But as Villeneuve - who’s shown his sci-fi chops as a filmmaker in movies like Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - takes a crack at the story, new audiences will encounter Paul Atreides, the planet of Arrakis, and the unnaturally blue eyes of the Fremen. There’s no single answer to that question. What is it about Herbert’s books - especially the first one - that exerts such a magnetic force on everyone from 13-year-old sci-fi readers to megafamous musicians? But it doesn’t really explain why it’s so compelling. This long line of descendants shows the expansive influence of Dune on a wide swath of pop culture. The most notable example, perhaps, is George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy, which shares so much with Herbert’s series that Herbert and a few colleagues organized the farcical “ We’re Too Big to Sue George Lucas Society.” If you’ve watched the Star Wars films, Dune’s reluctant, petulant, fated hero living on a desert planet in the shadow of a looming empire and the battle for the fate of the galaxy will feel a little familiar. Then there’s all the original storytelling Dune has inspired. That’s a Dune reference in SpongeBob SquarePants. There’s a crater on the moon officially named Dune, and some of the features on Saturn’s moon Titan have been named for planets from the series.

Video games like Fallout and World of Warcraft contain references to Dune, as do plenty of TV shows from Scooby-Doo to Rick & Morty to SpongeBob SquarePants. Fatboy Slim’s song “Weapon of Choice,” the one with the music video starring Christopher Walken, is one big reference to the book (“Walk without rhythm / It won’t attract the worm”). The story has been referenced by pop stars like Lady Gaga, who made a sly nod to Dune in the “Telephone” music video, and Grimes, whose debut studio album, Geidi Primes, is a concept album based on Dune. Even the most Dune-averse person can hardly avoid the long tail of Herbert’s saga, whether they realize it or not. Or they would, if we hadn’t been steeped in Dune fever for so many years, even prior to the recent arrival of Denis Villeneuve’s extraordinary and resolutely abstruse film adaptation. The trappings of its imagined, distant-future world feel wondrous, unfamiliar, and strange. The 1965 novel, which eventually garnered widespread acclaim, was followed by a universe of sequels for its rabidly devoted fans. The world of Dune is a wild one, a tale spun by Frank Herbert in the tumultuous 1960s that mixes fear of authoritarian rule and environmental collapse with fascism, racism, and hallucinatory imagery. A spice harvested from an arid desert that enables space travel. A secretive all-women order of spies, nuns, scientists, and theologians that’s bending history to its will.

Dune original book