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My love affair with Dune started with the David Lynch film. I must have been about 13 when I saw it and though I recognised that the film was flawed I was still intrigued. I must have seen the film 3 or 4 times over the years. Even after reading the book some years after first watching the film I still appreciated how Lynch had adapted it.

I've also played a couple of the PC games. First Dune from 1992 (an adaptation of the film). It's quite short from what I remember though it does capture the right atmosphere, even though it was built for very limited hardware specs (as you'd expect from a game from 1992). The last time I played that was about 15 years ago, so might not be able to stomach the graphics now.

I also played the RTS games, even getting Dune 2000 as soon as it was released. I didn't get very far into that game, though I don't think it's because I disliked it, I just had better games on my to play list and never got back to it.

What's recently reignited my interest is the two mini series from the Sci Fi Channel, Dune and Children of Dune. I enjoyed them, I wouldn't say they were any better or worse than Lynch's effort, though they would have benefited from bigger budgets. I'd love to see the same people tackle the rest of the books, though since Children of Dune came out in 2003 I don't see that happening.


So is there anything else that can give me a Dune fix? I've read the first two books, though the second one was so bad it discouraged me from reading any more. I'd love to explore this world more in video games. Emperor: Battle For Dune appears to be the most recent from 2001, though by all accounts is pretty terrible.

Are there any other games that are similar? The recent Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is set on a desert world, though that appears to be where the similarity ends.

Avalon Hill did a board wargame which is pretty well regarded.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/121/dune

IMO the novels are okay until Frank Herbert dies and his son + Keith Laumer take over, then it goes downhill.

Is that early game the one where you play as him and end up terraforming the planet?

I've played the various base-builder games, but I loved that first person game.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Avalon Hill did a board wargame which is pretty well regarded.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/121/dune

IMO the novels are okay until Frank Herbert dies and his son + Keith Laumer take over, then it goes downhill.

His son and Kevin J. Anderson. I won't stand for you besmirching Keith Laumer's name like that. Shame on you.

I thouroughly enjoyed the books by his son and Anderson. The prequel ones and the continuation ones.

I've read all of the ones by Frank himself except for Chapterhouse: Dune. I thought they were quite good, although Heretics of Dune was not as good as the first four.

 d-usa wrote:
Is that early game the one where you play as him and end up terraforming the planet?

I've played the various base-builder games, but I loved that first person game.

Yes. It was kind of a cross between a first person adventure and a turn based strategy game. It's one of those hybrid games that's actually pretty good.


Based on the responses in this thread I might give the books another go, thanks all.


By the way, I've done some more digging and there's a mod for Civilization IV called Dune Wars. Looks impressive, though I'm not sure I want to get back into Civ IV, it took me a long time to kick that addiction

SlaveToDorkness wrote:I thouroughly enjoyed the books by his son and Anderson. The prequel ones and the continuation ones.

ZergSmasher wrote:I've read all of the ones by Frank himself except for Chapterhouse: Dune. I thought they were quite good, although Heretics of Dune was not as good as the first four.

Of the originals, I thought 3-4 were the weaker ones of the series.

From the prequils, I likes the House series, but not the butlarian jihad

Hunters/Sandworms of Dune did a OK job wrapping things up. I stopped reading the rest of the stuff they put out since.

Anyone else remember this? It'd make a great Phone App game these days.



I'd seen the film but this set me off to reading the full series (at the time) of six books. I got a few chapters into House Harkonnen and gave up on the extended universe there and then.

I still long for a good set of Dune minis. GW got very close with the Van Saar from Necromunda. 40k in general owes Dune a great debt.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Avalon Hill did a board wargame which is pretty well regarded.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/121/dune

IMO the novels are okay until Frank Herbert dies and his son + Keith Laumer take over, then it goes downhill.

His son and Kevin J. Anderson. I won't stand for you besmirching Keith Laumer's name like that. Shame on you.

I could only remember that the name of the co-author started with K.

I've played the Avalon Hill game but it was over 30 years ago and I can't remember anything about it. The BoardGameGeek reviews will give a good idea of the style of game.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Avalon Hill did a board wargame which is pretty well regarded.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/121/dune

IMO the novels are okay until Frank Herbert dies and his son + Keith Laumer take over, then it goes downhill.

His son and Kevin J. Anderson. I won't stand for you besmirching Keith Laumer's name like that. Shame on you.

I could only remember that the name of the co-author started with K.

I've played the Avalon Hill game but it was over 30 years ago and I can't remember anything about it. The BoardGameGeek reviews will give a good idea of the style of game.

