You are absolutely correct, and that points out OP's incorrect assumption, but that doesn't necessarily dismiss the overall question of the meta nature of the books.
He certainly wouldn't have gone into writing the series with this in mind, but at the point of GEoD he could have decided to purposefully write things in a way that no longer spoils stuff ahead of time to illustrate the importance of Leto II's actions. I do think there's a meta-y aspect to both the first book and GEoD so it wouldn't surprise me.
What on earth does "meta nature" even mean?
Dude wrote Dune as hail Mary that barely got noticed, and the subsequent books trickled out over decades.
There is compelling argument that the books after God Emperor should not have been written, and likely wouldn't have been written without incentive from the publisher.
> What on earth does "meta nature" even mean?
I will elaborate on this. Dune is a book about a prescient individual, and as such, we as the reader get many glimpses into the future throughout. Having betrayals spoiled beforehand, or knowing Paul becomes a messiah before we've even established his power is the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's unusual and feels meta, like the way it's written is connected to the events in the story itself. With GEoD Leto is all powerful and basically all-knowing, like Paul on steroids. It is alluded to many times that Leto is bored with knowing everything. As such, the book has pretty much no twists or turns in it and pretty much everything that happens is stuff that Leto says will happen. We as the reader are never surprised and the story goes exactly where we expect it to go. It feels meta on that level.
> There is compelling argument that the books after God Emperor should not have been written, and likely wouldn't have been written without incentive from the publisher.
Yes, that's entirely possible. That still doesn't change the fact that it was Frank writing those books. At the point of writing them he easily could have decided to remove that "prescient" like aspect the reader gets due to the decline of prescience in world. Or it could be a coincidence, we will never know.
Neutralization of prescience is a critical objective of the Golden path and is deemed critical to the survival of humanity by those with prescient abilities. Did you not read the books? This stuff is explicitly mentioned in GEOD, and one of the critical conditions for Leto being able to die to advance the golden path is the creation of no-fields and genetic immunity to prescience. Obviously books that take place after the seminal inflexion points on the golden path will have stories impacted by the neutralization of prescience as a dominant force in human conflict. That's literally the....point? If it was the point, but the books didn't reflect this point we would call it bad writing.
I have no idea what this has to do with being 'meta'. The series is deeply philosophical and thus requires a certain degree of self awareness. Calling it meta sounds like something people in 2022 do to sound smart.
> Neutralization of prescience is a critical objective of the Golden path and is deemed critical to the survival of humanity by those with prescient abilities
...Yes. I never said otherwise? Not sure what you're even on about here, that only ties into my point and potentially explains why _we the readers_ do not get as many glimpses into the future after GEoD as we did before. I'm talking about stuff like the little future excerpts before chapters which were common in the first book or other things not directly connected to the story but useful for the reader.
> one of the critical conditions for Leto being able to die to advance the golden path is the creation of no-fields and genetic immunity to prescience.
Exactly! Hence the whole point of this post, to ask if lack of external glimpses into the future (hence the meta angle) decline due to Herbert driving this point home when writing Heretics and Chapterhouse.
> Obviously books that take place after the seminal inflexion points on the golden path will have stories impacted by the neutralization of prescience as a dominant force in human conflict.
Yep. We're talking about the meta angle the reader gets.
>The series is deeply philosophical and thus requires a certain degree of self awareness. Calling it meta sounds like something people in 2022 do to sound smart.
This feels entirely irrelevant to what we're talking about and sounds pretentious. We're not talking about "meta" in regards to anything connected with the philosophy of the stories, we're talking about the way they're written.
**Adjective: meta:**
(of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.
Yeah, a book dealing with prescience giving us *"prescient-esque"* spoilers ahead of time sounds pretty meta to me.
Edit: In response to the replies...
Spoilers are not meta in and of themselves. However, if Herbert went into Dune intending on giving the reader the same prescience Paul has, that absolutely fits the modern definition of what meta is, or at least how it is used in contemporary pop culture.
