God Emperor of Dune
OCLC 16544554 | | |
| Preceded by | Children of Dune | |
|---|---|---|
| Followed by | Heretics of Dune | |
God Emperor of Dune is a science fiction novel by American writer Frank Herbert, published in 1981. The fourth in his Dune series of six novels, it was ranked as the No. 11 hardcover fiction best seller of 1981 by Publishers Weekly.
Plot
Leto II Atreides, the God Emperor, has ruled the universe as a tyrant for 3,500 years after becoming a hybrid of human and giant sandworm in Children of Dune. The death of all other sandworms as a result of the terraforming of Arrakis, and his control of the remaining supply of the all-important drug melange, has allowed him to keep civilization under his complete command. Leto has been physically transformed into a worm, retaining only his human face and arms, and though he is now seemingly immortal and invulnerable to harm, he is prone to instinct-driven bouts of violence when provoked to anger. As a result, his rule is one of religious awe and despotic fear.
Leto has disbanded the
The
The
When Idaho falls in love and copulates with Hwi, Moneo sends him and Siona out to Tuono Village, an outcropping along the Royal Procession road, to keep them safe from Leto's wrath. Leto changes the venue of his wedding from Tabur Village to Tuono Village. Siona and Idaho overcome a searing mutual hatred of each other to plan an assassination. As Leto's wedding procession moves across a high bridge over a river, Siona's associate
With his dying breaths, Leto reveals a secret portion of the Golden Path: the production of a human who is invisible to prescient vision. Having begun millennia before with the union of Leto's twin sister Ghanima and
The Ixians have also begun the construction of navigation computers that will render the
Analysis
In God Emperor of Dune, Frank Herbert analyzes the cyclical patterns of human society, as well as humanity's evolutionary drives. Using his ancestral memories, Leto II has knowledge of the entirety of human history and is able to recall the effects and patterns of tyrannical institutions, from the Babylonian empire through to the Jesuits on ancient Earth, and thus builds an empire existing as a complete nexus encompassing all these methods. This galactic empire differs from the historical tyrants in that it is deliberately designed to end in destruction, and is only instituted in the first place as part of a plan to rescue humanity from an absolute destruction which Leto II has foreseen through his prescient visions. Leto II personally explores the emergent effects of civilization, noting that most hierarchical structures are remnants of evolutionary urges toward safety. Thus, by forming a perfectly safe and stable empire, Leto II delivers a message to be felt throughout history.[1]
Stylistically, the novel is permeated by quotations from, and speeches by its main character, Leto, to a degree unseen in any of the other Dune novels. The quotations are from Leto's own dictated records, made for future humanity. In part, this stylistic shift is an artifact of how Herbert wrote it: the first draft was written almost entirely in the first-person narrative voice, only being revised in later drafts to insert more third-person narration of events.[2]
Critical reception
God Emperor of Dune was ranked as the No. 11 hardcover fiction best seller of 1981 by Publishers Weekly.[3] The Los Angeles Times wrote that the novel was "Rich fare ... heady stuff", and Time called it "a fourth visit to distant Arrakis that is every bit as fascinating as the other three—every bit as timely."[4] Critic John Leonard of The New York Times was less charitable, stating the original Dune novel "was just about a perfect science fiction" that had not been improved on: "not in Dune Messiah, in Children of Dune or in God Emperor of Dune."[5]
In popular culture
The book is parodied in the animated television show The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy in the 2003–04 season episode "Mandy, the Merciless", with Mandy as the emperor Leto II, and Billy as Duncan Idaho.[6]
References
- ISBN 0-8057-7514-5, PS3558.E63Z89
- ^ "God Emperor of Dune is unique in the series, however, because almost all of the quotations are from The Stolen Journals (and not from the complete journals found at Dar-es-Balat). They were written by Leto to personalize himself to distant readers in the future....Written in the first person (the early drafts of God Emperor show that Herbert wrote most of the novel in the first person and left notes for himself to transcribe into the third person; material that he did not transcribe resulted in the journal quotations), they range informally and thought-provokingly over a broad range of subjects from government to prophecy to the nature of language...I believe this is their primary function, for Leto so dominates the book that the other characters seem to exist at times only to bring out differences in him. Even in their most private thoughts they are all obsessed with the God Emperor." pg 87, Touponce 1988
- The Bowker Annual/Publishers Weekly. LIS.Illinois.edu. Archived from the originalon July 19, 2011. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
- ISBN 9781440630514. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
- ^ Leonard, John (April 27, 1981). "Books of the Times". The New York Times. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
- ^ Motamayor, Rafael (March 1, 2024). "That Time a Cartoon Network Show Parodied The Weirdest Dune Book". /Film. Retrieved March 4, 2024.
External links
- God Emperor of Dune title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- God Emperor of Dune
