Heretics of Dune is a 1984 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, the fifth in his Dune series of six novels. This record is of Frank Herbert reading the first two chapters of the book. Rakis is becoming desert again. high quality The Lost Ones are returning home from the far reaches of space. The great sandworms are dying. And the children of Dune's children awaken from empire as from a dream, wielding the new power of a heresy called love...
Continued below
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Heretics of Dune read by Frank Herbert
Cover is VG+ with some bumps and edge wear
Tape is VG+ and plays great
Vintage cassettes are never perfect and may have some slight audio imperfections. If you have any issues return it for a refund.
Album Tracks:
Side A: Chapter 1 - 22:50
Side B: Chapter 2 - 24:13
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From the back cover: Frank Herbert's saga of Dune has been called a multivolume supernovel, the ultimate science fiction work, because each time the work grows by the addition of another volume, the whole is made different. Rich networks of story and plot, the individual books do not merely follow one another in chronological order, they intersect through a common point. And that common point is the created universe of Dune of Arrakis, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the spice. Frank Herbert's multiplex vision of this future universe given to us through the work cannot be seen in two dimensions, but must be imagined as a number of complex networks which intersect in three dimensions. Each individual volume is a unique pattern of characters and events that alters our audience perception of the shape of the whole "overwork."
The thematic material of the Dune supernovel is so varied and disparate, and yet so central to the real concerns of the everyday life of the individual human being in any historic period, that the Dune world becomes a fascinating analog to our own civilization. And as the work grows, the Dune supernovel becomes a novel of issues as much as themes: politics, science and technology, ecology, religion, psychology and sociology are discussed and constantly reinterpreted against the changing schema of the series. Perhaps in the end the one great theme of Frank Herbert is the evolution of ideas, the largest theme the human group mind can encompass. The play of ideas is constant, and each one is looked at from different angles at different times, just as Paul is looked at as a changed character in Dune Messiah, from Dune. He changes, his role changes, his relation to the whole external universe alters and of course the universe itself changes independently. Herbert's sensitivity to all these changes and his consistent tough-mindedness in facing the necessity of real changes in his characters and his universe makes us keep reading, keep wanting more.
Heretics of Dune rewards and fulfills our expectations of flow and change, of high adventure, intensity and stimulation. Our perception of the Dune universe is once again resolved from a new angle, a new distance, so that a new focus is achieved. With the passage of time, the past has been partly forgotten, partly reinterpreted. Paul Atreides, messianic hero of the first trilogy of novels, has paled in importance, overshadowed by the oceanic presence of Leto II, now called the Tyrant. Paul is rarely spoken of in this universe, which he once ruled, except as an abiding mythic presence to the Bene Gesserit, the Kwisatz Haderach who superseded all their plans, whose genes grew out of their own breeding program and whose familial line is still of primary genetic importance. And the Sisterhood, as usual, has a plan. This time, though, it is the plan of the Bene Gesserit which is at the motivating center of the book, a less secure but still powerful and enduring scientific cult whose wish is to control and influence interstellar society in secret so as to be free to change the future of the human race, that method which Leto II's "Golden Path" overarched for thousands of years - and perhaps still does.
The heretics of the title include the central characters of the book, interlocking lives while pursuing disparate courses of action and holding differing beliefs. Orthodoxy is the enemy and it is precisely that thematic point which controls this volume in the series. Heresy is perhaps the only free state in which a superior human mind can consider all the options in aid of solving a problem, answering a question of moral behavior, surviving as an individual.
In the episodes that open the book we are plunged once again into mystery and conflict, with characters and concerns on the largest scale, a plot at once thick and difficult to find a ground in. Yet we are still in the familiar universe of Dune, surrounded by the races and types, the details and technology we know so well from the prior books. The allusive familiarity of the setting gives Herbert enormous freedom to indulge in convoluted structures that would be impossible to maintain in a single novel of reasonable length, and in conversations between characters in which the major weight is carried to the reader through the perceptions of the omniscient narrative voice that illuminates their inner reactions and thoughts.
Perhaps in the end it is the narrative voice and mind of Frank Herbert that is the primary attraction of the great work. Through the constant presence of the author, with whom we identify, we become, for the moment, the godlike presence, intense, perceptive, clever, indirect and subtle.
We are not offered this reading experience elsewhere in contemporary fiction except in science fiction, and even in the SF field, never before on this scale. And with the release of Heretics, to be followed late this year by the major motion picture of Dune, the limits of popularity of what is already the most popular SF series of all time have surely not been reached.
- DAVID G. HARTWELL
Caedmon TC 1742
Cover: Illustration by John Schoenherr © 1984.
Library of Congress #: 83-740156 © 1984 Caedmon
Recorded at Holden Hamilton Roberts Recording Studios, Seattle, Washington
Tape editor: Jayne Reby
SOURCE: Heretics of Dune, copyright © 1984 by Frank Herbert
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