouraged his followers to venerate him as a prophet in order to buttress his political power. And, like Paul, Mohammed looked ultimately to a confrontation with a seemingly eternal and unbeatable infidel empire, that of the Byzantines. The comparison breaks down if it's pushed too far, but he clearly had the early history of Islam in mind when he wrote this story (and children of dune, for that matter.) there are plenty of other midi eval parallels as well.

Critically, Paul does not actually believe that he's a prophet. He's certainly a person of incredible gifts (in fact the culmination of a centuries long breeding program and essentially the most powerful psychic in the galaxy), but he's not religious, and he doesn't see himself as anything other than an aggrieved aristocrat exacting well-deserved revenge on his enemies. However, he can't get that revenge without lying to the simple-minded but incredibly fierce fremen, so lie he does.

This situation sets up the major ideological issue that dune wants to address - the impulse to worship heroes, which Frank Herbert regarded as a major mental disease. To understand this perspective, one need only reflect that he was in his twenties when Hitler shot himself in Berlin, after starting a war that killed something like forty-million people. Maybe if people had been just a little more cynical about their leaders, the world could have been spared this tidal wave of blood, death and misery. In fact, maybe if people didn't get worked up over ideals at all, and just concentrated on developing themselves as human beings and living lives of freedom, it need never happen again. That's the basic moral outlook of dune. There are no heroes to worship or ideals to believe in - it's all a sham. Only fools believe, and there's nothing more dangerous than a pack of believing fools.

I won't give away how Frank Herbert goes on to develop this theme - I'll just say that, even as we cheer Paul Atreides on in his quest for vengeance, we ought to be more than a little disturbed at the choices he's willing to make to get it. Like a true aristocrat, he regards power as an end unto itself, all other aristocrats as threats, and everyone else as just so much dirt beneath his boots. Despite his power, he's a hollow man in the truest sense, and his outlook is one of pure viciousness. The thrill of following his adventure is largely the fantasy of being someone like him - a colossus before whom all others must scrape and bow. n point of fact, when we have to deal with people like him in our own personal lives, we usually hate their guts.

There's so much more that could be said about this exciting and challenging book, but this review is already quite long. It's not a book without faults, but to my way of thinking they hardly deserve to be mentioned along side its accomplishments. The only thing I will say is that this is a book that's deeply rooted in a particular place in time. Its a weird mash of space opera, post war exhaustion, radical skepticism, 60's drug culture, midi eval intrigue, oil and environmental politics, Victorian imperialism, and probably a dozen other things I forgot to mention.