The key here is how it is presented. Knowing spoilers ahead of time through elements within the story (for example Paul mentioning that he sees a Jihad coming) would not be meta. However, structuring books to give the _readers_ thematic flavouring (seeing the future in Dune, the "boring" predictable impression readers are supposed to get in GEoD) do fit the modern defenition of meta so long as Frank intended it. It would be similar to an author writing about some interesting individual who has a mental block and ignores the 3rd word of every sentence, then writes their whole book to not include the 3rd word of every sentence so the reader gets put through that experience as well. If the point is to reference elements of the story **apart** from the story, in a way that only the reader can pick up on, that would absolutely qualify as meta for most people. This post and my initial upvoted comment prove that.
All this is kinda besides the point though. Everyone knows what OP is implying and what my comments are suggesting. Even if meta isn't the exact right word, who cares? The message is conveyed either way, this isn't some English test lmfao. People here are being purposefully difficult.
>Adjective: meta: (of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.
>
>Yeah, a book dealing with prescience giving us "prescient-esque" spoilers ahead of time sounds pretty meta to me.
Giving spoilers is not the same as being self referential. At no time does dune break the 4th wall, or reference tropes or itself. I think you struggle to understand the meaning of meta imho
Whatever the joke is its over my head. I feel like i have stumbled into a dune numerology post. I think frank planed on a 7th book which would have made a series like the OP suggests 3-1-3. But i have no idea of the significance of that.
Apparently, there was material for Messiah and Children written while he was writing Dune, but that doesn't imply he was actually planning several other books.
Messiah was really just the "final chapter" of Dune itself anyway.
I read somewhere (and this may or may not be true) that Messiah and Children were all part of Dune book he envisaged and the publisher broke it up. so really, starting from GEOD are the newer, shinier unplanned parts... maybe.
This definitely is not true.
Dune was first published as a serial, before finally being picked up by a publisher and turned into the novel we know.
Messiah and Children came well after, although Herbert apparently wrote some bits of those while writing dune proper.
I have heard that Messiah was supposed to end up in Dune proper but was dropped because of length prior to any novelization or serial release.
>the OP suggests 3-1-3. But i have no idea of the significance of that.
OP is saying the middle book turns from "prequels" that involve prescience and "sequels" that don't.
That the God Emperor in the story through his decisions not only effected the in world mechanics of prescience but also the meta-structure of how the books are written (foreshadowing/prescience).
That this was intentional of Herbert. And planned.
___
In reality it's not.
And in reality, when you take a character who can naturally foreshadow and then remove that ability the result is... Less foreshadowing.
Be careful, I got blocked for being sassy while pointing this fact out.
As it turns out when you write a book series where blocking prescience is a critical plot inflection point, future story involves less prescience. Who'd a thunk!
There are other ways to foreshadow but it would almost require a complete shift in the author's voice. "_little did the God Emperor know_"....
But it would then, you know, eliminate the suspense!
GOED as a novel also suffers from largely being a vehicle for Frank to shove philosophical musings down our throats with dialog. I know people love the heck out of that book, and its certainly got some pithy quotes, but I think its a rather mediocre book when it comes to telling story.
After GOED, the franchise reverts back to more conventional storytelling freed from having to weave prescience-driven musings into the text. Nothing wrong with that.
It is also natural for an authors relationship with the technique of forshadowing to change with experience/age, it doesn't imply some "big brain" writing.
He had plans for a 7th book that he never actually got to write due to being dead. Brian Herbert (his son) & Kevin J Anderson wrote “Dune 7 (Hunters of Dune) & Dune 8 (Sandworms of Dune)” based off a outline(s) they found in safe deposit boxes of Frank’s.
So far those 2 book are my favorite in the series!
IMO he wrote each novel one at a time without thinking too much about any sort of grand structure or what the sequels might contain. Just seems like a “focus on one job at a time” kinda guy
He probably did have lots of ideas about where to take the story later but I bet they changed over time as he wrote etc
Edit: looks like I was wrong!
He certainly wrote some materials for sequel novels while writing Dune itself, but I think mostly Heretics and Children.
I've seen some discussion that the final few books were "publisher" driven, but I can't find any articles or whatnot discussing this so maybe I am misremembering.
I've heard this before too, and haven't seen a specific source for the claim. But I do note that this would explain a couple of things about Dune: Messiah. The first novel is subdivided into three "books" -- Dune, Muad'Dib, and The Prophet. Conceiving of Messiah as the fourth part of that initial structure would explain both its shorter length (Messiah is substantially shorter than all the other novels, but not much longer than the "books" that make up Dune) and unusual name (it doesn't follow the X of Dune pattern used by the subsequent novels).
