DUNE Series

The DUNE series written by Frank Herbert and the continued by his son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson were another big and interesting read.

As you probably figured it out by your self I read the books chronologically, because I prefer to do so.

Hunting Harkonnens
The Butlerian Jihad
Whipping Mek
The Machine Crusade
The Faces of a Martyr
The Battle of Corrin
Sisterhood of Dune
House Atreides
House Harkonnen
House Corrino
Paul of Dune
Wedding Silk
The Winds of Dune
A Whisper of Caladan Seas
Dune
The Winds of Dune
The Road to Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Sea Child
Chapterhouse
Hunters of Dune
Treasure in the Sand
Sandworms of Dune

They don't call it the greatest SF novel of all time for nothing. I have to admit this was the biggest journey into imagination that I ever took. The world Frank Herbert created is amazing, the ideas, mind blowing.

It all begins on Earth, when people begun to be too lazy to do chores for them selves, so they had robots and computers to do this. Sounds familiar?

Anyway, a group of humans were disgusted of what humanity became and decided to become superior human beings and rule the world. So they moved their brains into machines to have the best of the two worlds. And so appeared the Titans, in front with their leader Agamemnon.
They have used the computer Omnius and his sidekick, the robot Erasmus to enslave humanity, but they ended up enslaved together with humanity.

In the initial battle during the Butlerian Jihad, humanity barely survived, Earth was destroyed and computers or any kind of thinking machines were forever banned.

Some factions evolved from this. The Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, the Suk Doctors, the Spacing Guild and the Navigators.

The Bene Gesserit were very powerful women. They had overwhelming mental capabilities, they could cure themselves from diseases, transmit memories from one to another and fight very good. They take as their responsibility the continuity of the human race and begin a complex breeding program to achieve the perfect human, the Kwisatz Haderach.

The Mentats were people trained to think like a computer. They were able to remember impressive amounts of data and make projections depending on the available information.They were in hight demand after the computers were banned, and all noble families had a Mentat as adviser.

The Suk Doctors were very competent professionals, highly regarded for their skills in medicine.

The Spacing Guild was a group that handled interplanetary transport. They were using the Navigators to fold space and travel long distances very fast.

The Navigators were initially humans, exposed to large quantities of melange (spice) that enriched their mental capabilities making them able to direct ships safely through space. At the same time, their body was transformed and minimized. They spent their life in melange filled tanks and their addiction was so strong that they died if there was no more spice.

Then we have the great families that fight for supremacy. The most important were the Atreides (the good guys) and the Harkonnens (the bad guys mostly).

And some extra characters like the Ixians that lived on planet X and were responsible for all the technological breakthroughs. And the Tleilaxu, small revolting creatures that were handling biological research and cloning.

It is interesting how all these factions interact until the day the common enemy reappears.

Also the entire story around the desert planet Dune (also called Arrakis) where the creatures that produced spice lived. And how they evolved from sand-trout, an organism that was able to terraform planets to make them livable for the worms. The powerful drug called spice that enhanced the mind and the body but produced a fatal addiction, with the secondary effect that it gave a strong blue color to the eyes.

And many, many other interesting characters and stories.

Also it is interesting to see how closely Frank Herbert studied the Muslim culture and the Arabic world. Many terms come from this culture and the way he describes the people of the desert is so respectful and attentive.

Again the motif of religious war and what people would do for religion is sadly and painfully similar to what is happening now in the world...

I haven't finished the last novel "Sandworms of Dune" but I look forward to what will happen next.

What can I say, the DUNE Saga it's definitively a must read.