Dune Book Club

The Dune Book Club is a club that meets every few weeks on the Official Dune Awakening Discord in a voice channel to read through the first Dune novel and discuss themes, events, characters and more. The club is open to everyone, and every edition of Dune. To help facilitate this, the times that the sessions occur have been spread to meet the most people across different timezones, and instead of specific book or chapter markers, snippets of the text are used to make sure participants are on the same page. The first session opened on 2023-09-28 21:00:00 UTC with a book giveaway

Session 1

The first session took place on 2023-09-28 21:00:00 UTC, reading the first two sections, until the quote that starts with "Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife:", for roughly an hour

The club talked about:

• How Frank Herbert laid out a lot of exposition that could've been "plot twists" openly almost in a Brechtian way, while still keeping some secrets for the future to be revealed and/or some points for foreshadowing
• The concept of human vs animal and how various characters were positioned in that "scale"
• Discussed in depth about Bene Gesserit, how both their façade and internal workings are full of hypocricy and tried to explain Reverend Mother's behaviour through that lens
• Observed how Herbert assigned musical attributes to some characters and not to others and shared theories about that.

Among other threads of discussion.

Session 2

The second session took place on 2023-10-12 23:00:00 UTC, reading the following two sections, until the quote that starts with "YUEH (yu'e), Wellington (weling-tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191...", for an hour

The club talked about:

• Reading the book out loud is more immersive than most books. Herbert does an amazing job at describing the mannerisms and feelings of the characters, while not doing too literally so there is still a lot of room for your imagination
• Dune isn't "fast" and it works out. There is a lot of exposition in the sections, but it's blended into the story well.
• Reverend Mother's relations and how she treats others is vague and that works really well. At any given time, it's hard to be sure if she genuinely likes someone, pretends to do that or if maybe she does have feelings toward others that she masks for the most part.
• Paul being introduced to knowledge, especially the challenges of Arrakis, is also us being introduced to all of that, which is part of the above point and also helps us relate to Paul as a protagonist
• Paul, despite is obvious talent and intelligence, is still naive and as the "real world" approaches fast, his transformation into shedding his naivety has started. He's introduced to very real and very uncomfortable insights and situations, such as Arrakis being a trap, his father's and even family's demise being very likely and how everyone actually knows about it.
• As part of the above point, Gurney partially wants Paul to grow and fast but also doesn't.
• Musically described voices doesn't seem to be a thing in these sections

Session 3

The third session took place on 2023-11-25 02:00:00 UTC, reading the following two sections, until the quote that starts with "With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant-", for an hour

The club talked about:

• How Frank Herbert does not hide Yueh's betrayal and how he starts from being a shady figure and grows to be someone relateable
• How seeing the thoughts of non-protagonists in a third person omniscient perspective gives us a different angle to view political discourse and intrigue compared to similar books
• The topics of fate and choices, how Dune does not spell out what the "prophecy" is explicitly to either the characters or the reader, leaving us to wonder if the actions being taken by the characters are of their own free will, or if there is a guiding force to control it
• Reversed nature vs nurture between the characters, and how this forms complex personalities and pushes them to make certain descisions. All of the characters are deep, complex and living on and off the page

Session 4

The fourth session took place on 2024-01-06 03:00:00 UTC, reading the following two sections, until the quote that starts with "Many have marked the speed with which Muad’Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis.", for an hour

The club talked about:

• The abundance of foreshadowing in these chapters
• Atreides prepares against attacks from others, but they are trusting of their people for the most part
• Wanna - is she part of BG's plans? Was her part pushing Yueh for betrayal? Is Yueh convincing himself that he wasn't manipulated?
• If only Yueh and Jessica talked to each other, a lot could've been prevented!
• Jessica and Leto - how they are products of their upbringing and the conflicts between what they have to live their lives and what they want from life for themselves and for the other one
• Mandatory praise about getting in different characters' minds and being presented those angles
• Mandatory discussion about fate and prophecies, brought back up from the previous session

Session 5

The fifth session took place on 2024-02-10 18:00:00 UTC, reading the following three sections, until the quote that starts with "Over the exit of the Arrakeen landing field", for roughly an hour and a half

The club talked about:

• The 3 chapters being coincidentally from the point of view of Paul, Jessica and Leto respectively
• Paul's hertiage and influcences forming two parts of his character, but he is still an individual, and has a childish innocence about him
• Again the invisible hand of fate or coincidence?
• How the prose changes format to change the tone and emotion suddenly, and how it can subvert expectations by forming a pattern (describing a room in detail before sudden peril) and then breaking it to keep the readers on their toes
• The many deep layers of the Bene Gesserit pulling the strings from the shadows, and games of "4D chess" with regard to politics, betrayal and traitors in their midst
• Duke Leto having great internal conflict that the first assasination attempt was against his son, while having to hide it as the mantle of leadership demands an appearance of stoic courage in the face of adversity
• Gurney being very different to the film adaptations - a much softer, warmer diplomat that can release the inner elite soldier when necessary

Followed by half an hour of general hangout and talking on the call