While describing the Caucasians’ fondness for swordplay, Blanch writes, “To kill with the point lacked artistry.” In Dune, this becomes “illing with the tip lacks artistry,” advice given to a young Paul Atreides by a loquacious weapons instructor. Herbert also lifted two of Dune's most memorable lines directly from Blanch. Sietch and tabr are both words for camp borrowed from the Cossacks, the Czarist warrior caste who would become the great Christian antagonists of Shamyl’s Islamic holy warriors. When Paul Atreides, Dune’s youthful protagonist, is adopted by a desert tribe whose rituals and feuds bear a marked resemblance to the warrior culture of the Islamic Caucasus, he lives at the exotically named Sietch Tabr. Herbert is ecumenical with his borrowing, lifting terminology and rituals from both sides of this obscure Central Asian conflict. As Blanch writes, “No Caucasian man was properly dressed without his kindjal.” Kindjal, the personal weapon of the region’s Islamic warriors, becomes a knife favored by Herbert’s techno-aristocrats. Kanly, from a word for blood feud among the Islamic tribes of the Caucasus, signifies a vendetta between Dune’s great spacefaring dynasties. Chakobsa, a Caucasian hunting language, becomes the language of a galactic diaspora in Herbert’s universe. She called The Sabres of Paradise “the book I was meant to do in my life,” and the novel offers the magnificent, overstuffed account of Imam Shamyl, “The Lion of Dagestan,” and his decades-long struggle against Russian encroachment.Īnyone who has obsessed over the mythology of Dune will immediately recognize the language Herbert borrowed from Blanch’s work. She was also a seasoned traveler, a keen observer of Middle Eastern politics and culture, and a passionate Russophile. A British travel writer of some renown, she is perhaps best known for On the Wilder Shores of Love (1954), an account of the romantic adventures of four British women in the Middle East. Lesley Blanch, the book’s author, has a memorable biography. The Sabres of Paradise (1960) served as one of those sources, a half-forgotten masterpiece of narrative history recounting a mid-19th century Islamic holy war against Russian imperialism in the Caucasus. Islamic theology, mysticism, and the history of the Arab world clearly influenced Dune, but part of Herbert’s genius lay in his willingness to reach for more idiosyncratic sources of inspiration. Even a casual political observer will recognize the parallels between the universe of Dune and the Middle East of the late 20th century. Melange, the hallucinogenic drug at the heart of Herbert’s book, acts as a prerequisite for interstellar travel and can only be obtained on one harsh, desert planet populated by tribes of warlike nomads. Not all of the book’s success is a result of inspired borrowing, but much of the richness and depth in Herbert’s imagined future of religious fanaticism and aristocratic intrigue can be traced to its creator’s talent for appropriation. Drawing inspiration from the midcentury United States’s nascent environmental movement, European feudalism, Middle Eastern oil politics, and Zen Buddhism, Herbert created a universe that is at once exotic and familiar. My excitement for the movie has nosedived, but then again I thought Blade Runner 2049 greatly surpassed its source material so who knows.Īll that to say I think a lot of this is just disappointment because I wanted to get back into reading books and this didn’t do it for me.FRANK HERBERT’S Dune (1965) is a science-fiction classic in part because it’s such brilliant pastiche. Riding giant sand worms? Stilsuits recycle your feces and urine? Most of the character dialog from the Fremen is pretty bad and cringe, it comes off as an author trying to do their best impression of an indigenous population with inexplicable sage wisdoms. It felt so rushed and anti-climactic.Īnd then the cheese of it all, my god. Paul’s son we never meet dying, Thufir expiring with a hasty apology to Jessica, the Fremen effortlessly overrunning the Harkonnen in a page and an entire chapter of exposition about how Paul would rule the universe. So many storylines are so poorly concluded. Like anyone who appreciates movies I’m gonna be stoked for anything made by Denis Villenueve, so this is actually the first book I’ve picked up in maybe 6 years?īook 1 is well done and got me excited for some epic things in the rest of the story but it just never comes together. I came searching Reddit to see if anyone else felt this way about Dune.
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