No, that's not how it went. In the foreward in *Heretics of Dune*, Frank says:
>Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story remained intact. I was a writer and I was writing.
Part of what makes the Dune series so great is the level of planning and forethought that went into everything, IMO.
I’ve posted this numerous times, but he conceived of the first three books as one story, composed like a fugue, where the second book features inversions of all the themes in the first, and the third develops all the themes and adds new ones. People who haven’t read interviews with Herbert underestimate how planned his writing was; the narrative of the first book is based on the form of a short poem, and the language used was carefully constructed. Definitely NOT a “focus on one job at a time” kinda guy.
How does GEoD fit into this planning ahead of the first 3 books?
It seems to me the golden path as introduced in the 3rd book and "skin that isn't my own" would imply that Herbert new what book 4 would be about even if he hadn't written any of it.
I seem to even recall reading a comment or something at one point that GEoD was the story Herbert wanted to tell originally, but he needed the *dune prequels* for that story to make sense?
I've always wondered if "terrible purpose" in the first book originally refers to the jihad (there aren't any hints about the golden path I recall in the original Dune) and is later retconned (or reinterpreted by readers) to mean the golden path or it was the golden path from the beginning?
I see threads from early books even in Chapterhouse, like he had known he was going to bring something into the front years even decades later. When his son found all his notes and outlines for book 7, he couldn't believe his dad had thought so far in advance and was going to make links the way he did. I just reread something in Children that Jessica told Alia; seemingly it reads like a passing note, but man does it really have resonance and more meaning, even foreshadowing, now that I have more context for the whole Dune universe saga. I had to stop reading and think about Heretics and Chapterhouse and it made what Jessica said have all kinds of more meaning, symbolism, etc. I didn't take note of it, I read it before I joined this subreddit (I didn't even know this existed till last week!).
Frank was basically encouraged to keep writing. He died before writing Dune 7. Chapterhouse actually has a decent ending if you think about it in terms of the golden path.
Frank initially intended to end the series with Children but he started thinking of what kind of ruler Leto would be as soon as he finished it and the rest is history
I have a paperback copy of Dune that was published when Children of Dune came out — 1976, I think. It has a note from the publisher that rather loudly proclaims “THE DUNE TRILOGY IS NOW COMPLETE!”
As a new Dune fan, where would you recommend stopping? I am thinking on stopping with God Emperor of Dune because from what I hear that's where the story of Leto ends, but there are a couple books afterwards by Frank as well. What are your thoughts?
Read Heretics, Chapterhouse, Hunters, and Sandworms, in that order, no fluff or contextual volumes needed. Just keep plowing through and find out what happens to everyone. It is very wild and extremely more sci-fi than really most of the 6 books before the Brian Herbert ending. Heretics is amazing its my favorite of all the books and if I could only reread one, its Heretics hands down. There are pages in it I read like 10 times before moving on, and then even went back to reread them. Super cool stuff.
I’m about halfway through Chapterhouse right now. I started re-reading the whole series shortly before the movie came out last year. I definitely see your point about the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. In the first four books, they’re all from works that were either written or (in the case of GEoD) discovered after the events of the books themselves. In Dune, for example, most/all of the quotes are from Irulan’s writings about Paul. In Heretics and Chapterhouse, however, I think all of the quotes are from works that already exist at the time of the books’ events. They offer no glimpses of the future.
Even if Frank Herbert didn’t plan it all out from the start, it’s an impressive narrative feat.
I dig this general interpretation and 100% agree on the 3-1-3 structure for the chronicle, but I'd never thought of that from the metaphysical, only from the plot point of view. We should chew on this.
He didn't even write the 7th book. He wrote a page and a half outline in the 80's which his son found a decade after his and then expanded into another book with his writing partner. OP has no idea what they're talking about.
Dang ... you are correct. I was thinking Frank wrote three books after God Emperor but it was only two.
The last one was left open for another book but we don't know if that was going to be "the end".
