Dune

Dune is a highly-influential and well-known science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, who had gender issues.

The novel Introduced the Bene Gesserit, and employed a number of other classic gendered tropes:

• woman as vessel for the Chosen Male
• women running a breeding society (the Bene Gesserit)
• a woman driven mad by too much knowledge
• a woman who falls in love against her sister/conspirators' plans

Herbert's views might well be displayed here in an observation by the (male) protagonist, Paul Atreides:

There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed." (1984 Berkley edition, p.445).

Further reading

• A Door into Ocean by Joan M. Slonczewski (1986) was written in significant part in response to Dune. Slonczewski notes:

"Much of A Door into Ocean reflects my responses to Frank Herbert's Dune, and to Ursula LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest. Dune depicts a world covered entirely by desert. To a biologist, the limitations of such a world are clear; no desert ecosystem can exist without moisure evaporated from ocean and carried by air currents. It was a natural step to imagine the opposite, a world covered entirely by water, which the Earth may well have been early in our planet's history."

"Dune depicts several male-dominated societies whose members scheme and oppress one another. The psychology of the characters is compelling, and study of it was helpful for me. Nevertheless, the societies in Dune are all limited to those dominated by males and violence. (Even the female Bene Gesserit use violent means, and direct most of their scheming toward manipulation of males.) Thus, in Ocean I attempted to oppose the Dune concept by depicting ocean-dwelling females in nonviolent revolution, who succeed without losing their humanity--as Paul and the Fremen sadly do."

Reviews, discussions, commentaries

• James Schellenberg, "Journeys to Dune: Reviews" (Sept. 22, 1998)