Coming to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies as I do with primarily no prior background with Frank Herbert’s books, two apparent factors of entry for me into the overall milieu of Dune are Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. In my critiques of Dune: Half One and now Dune: Half Two (filed and pending publication; keep tuned!) I’ve written a bit evaluating and contrasting Dune with Star Wars. Right here I’d like to think about Dune in relation to The Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s bigger legendarium.

In some ways Dune and The Lord of the Rings are comparable works; certainly, they stand alone amongst Twentieth-century literary tasks of their depth and scope of worldbuilding, with dense, wealthy lore developed over a number of volumes completed and unfinished—in each circumstances indirectly posthumously developed by the creator’s sons. Tolkien might have left behind way more in the way in which of unfinished writings, and Christopher Tolkien might have managed his father’s literary legacy with extra grace than Brian Herbert. But the parallels, nonetheless inexact, are placing and distinctive. Arthur C. Clarke fairly remarked, “I do know nothing corresponding to [Dune] besides Lord of the Rings.”

Even Tolkien acknowledged the kinship of the works—in a 1966 letter expressing his robust dislike for Dune:

It’s not possible for an creator nonetheless writing to be honest to a different creator working alongside the identical strains. At the least I discover it so. Actually I dislike Dune with some depth, and in that unlucky case it’s a lot the most effective and fairest to a different creator to maintain silent and refuse to remark.

It might sound unusual that Tolkien noticed himself and Herbert as “working alongside the identical strains,” particularly given the favored concept of Tolkien as a medievalist curmudgeon who hated modernity, for whom science fiction would presumably be anathema. In actuality, Tolkien thought-about science fiction “an excellent medium for the creativeness to work with”—and he noticed science fiction and fantasy as extra associated than opposed:

The connection between science fiction and fantasy is troublesome and topically vital.… Clearly many readers of [science fiction] are drawn to it as a result of it performs the identical operation as fantasy — it offers Restoration and Escape (I analyzed these in my ‘Essay on Fairy Tales’) — and surprise. However after they invoke the phrase ‘Science,’ and use a component of scientific data (very variable, typically, in scope and accuracy) authors these days are extra simply capable of produce suspension of disbelief. The legendary laboratory ‘professor’ has changed the wizard. [Emphasis added —SDG]

The caricature of Tolkien as a cranky Luddite standing athwart technological and literary historical past yelling Cease has acquired some salutary pushback lately, most notably from Holly Ordway in her 2021 e-book Tolkien’s Fashionable Studying: Center-earth Past the Center Ages. Center-earth is about within the mythic previous, however Ordway establishes that Tolkien’s legendarium is knowledgeable by his studying of a variety of contemporary works—and that Tolkien’s literary tastes have been definitely catholic sufficient to incorporate works of science fiction. Tolkien had a excessive regard, for instance, for H.G. Wells and Isaac Asimov, and he was “enthralled” by the primary (and most “science-fictiony”) quantity in his pal C.S. Lewis’s so-called Area Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet.

Tolkien’s dislike for Dune pursuits me partly as a result of, whereas I’m fascinated by Villeneuve’s variations, reviewing them has confirmed a problem, since I need to attempt to articulate my appreciation of films the enchantment of which I battle to elucidate to myself. Actually once I learn my very own descriptions in my critiques, they sound to me like motion pictures I’d dislike! But I do like them. I think, although, that I wouldn’t take pleasure in Herbert’s books—and the excerpts of Dune that I’ve learn do nothing to problem that impression.