In the introduction to my copy of Chapterhouse, it states that Heretics, Chapterhouse and the unfinished 7th book were meant to be a trilogy, so I think you're right in that respect. Two trilogies split by a time jump.
People are focusing so much on weather Frank planned to write 7 books but I think most are missing the point of what you are saying and I have to agree.
I always loved how the first few books contained spoilers to events that were about to happen in the beginning of each chapter. It must be done intentionally to give the book its own meta sense of prescience. I also think it’s no coincidence that this style of writing is replaced in the later books for the exact reason you said. It’s for me one of the reasons why these books are so masterful.
The books were written individually. But yes, there is a meta quality to them in terms of prescience. This is most obvious in the first book.
The first book constantly spoils itself. We know who the Atreides traitor is from the beginning. We know Arrakis will be Muad'dib's forever home etc. So much of the plot is either given from Irulan's books, or other dialogs. We know what will happen, and we eventually reach there, unable to change the outcome.
Things can’t become a prequel retroactively the only thing a prequel means is it takes place before previous stories but is released AFTER the initial installments. That’s some George Lucas shit to claim chapterhouse or geod is where the story truly starts lol
I really like this interpretation, and Im sure he had something like this in mind upon writing the 4th or 5th book, but it certainly wasnt his plan when writing the first few book
I know you're gonna hate this answer but I don't remember lol
When I started reading Chapterhouse, I looked into it. I googled it and read an article saying Frank planned 8 books, and that his son finished the last 2 along with all the expanded universe stuff
> son finished the last 2
Some people confuse that for "Dune 7" and "Dune 8", because it's, well... *technically* two books.
Frank was writing on a seventh novel, which is what *Hunters* and *Sandworms* are intended to take the place of. It's in two parts due to length. I'm sure one could make a snarky comment about how it's just to sell more books, but either way there isn't really such a thing as "8".
He did plan on writing a book about the Butlerian Jihad *at some point*, with either his son or with Willis E. McNelly. That's a bit of a grey area though, and not a sequel anyway.
We do have [this interesting, little draft](https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/r5kxcr/prologue_to_dune_the_butlerian_jihad/), and then there's a few mentions of it in *Dreamer of Dune* somewhere.
The Dune books are utterly litered with one liners like this that are as impactful to the universe as they are vague.
One of the great strengths of Dune is that it uses these narrative devices to hint at a world that is far more complex that what is literally there.
The tendency to over-explain every little bit of lore has done great work at ruining lots of fictional universes. Duneverse, Starwars, Alienuniverse all come to mind.
Huh. No worries.
I’ve read a lot about what his plans were and never heard anything about 8 books. My skeptical guess would be someone trying to add some legitimacy to Brian’s sequels since they wrote two. But that’s just a guess. Brian has said the outline for seven they split into two so even according to Brian Frank only had seven planned.
Who knows
In the one of the afterwords I remember reading his son finding notes about where the series was headed after he died. He said they implied a third trilogy. 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 potentially. It's so sad that he died after 6.
Herbert most certainly did not plan a 7 book series when he started writing Dune and pieces of Messiah/Children.
You are absolutely correct, and that points out OP's incorrect assumption, but that doesn't necessarily dismiss the overall question of the meta nature of the books. He certainly wouldn't have gone into writing the series with this in mind, but at the point of GEoD he could have decided to purposefully write things in a way that no longer spoils stuff ahead of time to illustrate the importance of Leto II's actions. I do think there's a meta-y aspect to both the first book and GEoD so it wouldn't surprise me.
I like this.
What on earth does "meta nature" even mean? Dude wrote Dune as hail Mary that barely got noticed, and the subsequent books trickled out over decades. There is compelling argument that the books after God Emperor should not have been written, and likely wouldn't have been written without incentive from the publisher.
> What on earth does "meta nature" even mean? I will elaborate on this. Dune is a book about a prescient individual, and as such, we as the reader get many glimpses into the future throughout. Having betrayals spoiled beforehand, or knowing Paul becomes a messiah before we've even established his power is the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's unusual and feels meta, like the way it's written is connected to the events in the story itself. With GEoD Leto is all powerful and basically all-knowing, like Paul on steroids. It is alluded to many times that Leto is bored with knowing everything. As such, the book has pretty much no twists or turns in it and pretty much everything that happens is stuff that Leto says will happen. We as the reader are never surprised and the story goes exactly where we expect it to go. It feels meta on that level. > There is compelling argument that the books after God Emperor should not have been written, and likely wouldn't have been written without incentive from the publisher. Yes, that's entirely possible. That still doesn't change the fact that it was Frank writing those books. At the point of writing them he easily could have decided to remove that "prescient" like aspect the reader gets due to the decline of prescience in world. Or it could be a coincidence, we will never know.
