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).