Dune is one of the most famous sci fi books
ever. The story of Paul Atreides’ rise to power is widely read, and been made into movies and
TV shows. But this book is not the whole story of Dune – Frank Herbert wrote six Dune
books, and it’s only in these sequels that the true meaning of Dune is revealed.
The Dune sequel books get weird. Paul’s son transforms into a worm god and rules for thousands
of years. Duncan Idaho gets resurrected hundreds of times. There's an invasion by dominatrixes
from space, and genetically modified cat-people, and chairs made out of living dogs. And each book
is full of secret plots and abstract philosophical ideas. It would take many videos to fully explore
these books. So first, what’s the basic story? What happens in Frank Herbert’s six Dune books?
In Book 1, House Atreides takes over the desert planet Arrakis, land of sandworms and spice.
But they’re attacked by the Harkonnens and the Emperor. Paul Atreides unlocks a powerful
[prescient] mind that can see into the future. He becomes a religious leader to the native
Fremen, and falls in love with Chani. He defeats the Harkonnens and defeats Emperor Shaddam,
and Paul becomes Emperor of the Universe. So Book 1 seems to be a classic story of a
hero fulfilling his destiny and defeating evil. But in Book 2, Dune Messiah, Paul being Emperor
is a disaster. The Fremen kill billions of people in a holy war. And Paul can’t stop the violence –
his religion is out of his control. A conspiracy of powerful people plot to destroy Paul – led by
Gaius Mohiam, and by Paul's wife Princess Irulan, with a Spacing Guild Navigator [Steersman], and
a Tleilaxu Face Dancer, and Paul’s own Fremen High Priest. These guys have an elaborate plan to
destroy Paul using a cryptic dwarf called Bijaz who manipulates a resurrected version of Duncan
Idaho who is now a Mentat [cyborg] philosopher with robot eyes. Paul knows there’s a plot against
him. But he allows some of their plan to happen anyway because he's afraid of even worse possible
futures happening instead. Seeing the future is a curse, it’s a trap that takes away Paul's free
will. Paul gets blinded by a nuclear weapon, and relies on his visions to see – like Neo in
The Matrix 3. Chani dies giving birth to twins, Leto the Second and Ghanima. Paul wants to escape
his grief and politics and destiny so he walks into the desert to die. So in Dune Messiah, Paul's
rise as a heroic leader turns out to’ve been a terrible mistake. He loses everything he
loves, and gets billions of people killed. The message is that religious and political
leaders are dangerous. Blindly following a messiah or a vision or plan can lead to disaster.
Book 3 is Children of Dune. Paul's sister Alia rules the universe on behalf of young Leto
and Ghanima. But Alia’s mind gets possessed, taken over by the memory of the Baron Vladimir
Harkonnen. Turns out that the Baron was Alia and Paul’s grandfather, and his personality corrupts
Alia’s mind and leads her government into decline. It turns out that changing the environment of
Arrakis to have water and plants is a disaster, because without desert, there’s no sandworms and
no spice, and Fremen desert culture starts to die. Paul turns out to be alive still as a
mysterious desert preacher. He criticises the Atreides religion and government, but ends
up getting stabbed to death by his own priests. Wensicia Corrino, the daughter of the old Emperor
Shaddam, plots against the Atreides. She tries to kill Leto and Ghanima with Laza tigers. So
Leto fakes his own death and gets super high in the desert to unlock his mind. And Leto sees
a possible future that could save humanity from extinction, a plan called the Golden Path. Leto
transforms his own body so he'll become part sandworm and will rule the universe for
thousands of years. Jessica deals with the Corrinos by converting their heir to the Bene
Gesserit, and marrying him to Ghanima. Alia kills herself to kill the Baron within her. And
worm boy Leto becomes Emperor. So Leto’s plan will apparently save the human species. But to
be the saviour he has to give up his humanity, and become a monstrous tyrant. Dune
rejects the heroic messiah Paul and instead turns to a darker more complicated leader.