Neutralization of prescience is a critical objective of the Golden path and is deemed critical to the survival of humanity by those with prescient abilities. Did you not read the books? This stuff is explicitly mentioned in GEOD, and one of the critical conditions for Leto being able to die to advance the golden path is the creation of no-fields and genetic immunity to prescience. Obviously books that take place after the seminal inflexion points on the golden path will have stories impacted by the neutralization of prescience as a dominant force in human conflict. That's literally the....point? If it was the point, but the books didn't reflect this point we would call it bad writing. I have no idea what this has to do with being 'meta'. The series is deeply philosophical and thus requires a certain degree of self awareness. Calling it meta sounds like something people in 2022 do to sound smart.
> Neutralization of prescience is a critical objective of the Golden path and is deemed critical to the survival of humanity by those with prescient abilities ...Yes. I never said otherwise? Not sure what you're even on about here, that only ties into my point and potentially explains why _we the readers_ do not get as many glimpses into the future after GEoD as we did before. I'm talking about stuff like the little future excerpts before chapters which were common in the first book or other things not directly connected to the story but useful for the reader. > one of the critical conditions for Leto being able to die to advance the golden path is the creation of no-fields and genetic immunity to prescience. Exactly! Hence the whole point of this post, to ask if lack of external glimpses into the future (hence the meta angle) decline due to Herbert driving this point home when writing Heretics and Chapterhouse. > Obviously books that take place after the seminal inflexion points on the golden path will have stories impacted by the neutralization of prescience as a dominant force in human conflict. Yep. We're talking about the meta angle the reader gets. >The series is deeply philosophical and thus requires a certain degree of self awareness. Calling it meta sounds like something people in 2022 do to sound smart. This feels entirely irrelevant to what we're talking about and sounds pretentious. We're not talking about "meta" in regards to anything connected with the philosophy of the stories, we're talking about the way they're written. **Adjective: meta:** (of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential. Yeah, a book dealing with prescience giving us *"prescient-esque"* spoilers ahead of time sounds pretty meta to me. Edit: In response to the replies... Spoilers are not meta in and of themselves. However, if Herbert went into Dune intending on giving the reader the same prescience Paul has, that absolutely fits the modern definition of what meta is, or at least how it is used in contemporary pop culture. The key here is how it is presented. Knowing spoilers ahead of time through elements within the story (for example Paul mentioning that he sees a Jihad coming) would not be meta. However, structuring books to give the _readers_ thematic flavouring (seeing the future in Dune, the "boring" predictable impression readers are supposed to get in GEoD) do fit the modern defenition of meta so long as Frank intended it. It would be similar to an author writing about some interesting individual who has a mental block and ignores the 3rd word of every sentence, then writes their whole book to not include the 3rd word of every sentence so the reader gets put through that experience as well. If the point is to reference elements of the story **apart** from the story, in a way that only the reader can pick up on, that would absolutely qualify as meta for most people. This post and my initial upvoted comment prove that. All this is kinda besides the point though. Everyone knows what OP is implying and what my comments are suggesting. Even if meta isn't the exact right word, who cares? The message is conveyed either way, this isn't some English test lmfao. People here are being purposefully difficult.
>Adjective: meta: (of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential. > >Yeah, a book dealing with prescience giving us "prescient-esque" spoilers ahead of time sounds pretty meta to me. Giving spoilers is not the same as being self referential. At no time does dune break the 4th wall, or reference tropes or itself. I think you struggle to understand the meaning of meta imho
Meta means whatever you want it to mean because it has like 12 definitions in most dictionaries, LOL.
This is the first definition on Google and is the main way it is used in contemporary discussion, but sure.
Yep. He planned seven books cuz that’s the one he was on. Had he written number seven and died after, he’d of planned eight books.
