The Road to Dune
by Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert, Kevin J. AndersonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-29
ISBN: 0765353709
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Book Reviews of The Road to Dune
Book Review: The bottom of the barrel is okay. . .
Summary: 3 Stars
In looking at the other reviews, it is clear that everyone who reads this comes to the book with a set of prejudices that completely color their take on this book. So let me begin with that. When I was in fifth grade, I fell madly in love with Arrakis. I've always been much more ambivalent about _Dune_ and its sequels. The world itself is so rich that it feels just as real as the moon in the sky. The characters, however, are all cut from the same power-hungry cloth. They might be good or evil (rarely in between) but they're always striving and scheming. It seems like such a narrow take on the human experience. It was all the more shocking to read Herbert's moving description of the end of his wife's life that follows _Chapterhouse_. The short essay left me with a sense that we readers had been robbed of so much of what _Dune_ could have been.
The narrowness of the characterization turned, in my view, into self-parody in the second generation novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson. They're credible pulp fiction but at the end of the day they're nothing more than light adventure stories and as you get older that loses its hold over you. I stopped reading them when I got tired of the homophobia and the machismo.
I found _The Road to Dune_ remaindered, so I bought it on impulse. It's a mixed bag. It contains four separate parts.
The first is an early attempt at the original _Dune_ novel. As an example of campy pulp fun, it's not bad. It has a glaring plot hole that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist in the classic version of _Dune_ (but would have to reread to double check). In seeing the evolution of the novel, it also makes sense of some of the less explicable parts of what was ultimately published. The replacement of the Harkonnen with the Atreides on Arrakis always struck me as forced, for instance, but seeing its origins in more of a contest in an `action story' at least gives it some context. My main reaction to this short novel is that it underscoreswhat an accomplishment _Dune_ is. It took an enormous amount of work to create such a vivid world in this `Spice Planet' story. To keep working it and working it into Arrakis was quite the feat.
The second section, rather brief, is a series of letters about the publication of _Dune_. That the novel had such difficult getting published is the stuff of science fiction legend, but the actual story is more interesting than I expected. I hadn't realized that the major objection was really to the length of the novel --- it doesn't seem THAT long by today's standards --- or that a number of the publishers who rejected it had a sixth sense that they were making a mistake.
Unless you put the fanatic back into fan or have read _Dune_ or _Dune Messiah_ recently, the deleted scenes that make up the third part of the book generally deal with such minor points and are so hard to put into the time line that they seem like random minutiae. The alternate endings to _Dune Messiah_ are the arguable exception.
The fourth section is four stories by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson that others have criticized for already being available for free online. I wouldn't want to read something that long online myself , so their inclusion doesn't seem so baffling to me. One is set during _Dune_; the others are based on the Butlerian Jihad thousands of years before the events of June. My main sense of these stories is that their quality is similar to Herbert and Anderson's other Dune pieces. So if you like their novels, you'll probably like them. If you've gotten to the point where the relentless violence and scheming seems old or the one-dimensional characterization isn't worth your time, then you won't.
This review is based on a remaindered trade paperback edition. After having written the review, I realized that it appears to be a UK edition.
Summary of The Road to Dune
Frank Herbert's Dune is widely known as the science fiction equivalent of The Lord of the Rings. Now The Road to Dune is a companion work comparable to The Silmarillion, shedding light on and following the remarkable development of the bestselling science fiction novel of all time.
In this fascinating volume, the world's millions of Dune fans can read--at long last--the unpublished chapters and scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah. The Road to Dune also includes some of the original correspondence between Frank Herbert and famed editor John W. Campbell, Jr., along with other correspondence during Herbert's years-long struggle to get his innovative work published, and the article "They Stopped the Moving Sands," Herbert's original inspiration for Dune.
The Road to Dune also features newly discovered papers and manuscripts of Frank Herbert, and Spice Planet, an original novel by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, based on a detailed outline left by Frank Herbert.
The Road to Dune is a treasure trove of essays, articles, and fiction that every reader of Dune will want to add to their shelf.
In this fascinating volume, the world's millions of Dune fans can read--at long last--the unpublished chapters and scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah. The Road to Dune also includes some of the original correspondence between Frank Herbert and famed editor John W. Campbell, Jr., along with other correspondence during Herbert's years-long struggle to get his innovative work published, and the article "They Stopped the Moving Sands," Herbert's original inspiration for Dune.
The Road to Dune also features newly discovered papers and manuscripts of Frank Herbert, and Spice Planet, an original novel by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, based on a detailed outline left by Frank Herbert.
The Road to Dune is a treasure trove of essays, articles, and fiction that every reader of Dune will want to add to their shelf.
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