Timothée Chalamet as Paul and Rebecca Ferguson as his mother, Jessica, in Dune (2021).
Credit: Warner Bros.

This month, an exciting new motion-picture adaptation, titled Dune (2021), appeared in theaters. The film starred actor Timothée Chalamet as the lead character, Paul Atreides. Dune was directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Dune is a science fiction novel by the American author Frank Herbert. It was published in 1965. The title refers to the desert planet Arrakis, where the action of the novel takes place. Dune is notable for its imaginative desert setting and its religious and environmental themes.

The novel tells the story of Paul Atreides, the heir of a noble house that is taking control of Arrakis. The planet is important because it is the only place where deposits of the fictional spice melange are found. Melange is a druglike substance also used in interstellar travel (travel among the stars).

When House Atreides is betrayed by the evil House Harkonnen, Paul is cast out into the desert along with his mother, Jessica. Jessica is a member of an order of mystics called the Bene Gesserit. In the desert, Paul and Jessica take up with a mysterious people known as the Fremen. The Fremen survive in the desert wearing stillsuits, special suits that conserve and recycle their body fluids. The Fremen follow a religion that revolves around melange, giant sandworms that live in the open desert, and transforming Arrakis into a more habitable world.

Dune features a large and complex cast of characters. Notable people in House Atreides include Paul’s father, Duke Leto; the swordmaster Duncan Idaho; the minstrel Gurney Halleck; the doctor Wellington Yueh; and the mentat Thufir Hawat. Mentats are human beings trained to replace advanced computers, which have been banned. Notable characters in House Harkonnen include the evil Baron Vladimir; his nephews Glossu “the Beast” Rabban and Feyd-Rautha, and the mentat Piter de Vries.

Herbert wrote five more books in the “Dune” series. Dune‘s direct sequels are Dune Messiah (1969) and Children of Dune (1976). God Emperor of Dune (1981) shifts the action thousands of years into the future, to an Arrakis transformed by Paul’s son, Leto Atreides II. Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985) continue the saga of the Atreides family. Following Frank Herbert’s death in 1986, his son Brian and the American author Kevin J. Anderson wrote a number of additional novels set in the Dune universe.

A motion-picture adaptation, also titled Dune, was directed by David Lynch and released in 1984. The Dune saga has also been adapted into two television miniseries, “Dune” (2000) and “Children of Dune” (2003).

N. K. Jemisin, American fantasy and science fiction author
© Laura Hanifin 2015 (licensed under CC BY 4.0)

In honor of international literacy day, World Book is celebrating the writer of the “Broken Earth” trilogy, N. K. Jemisin. Jemisin is an American author of fantasy and science fiction. She is known for creating dynamic fantasy worlds destabilized by cultural conflict, inequality, and oppression. In 2016, she won a Hugo Award, the most prestigious award in science fiction, for her novel The Fifth Season (2015). Jemisin became the first Black American author to win in the novel category. The book’s sequels, The Obelisk Gate (2016) and The Stone Sky (2017), won Hugo Awards in 2017 and 2018, making Jemisin the first author to win in the novel category three years in a row.

The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky make up Jemisin’s “Broken Earth” trilogy. The trilogy is set in the Stillness, a post-apocalyptic world wracked by earthquakes and other disasters. A race of people called Orogenes have the ability to control natural forces, but they are feared, oppressed, and persecuted for their powers.

Jemisin began her career in fantasy and science fiction writing short stories. Her first published novels were the “Inheritance” trilogy: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms (both 2010) and The Kingdom of Gods (2011). The trilogy takes place in an empire where gods have been enslaved to human beings. The novels The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun (both 2012) are set in an ancient Egypt-like world where people known as Gatherers accumulate magic power by harvesting people’s dreams. The protagonists of The City We Became (2020) are avatars (living embodiments) of the five boroughs (sections) of New York City. Jemisin’s short fiction was collected in How Long ’til Black Future Month (2018).

Nora Keita Jemisin was born Sept. 19, 1972, in Iowa City. She grew up with her mother in Mobile, Alabama, spending summers with her father in New York City. She earned a B.S. degree in psychology from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1994. She earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1997. She worked as a counselor, psychologist, and university administrator before becoming a full-time writer.

January 3, 2020

Yesterday, January 2, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the American author Isaac Asimov in 1920. Asimov wrote about 400 books for young people and adults, mostly nonfiction emphasizing science and technology. However, he became best known for his science fiction.

The author Isaac Asimov was born 100 years ago on Jan. 2, 1920. Credit: © Everett Collection/Alamy Images

Many of Asimov’s short stories and novels feature robots as characters. Several were collected in I, Robot (1950). His popular Foundation series of science-fiction novels includes Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), Second Foundation (1953), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Foundation and Earth (1986), Prelude to Foundation (1988), and Forward the Foundation (published in 1993, after his death). He also wrote Fantastic Voyage (1966) and The Gods Themselves (1972).

Asimov’s nonfiction is notable for making complicated material understandable to the general reader. These works include Asimov’s New Guide to Science (1984). Asimov also wrote on such topics as history, humor, William Shakespeare, and the Bible. He wrote two volumes of autobiography, In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980).

Asimov was born on Jan. 2, 1920, in Petrovichi, Russia, near Smolensk. When he was 3 years old, his family moved to New York City. Asimov became a United States citizen in 1928. He taught biochemistry at Boston University from 1949 to 1958 before becoming a full-time writer. He died on April 6, 1992.