Dune by Frank Herbert
Because it bridges the gap between pulp fiction planetary romance and involvement in contemporary politics, Dune is a tremendously fascinating book. It tells the tale of a young aristocrat who is exiled to a desolate planet after his family is murdered. To try to return and retrieve his inheritance, he strikes a truce with the desert warriors.
However, in addition to that fundamental “hero’s journey” component, a significant portion of the book is closely related to the setting, the extremely peculiar ecology of the Dune planet, which, as I said, is primarily desert but has extraordinary animals like enormous sandworms.
Dune by Frank Herbert
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Frank Herbert’s science-fiction book Dune, which was first published in 1965, may have served as the basis for any number of “Star Wars” or “Hallmark Home for the Holidays” episodes as well as a screenplay for “Hallmark Home for the Holidays.” It is a novel that is significant, flexible, and versatile. The book is excellent and has strong religious overtones. It has historical significance that dates back to antiquity and raises important questions about future social and political stability.
The narrative supposedly follows a devoted, very protective single mother who simply wants what is best for her son. She brings him camping so he can earn the survival skills equivalent of a “Boy Scout” merit badge. His main responsibility is to feed the family in the woods. If he can find the correct bait and use it to hook a fish for dinner, he can almost guarantee that he will earn the desired merit badge. The issue is that they quickly learn the lake has almost completely dried up. The waters have subsided or have been somehow redirected.
He must therefore look for other food sources. It seems easy enough, you decide. But you recall that the book is entirely science fiction. The potential outcome scenarios multiply and become unexpected as things quickly turn ugly and out of control. Later on, when the son decides to go to his first rodeo, the plot gets even more fascinating.
Perhaps the single mother accidentally packed a bottle of “Mescal” Mexican tequila in her bag rather than the “cooking Sherry” she had planned to bring “for medicinal purposes” on the trip. She must have been drinking some kind of strong alcoholic beverage, leading her to dream and possibly hallucinate, while cooking over the typical open campfire.
The makers of this specific tequila even added a tiny grub-worm to the bottles as a warning and out of an excess of caution, or perhaps just for aesthetic sake, I suppose. Similar to the “green dragon” or “genie in the bottle” depicted on the label of the alcoholic beverage absinthe. The harmless, one-inch, standard-size grub-worm is then changed, multiplied, or somehow increased by the unexplained processes of her mind into a monstrous monster 5,000 times its usual, original size in her dreams or perhaps because of her active imagination. The story’s science-fiction component now starts to take shape.