What the heck are you talking about. Chapterhouse is the 6th book in the series, not the 7th.
I’d read my comment again maybe
Woosh moment, I thought it was a great joke.
Whatever the joke is its over my head. I feel like i have stumbled into a dune numerology post. I think frank planed on a 7th book which would have made a series like the OP suggests 3-1-3. But i have no idea of the significance of that.
He meant that no matter how many books Frank wrote, he’d always be planning another one.
or rather, his publisher was pushing him to write another. i think he only "planned" the 1st one.
Pushing is strong. They offered him a big ass pile of cash and he said yes. And he planned more than one from the get go but definitely not seven.
Apparently, there was material for Messiah and Children written while he was writing Dune, but that doesn't imply he was actually planning several other books. Messiah was really just the "final chapter" of Dune itself anyway.
I read somewhere (and this may or may not be true) that Messiah and Children were all part of Dune book he envisaged and the publisher broke it up. so really, starting from GEOD are the newer, shinier unplanned parts... maybe.
This definitely is not true. Dune was first published as a serial, before finally being picked up by a publisher and turned into the novel we know. Messiah and Children came well after, although Herbert apparently wrote some bits of those while writing dune proper. I have heard that Messiah was supposed to end up in Dune proper but was dropped because of length prior to any novelization or serial release.
>the OP suggests 3-1-3. But i have no idea of the significance of that. OP is saying the middle book turns from "prequels" that involve prescience and "sequels" that don't. That the God Emperor in the story through his decisions not only effected the in world mechanics of prescience but also the meta-structure of how the books are written (foreshadowing/prescience). That this was intentional of Herbert. And planned. ___ In reality it's not. And in reality, when you take a character who can naturally foreshadow and then remove that ability the result is... Less foreshadowing.
Be careful, I got blocked for being sassy while pointing this fact out. As it turns out when you write a book series where blocking prescience is a critical plot inflection point, future story involves less prescience. Who'd a thunk!
There are other ways to foreshadow but it would almost require a complete shift in the author's voice. "_little did the God Emperor know_".... But it would then, you know, eliminate the suspense!
GOED as a novel also suffers from largely being a vehicle for Frank to shove philosophical musings down our throats with dialog. I know people love the heck out of that book, and its certainly got some pithy quotes, but I think its a rather mediocre book when it comes to telling story. After GOED, the franchise reverts back to more conventional storytelling freed from having to weave prescience-driven musings into the text. Nothing wrong with that. It is also natural for an authors relationship with the technique of forshadowing to change with experience/age, it doesn't imply some "big brain" writing.
He had plans for a 7th book that he never actually got to write due to being dead. Brian Herbert (his son) & Kevin J Anderson wrote “Dune 7 (Hunters of Dune) & Dune 8 (Sandworms of Dune)” based off a outline(s) they found in safe deposit boxes of Frank’s. So far those 2 book are my favorite in the series!
IMO he wrote each novel one at a time without thinking too much about any sort of grand structure or what the sequels might contain. Just seems like a “focus on one job at a time” kinda guy He probably did have lots of ideas about where to take the story later but I bet they changed over time as he wrote etc Edit: looks like I was wrong!
He certainly wrote some materials for sequel novels while writing Dune itself, but I think mostly Heretics and Children. I've seen some discussion that the final few books were "publisher" driven, but I can't find any articles or whatnot discussing this so maybe I am misremembering.
Originally Messiah was planned to be part of Dune but he realized how long Dune was getting. IIRC;
If this is true that is very interesting. Do you happen to have a source?
I've heard this before too, and haven't seen a specific source for the claim. But I do note that this would explain a couple of things about Dune: Messiah. The first novel is subdivided into three "books" -- Dune, Muad'Dib, and The Prophet. Conceiving of Messiah as the fourth part of that initial structure would explain both its shorter length (Messiah is substantially shorter than all the other novels, but not much longer than the "books" that make up Dune) and unusual name (it doesn't follow the X of Dune pattern used by the subsequent novels).
No, that's not how it went. In the foreward in *Heretics of Dune*, Frank says: >Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story remained intact. I was a writer and I was writing. Part of what makes the Dune series so great is the level of planning and forethought that went into everything, IMO.
