Dune and fantasy

There's a new movie out based on the novel "Dune," by Frank Herbert, so today I'm going to discuss that book's impact on the broader science fiction and fantasy world.  (The movie has the good sense to stick closely to the book and has sought to get the look right, but this post is about the book.  It's number 1 bestseller in the Kindle store on Amazon, so I'm not the only person interested.)

The book was published in 1965, and although it's hard to imagine that it would have had trouble finding a publisher, given that it's sold literally millions of copies world-wide, at the time it seemed too long, too complex, and too weird for the regular SF publishers.  It was published eventually by a small company whose primary business was publishing automobile repair manuals.  But the fans found it and it took off.

Officially it's science fiction.  People are bopping around the galaxy in space ships, and it's supposedly set thousands of years in the future.  (You can tell SF from fantasy because the former has space ships, the latter has wizards and/or dragons.  SF is set in an imagined future, fantasy an imagined past.)  Fantasy as a genre didn't really exist as a genre in the 1960s, but at almost exactly the same time as "Dune" came out, J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" was published in paperback by Ace (it had been published in hardcover a decade earlier.)

(Ace was taking advantage of a loophole in the then copyright laws, and the situation was messy for a while, but we won't talk about that now.)

Nobody quite knew at first what to do with "Lord of the Rings."  One eminent reviewer called it "super science fiction."  But fans loved it, and the genre took off as well as the books.

But modern fantasy is not just the heir of "Lord of the Rings."  It's also the heir of "Dune."  Standard in an awful lot of fantasy these days is a prophecy about a Chosen One, visions, clashes between noble ruling Houses, abrupt betrayals, multi-generational secret plans, free people roaming in the wild lands beyond civilization, and a young person trying to make his or her own way in a dangerous world s/he doesn't even fully understand.  This is all right there in "Dune."  Pretty much none of it is in "Lord of the Rings."

Although Frodo was shown as a youth in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, in the books he's middle aged.  The epic battles are far smaller in the books than the movies.  There are no political clashes between ruling houses in Tolkien's world, almost no prophecies, no wild and free people (orcs don't count, because they're bad).  It's about a quest to destroy an artifact of absolute power.  It's set in a more or less medieval world, though they have a number of New World plants, including potatoes and tobacco.

In "Dune," projectile weapons and computers were banned centuries ago, so although they have a lot of advanced technology, they still fight with knives and swords, increasing the medieval feel.

George Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, which begins with "A Game of Thrones," has a lot of the "Dune" tropes, including the wild and free people north of the Wall (plus Dothraki), betrayals, sword fights, clashes between noble Houses, epic battles, and young people trying to find their way.  But it's unabashedly fantasy, not science fiction.  Also unabashed fantasy is Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series, that follows "Dune" with a secret society of women with mystic powers who are trying to find The One who was prophesied.

"Dune" of course also heavily influenced science fiction.  The field decided it was fine to have long, complicated books, not just paperbacks less than 150 pages long.  "Dune" also influenced movies long before a decent movie was made of it.  Think about Star Wars, beginning on a desert planet (like Arrakis in "Dune"), a young person who discovers he has mystic powers, fighting with swords (though they are called light sabers).  But Star Wars had alien sentient species, whereas "Dune," like modern fantasy, is all humans all the time.

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

For my own version of fantasy with clashing noble houses, young people finding their way in a dangerous world, betrayals, and dragons (plus some Norse legend), see Shadow of the Wanderers, available both as an ebook and a paperback from Amazon and other on-line sellers.

Modern Fantasy and Medieval Fantasy

As well as inventing universities, professional lawyers, and the banking industry, the twelfth century invented fantasy.

Now in some ways fantasy is the oldest form of literature, larger-than-life people wandering through the landscape having adventures colored heavily by marvel and the supernatural.  In the twelfth century, however, it took on a more specific form, one of knightly adventures, generally with a strong admixture of romance as well as sword fights.  The authors were not describing their own society, but in presenting a larger-than-life version of that society they were able to comment on and critique it.

King Arthur stories as we know them were a twelfth-century invention, although the "complete" Arthur  corpus was put together only in the fifteenth century, around the time the printing press was invented.

Modern fantasy was essentially invented in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by people who were very familiar with the literature of the real Middle Ages (such as J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis) and thought that modern times had lost something important in leaving medieval ideals and values behind.

I myself write fantasy, imbued with real medieval social history--but because it's fantasy, not historical fiction, I can be as anachronistic as I like.  My Royal Wizard of Yurt series, which begins with A Bad Spell in Yurt, is set in something like what the nineteenth century would have been like if the Middle Ages had continued--with no New World to discover, no Protestant Reformation, no Enlightenment, no French Revolution, no Industrial Revolution, and, of course, magic.

(For more on my thoughts on religion in fantasy, click here.)

All of the Royal Wizard of Yurt series are now back in print as physical books, and they are also coming out as audio books, and all are available as ebooks on all the major e-tailers:  iTunes, Kobo, B&N-Nook, and of course Amazon.  amazon.com/author/cdalebrittain

© C. Dale Brittain 2014 
For more on medieval and modern fantasy, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.