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[1]
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
Session 6
The sixth session took place on 2024-02-29 18:00:00 UTC, reading the following section, until the quote that starts with "On that first day when Muad’dib rode through…", for nearly two hours.
The club talked about:
- The bonds of trust between the main characters - Jessica calms Paul from his rage, and Paul calms Leto in turn. How they all have strong emotional turmoil given their situation but they handle it together
- How Duke Leto is getting more desperate after the assassination attempt against Paul, but manages to channel this into shrewd political strategy rather than show it in the face of his officers
- How much the Atreides lean on their mentat Thufir Hawat, and give him a lot of respect and admiration for his skill set - but it still gives a feeling everyone here is under pressure and needs to give their all
- The Atreides House is built on mutual respect and loyalty. All members are given the choice to participate or freely leave - they all choose to keep their oath of allegiance even though they know this is a trap and enemies surround them
- The Duke is very keen to lend a fair hand and build bridges on Arrakis as he needs desert power, but is totally ruthless and political when it comes to Harkonnen - the centuries of Kanly runs thick in their bloodline, but Paul is still very inexperienced in this and wants to see the good in people
- The Atreides and the Fremen have a lot in common, despite some culture clash - and the movies seem to handle the interaction between Stilgar and The Duke better by having him return the spitting gesture of respect
- A lot of broad speculation/theory crafting about the wider plans of why the Emperor chose to take out the Atreides by putting them on Arrakis - how the plan ultimately made sense but it could have gone very different ways given the Emperor and Harkonnen were losing favour with the rest of the Landsraad
- Noted how interesting Liet Kynes is treated with two different titles, one a person, the other a religious figure - strong parallels to Paul, and how Herbert represents these multifaceted characters by their names
Session 7
The seventh session took place on 2024-03-22 19:00 UTC, reading the following section, up to the quote that starts with "My father, the padishah emperor...", for an hour and a half.
The club talked about:
- FlamingMojo formally taking over running the Book Club moving forward
- The bonds of trust of the Atreides being used as a weapon by the Harkonnens by spreading doubt about Jessica possibly being the traitor
- Duke Leto's two sides and deep character - an emotional man who at times is driven by the heart, but also a wry political mastermind who doesn't shy from using all the levers of power available to him.
- Speculation if we were the Atredies, who would we suspect if we didn't know it was Yueh
- How Leto is suffering from a lack of information, once he calms down from his initial emotional reaction, begins to think of the 4D chess that the politics of the Great Houses is
- Herbert's description of the dew plants in the morning showing how hardy and strong things living in this harsh world can still be beautiful
- Leto using the necessary evil plan as a teaching moment for Paul, and how Paul has inherited some of his father's emotional responses
- The place of propaganda in the world, and how the Atredies are not morally white, but lean that way where they can afford to
- Not side-stepping religion in the lore ;)
- How different classes view religion differently in Dune, and how relics and religious symbols can be used as keys in the great plans of the Bene Gesserit
Session 8
The eigth session has not been announced yet - stay tuned for more!