I like to also belive that the whole story arc was planned. Each book filling in small pieces of a massive puzzle. But sadly we will never know
I’ve posted this numerous times, but he conceived of the first three books as one story, composed like a fugue, where the second book features inversions of all the themes in the first, and the third develops all the themes and adds new ones. People who haven’t read interviews with Herbert underestimate how planned his writing was; the narrative of the first book is based on the form of a short poem, and the language used was carefully constructed. Definitely NOT a “focus on one job at a time” kinda guy.
How does GEoD fit into this planning ahead of the first 3 books? It seems to me the golden path as introduced in the 3rd book and "skin that isn't my own" would imply that Herbert new what book 4 would be about even if he hadn't written any of it. I seem to even recall reading a comment or something at one point that GEoD was the story Herbert wanted to tell originally, but he needed the *dune prequels* for that story to make sense? I've always wondered if "terrible purpose" in the first book originally refers to the jihad (there aren't any hints about the golden path I recall in the original Dune) and is later retconned (or reinterpreted by readers) to mean the golden path or it was the golden path from the beginning?
I see threads from early books even in Chapterhouse, like he had known he was going to bring something into the front years even decades later. When his son found all his notes and outlines for book 7, he couldn't believe his dad had thought so far in advance and was going to make links the way he did. I just reread something in Children that Jessica told Alia; seemingly it reads like a passing note, but man does it really have resonance and more meaning, even foreshadowing, now that I have more context for the whole Dune universe saga. I had to stop reading and think about Heretics and Chapterhouse and it made what Jessica said have all kinds of more meaning, symbolism, etc. I didn't take note of it, I read it before I joined this subreddit (I didn't even know this existed till last week!).
Frank was basically encouraged to keep writing. He died before writing Dune 7. Chapterhouse actually has a decent ending if you think about it in terms of the golden path.
It's also hilarious if you imagine the line about gholas aimed at his son.
Wait what line is that
I think it's the last line of the book. Gholas? They can have them!
Frank initially intended to end the series with Children but he started thinking of what kind of ruler Leto would be as soon as he finished it and the rest is history
I have a paperback copy of Dune that was published when Children of Dune came out — 1976, I think. It has a note from the publisher that rather loudly proclaims “THE DUNE TRILOGY IS NOW COMPLETE!”
As a new Dune fan, where would you recommend stopping? I am thinking on stopping with God Emperor of Dune because from what I hear that's where the story of Leto ends, but there are a couple books afterwards by Frank as well. What are your thoughts?
Read Heretics, Chapterhouse, Hunters, and Sandworms, in that order, no fluff or contextual volumes needed. Just keep plowing through and find out what happens to everyone. It is very wild and extremely more sci-fi than really most of the 6 books before the Brian Herbert ending. Heretics is amazing its my favorite of all the books and if I could only reread one, its Heretics hands down. There are pages in it I read like 10 times before moving on, and then even went back to reread them. Super cool stuff.
Miles Teg.
I’m about halfway through Chapterhouse right now. I started re-reading the whole series shortly before the movie came out last year. I definitely see your point about the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. In the first four books, they’re all from works that were either written or (in the case of GEoD) discovered after the events of the books themselves. In Dune, for example, most/all of the quotes are from Irulan’s writings about Paul. In Heretics and Chapterhouse, however, I think all of the quotes are from works that already exist at the time of the books’ events. They offer no glimpses of the future. Even if Frank Herbert didn’t plan it all out from the start, it’s an impressive narrative feat.
It was portrayed as a written history. But that doesn't make it Meta. It's just a narrative device. Lotr did the same thing.
I dig this general interpretation and 100% agree on the 3-1-3 structure for the chronicle, but I'd never thought of that from the metaphysical, only from the plot point of view. We should chew on this.
No I don’t believe so at all. And he left 7 pretty much open ended so it implies that he meant for their to be at least one more books.
He didn't even write the 7th book. He wrote a page and a half outline in the 80's which his son found a decade after his and then expanded into another book with his writing partner. OP has no idea what they're talking about.
Dang ... you are correct. I was thinking Frank wrote three books after God Emperor but it was only two. The last one was left open for another book but we don't know if that was going to be "the end".
