Space Drugs, Verbal Warfare, and a Really Good Book
Frank Herbert wrote Dune in 1965. From what many would consider the early eras of futuristic science fiction, only a year before the release of the breakthrough series Star Trek, Herbert wrote a novel whose subject matter reached beyond planets and stars, but tackled history, philosophy, religion, geology, warfare, politics, and economics. He imagined the human race far in the future, but without any sort of advanced computers, having been banished in a revolution hundreds of years prior. In place of the logical reasoning of computers came two things: religion and drugs. With the help of an awareness-enhancing drug called “spice”, and several intersecting cults whose substance borrow and engage directly with the roots of Sunni Islam, the human race is populated by trillions of drugged-up zealots, all ambling for a chance at universal domination.
I finished Dune near the beginning of the year, but its underlying messages and brilliant twists still inspire in me a sense of awe. To put it simply, the characters of Dune do not think or speak like us. The universe, governed by a feudal organization called the Imperium, is held together by the sale of the spice from its sole originator, the planet Arrakis. Every feudal house in the universe wants a piece of this, of course. In a bizarre combination of feudal parlance and futuristic hyper-awareness, the more prominent characters of the story treat every conversation as a sort of mental attack. While conventional weapons, like guns and bombs, are made obsolete by impact-repelling shields, the weapon of choice for an intellectual guerilla like Paul Atreides (the protagonist) is his words. Treachery and conspiracy is a constant, so using precise training and his legendary genetic lineage, Paul can unravel and even compel his opponents to act upon his own wishes — just through words. It’s a supernatural talent accentuated by the logical reasoning that is accompanied within Paul’s narration.
Because the manufacture and worship of computers is forbidden in the universe, the intellectually superior members of the story are given the spice and trained to replace the machines, gaining the power to sort immense amounts of data and make computational analyses of the data. This methodical, deeply mechanized thinking stuck out to me as something that might be useful when presented with not just a ton of data, but an overflow of stimuli. I wondered how such thinking might be used in the real world, and how it might be used to sort through the endless amount of information, sounds, and sights blasted at our craniums every second. I resolved to test this by replicating both the intensely logical style of thought and the added benefit of the spice. To make up for the real-world absence of a fictional space drug like the spice, I relentlessly perused the internet for a well-traded, easily attainable awareness-enhancing substance that wouldn’t land me in a juvenile prison. I landed on 9–10 hours of sleep per night.
Armed with a proper sleep schedule and a desire to seek out logical conclusions from shifting probabilities, I found reading the rest of Dune to be easier, if not more poignant. At times, even the most empathetic characters seemed to have their minds buried in the spice, trapped into a forward-gazing prescience that promised momentary gains and terribles losses. Even Paul, the prophecied savior of Arrakis, is plagued with visions of a mass genocide, a universal Jihad in his name. The curse of prescience saps the minds of the afflicted, making their present actions seem dazed and even illogical, which is highly off-brand. Keeping this in mind, and approaching the subject with the critical analysis, the characters of Dune seemed to leap out of the page, their otherwise otherworldly patterns of cognition becoming as clear as day.
The genius of Dune can be attributed to many different areas, but it is best summarized with a simple conclusion: the depth and minute messages of Dune shift wildly depending upon your area, be that the Qur’an, ecology, feudal politics, or even just economics. The most recent movie, starring Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya, does a pretty good job at exploring these themes. If you want to get ahead before Dune: Part Two comes out, or you want to delve deeper into a conflicted, irreparably human universe, Dune is most certainly the book for you.
