Tag: Dune

Dune Foresaw—and Influenced—Half a Century of Global Conflict

~ cafebedouin

“Written even before the advent of America’s war in Vietnam, Dune captures a world in which war is inherently asymmetric, where head-on, conventional military conflict has largely been replaced with all the subtler ways that humans seek to dominate one another: insurgency and counterinsurgency, sabotage and assassination, diplomacy, espionage and treachery, proxy wars and resource control. For the military officers and intelligence analysts who still read and reread Dune today, it presents an uncanny reflection of the state of geopolitical competition in 2021—from the pitfalls of regime change to the terra incognita of cyberwar.

-Andy Greenberg, “Dune Foresaw—and Influenced—Half a Century of Global Conflict.” Wired. September 28 ,2021

Obligatory. See also: The Secret History of Dune.

The Secret History of Dune

~ cafebedouin

“…part of Herbert’s genius lay in his willingness to reach for more idiosyncratic sources of inspiration. The Sabres of Paradise (1960) served as one of those sources, a half-forgotten masterpiece of narrative history recounting a mid-19th century Islamic holy war against Russian imperialism in the Caucasus…

…Why is Blanch’s influence on Dune worth recognizing? Celebrating Blanch is not a means to discredit Herbert, whose imaginative novel transcends the sum of its influences. But Dune remains massively popular while The Sabres of Paradise languishes in relative obscurity, and renewed public interest in Blanch’s forgotten history would be a welcome development.”

—Will Collins. “The Secret History of Dune.” The L.A. Review of Books. September 16, 2017.