Eric Benét reflects on Frank Herbert’s Dune, acknowledging its profound influence on science fiction while criticizing Herbert’s portrayals of women and homosexuality. He highlights the villain Vladimir Harkonnen as depicted with negative associations to homosexuality and notes gendered power structures in later sequels (Bene Gesserit vs. honored madres).
This time on books that changed my life. What other.
Lessons in the book stick out? You know, there were some things in Dune that aren't the greatest.
In. In retrospect, like. Like years later, I would.
I mean, not to take anything away from the greatness and how profoundly influential that this book is on science fiction or literature in general. But Frank Herbert has some pretty interesting views about women and homosexuality that I think that were very indicative of the time. And I feel like the villain in this book, Dune, is the big boss of the Harkonnen planet. Vladimir Harkonnen. He was the evil guy in this book, and he was homosexual. And clearly a very.
It felt like Frank Herbert was connecting homosexuality to, like.
An insidious pathological.
Disease of. He was using negative association as a tool. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like there was a lot of that is probably from the. You know, Frank Herbert is a product of. What was he born in 1920? So he's a product of the time. We evolve as human beings and we understand that. You know, there are many people, probably in the 1950s and 60s who would refer to people of my color as derogatory terms. May feel bad about the way they look down upon people. Hopefully they feel bad about it now, but this isn't so derogatory. But he had some really interesting takeaways on women, too. The sequels of Dune, like, by the time he got to the fourth book and the fifth book, you had the Bene Gesserits, but then you also had the honored madres who were this. They were like the Bene Gesserits, but they controlled men through.
Sex. And they just had heartless intentions and used their sexuality to devour the universe. And, of course, it's all fiction, and he's making this up as some deeper meaning, but there's an authority to it. Yeah, there is. You know, usually the main character, the protagonist, or whoever the star is, you get to go inside their head and you get to see what they're thinking. Frank Herbert had a way of whoever steps into the scene, you get to see in their brain, you get to hear their thoughts. You get to see their true motivation in a conversation or their true motivation of what they're doing. He almost, to the point where he gives the reader too much information. Like, it's almost like he kind of gives the plot away sometimes. And I thought that was really interesting how there was not only so much information in the world, in the world building of Dune, but there was also so much information in each character. I thought that was fascinating. And I think a lot of people call it the greatest science fiction book ever written. And I think there's more arguments to support that than there are to, you know, refute it, so.
