this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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When I said my biggest problem with the story was the same problem I had with Star Wars, royalty starting wars. My buddy who likes both said they were "Space Operas". I think that's the perfect way to describe them and how they are similar.
—Wait till they find out about Rebel Moon and how it was churned out with the specific intent of creating a space-franchise to capitalise on.
I would say Dune (at least the first book before it goes really fucking weird) has a sort of anti-colonial, indigenous(ish) peoples under occupation themes that Star Wars just isn't interested in exploring. With Star Wars it's basically just "There's an evil empire, okay that's enough, let's go" vibes to OG Star Wars. Like you don't have to pay attention to the political background blurb at the beginning that serves as pasting a veneer of political intrigue at all and the story basically makes sense. It's a War story, whether or not a Monarchy is involved barely matters. It could be "Ambassador Leia" and "President Palpatine" and basically nothing would functionally change. Empire requires no monarchs to function.
Dune does come across as "The Indigenous peoples of Dune hadn't a hope until this one random outsider self insert character showed up and joined their cause and was amazing at everything and was lifted up as saviour because vague prophecy seeded by generations of matriarchal Jedi (Bene Gesserit) manipulation reasons..." It's sympathetic to indigenous peoples in a vaguely problematic for a host of familiar reasons kind of way. Like the world building is great and all but I feel like you could swap Luke Skywalker and Paul Atreidies and end up with a generally better story on both counts.
Dune has the sub-theme of tough conditions create tough people. The sand people were just waiting for the right spark.
I mean yes, but that's a bit of a surface level read and I would argue more of a trope than a theme. Like there's a lot of fantasy where there is a scarcity based culture that makes for skilled people with very survival forward approaches to things normally governed by sentimental attachments that paint kindness as a privilege of those with resources to spare...
Those conditions in fictional tropes pre 1960's were just more often than not just temporary generational stuff. Famine, war, extreme poverty and so on were popular places to draw touch characters from but the sci-fi boom just elaborated it into death worlds where things are always horrible as a matter of a more overarching environmental nature. People have otherwise been on their box about the effects of soft living on moral character since as long as the written word has existed.
If by surface level read you mean reading what the author wrote, then I agree. I think in this case, what the reader brings to the story is most important. I have training as a biologist so, survival of the fittest is right in my arena.
It is what the author wrote but it's basically like saying Winnie the Pooh has themes of childhood innocence... Yes. It does, sure, but would you bother writing an essay on it? Deeper reads of the text give you a lot more subtext. Like for instance how the plight of the Fremen and the spice trades mirror the political situations in the Midde East, Atraidies and Harkonnen are rips of Greek and Finnish names with many of the main offworld characters having Biblical (Hebrew or Roman) names while Fremen are specifically sort of coded as Bedouin /Islamic Zen Buddhist mashups and sometimes they straight up speak Arabic. So the offworld Empire gets kind of "Western Civilization" coded and the desire for emancipation is taken over by an inevitable religious fanatism caused by essentially an offworld sympathizer who is the result of hundreds of years of Eugenics becoming a messiah figure basically being a better indigenous people then the indigenous people who are ultimately pawns in a female lead conspiracy that fucked up because of one woman's choice to have actual reproductive autonomy...
Dune's got a lot subtextually going on worth talking about but "Tough conditions tough people" isn't what I find interesting about the story. I get that from a lot of places so it doesn't feel particularly unique or special to the story.