Dune

"Then why are we walking into this?"

"Paul!" The Duke frowned at his son. "Knowing where the trap is - that is the first step in evading it. This is like single combat, Son, only on a larger scale - a feint within a feint within a feint... seemingly without end."

So my Editor keeps hounding me to put some more literary reviews here given the explosion of traffic we've had from Russia and other regions. So I will do so and will try to more regularly share with the world some of the most joyous evocations that the written word has produced for us. Internet knowledge is now ubiquitous - but I more refer to wisdom than knowledge accumulated from internet encyclopedias and reading articles which fool the mind.

Dune, a Sci-Fi masterpiece written by a guy named Frank Herbert. You laugh at the thought of Sci-Fi eh? Well I make the claim that the genious in the genre is the absolute necessity of a sprawling imagination. In it's elemental form - sci-fi is the production of a world that contains components of the human experience that we are familiar with, and combines them with a world that only exists within the author's mind. And we are forever thankful that he share it with us. Creating an entire world within words from nothing. More than Joyce can say? Yes. And Herbert did it better than anyone before or since had. Layers on layers of not only a world - but worlds and customs and culture and language and history and future that come from nothing but imagination.

But I see the interest and page views falling so I will wrap this up. I will keep your attention by summarizing the story in three sentences, something I will try to make a habit of as I read more stories about things that aren't (and some that are) real in order to placate the audience:

Fmaily moves to another planet. Boy becomes saviour of a people and prophecy is realized. Good battles and overcomes evil.

You've got to read the book to see the nuance and appreciate the political wranglings that make this tale applicable to time immemorrial.

What's the matter with Kansas?