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| Sand worms are a big part of the Dune mythos. They'll happily gobble up the huge harvesters that collect the Spice. Nom nom nom! |
Like 40k it presents a pretty bleak view of the future with lots of political scheming and maneuvering between different "Houses".
It is a universe dominated by the need for the rare substance simply referred to as "Spice", which is only found on a single planet through the thousand planets spanning empire.
This substance allows navigators of huge space ships to calculate routes through folded space and makes faster-than-light travel possible (it also has the small side effect of turning said navigators into monstrous floating brains that require constant immersion in Spice to live, but you already knew there would be some hideous unmentionable drawback to this, right?).
The only place this Spice is found is the sand planet Arrakis, also known as Dune.
The original Dune trilogy focuses on the battle for this planet between two houses, which is carried out with both political and military means.
I would say that the strong point of the Dune books is the machiavellian vibe that permeates the Dune universe.
Everyone is looking out for their own agenda and the amount scheming, plotting and smug evil cackling would put even a Republican convention to shame.
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| The 1984 Dune movie was a a kinda weird but kinda cool David Lynch affair. Also Sting. |
If you prefer a more grand military sci-fi epic then the much newer series "Legends of Dune" tell the tale of how humans more than 10.000 years before the original Dune books timeline fought thinking machines across the galaxy.
It's a great series and if you've already read the original trilogy it sets up a lot of stuff that will make you go "aaah, so that's how that started".
Even though the first Dune book came out way back in 1965 I still say it is mandatory reading for any real science-fiction fan.
Dune also made its way into video games with the rather genre confused, but in my opinion fairly entertaining game "Dune" that puts you into the boots of the Atreides house heir Paul Atreides in a 1st person adventure / strategy game / RTS game (yes, that *is* much like mixing milk, diet coke and sausages but the result is surprisingly tasty and rich in protein).
Of course the real smash hit was "Dune 2", being one of the first RTS games it is generally considered as the direct forefather to Command & Conquer and the explosion of RTS games that spread a blanket of real time fatigue over players through the mid and late nineties that we have yet fully recovered from.
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| "Look guys, over there by the Sydney opera house!" |
Today the Dune universe is no longer video game relevant and it seems like the franchise is simply not big enough to warrant the multi-million dollar investment needed to make a quality game.
I think that's a great shame, cause Dune really is a universe worth your time and I'd love to have a chance to once again see a harvester get swallowed by a several hundred meter long sand worm and yell at my monitor:
THE SPICE MUST FLOW!
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