It is a rare occurence in the life of Sam Ehmann that a thought comes into my head fully formed. Usually they are like a 3 year old's drawings, the general shape might kinda sorta be there, and if you really squint and stretch the imagination you can see the lion they are so proud of. But today I got lucky, and I went from desperately grasping for blog post ideas, to WHAM! An actually pretty cool concept that I can probably milk for a few hundred words. Everyone gets lucky sometimes.
Dune, published by Frank Herbert in 1965, is one of the science fiction greats. It tells the story of the Atreides family, as they are placed in charge of the planet Arrakis, the birthplace of a drug called spice that grants some brief glimpses of the future, by their sworn enemies the Harkonnen. The story follows the son of Duke Leto Atreides, Paul, who is a part of a larger prophecy to lead the native people of the desert land to salvation. Now with the stage set, we get into the similarities.
If you take just the first third of Dune, you actually have a very apt tragedy in the Shakespearean style. Before they even arrive on the planet, they are aware that they may be stepping into a trap. Their sworn enemies are placing them in charge of arguably the most important planet in the galaxy, with little evident motivation to do so. The duke's wife, Jessica, soon receives warning left by the previous duke, that something very bad will happen to her husband. As they are finally just getting settled on the planet, the duke's most trusted adviser Hawat begins to plot against them. He attempts to assassinate Paul in his sleep, but fails. Then Hawat attacks and captures the Duke himself, before turning him over to the Baron Harkonnen who kills him.
Duke Leto's foolishness in trusting his ability and power too much and stepping willing into a Harkonen trap is very similar to Lear's tragic mistake. The power they posses cloud their judgement, causing them to be rash and unbending. They are then both betrayed by some of their closest friends and family, before finally dying. In both cases the consequences of their mistakes are foreshadowed quite obviously through dialog, and the plots against them are laid clear to the reader well before the tragic heroes realize, classic examples of dramatic irony.
Overall these two stories are similar, but it is worth noting again that this is just the first third of Dune which is mostly exposition to set up the whole story about Paul. If you have not read Dune I cannot recommend it enough. In many ways, it is to science fiction what Lord Of The Rings is to fantasy. It just so happens that one of them actually had a good movie so we still talk about it today, and the other got terrible movies and fell out of the public conciseness, despite being the best selling science fiction novel of all time. Go figure.
Dune, published by Frank Herbert in 1965, is one of the science fiction greats. It tells the story of the Atreides family, as they are placed in charge of the planet Arrakis, the birthplace of a drug called spice that grants some brief glimpses of the future, by their sworn enemies the Harkonnen. The story follows the son of Duke Leto Atreides, Paul, who is a part of a larger prophecy to lead the native people of the desert land to salvation. Now with the stage set, we get into the similarities.
If you take just the first third of Dune, you actually have a very apt tragedy in the Shakespearean style. Before they even arrive on the planet, they are aware that they may be stepping into a trap. Their sworn enemies are placing them in charge of arguably the most important planet in the galaxy, with little evident motivation to do so. The duke's wife, Jessica, soon receives warning left by the previous duke, that something very bad will happen to her husband. As they are finally just getting settled on the planet, the duke's most trusted adviser Hawat begins to plot against them. He attempts to assassinate Paul in his sleep, but fails. Then Hawat attacks and captures the Duke himself, before turning him over to the Baron Harkonnen who kills him.
Duke Leto's foolishness in trusting his ability and power too much and stepping willing into a Harkonen trap is very similar to Lear's tragic mistake. The power they posses cloud their judgement, causing them to be rash and unbending. They are then both betrayed by some of their closest friends and family, before finally dying. In both cases the consequences of their mistakes are foreshadowed quite obviously through dialog, and the plots against them are laid clear to the reader well before the tragic heroes realize, classic examples of dramatic irony.
Overall these two stories are similar, but it is worth noting again that this is just the first third of Dune which is mostly exposition to set up the whole story about Paul. If you have not read Dune I cannot recommend it enough. In many ways, it is to science fiction what Lord Of The Rings is to fantasy. It just so happens that one of them actually had a good movie so we still talk about it today, and the other got terrible movies and fell out of the public conciseness, despite being the best selling science fiction novel of all time. Go figure.
"public conciseness" Neither Lord of the Rings nor Dune are concise by any stretch of the mind :) Regardless, I think Dune is an interesting comparison here. Fantasy novels like LOTR usually deliberately follow a very traditional form (LOTR specifically is probably the best example of the Hero's Journey there is, besides *maybe* Star Wars). Lots of science fiction, however, seems to split into two camps: soft sci-fi, which is basically reskinned fantasy (again: see Star Wars. Swords -> Lightsabers, Merlin -> Yoda, Magic -> The Force, etc.), and hard sci-fi, which I've heard described as focusing less on characters and plot and more on exploring the consequences of a given potential scientific development. I've always seen Dune as falling much more into the latter, given its intense range of heavily-developed backstory elements (the history of Arrakis, the sandworm lifecycle, the effects of spice on humanity's space empire, etc.). However, an analysis like yours might suggest to me more of a traditional focus on plot. While it's ultimately all just meaningless categorization of unique books, I still think it's interesting to reexamine books like these.
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