Book 4 is God Emperor of Dune, set thousands of years after the previous books. Leto rules the
universe with an iron fist. His plan, the Golden Path, is to oppress humanity for thousands of
years, to teach the species to want freedom to grow stronger, and to think for ourselves. Leto
also breeds the Atreides bloodline to create Siona Atreides. Siona has a special gene that makes her
invisible to people who can see the future. So Siona’s genes will free humanity from the control
of prescient people [like Leto and Paul]. Leto falls in love with a woman called Hwi. Trapped in
his monstrous worm body, Leto is tormented by the loss of his humanity, his tragic self-sacrifice
to save the species. Over the centuries, Leto resurrects Duncan Idaho over and over, and
he allows Duncan and Siona to rebel against him. He teaches Duncan and Siona so they grow strong
enough to eventually destroy him. In the end they kill Leto by using the blind obedience of Nayla,
a fanatic of Leto’s religion. Leto’s dying body rejuvenates the sandworms and spice on Arrakis,
and humanity is finally freed from his control. After millennia of oppression, humanity bursts
out across the universe in The Scattering, a mass migration into space. Humanity expands and evolves
to save it from stagnation and extinction – just as Leto planned. His Golden Path gives
humanity a universe of infinite possibilities. Book 5, Heretics of Dune, is set another
thousand years in the future. The Bene Gesserit control much of the Old Empire,
but a new threat comes from the Scattering. The Honoured Matres are a wild offshoot from
the Bene Gesserit who use sex to enslave people. The Bene Gesserit train a girl called Sheeana who
can control sandworms, and they hope to breed her with a new resurrected Duncan Idaho, and to use
her as a religious force to control people. But there’s also a plot by the Tleilaxu, a bunch of
religious genetic scientists who look like creepy grey elves. The Tleilaxu secretly modified this
new Duncan, giving him special sex powers – which terrifies the Honoured Matres. Bene Gesserit
leader Taraza uses Duncan to lure the Honoured Matres into destroying the planet Arrakis. Cause
by killing the planet’s sandworms, they destroy the remnants of Emperor Leto’s consciousness
and end his influence on the universe. The Bene Gesserit take the last sandworm to make spice on
their own planet called Chapterhouse. Taraza is helped by Miles Teg, a legendary Atreides soldier
who sacrifices himself and dies on Arrakis. In Book 6, Chapterhouse: Dune, the Honoured Matres
rampage across the Empire, hunting to exterminate the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Gesserit go
into hiding on the planet Chapterhouse, under the leadership of Darwi Odrade, an
unusually rebellious and emotional Reverend Mother who wants her Sisterhood to change and
evolve to survive this crisis. Odrade creates a young clone of Miles Teg who is her father.
And she trains a captured Honoured Matre, Murbella, to be a Bene Gesserit. Murbella and
Duncan fall in love. Teg leads an attack on the Honoured Matres. But the Matres defeat Teg with a
secret weapon, and they kill Odrade. So Murbella infiltrates and takes over the Honoured Matres
from within. Then she merges the Honoured Matres with the Bene Gesserit, assimilating to create
a new stronger Sisterhood. Murbella has changed so much that Duncan decides to leave her.
He and Sheeana steal a spaceship and escape, along with the last living Tleilaxu Master, and a
secret group of Jewish people and some sandworms and a Van Gogh painting. Together they start a
new journey, free in the infinite universe. In the final chapter, we see a mysterious elderly couple
called Daniel and Marty. These two are apparently advanced Face Dancers from the Scattering
who escaped the control of the Tleilaxu. But Daniel and Marty also seem to represent
the author Frank Herbert and his wife Beverly. As they work in their garden, they break the
fourth wall, chatting about Dune’s characters and the unfinished plotlines like the Tleilaxu.
They admit that the characters got away from them, beyond of the author’s control. The book ends with
a loving tribute to Bev, who died the previous year. The year after publication, Frank died.
So Frank never wrote a neat final conclusion to the Dune series. But this open-ended last
chapter fit the central themes of Dune – the characters get freedom and self-determination,
not even the author controls them any more. And Daniel and Marty in their garden show the
simple human warmth that is the emotional heart of Dune. Dune was never really about the plot
as much as it’s about the ideas. A philosophy of the mind, of thinking, politics, technology,
of how to live in a chaotic universe. So we’re making a video called The Philosophy of Dune,
exploring the themes and big ideas of the series. We're also gonna cover the new Game of
Thrones TV show, House of the Dragon, which is based on a book called Fire & Blood.
Fire & Blood, and the entire Dune series are available on audiobook. You can get any one of
these for free right now, at audible.com/asx. Sign up for a Premium Plus trial membership,
and you can choose an audiobook to keep, even if you cancel the trial. You could get the
Dune Audio Collection with readings and commentary by Frank Herbert himself. Membership also includes
unlimited access to thousands of audiobooks and shows in the Audible Plus Catalog. Sign up
at audible.com/asx, or text asx to 500-500. Thanks for watching, and thanks
to the Patrons, including jlee60, Micah Prude, Ruven Dewender, Hill1030,
Dylan Elliott, and Rilhon. Cheers.
This summary was too superficial. I love this channel, but I wish he had made a video of this length per book instead.
Finally. Someone to explain this
I love your videos! Keep up the amazing work. Wonderful analysis on anything you undertake. Excited to see what you work on next!!