High and Dry

Dune
by Frank Herbert
p. 1965

Dune is an iconic piece of science fiction, one of the best-selling in the genre, and the first in an epic series by Frank Herbert, but it’s a series I hadn’t gotten around to until just now. It’s also not a story that can be fully related in few words, but I will try in a few sentences.

Set in the far distant future, it is a coming-of-age story about young Paul Atreides, the son of a Duke, Leto Atreides, and Leto’s powerful mistress, Lady Jessica, who is part of a religion that is somewhat akin to witchcraft. In any case, Jessica’s people—the Bene Gesserit—are sometimes feared, sometimes reviled, sometimes respected, and Paul himself has been trained in their ways, even though the Bene Gesserit are solely women.

Paul’s family has recently arrived on Arrakis, a desert planet from which their people mine a spice called melange, which is very valuable. They face plenty of danger from giant carnivorous sandworms, the fierce climate and the wary native population, but the biggest threat comes from the House Harkonnen, their political rivals who are making a play to snatch control of Arrakis from the Atreides. We meet up with Paul at the beginning of this coup and follow him through to its conclusion, enduring a large time jump in the middle as Paul grows into a man and finds his destiny on the strange desert planet.

Straight off the bat, I have to give Frank Herbert credit for his skill at worldbuilding. Even by today’s standards, Dune presents a remarkably realized fictional world; that it is also one of the earliest examples in science fiction/fantasy just makes the detail Herbert put into his world all the more impressive. I personally have a low skill and little patience for the art of worldbuilding, which is why most of the things I tend to write either take place in the real world or in an urban setting very similar to our own, but even if I have no interest in creating a world myself, I have mountains of respect for those that do. It takes a lot of patience and skill to create a realistic universe in which to set your tale.

Unfortunately, I think that this sometimes comes at the expense of characterization. There were very few in Dune that I found intriguing or relatable. I know this is supposed to be a coming-of-age tale with Paul at the center, but Paul is very hard to relate to because he is mind-numbingly perfect. Paul Atreides is all things; he goes by so many titles or personas in Dune that it is almost dizzying to keep track of them all. He’s Paul Atreides, he’s Maud’Dib, he’s Usul, he’s the Lisan al-Gaib, he’s the Mahdi, he’s the Kwisatz Haderach—the names never end and Paul embodies all of them. From the start of the uprising that thrusts Paul into his destiny, he goes through a sort of metamorphosis that strips him of his childhood innocence. This is a necessary transformation for Paul to become the leader he was meant to be... but it also makes him dull as a doorknob. Possessing approximate knowledge of all things past and present strips Paul of doubt and weakness and makes him an all-powerful Gary-Sue. Even Paul’s mother finds the change unsettling, as she spends the entire book alternating between being proud and terrified of her son. Lady Jessica frets to such an extent that it gets old quickly. The later addition of a second creepy child does not help matters.

Any other characters I saw potential in were quickly disposed of the moment I started to find them interesting. Shadout Mapes? Dead. Duke Leto? Dead. Liet Kynes? Dead. Duncan Idaho? Dead—and this one hurt most of all. I’m happy to hear he was revived for subsequent novels, thanks to his instant appeal and popularity, but I’m not sure it’s enough to get me to continue. Some may interpret this ruthless disposal of characters as a storytelling device—a ploy to make you think you know what’s coming before it all gets flipped on its head—but I just found it disappointing after a while. What’s the use in allowing yourself to enjoy characters if you know they’re all going to be killed off before they reach their potential?

I also don’t think Herbert did a very good job at portraying minorities. Unique for the decade it was released, Dune actually has a homosexual character... only he is a fat, evil pedophile and the story’s lead antagonist. Of course. I haven’t got much else to say about this topic; it speaks for itself. I suppose it is telling that a story that goes out of its way to present a homosexual would make him so inherently vile.

It is Dune’s treatment of women that is more complicated. The story starts with some promise, portraying the Bene Gesserit as an extremely powerful and respected subset of women in society. All the women in Dune have their heads about them but unfortunately, no matter how clever they are, they still live in a cripplingly patriarchal society, and even the most powerful female characters are still propping up their men throughout the novel. Hell, the Bene Gesserit’s lifelong ambition is to find a male to induct into their religion and become a messiah for them all. I’ll give Dune credit for its time, but on the whole, the song remains the same.

I don’t see myself picking up any future Dune novels, as the fate of Arrakis is simply not compelling enough to plod through thousands of pages of Herbert’s thick and tedious fantasy-language. There’s only so much of Kwisatz Haderrachs and gom jabbars and landsraads and sardaukars that I can take. If I have to flip back and forth between a glossary and the text every other page just to understand what I’m reading, then the endeavor, on the whole, really starts to lose its appeal.