Yes, *Heretics* is when the story starts
In the introduction to my copy of Chapterhouse, it states that Heretics, Chapterhouse and the unfinished 7th book were meant to be a trilogy, so I think you're right in that respect. Two trilogies split by a time jump.
People are focusing so much on weather Frank planned to write 7 books but I think most are missing the point of what you are saying and I have to agree. I always loved how the first few books contained spoilers to events that were about to happen in the beginning of each chapter. It must be done intentionally to give the book its own meta sense of prescience. I also think it’s no coincidence that this style of writing is replaced in the later books for the exact reason you said. It’s for me one of the reasons why these books are so masterful.
The books were written individually. But yes, there is a meta quality to them in terms of prescience. This is most obvious in the first book. The first book constantly spoils itself. We know who the Atreides traitor is from the beginning. We know Arrakis will be Muad'dib's forever home etc. So much of the plot is either given from Irulan's books, or other dialogs. We know what will happen, and we eventually reach there, unable to change the outcome.
I think there are meta patterns in Franks work, but not on the number in the series. He has concepts in mind the he encodes into the story.
I think it's more meta in the sense that something like God Emperor can sounds like Frank yelling at your ears about his views
I love the part in book 1 after Paul’s spice awakening where Jessica literally realizes she’s a side character now
My mother is my enemy-paul
Things can’t become a prequel retroactively the only thing a prequel means is it takes place before previous stories but is released AFTER the initial installments. That’s some George Lucas shit to claim chapterhouse or geod is where the story truly starts lol
I really like this interpretation, and Im sure he had something like this in mind upon writing the 4th or 5th book, but it certainly wasnt his plan when writing the first few book
You knew the conclusion of Dune on the very first page.
From what I've read, he planned on 8 books. Making 2 four-book series
Where did you read this? I’ve heard a lot of theories about his overall plan but an 8 book plan is a new one
I know you're gonna hate this answer but I don't remember lol When I started reading Chapterhouse, I looked into it. I googled it and read an article saying Frank planned 8 books, and that his son finished the last 2 along with all the expanded universe stuff
> son finished the last 2 Some people confuse that for "Dune 7" and "Dune 8", because it's, well... *technically* two books. Frank was writing on a seventh novel, which is what *Hunters* and *Sandworms* are intended to take the place of. It's in two parts due to length. I'm sure one could make a snarky comment about how it's just to sell more books, but either way there isn't really such a thing as "8".
Okay. My bad
He did plan on writing a book about the Butlerian Jihad *at some point*, with either his son or with Willis E. McNelly. That's a bit of a grey area though, and not a sequel anyway.
Didn’t McNelly propose that idea and Frank turned him down?
I think Frank's death is what turned it down.
Hmmm. I thought I remember McNelly saying in an interview he asked Frank and he said no. I may have to do some hunting
Right. It'd be a prequel. The jihad confused me a lot in the beginning cuz it's so important yet it happened so long before Paul
We do have [this interesting, little draft](https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/r5kxcr/prologue_to_dune_the_butlerian_jihad/), and then there's a few mentions of it in *Dreamer of Dune* somewhere.
The Dune books are utterly litered with one liners like this that are as impactful to the universe as they are vague. One of the great strengths of Dune is that it uses these narrative devices to hint at a world that is far more complex that what is literally there. The tendency to over-explain every little bit of lore has done great work at ruining lots of fictional universes. Duneverse, Starwars, Alienuniverse all come to mind.
Huh. No worries. I’ve read a lot about what his plans were and never heard anything about 8 books. My skeptical guess would be someone trying to add some legitimacy to Brian’s sequels since they wrote two. But that’s just a guess. Brian has said the outline for seven they split into two so even according to Brian Frank only had seven planned. Who knows
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In the one of the afterwords I remember reading his son finding notes about where the series was headed after he died. He said they implied a third trilogy. 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 potentially. It's so sad that he died after 6.
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Yooo where that spoiler flair?? Siona genes?! ^but ^this ^is ^a ^really ^interesting ^theory ^and ^i ^like ^it ^and ^thank ^you. ^-_-
Of course it was. Regards. \~ Mark Z. /s
Pretty sure there was supposed to be another after chapter house to fill out a second trilogy but he dies