We're cool, then. Actually, Kevin J. Anderson is a pretty nice guy, or at least he was back when I did the convention thing.

The main issue I have with the Lynch film is that what many people remember about it are a lot of really un-Dune-like things. Take milking cats as just one example, although we could also talk "weirding modules," draining pus, Paul making it rain, or plenty of other items. It's mostly...interesting, but these things are very distracting elements of the film, even as most of the important themes from the book are completely missing.

I'm a Lynch fan and used to have the movie poster on my wall. But just keeping it real, it's not a very good film or adaptation of the book. I know he shot a lot of stuff that never made the final cut. Some of that was added in the "Alan Smithee" extended cut, and it helps, but it's still very, very flawed. Ultimately, I'm not sure Lynch was the right guy for the job, or that the job as it was (single 2-hour movie) should have been attempted.

I thought the SciFi (now SyFy) Channel version -- although limited in budget -- was a more faithful adaptation of the book that included a little more of its core themes.

You should track down the documentary Jodoworski's Dune. It would have made the Lynch version look sane.

Some further background reading -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dune_Encyclopedia

The various games are nearly all fine offerings... just don't read beyond the first book, and maybe, MAYBE the second. Especially don't read the hack prequels his son and KJA were involved in, they're atrocious.

 Killionaire wrote:
The various games are nearly all fine offerings... just don't read beyond the first book, and maybe, MAYBE the second. Especially don't read the hack prequels his son and KJA were involved in, they're atrocious.

If you skip anything after the first, you more-or-less miss the entire point to the story. Which is completely your prerogative, but Dune was never meant to be a straight-up hero/savior story. Books 4 through 6 get trippier, and introduce many more characters that readers may not feel as attached to as those in the initial trilogy. They're not to everyone's taste. *shrug*

I've seen/heard/read so many people rail on the Kevin Herbert/Anderson books, but I don't think it's completely warranted. They don't rise to the level of Frank's work, but they aren't bad brain candy sci-fi novels set in that universe. Besides, their conclusion to the saga (finally resolving the cliffhanger in Chapterhouse) is right out of Frank's notes. Had Frank survived, it would have been completed in his style, but I believe the overall plot was what it was.

 Easy E wrote:
You should track down the documentary Jodoworski's Dune. It would have made the Lynch version look sane.

and yet, i wish we could have gotten that movie

 gorgon wrote:

 Killionaire wrote:
The various games are nearly all fine offerings... just don't read beyond the first book, and maybe, MAYBE the second. Especially don't read the hack prequels his son and KJA were involved in, they're atrocious.

If you skip anything after the first, you more-or-less miss the entire point to the story. Which is completely your prerogative, but Dune was never meant to be a straight-up hero/savior story. Books 4 through 6 get trippier, and introduce many more characters that readers may not feel as attached to as those in the initial trilogy. They're not to everyone's taste. *shrug*

I've seen/heard/read so many people rail on the Kevin Herbert/Anderson books, but I don't think it's completely warranted. They don't rise to the level of Frank's work, but they aren't bad brain candy sci-fi novels set in that universe. Besides, their conclusion to the saga (finally resolving the cliffhanger in Chapterhouse) is right out of Frank's notes. Had Frank survived, it would have been completed in his style, but I believe the overall plot was what it was.

I remember the first DUNE book, no problem.

I have vague memories of possibly reading the next two, and finding them...odd.

But this was a long time ago!

I think I'm due to re-read it all!

Should I start with the prequels, or just read the originals first, and then go back and read the new stuff?

If that makes sense!

I would say that the first three (Dune, DM, Children) are a true trilogy and one story. Start there, without question, then decide how much stamina you have left, lol. And yes, I would also say that concepts in the series get weirder the farther you go.

Book 4 (God Emperor) involves a big time jump and is kind of its own story, and then there's more time jump before books 5 (Heretics) and 6 (Chapterhouse), which together are their own story. Which was then finally completed recently in Hunters of Dune (effectively book 7) and Sandworms of Dune (8) by B. Herbert and Anderson.

The catch to reading them in that order is that the prequels involving the Butlerian Jihad (TBJ, Machine Crusade, Battle of Corrin) help set up some things in Hunters and Sandworms. So you might want to read those before books 7 and 8, if you ever get that far.

For the rest of the B. Herbert/Anderson books, I would say that the "house" prequels (Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino), the "schools" prequels (Sisterhood, Mentats, and soon Navigators), and in-between novels (Paul, Winds) aren't required reading. I think I remember liking the house books more than the rest, but it's admittedly hard keeping all those books straight.

I love love love Dune!

