I was recently browsing an online forum for science fiction reading and discussion. One post, in particular, caught my eye. The post’s author was talking about how they had just finished reading Dune and were a little underwhelmed. They wrote about how the narration felt distant and stilted, about how Paul was an inaccessible protagonist. And while I was initially taken aback and indignant reading this post, the more I reflected, the more it occurred to me that I’ve heard this criticism of Dune before. I try to force everyone I meet to read Dune, and of the few who have listened to me, several have said that the book reads oddly. Dune employs formal and jarring language. My instinct is to reject this feedback out of hand. When I read Dune, it’s almost a religious experience. The prose seem to have supernaturally perfect rhythm. “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” Those words are the only thing I’ve ever considered tattooing on my body. They’re simple and quiet phrases but they catch in my mind like they were designed with hooks and barbs to latch onto my synapses. How can people read these lines as being cold and devoid of feeling? They’re desperate alive and full of life. What’s the discrepancy?

While I don’t agree with critics condemnation of Herbert’s prose, I admit that I can see where they’re coming from. Over the course of Dune, the language changes. It begins as many science fiction novels do from the perspective of a child moving through an adult’s world of new technologies and ideas. But over the course of the book the narration changes slowly. As Paul makes the transition into Muad’dib, the writing becomes more formal, the subject matter becomes more metaphysical. I think that my love of Herbert’s cold, stilted writing in these sections stems from the way that I see language deepening and complicating the narrative of Paul Muad’dib. Dune, within the world of the story, is a history of Paul as written by one of his apostles. It is the story of a boy that the narrator fears may be a god. It is a biblical story, in a way. Hundreds of generations of focused human breeding and the inexorable pull of fate granted Paul with extra-human power. And as Paul’s power grows, he loses the uncertainty of action that defines the human perspective. Paul can see all of time, and he grows to know exactly what he must do and say to achieve the outcomes he desires. We mere humans muck about in the uncertainty of the repercussions of our actions. Paul is no longer human but is playing the role of a human. He is acting out a part, move for move, word for word, set in time to prevent the fire of chaotic jihad from spreading across the universe. His concerns, like the concerns of prophets in our earthly religions, are greater than human concerns. It makes sense that any description of this pseudo-deity would be filled with the lofty, inaccessible language of destiny, infinities, and doom. I agree that, often, Herbert’s writing does not create a fully human, approachable character of Muad’dib. But that human character does not exist. The human paul slips away into godliness as he drinks from the cup of the infinite. But Paul still has a mortal body. He still loves his family and mourns the dead, and Herbert does a masterful job of sprinkling moments of genuine human emotion into the narrative. As the stilted language of a person who feels entrusted with the weight of the universe begins to encroach into the narration over the course of the book, these human moments serve to illustrate the loss of self that Paul feels as Maud’dib. The narrative evolution underlines the emotional significance of the book, and that’s pretty dope.