Dune – Frank Herbert

Thoughts: I thoroughly enjoyed Dune. The worldbuilding—the ecology of Arrakis, the religion of the Fremen—was exquisite.

(The notes below are not a summary of the book, but rather raw notes - whatever I thought, at the time, might be worth remembering.)

Herbert, Frank. [1965] 2010. Dune. ACE.

• 620: Bene Gesserit proverb: “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”
• 798: Pardot Kynes: “There’s an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet…. You see in this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. Life’s aim is simple: to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity. Life improves the closed system’s capacity to sustain life. Life—all life—is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.”