I remember the salt smoke from a beach fire
And shadows under the pines-
Solid, clean… fixed-
Seagulls perched at the tip of land,
White upon green…
And a wind comes through the pines
To sway the shadows;
The seagulls spread their wings,
Lift
And fill the sky with screeches.
And I hear the wind
Blowing across the beach,
And the surf,
And I see that our fire
Has scorched the seaweed.
I first tried to read Dune when I was about 10 years old. I was a precocious reader, but it was just too hard for me. I ended up bursting into tears and throwing the book across the room.
Six or seven years later I ran across Doon. It parodied everything about Dune so perfectly that I laughed out loud again and again. So after finishing it, I gave Dune another try.
Apparently I had become a more sophisticated reader, because I found myself appreciating the book immensely. It was brilliant. I ended up reading the whole series, as well as other unrelated books by Frank Herbert. And I’ve read them several times again in the following decades.
But a word of warning: the so-called “Dune” prequels and sequels written by Frank Herbert’s idiot son Brian and his moronic co-author Kevin J. Anderson are absolute shit. They are the absolute opposite of everything that was good about Frank Herbert’s Dune. Penny Arcade did a great strip describing exactly what Brian and his co-author have done to Frank Herbert.
Frankly, both Brian and Kevin should have had their hands chopped off before they were ever allowed near a keyboard!
It may just not be for me, but I am thinking I’ll eventually give it a try. For what it’s worth, I read it end to other and as an adult. It just didn’t vibe for me, I didn’t like the character, I didn’t love the cultures that were being presented, even if some aspects of the technology were interesting. I can see how it became foundational to a certain genre of science fiction, but I never found the spark in it to make me care.
I heard the books after Dune itself are better. A less moody character, a less shallow character, and cultures that aren’t so much seeming like outsider’s shallow takes on Arabic and nomadic cultures.
The one I read was the original by Herbert, and it’s the only Herbert or Dune book I read.