When I finally got around to reading Seven Pillars, I wasn't too far in before I was convinced Herbert had the book on his desk the whole time he was writing Dune. So many minor similarities, little scenes that don't quite match up but if you squint they do. Even the arc toward eventually committing war crimes, while seeking some great end for the people he's leading, feels like a connection. But also little stuff like the early travel scenes in Pillars reminded me of early scenes among the Caladanians(?) in Dune.
I think the part where I went "OK yeah this was the reference when he was coming up with the core plot and character of Paul" was when I came across the part where Lawrence comes up with his novel guerrilla war strategy: he's sick, feverish, possibly dying, in a tent in the desert, tended by a few companions. When he comes out of it, he's got his Path. It's too perfect.
[edit] Incidentally, it's not clear to me this author has a good picture of Lawrence's background. Lines like this:
> In terms of clothing, Lawrence comes to accept the Arab dress as “convenient in such a climate” and blends in with his Arab companions by wearing it instead of the British officer uniform.
make me think the author isn't aware that Lawrence had already spent a lot of time in the Middle East (especially, IIRC, modern Syria—so, near Damascus) very shortly before the war broke out, and that was a big part of why he was recruited by British intelligence for the mission(s) in Seven Pillars. It was on an earlier, pre-war trip that he'd adopted Arab dress—unlike what's suggested (if not quite stated) in the film Lawrence of Arabia, he was already quite familiar with and comfortable in it.
>unlike what's suggested (if not quite stated) in the film Lawrence of Arabia
The scene from the movie is based on this passage from chapter 20 of Seven Pillars, which suggests that while he was familiar with Arab clothing before the war, there was a period of time when he was in British army uniform during the Arab conflict, until he was asked by Feisal to change into Arab clothes:
"Suddenly Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in and out of Feisal’s tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once, very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more decent in the desert."
Also, the below quote is from the introduction, which I might add is perhaps the most beautiful introduction I've ever read. I sometimes go back just to read it:
"In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me, At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith. I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed’s coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do."
The discrepancy is easy to explain; Frank Herbert never owned a copy of Seven Pillars but was instead inspired by a manuscript of desert adventures that he’d found on a train as a boy whilst holidaying in the UK.
What's ironic is how people often point to plot points in many franchises (Star Wars, GoT, etc) as being derivative of Dune... Yet Dune itself is fairly derivative of other works
It’s even more stark the further back you go. When the printing press was invented, it didn’t usher in a new era of creativity but instead the first few centuries resembled modern Hollywood: shameless sequels and reboots. By far the most popular books were translations of Greek classics and rote derivatives of the Arthurian legends. It wasn’t until the first iterations of copyright and a few other cultural shifts that a “professional” writer class was born and started to expand on the creativity of our stories. Until then publishing wasn’t profitable enough to support a real creative process, so they cribbed as much from existing canon as they could to make ends meet. See how long it took science fiction to properly develop into a literary form, for example.
The first book I concur but the series goes in directions I would never have predicted in multiple places in later books, off the top of my head - books four and five stand out in memory, though he laid the groundwork in the first book.
On Star Wars and derivations... Bertram Thomas' Arabia Felix, about his crossing of the Empty Quarter, listed some names of stars, transliterated from the arabic.
The north star, was written as Al Jedi... the Jedi. It goes a step further, in that it's arabic which translates as the kid (as in a goat, but the same way Hans refers to Luke).
I'm not sure how much is coincidence, but reading about Thomas preparing to travel by starlight, it struck me as being remarkably reminiscent. I guess there are no original stories.
True, but the references in Star Wars to spice (spice mines of Kessel in the original, a reference to striking spice miners in Attack of the Clones) is pretty much only from Dune. Unless they were mining oregano or something.
The part of that interview that's stuck with me after I listened to this last year was his comments about the feudal system (at around 38:30 [1]).
So, tribal organisation is a natural organisation of humankind. We tend to fall into it, given any chance at all, given the proper stresses, or given the proper lack of stresses.
FH: Well, one of the threads in the story is to trace a possible way a messiah is created in our society, and I hope I was successful in making it believable. Here we have the entire process, or at least the large and some of the subtle elements of the construction of this, both from the individual standpoint, and from the way society demands this of you. It’s the references in there, you know, that the man must recognize the myth he is living in, because the creation of an avatar is a mythmaking process. We’ve done it in our…in recent times. Look at what’s happening to John F. Kennedy.
WM: O, sure.
