Baron Harkonnen has a plan to get his nephew Feyd-Rautha on the imperial throne as well, which somehow involves his other nephew (вЂњBeastвЂќ Rabban) taking over Arrakis as ruler and running it into the ground thatвЂ™s to say nothing of his initial plot to kill Duke Leto, of course. What they intend to do with him is not clear. The Bene Gesserit, for example, have been manipulating the various nobles in a breeding program to try and get the Kwisatz Haderach. The gist of it is that everyone has a plan.

I actually havenвЂ™t touched on about 90% of what goes on, because thereвЂ™s a ton of subplots. Eventually, he leads the Fremen to freedom from the Harkonnens and bullies the emperor into abdicating and letting him marry his daughter in a political alliance, making him at about age 17 or 18 the emperor. Paul, now known by the Fremen as Usul (privately) and MaudвЂ™dib (publically), to say nothing of his other titles (Lisan al-Ghaib for one, and Kwisatz Haderach for another) is able to see the future to some extent because of the spice, his natural inclinations, and the Water of Life. Meanwhile, Paul falls in love with a Fremen woman named Chani, and they will have a son together in fairly short order, because I guess condoms donвЂ™t exist in the year 10,191. This isnвЂ™t good for the fetus (who will grow up to be St. After they return to the Fremen home base, Lady Jessica (who is pregnant with the late dukeвЂ™s child) is tested with the Water of Life and becomes a Reverend Mother (a type of religious leader), which means that she gets certain powers primarily related to communicating psychically (in a sense) with the bandвЂ™s previous Reverend Mothers. Lady Jessica actually takes Stilgar in close combat (unarmed) to gain their acceptance, and later on Paul knifes a guy, so itвЂ™s not like this part of their journey was easy. And then, returning from a night of supervising his troops, Duke Leto finds that the Harkonnens have engineered a plot to land highly trained imperial troops on the planet, kill him and his family, and take the place back.ДЄfter a daring escape and a lot of running around in which nearly every character youвЂ™ve come to care about dies in rapid-fire succession, Paul and the Lady Jessica wind up getting adopted by a band of Fremen led by a man named Stilgar. Not long after their arrival, the duke receives notice that there is a traitor in his midst. Arrakis was previously ruled by the Harkonnens, who are the mortal enemies of the Atreides, and the switch got made basically because the Padishah Emperor decided it should happen. In case you, like me, have been living under a rock for the last my entire lifetime and then some, this is the plot (spoilers ahead):Дuke Leto Atreides, his concubine Lady Jessica, who is a highly trained Bene Gesserit adept, their fifteen-year-old son Paul (who has also been trained in his motherвЂ™s weirding ways), and the dukeвЂ™s entire entourage pick up and move from Caladan, a normal-sounding planet with lakes and rainfall, to Arrakis, also called Dune, a desert planet where it never rains and the native Fremen wear special stillsuits designed to reclaim all bodily moisture for recycling. Many a night in the last few weeks I was up far past my bedtime, tellling myself IвЂ™d read just a few more pages before I turned out the light. Soon I was deep into to the world of the gom jabbar and the kwizach hadarach, the reverend mother and the melange. Having just finished Solaris, I decided I would rectify that and dug out our copy. Then one night I was having a discussion with B about world building in scifi/fantasy and he said, вЂњEvery universe has one thing that itвЂ™s centered around. Anyway, this year is the 50th anniversary of its publication (1965вЂ“2015), and I had never read it.

IвЂ™m not kidding-you can google that shit. New York: Ace Books, 1990.Дune is apparently the most popular science fiction book ever published.

Dune the spice must flow