Dune (franchise)

Dune is an American science fiction media franchise that originated with the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert and has continued to add new publications. Dune is frequently described as the best-selling science fiction novel in history. It won the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Hugo Award in 1966 and was later adapted into a 1984 film, a 2000 television miniseries, and a three-part film series, with the first film in 2021, a sequel in 2024 and a confirmed third movie coming out in 2026. Herbert wrote five sequels, the first two of which were adapted as a 2003 miniseries. Dune has also inspired tabletop games and a series of video games. Since 2009, the names of planets from the Dune novels have been adopted for the real-world nomenclature of plains and other features on Saturn's moon Titan.

Frank Herbert died in 1986. Beginning in 1999, his son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson published several collections of prequel novels, as well as two sequels that complete the original Dune series (Hunters of Dune in 2006 and Sandworms of Dune in 2007), partially based on Frank Herbert's notes discovered a decade after his death. As of 2024, 23 Dune books by Herbert and Anderson have been published.

The political, scientific, and social fictional setting of Herbert's novels and derivative works is known as the Dune universe or Duniverse. Set tens of thousands of years in the future, the saga chronicles an intergalactic human and transhuman civilization that has banned all "thinking machines", including computers, robots, and artificial intelligence. In their place, this civilization—which, for most of the narrative, is organized as a complex technofeudal polity called the Imperium—has developed advanced mental and physical disciplines and technologies that adhere to the ban on computers. The harsh desert planet Arrakis, the only known source of the spice melange, is vital to the Imperium. Humans ingest melange to be able to perform the computations needed for space travel and other advanced tasks.

Due to the similarities between some of Herbert's terms and ideas and actual words and concepts in the Arabic language, as well as the series' inspiration from Islamic culture and themes, a Middle Eastern influence in Herbert's works has been widely noted.

The Dune saga is set thousands of years in humanity's future. Faster-than-light travel has been developed, and humans have colonized a vast number of worlds. However, a great reaction against computers has resulted in a ban on any "thinking machine", with the creation or possession of such punishable by immediate death. Despite this prohibition, humanity continues to develop and advance other branches of technology, including extrasensory perception (ESP) and instruments of war. At the time of the first book's setting, humanity has formed a feudal interstellar empire known as the Imperium, run by several Great Houses that oversee various planets. Of key interest is the planet Arrakis, known to the native population as "Dune". A desert planet with barely any precipitation, it is the only planet where a special life-extending drug, melange (or "the spice"), can be found. In addition to life extension, melange enhances the mental capacity of humans through prescience, allowing the Spacing Guild pilots (mutated by heavy melange use) to navigate folded space and travel the distances between planets; and triggers some of the powers of the Bene Gesserit, a religious group that secretly seeks to control the direction humanity takes. Melange is challenging to acquire due to the harsh environment of Arrakis, and the presence of giant sandworms that are drawn towards any rhythmic sounds on the sands of the desert. Feudal control over the fiefdom Arrakis, its spice production, and the impact on humanity's development become the centerpoints of a millennia-long conflict that develops through the series.

The Dune universe, set in the distant future of humanity, has a history that stretches thousands of years (some 15,000 years in total) and covers considerable changes in political, social, and religious structure as well as technology. Creative works set in the Dune universe can be said to fall into five general time periods:

As explained in Dune, the Butlerian Jihad is a conflict taking place over 11,000 years in the future (and over 10,000 years before the events of Dune), which results in the total destruction of virtually all forms of "computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots". With the prohibition "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind," the creation of even the simplest thinking machines is outlawed and made taboo, which has a profound influence on the socio-political and technological development of humanity in the Dune series. Herbert refers to the Jihad several times in the novels, but does not give much detail on how he imagined the causes and nature of the conflict. Critical analysis has often associated the term with Samuel Butler and his 1863 essay "Darwin among the Machines", which advocated the destruction of all advanced machines.

In Herbert's God Emperor of Dune (1981), Leto II Atreides indicates that the Jihad had been a semi-religious social upheaval initiated by humans who felt repulsed by how guided and controlled they had become by machines. This technological reversal leads to the creation of the universal Orange Catholic Bible and the rise of a new feudal pan-galactic empire that lasts for over 10,000 years before Herbert's series begins. Several secret societies also develop, using eugenics programs, intensive mental and physical training, and pharmaceutical enhancements to hone human skills to an astonishing degree. Artificial insemination is also prohibited, as explained in Dune Messiah (1969), when Paul Atreides negotiates with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, who is appalled by Paul's suggestion that he impregnate his consort in this manner.