FH: Who was a very earthy, real, and not totally holy man…so here we have a likeable person, now, you see…
WM: Yes.
FH: But real in the flesh and blood sense who by the process of emulation becomes something larger than life, far larger than life, and I’ve just explored all of as many permutations as I could recognize in the process.
WM: Oh, I-I caught overtones of Lawrence of Arabia in the thing, for example.
FH: He could very well become an avatar for the…for the Arabs.
WM: Right.
FH: If Lawrence of Arabia had died at the crucial moment of the British…
WM: Say, when Allenby walked into Jerusalem.
FH: Yes. If he had died…if, for example, he had gone up and killed the people who were destroying his breed, walked into that conference and said, Gentlemen, I have here under my javala a surprise, Bang! Bang! Bang! and he had been killed…
WM: He’d have been deified.
FH: He would have been deified. And it would have been the most terrifying thing the British had ever encountered, because the Arabs would have swept that entire peninsula with that sort of force, because one of the things we’ve done in our society is exploited this power…Western man has exploited this avatar power.
I do think it's unfair when people claim Dune is a straight retelling of T.E. Lawrence's story. For instance I think the messianic aspects are drawn from other episodes in history, like the Mahdist War
If you really wanted to you could say even George RR Martin was influenced by it.
(Game of Thrones spoilers below)
Look at the character arc of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. You will find some similarities there too both with Dune and with Lawrence of Arabia. But with a female character rather than a male.
> make me think the author isn't aware that Lawrence had already spent a lot of time in the Middle East
it is actually mentioned in the article. you misread here, with the point being that knowing how to do something is not the same as accepting it for a normal activity.
I'm 100% onboard with the 'Lawrence of Arabia inspired Dune' theory but I think one of the cleverest things Herbert did with Dune is to introduce a 'visionary substance' (spice) into the otherwise austere Islamic-adjacent motif.
He not only shrouded the spice in ritual and religion (which isn't THAT suprising considering many human societies used visionary substsances, and Herbert was a child of the 1960s psychedelic culture too) but also give it a central place in the economy and functioning of the empire.
What if a visionary substance was the real deal that gave you insight and precognition? What a rebel leader took full advantage of such a substance? What if that was combined with religious fervour?
Dune is basically space war + outsider Messiah + Islam + psychedelics
Plus he also had the smarts to use plausible mechanisms to remove advanced computers (the Butlerian Jihad) and nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a historical event IIRC? it's been a while..) from the technologies available to the Dune universe. This allowed the exploration of all sorts of human developmental possibilities - the Bene Gesserit and mentats, advanced schools of martial art and mental discipline etc.
On the topic of the Butlerian Jihad, and its echo of the historic Islamic taboo on art representing living things - looking around the current world and bearing in mind how twisted out of shape our social conversation has arguably become so quickly given that iPhones only landed in 2007... you have to wonder whether it is such an outlandish idea. Looking at the news over the last few weeks and months makes me realise that it is incredibly hard to see outside your historical moment, until things just happen! There are many possibilities and reality can get weird...
Nuclear weapons exist and are used, they call them atomics. I believe they are used to break into the city in the first book. The big taboo seems to be using them against people.
> and Herbert was a child of the 1960s psychedelic culture
Was he really a child of this culture? He was in his 40s by the time Dune came out in 1965, with large parts of it written in the early 60s, when psychadelics seemed more of a fringe thing used in beatnik circles, academic labs and prisons.
OTOH, the concept of invaders seizing territory for spice or other unique natural materials (Dutch and Portuguese in the Moluccas, Japan annexing Taiwan) drugs shifting empires (Opium) and special substances and techniques needed for long-distance navigation (citrus, astrolabe) had been around for centuries.
I hear you, but I believe he publicly commented on psychedelics and visionary substances and their inspiration for Dune's spice. He studied the natives of North and South America which have many examples of these things.
I don't have a source handy, but can share what Paul Stamets recounted a personal conversation with Frank in his Mycelium Running book as reported on the Dune wikipedia page:
"Frank went on to tell me that much of the premise of Dune—the magic spice (spores) that allowed the bending of space (tripping), the giant sand worms (maggots digesting mushrooms), the eyes of the Freman (the cerulean blue of Psilocybe mushrooms), the mysticism of the female spiritual warriors, the Bene Gesserits (influenced by the tales of Maria Sabina and the sacred mushroom cults of Mexico)—came from his perception of the fungal life cycle, and his imagination was stimulated through his experiences with the use of magic mushrooms."
