I
was fifteen years old the first time I read Dune.
I had been an avid reader since I was eight years old, when I began reading
novels in the third grade. I read the books that inspired me over and over
again, I read all kinds of things, but at that point in my life I read mostly
fiction, and with that said, at the age of fifteen, I found Dune to be somewhat dense, and
challenging.
I
had taken that first copy from the carousel of the library at the alternative
high-school I was attending. I read it, perhaps not as carefully as I should,
but as carefully as I could, and I went to see the motion picture when it came
out later that year.
I
found David Lynch’s adaptation to be one of the worst movies ever made, and
with that Dune passed from my
thoughts for a time.
In
the summer of 1988 I was visiting a friend in Montana, and I picked up a copy
of Dune from the bookstore in
Bigfork. I needed something to read on the bus ride home to Minneapolis.
Four
years later I was able to engage the book in a completely different way, after the
first two pages I was hooked. I was nineteen years old, and in the intervening years
I had learned enough and grown enough to understand what Frank Herbert was
getting at.
Dune changed
my life.
I
would read it and all six books in the original Dune series, eight times in sum, as well as everything else Frank
Herbert wrote on my quest to absorb his wisdom.
He
was a giant.
I
have given away dozens of copies of Dune throughout my life, and recommended it
to more people than I can count, always with the words this book will change your life.
Many
of them came back to me to tell me that it did.
Frank
Herbert wrote science fiction, but he wrote science in his fiction had less to
do with spaceships and laser beams (though it had those things), and more to do
with the science of politics, religion, ecology and psychology.
What
is most significant about Frank Herbert’s writing is this: he opens a window
for the reader on what it means to be human, and he asks open ended questions
about the range of human potential, in a way that allows the reader to believe
in those possibilities for themselves.
Frank
Herbert is inspiring.
He
makes the reader believe that we can do more, be more, see more of the world
than our sense sallow…if we are disciplined, if we are attentive to the world
around us, and if we cultivate within ourselves the desire to live a life
without fear.
He
died thirty-four years ago today, when he passed a heroic light left the world.
Given First - 2020.02.11
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