Any one a Frank Herbert fan? Dune?

[Erin]

Thanks guys Those were great reviews. I'm super excited to read the book now, it sounds quite intriguing. I'll have to check out the movie as well.

[OchrisO]

Thanks guys Those were great reviews. I'm super excited to read the book now, it sounds quite intriguing. I'll have to check out the movie as well.

There's a pretty good miniseries that sci-fi did as well(I like it anyway). I have it somewhere if you want to borrow it sometime, I can look for it.

[Vasagi]

Thanks guys Those were great reviews. I'm super excited to read the book now, it sounds quite intriguing. I'll have to check out the movie as well.

Dune is all about the politics. Ingrigues and schemes and plots between the powers that be. Here's my synopsis:

Coming into Dune, the government is split into 3 factions:

1) The emperor - the commander-in-chief of the universe. Think G-Dubya with a gay haircut. He rules the most feared military force in the universe ... crossing the Emperor is usually a bad idea. Not only will he align other forces against you, but then he'll send in his Sardaukar Troops.

2) The Landsraad - A group of the major "houses" ... which are mostly planetary governments. Think Congress in the US. The people you read about are mostly the rulers of a few houses in the Landsraad. The main 2 in Dune are House Atreides (good guys) and House Harkonnen (bad guys) who have feuded for as long as anybody can remember.

3) The Spacing Guild - The group that has a monopoly on space travel. Picture Microsoft on steroids. If you want to go to another planet ... only the guild can get you there. To cover the vast distance between stars, they teleport huge starships from one place to another ... called "folding space". They need huge amounts of "Spice", called Melange to do it. Thus ... spice is the #1 commodity of the universe. Without spice, travel dies and the universe falls back to the stone ages. Spice comes from 1 planet: Arrakis aka Dune.

Dune - desert planet in the middle of nowhere, that's the ONLY place that spice comes from. Home to sandworms that like to eat big things ... and protect the spice ... picture a freight train with a hungry mouth burrowing underground. Also home to the Fremen ... a group of native humans who are basically desert nomads.

It gets complex fast ... and I'm only scratching the surface of setting up the scene. There's so many other things that go on that I can't even get into it ... schemes that are a "feint within a feint within a feint" ... and then you have to figure that the course of the 6 book series covers about 5000 years. Seriously ... I think it's between books 3 & 4 that thousands of years literally pass by.