Totally agree with you on the invaders part. I think this is why Dune is so great, it blends A LOT of things together into a coherent narrative.
Yeah, that's smart too. And how the "Spacefaring Guild" requires spice to navigate the best routes between the stars. Oil for transport. Everyone brought to their needs by Pauls' threat to switch off the oil supply. It's all so smart, Herbert was a hypergenius I think.
It bothers me that this doesn't actually sound that far from what a lot of folks seem to genuinely think? People are desperate for a panacea. But only if it works on the elites, it seems. Heaven forbid we come up with something that merely helps people lose weight.
Worse, a lot of people mistake euphoria moments for being right.
My memory of the book is faded and relying on the recent movie.
Why is the rebellion in your opinion Islam like.
Dethroned prince, lost prince, rebellion against colonization, empire mining a colony are very much a common trope
I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" at the Riverside Theatre on Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee in 70mm in the summer of 1962, the year it was released. I was overwhelmed ("blown away" as a term of art didn't exist back then but would be an apt description). I was SO thrilled when, after nearly two hours, the screen said "There will now be an intermission." Never heard of such a thing back then for a movie!
I note that the film is now available for rent in 4k. I'm gonna take a flutter and watch it on Vision Pro.
A friend raving about it got me to go see the 1989 reissue, and I was similarly overwhelmed/blown-away. The intermission only added to the sense of it being an event.
Last year, I dragged friends of mine to see it in the theater. They, too, were amazed. Now, we've been reading up on those times.
The reading list, so far:
'Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East', Soctt Anderson
20 years ago when I was living in Shanghai, my girlfriend was a member of the communist party (meritocratic she was enrolled because she had great grades). She had regular meetings with a small group of members of the party and they had regular discussions after being told to watch certain movies.
Lawrence of Arabia was one of those movies she had to watch to later discuss with other members... So we watched it together, had great discussion about it. Later when she went to meet with the other party members, they discussed the cult of personality surrounding the character and the use of guerrilla tactics.
(Another movie they all watched like this was 7 years in Tibet)
The parallels with Lawrence are obvious, but I find that the character of Paul Atreides follows some older models as well.
Towards the end of the first book of Dune he has become an almost mythical figure, a Moses using his divine insight to lead his people to freedom, or a Mohammed throwing them into a global war of conquest.
That ambiguity is perhaps the book's greatest achievement: Paul's actions are only justifiable if the reader believes in him completely (he has really seen all possible futures and picked the best one) or not at all (he just wanted revenge and could not have foreseen the consequences).
Interesting to note that the recent Villeneuve adaptation seems to lean heavily into the latter interpretation (Paul and Jessica especially are ruthless and want revenge/power) while the Lynch adaptation was probably more of the former (Paul really wants to do good).
Samuel Butler's 1872 "Erewhon" fiction book which features a society which banned all complex machines because of a prior machine intelligence uprising is the direct, and directly referenced, inspiration for the "Butlerian Jihad" in the Dune book series.
Frank Herbert said him self in an interview that Dune was inspired from Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch and that book is the story of Imam Shamil of the north caucasus.
Was looking for this comment, thanks. There was also a very lengthy article by s.o. about the fact which traces the origins of many details.
The presently discussed article ‘Paul Lawrence of Dune’ sound as if written for political goals, rather than actual understanding of the origins of Dune.
Many writers of genre fiction rely on their audience having read fewer history books than they have. I saw people online calling George Lucas a prophet for depicting the decline of the Republic in the Prequels, but he really just read a couple of books about Ancient Rome. And dragons and zombies make the premise of "what if the Mongols invaded during the War of the Roses" a lot more exciting.
Originality is overrated though, so I don't mind. One of my favorite science fiction novels, The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester, is transparently based on The Count of Monte Cristo.
A comment mentions it, but Sabres of Paradise is another key component to understanding Dune as a referential text as it pertains to imperialism and religious fervor as an insurrectionist response.
Lol. More like Dune lifts wholesale from Sabres of Paradise, translating the stories about Imam Shamyl into space, only adding some bits of LSD inspired trippiness. If anything, Herbert toned down the historical accounts. On the other hand, Lesley Blanch went for the dramatic over the historical in Sabres. The story about the Sultan that drowned his son's mistress, for example, was from a Greek movie version.
Yeah, it can't be understated how much was lifted. Chakobsa, the Kindjal, etc. Shamyl even acts like Atreides with regards to how he uses "visions" to drive important political decisions.