There must be some legal tangle preventing Herbert the Younger from licensing the property out to game designers.

Back when FFG wanted to reprint an updated version of Avalon Hill's top notch game, they could not get the rights; hence "Rex - Final Days of an Empire" using the Twilight Imperium setting.

I think the SciFi channels "Frank Herbert's Dune" is vastly improved if you think of the film not as a, well, a film but instead as a recorded theatrical play with technology components. - A bit like, say, Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds.

In that mindset, I found it really works. - Baron Harkonnen (played by Ian McNeice in one of my favourite villain roles of all time), isn't just ranting to the camera in an empty room, he is actually performing a Soliloquy.

I read the Dune novels while I was still a teenager, I've got to say that Dune Messiah and Children of Dune went completely over my head until I saw the miniseries (starring a young James McAvoy as a very power psychic a good decade before playing another one...)

I reread God Emperor after that, which was improved. However Heretics and Chapterhouse are still a bunch of gibberish to me.


I thoroughly enjoyed Emperor: Battle for Dune the game, I wouldn't say it was terrible at all, though it does have the various cheesy elements that are found in Red Alert and Command And Conquer cinematics. - It's not gone the full hog crazy as RA2 and RA3 has though.

I read Frank's books and some of his son's. The younger Herbert is a competent author, but will always pale when compared to Frank's overarching narrative, that was unfortunately never concluded (unless you count his son using his notes for Sandworms of Dune). There was supposed to be another film, but it got caught in development hell. With big guns/robots being what studios are willing to produce we may never see another Dune, unfortunately.

 Compel wrote:
In that mindset, I found it really works. - Baron Harkonnen (played by Ian McNeice in one of my favourite villain roles of all time), isn't just ranting to the camera in an empty room, he is actually performing a Soliloquy.

That was far closer to the Baron of the novels than what we got in the Lynch film.

 Compel wrote:
I think the SciFi channels "Frank Herbert's Dune" is vastly improved if you think of the film not as a, well, a film but instead as a recorded theatrical play with technology components. - A bit like, say, Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds.

In that mindset, I found it really works. - Baron Harkonnen (played by Ian McNeice in one of my favourite villain roles of all time), isn't just ranting to the camera in an empty room, he is actually performing a Soliloquy.

I read the Dune novels while I was still a teenager, I've got to say that Dune Messiah and Children of Dune went completely over my head until I saw the miniseries (starring a young James McAvoy as a very power psychic a good decade before playing another one...)

I reread God Emperor after that, which was improved. However Heretics and Chapterhouse are still a bunch of gibberish to me.


I thoroughly enjoyed Emperor: Battle for Dune the game, I wouldn't say it was terrible at all, though it does have the various cheesy elements that are found in Red Alert and Command And Conquer cinematics. - It's not gone the full hog crazy as RA2 and RA3 has though.

Well it really is exactly that, a "TV play" I mean, you can see it even in the way the sets are constructed and how they're shot, and the finale is very much the closing scene of a play complete with the lights going down.

It's one of my favourite Sci-Fi channel productions, even above the BSG miniseries, and the style is certainly one of the main reasons why. I picked up all 8 of the "core" story novels a while ago for cheap, but every time I start to muster up the energy to get stuck into them I think "nah, I'll just rewatch the miniseries".

I used to think the Lynch film was a masterpiece, but on viewing it again recently I expect that was mostly because I was a teenager and stoned out of my gourd at the time, so it seemed super-profound and avant-garde, when really it's just mostly odd for the sake of odd and a bit of a slog to get through.

 George Spiggott wrote:
I still long for a good set of Dune minis. GW got very close with the Van Saar from Necromunda. 40k in general owes Dune a great debt.

Have you seen these?






My hope against hope is that somebody will eventually do Dune in a similar fashion to Game of Thrones as it'd be an epic setting for a series with lots of death and politics.

I think it's a crying shame that people still take their cues regarding stillsuits from the Lynch movie. I know the reason why they made that decision for the film, but stillsuits without masks and head coverings make no sense.

Don't think they wore full face masks/helmets in the novels. Besides, for a movie or TV series we need to see the actors' faces.



That's by Gorrem on Deviantart - he has a whole gallery of super awesome Dune art.

The stillsuits are described as having hoods and mouth filters in multiple places in the books. It wouldn't make any sense for stillsuits to deliver the kind of moisture reclamation as described if heads and mouths were left uncovered. Faces and scalps sweat a lot.

 gorgon wrote:
The stillsuits are described as having hoods and mouth filters in multiple places in the books

That's what I was thinking as well.

Works for a novel, would be lame for the visual medium (maybe even comics).