The Dune trilogy is among my biggest influences and inspirations as a writer—and I’m certainly not alone in this. It was one of the works that helped to define space opera and science fiction as we know them today, so it’s no surprise that people keep trying to adapt it for the big screen.

Unfortunately, none of those past attempts did full justice to the source material. Not even Patrick Stewart could save the David Lynch adaptation, and while the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries hit more of the right beats, it still fell far short of the tone and epic scope of the original.

And I will say Denis Villeneuve’s two-part Dune movie isn’t perfect, either—but it gets it a lot more right than any past attempt, and has earned at least this life-long Frank Herbert reader’s seal of approval. Stretching it into two films was a smart move, giving the story the space it needs to breathe and nearly achieving the expansive, multi-threaded plot of the book.

In the first half of this review, I looked at the physical content of Frank Herbert's created universe in Dune, but that is really only half the story. The politics and religion of both Arrakis and the rest of the Imperium are the ultimate driving force of the narrative, serving as both setting and plot.

The first Dune book spends more time exploring the Fremen than it does the Landsraad and the Imperium. The Fremen are more unique to Dune and therefore both more interesting and in need of more introduction. Herbert starts with them knowing the reader will take longer to understand them and doesn't drop too many details on the Imperium in the first book, saving that discovery for later installments in the series.

Dune is one of those books it’s effectively useless to review in a traditional sense. It doesn’t really matter to anyone if I like the book or not. It’s a classic, and it’s canon, and close to required reading for anyone who wants to write science fiction. I did my most recent re-read of Dune in this spirit—enjoying the story, sure, but trying to look beyond the story and see the underpinnings of Frank Herbert’s world and the way that he created it.

Because there's a lot to look at with this world, I've split the post into two parts. This first post will look at the physical aspects of the invented world of Dune, while the next will explore the culture.