Readit News
I think the part where I went "OK yeah this was the reference when he was coming up with the core plot and character of Paul" was when I came across the part where Lawrence comes up with his novel guerrilla war strategy: he's sick, feverish, possibly dying, in a tent in the desert, tended by a few companions. When he comes out of it, he's got his Path. It's too perfect.
[edit] Incidentally, it's not clear to me this author has a good picture of Lawrence's background. Lines like this:
> In terms of clothing, Lawrence comes to accept the Arab dress as “convenient in such a climate” and blends in with his Arab companions by wearing it instead of the British officer uniform.
make me think the author isn't aware that Lawrence had already spent a lot of time in the Middle East (especially, IIRC, modern Syria—so, near Damascus) very shortly before the war broke out, and that was a big part of why he was recruited by British intelligence for the mission(s) in Seven Pillars. It was on an earlier, pre-war trip that he'd adopted Arab dress—unlike what's suggested (if not quite stated) in the film Lawrence of Arabia, he was already quite familiar with and comfortable in it.
The scene from the movie is based on this passage from chapter 20 of Seven Pillars, which suggests that while he was familiar with Arab clothing before the war, there was a period of time when he was in British army uniform during the Arab conflict, until he was asked by Feisal to change into Arab clothes:
"Suddenly Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in and out of Feisal’s tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once, very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more decent in the desert."
Also, the below quote is from the introduction, which I might add is perhaps the most beautiful introduction I've ever read. I sometimes go back just to read it:
"In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me, At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith. I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed’s coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do."
(those who don't follow: you can catch up on the Seven Pillars wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Pillars_of_Wisdom or like basically any biography of Lawrence, various forwards, et c.)
The north star, was written as Al Jedi... the Jedi. It goes a step further, in that it's arabic which translates as the kid (as in a goat, but the same way Hans refers to Luke).
I'm not sure how much is coincidence, but reading about Thomas preparing to travel by starlight, it struck me as being remarkably reminiscent. I guess there are no original stories.
A tale as old as time
That's what renewed my passion for reading; revisiting texts with contexts in mind, history, intent, etc.
I feel the education system really fails people with these little bits
Later saw the movie and kept thinking there would be a twist. Was largely disappointed but the mother starting a holy war was a bit intriguing.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216441.Manta_s_Gift
So, tribal organisation is a natural organisation of humankind. We tend to fall into it, given any chance at all, given the proper stresses, or given the proper lack of stresses.
[1]: https://youtu.be/A-mLVVJkH7I?t=2314
The part relevant to the OP:
FH: Well, one of the threads in the story is to trace a possible way a messiah is created in our society, and I hope I was successful in making it believable. Here we have the entire process, or at least the large and some of the subtle elements of the construction of this, both from the individual standpoint, and from the way society demands this of you. It’s the references in there, you know, that the man must recognize the myth he is living in, because the creation of an avatar is a mythmaking process. We’ve done it in our…in recent times. Look at what’s happening to John F. Kennedy.
WM: O, sure.
FH: Who was a very earthy, real, and not totally holy man…so here we have a likeable person, now, you see…
WM: Yes.
FH: But real in the flesh and blood sense who by the process of emulation becomes something larger than life, far larger than life, and I’ve just explored all of as many permutations as I could recognize in the process.
WM: Oh, I-I caught overtones of Lawrence of Arabia in the thing, for example.
FH: He could very well become an avatar for the…for the Arabs.
WM: Right.
FH: If Lawrence of Arabia had died at the crucial moment of the British…
WM: Say, when Allenby walked into Jerusalem.
FH: Yes. If he had died…if, for example, he had gone up and killed the people who were destroying his breed, walked into that conference and said, Gentlemen, I have here under my javala a surprise, Bang! Bang! Bang! and he had been killed…
WM: He’d have been deified.
FH: He would have been deified. And it would have been the most terrifying thing the British had ever encountered, because the Arabs would have swept that entire peninsula with that sort of force, because one of the things we’ve done in our society is exploited this power…Western man has exploited this avatar power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
(Game of Thrones spoilers below)
Look at the character arc of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. You will find some similarities there too both with Dune and with Lawrence of Arabia. But with a female character rather than a male.