You Blew It Up! You Damn, Dirty Hippies!

Directive 51 
A Novel of Daybreak
by John Barnes

p. 2010

John Barnes’ Directive 51 is the latest in the slew of post-apocalyptic fiction novels in my repertoire, but unlike most of the others I’ve read, it is not a product of Cold War propaganda, but rather a modern day take on the apocalypse, in that it hits us where it counts—technology. Directive 51 is the first in a trilogy of novels (titled the Daybreak trilogy) detailing an attack on the world using bio-terrorism that targets all mechanical and plastic materials, effectively reducing us to pre-industrial-revolution times.

Let’s start with what exactly Directive 51 is. It’s real, for starters, a term coined under the Bush administration, but existing, in some form, under some other title, for a couple decades, according to the afterword by Barnes. It’s the rule that states what happens when the president is found unfit to lead the country, and that is precisely what happens when Daybreak—the name for the underground eco-terrorist movement—is unleashed on the planet. The search for a fitting president in the crisis loosely provides the basis for the first installment in this trilogy... and it’s exactly as boring as it sounds.

Directive 51 is fundamentally an ensemble story, but indispensable government agent, Heather O’Grainne, often takes center stage. Heather works for the department of 'Future Threat Assessment’, a group meant to anticipate crimes and prevent them, and since the story picks up on the very morning that Daybreak (a worldwide coordinated event amongst thousands of different groups and millions of participants) is unleashed, I think it’s safe to say that Heather is probably terrible at her job. But we’re supposed to see her as the smartest person in the room, so it’s probably a good idea to adopt a ‘Just shut up and go with it’ attitude from the start.

A lot of the characters in this story have the potential to be interesting. A lot of the first part follows various ‘Daybreakers’ as they deposit their instruments of destruction around the U.S. and a couple of them are mentioned later, but for the most part, they are dropped without ceremony or just plain presented as brainless, selfish hippies. If Barnes was intending for their cause to be sympathetic, he failed miserably, but I don’t think he was; I think he had every intention of bashing young eco-crusaders for the dirty hippies he thinks they are.

Barnes isn’t very transparent in general. Despite the fact that two party politics really have nothing to do with the conflict, it is repeatedly stressed that the acting president when Daybreak occurs is Democratic, and when he suffers an untimely mental breakdown, his replacement—another Democrat—quickly turns tyrant and stages a coup, actually succeeding in murdering the first president so he can’t reclaim power. The new president is a Republican who had been planning to run in the upcoming election anyway. It is mentioned that he leans towards religious fundamentalism, leading me to suspect that this president will also be problematic when he tries to sneakily impose his beliefs on the American people, vulnerable in this time of crisis... but that entire thread is dropped and it turns out this president is, like, the best prez evah and exactly what America NEEDS... until he gets martyred in a nuclear attack. His replacement? Another Democrat who lets power go to his head... of course. Very subtle, Barnes.

Dropping story threads is something else I have issues with. I understand that this is a trilogy and this is only book one, but nothing really happens. There are a small handful of actions scenes interspersed in a 500 page book, and the rest is all talking, and not even fun or interesting talk at that. Lots of talk is forgivable if the reader is enjoying themselves, but Barnes’ dialogue is forced and his characters are too bland. All of them are either no-nonsense government officials who were too stupid to do anything right or dirty hippies who only thought of themselves. I didn’t find myself rooting for any of them and any of those I thought could be interesting were dropped halfway through. So much for that.

But Directive 51’s biggest problem is in the subversion of its genre. The reason I love reading post-apocalypse stories is to see how ordinary people adapt and survive, but none of Directive 51’s characters are regular people; they are the most important people in the country, literally, and as such they don’t really get to experience the full realm of Daybreak firsthand. They get showers and electricity and access to the last working forms of transportation where others do not, because they are that important. The full depth of human struggle of Daybreak—the starvation, the riots, the ravages of disease—are not felt and these characters are not relatable.

I will give Barnes one thing though—his ratio of female to male characters is impressive and his women are strong and smart and not totally lacking in a couple spare dimensions... The only time I raised an eyebrow was when Heather—our lead hero and at one point, somehow the only voice of reason and stability in the entire government—decided that the best idea, in the wake of a worldwide attack kickstarting the end of the world as we know it, was to get pregnant immediately with her sure-to-not-survive-the-apocalypse handicapped boyfriend.

Because, sure.

This foolhardy logic aside, Heather did a great job as lead and I’m sure she and all the other characters introduced in Directive 51 continue to grow and have adventures in the next two novels in Barnes’ trilogy... but I’m clearly not the target audience for them.