Things people don’t get about DUNE

Frank was f***in with us

There’s something kinda perverse about Dune

And I don’t mean the rubber suits and giant worms

Although Freud would have a field day

But Frank Herbert spent decades writing about characters he thought were monstrous, and a future he intended as a nightmare warning against mystification and prophecy

Then Frank spent years meeting fans who took a whole other meaning from his stories

FAN — I love Paul, he’s my hero!

FRANK — We’ll actually I intended him as a terrifying warning against heroes

FAN — oh

OR

LUDDITE — “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” is the warning we need against AI!

FRANK — Well, actually…heh…that’s a false commandment created to keep humanity in feudal slavery…

LUDDITE — The Author Is Dead!

I don’t know another kind of writer who would dedicate years to creating a book about the future they fear most, other than a science fiction writer.

That’s just how we roll.

Frank revealed his true intentions in a 1985 talk at UCLA, and rounded the whole thing off with an act of heresy against science…