Starks = Atreides, Ned = Leto, Catelyn / Sansa = Lady Jessica, Paul = Jon/Robb, Duncan Idaho = Benjen, Gurney = Aemon Targaryen / Jorah Mormont, Chani = Ygritte / Arya, Jamis = Tormund, Dr. Yueh = Littlefinger
Lannisters = Harkonnens, Tywin = Baron Vladimir, Joffrey / Jaime = Feyd / Rabban (to some degree, traits are mixed between these characters)
it is actually mentioned in the article. you misread here, with the point being that knowing how to do something is not the same as accepting it for a normal activity.
He not only shrouded the spice in ritual and religion (which isn't THAT suprising considering many human societies used visionary substsances, and Herbert was a child of the 1960s psychedelic culture too) but also give it a central place in the economy and functioning of the empire.
What if a visionary substance was the real deal that gave you insight and precognition? What a rebel leader took full advantage of such a substance? What if that was combined with religious fervour?
Dune is basically space war + outsider Messiah + Islam + psychedelics
On the topic of the Butlerian Jihad, and its echo of the historic Islamic taboo on art representing living things - looking around the current world and bearing in mind how twisted out of shape our social conversation has arguably become so quickly given that iPhones only landed in 2007... you have to wonder whether it is such an outlandish idea. Looking at the news over the last few weeks and months makes me realise that it is incredibly hard to see outside your historical moment, until things just happen! There are many possibilities and reality can get weird...
If I recall correctly, they are banned from use on people because that's how the machines tried to annihilate mankind (it's been a while..)
They have them ("atomics"). If bored into the planet, they are powerful enough to split it.
The Great Convention (akin the Geneva convention) prohibited the use of atomics. A convention that...well, no spoilers.
They have them.
But there's a moral taboo and a practical MAD one.
Was he really a child of this culture? He was in his 40s by the time Dune came out in 1965, with large parts of it written in the early 60s, when psychadelics seemed more of a fringe thing used in beatnik circles, academic labs and prisons.
OTOH, the concept of invaders seizing territory for spice or other unique natural materials (Dutch and Portuguese in the Moluccas, Japan annexing Taiwan) drugs shifting empires (Opium) and special substances and techniques needed for long-distance navigation (citrus, astrolabe) had been around for centuries.
I don't have a source handy, but can share what Paul Stamets recounted a personal conversation with Frank in his Mycelium Running book as reported on the Dune wikipedia page:
"Frank went on to tell me that much of the premise of Dune—the magic spice (spores) that allowed the bending of space (tripping), the giant sand worms (maggots digesting mushrooms), the eyes of the Freman (the cerulean blue of Psilocybe mushrooms), the mysticism of the female spiritual warriors, the Bene Gesserits (influenced by the tales of Maria Sabina and the sacred mushroom cults of Mexico)—came from his perception of the fungal life cycle, and his imagination was stimulated through his experiences with the use of magic mushrooms."
Totally agree with you on the invaders part. I think this is why Dune is so great, it blends A LOT of things together into a coherent narrative.
Deleted Comment
Worse, a lot of people mistake euphoria moments for being right.
I note that the film is now available for rent in 4k. I'm gonna take a flutter and watch it on Vision Pro.
Last year, I dragged friends of mine to see it in the theater. They, too, were amazed. Now, we've been reading up on those times.
The reading list, so far:
'Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East', Soctt Anderson
'Seven Pillars of Wisdom', T.E. Lawrence
'A Peace to End All Peace', David Fromkin
Lawrence of Arabia was one of those movies she had to watch to later discuss with other members... So we watched it together, had great discussion about it. Later when she went to meet with the other party members, they discussed the cult of personality surrounding the character and the use of guerrilla tactics.
(Another movie they all watched like this was 7 years in Tibet)
Towards the end of the first book of Dune he has become an almost mythical figure, a Moses using his divine insight to lead his people to freedom, or a Mohammed throwing them into a global war of conquest.
That ambiguity is perhaps the book's greatest achievement: Paul's actions are only justifiable if the reader believes in him completely (he has really seen all possible futures and picked the best one) or not at all (he just wanted revenge and could not have foreseen the consequences).
They didn’t want revenge/power, they had no choice but take it or die. It’s even said explicitly in numerous places in the movie.
The presently discussed article ‘Paul Lawrence of Dune’ sound as if written for political goals, rather than actual understanding of the origins of Dune.
tl;dr: http://www.jacurutu.com/viewtopic.php?t=4054
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunta-Hajji
Originality is overrated though, so I don't mind. One of my favorite science fiction novels, The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester, is transparently based on The Count of Monte Cristo.