I have been an avid reader of the late Frank Herbert's works for more years than I care to remember. For those of you who have been living in a cave on some remote desert planet, Herbert created a world, indeed, a universe, called Dune.
The massive six-volume series is considered to be among the best science fiction has to offer. It brought us a future so vividly realized and so intricately detailed that some of us got lost and never quite came all the way back.
No wonder, then, that we had high expectations several years ago when Dino DeLaurentiis and David Lynch joined forces to attempt the unthinkable: making a movie from the book. They even gained Frank Herbert's assistance.
It was bound to be a disappointment since a movie could not possibly hope to match the Dune so many of us had created in our overactive imaginations. The critics savaged it with a viciousness that hadn't been heard since they pilloried 2001: A Space Odyssey. Interesting that the latter film is now included on many of the all-time ten best lists.
The film version of Dune has improved with age, as well. When you realize that it was more true to the letter than to the spirit of the book, it gets better. Perhaps nothing did more to improve the original film version than the recent made for TV version. The producers tried to take advantage of the critical failure of the original by calling the new version Frank Herbert's Dune. I think Frank would just as soon not be associated with this one.
Produced by the Sci-fi Channel, the TV version manages to steal all the worst features of the original film without stealing any of the better ones. Then it managed to come up with a lot of new bad points on it's own. One of the joys of the first version was David Lynch's gift for taking already strange characters just a skosh further off the wall. The TV version wasn't even in the ballpark. They did, however, manage to add in enough excruciatingly boring scenes to make it drag on for four hours. John Hurt looked thoroughly embarrassed in the starring role and should have.
Frank's son Brian Herbert might have learned from this experience, but didn't. This time the result is not all bad. Herbert Senior left behind voluminous notes on the universe he created with the apparent intention of writing a series of prequels to Dune.
Herbert Junior is a mediocre sci-fi writer at best, but he's no dummy. He hooked up with Kevin Anderson to publish three books in this prequel series. The impact that his father's work had can be judged by the fact that all of the new Dune books hit the top of the best seller charts.
Unfortunately, they contain none of the sublety or complexity of the elder Herbert's originals. That's not to say they're not whacking good reads. Kevin Anderson wrote many of the grocery store bestsellers spawned by the Star Wars phenomenon. He also set the Guiness Book of World Records standard for "largest single-author book signing." For whatever that's worth. He didn't sell that many books by being a lousy storyteller.
The new series of Dune books can't match the originals, but Frank Herbert created a universe so spellbinding that most of us who ate up the original series are also buying the new books. We are enchanted by the Dune universe and have a seemingly unquenchable appetite for more details, even if the writing isn't quite up to snuff.
I saw the fourth book in the new series while supposedly Christmas shopping for others. Professor Pavlov would have been proud of me. I snapped it up immediately and read the first chapter right there in Barnes and Noble. Christmas shopping could wait. I needed to find out about The Butlerian Jihad.
Like any victim of addiction, I can't really help it. I'm just Dune my thing.
9:27:26 PM 
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