In honor of our worldbuilding short fiction contest here at Fictionate, my fellow staff writer Heather and I have written a series of several posts about worldbuilding to help prepare you for writing your short story. (I also have a few older posts to help guide you on your way). This week, I thought we could discuss the worldbuilding of one of my favorite books in depth: Dune by Frank Herbert.
Published in 1965, Dune is a hallmark piece of science fiction. You can see how greatly Tatooine resembles Arrakis in the Star Wars franchise, and many believe that fantasy juggernaut Game of Thrones borrowed a great deal from Dune as well. While it’s a great story in a lot of ways, Dune’s greatest strength is clearly its worldbuilding. Heather recently discussed the stellar worldbuilding of J.R.R. Tolkien, and famed sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke has been quoted as saying of Dune, “I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings.”
Here are some of the greatest facets of Frank Herbert’s worldbuilding in Dune that you can try to incorporate into your own work.
A Ton of Research
It is clear from reading Dune that a ridiculous amount of research went into it. The first inspiration for Herbert’s story came when he went to research a magazine article about a research project in Oregon to stabilize sand dunes. The article was never published but the research provided Herbert with a deep fascination with the subject matter, and he would go on to toy with the idea of a desert planet for the next five years. During those five years, he spent time in the desert and started building tons and tons of file folders.
Herbert’s commitment to his research shows in the novel with the incredibly accurate and intricately detailed way he paints his desert setting. This book shows that it is worth doing the front work of research—be it research on spacecraft, mythological creatures, or UFO sightings. It will help to make your story richer and give it a level of detail that will help your world come alive in readers’ minds.
Complexity
Another admirable aspect of Herbert’s worldbuilding is that his world is extremely complex. In the book, he builds a detailed history of how his world got to be the way it is, with politics, warring factions, economics, and different religions all incorporated into the story. There are even extensive appendixes at the end of the book that go into even more detail about the history and many facets of Dune’s world.
Like doing your research, making sure your world is complex will make it richer and more realistic. A complex world envelopes the reader and makes them feel truly transported. This is admittedly harder to pull off in a short story than in a novel, but you can still hint at the complexity of your world within the confines of a shorter word count.
Environment is Important
While Dune’s overall setting spans multiple solar systems, most of the action of the first book in the series takes place on the desert planet of Arrakis. The planet is like a character in the story with the way its landscape and ecology influence the events. The lack of water available results in special suits the Fremen wear to conserve and recycle the body’s water. The lack of water is incorporated into their customs and religion as well. Another major driving factor of the plot is the sandworms—enormous, terrifying creatures that make the invaluable Spice that people use to sharpen their minds and extend their lives. The sandworms make the desert a dangerous place to even walk upon.
Herbert didn’t simply make the setting of Dune a desert planet because he thought it would look cool. He thought deeply about how such a planet would affect the people who live there and how creatures like sandworms might affect the planet’s ecology. As you build your world, it’s important not to just think of how creative or impressive it can be, but the effect that setting has on your characters and their culture.
Lack of Context
With how complex Dune’s world is, you might think that a lot of time is spent on lengthy exposition. Nope! As the reader, you get dropped right into this world with hardly any exposition at all. Instead, the characters’ words and actions fill in the gaps seamlessly. The mystical nature of the Bene Gesserit and Paul’s training in their ways are quickly introduced, as is the Atreides family’s imminent departure to Arrakis. Terms like “gom jabbar” come into play but are not immediately explained, helping to build the mystery.
Instead of a lot of handholding, Herbert trusts his readers to be able to understand what’s going on in the world of the story. This sense of mystery can help to make a reader more interested in what comes next. Part of what works about the lack of context in this world is the perspective we see it through, which we’ll discuss in the next section.
See Through the Eyes of an Outsider
Dune is not told through the perspective of a Fremen who has lived their whole life on Arrakis. Instead, we see the desert planet through the eyes of Paul, a newcomer who previously lived in a completely different environment. We learn all about this planet as he does—he’s just as curious as we are about how this strange place works and the powers at play.
To help a reader understand your world without being bogged down by stilted exposition, it can be very effective to place your story in the perspective of someone new to your world. That way, it doesn’t seem forced when your protagonist asks how something works or about the behavior of creatures like sandworms. Characters will often offer this information without even being asked, aware of the protagonist’s status as a newcomer.
Science Fiction without Thinking Machines
Dune takes place thousands of years after the Butlerian Jihad where humans outlawed “thinking machines”. With this ban came the commandment, “thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind”. So this is a world without computers or robots. Guild navigators use Spice to look into the future to make the necessary calculations from space travel. Also fueled by Spice, Mentats have become “human computers” capable of processing large amounts of data and drawing conclusions.
Advanced technology has become a regular fixture in most science fiction. But Dune removes high-tech possibilities from the equation and produces some fascinating replacements. It may be tempting to fill your sci-fi story with futuristic technology, but Dune shows that going low-tech can result in some very creative innovations.
Just on the Edge of Impossible
There are many aspects of Dune that seem improbable. The most magical aspect of the plot is the Spice that everything revolves around—it extends life and can give a person precognition. The Bene Gesserit seem quite magical themselves, but over time we see that their skills are honed through extensive training that seems less and less magical the more we learn about them. Spice is magic, yes, but the world built around it is a very realistic one as long as we accept this one impossibility.
It's okay to put impossible technology or even a seemingly magical substance into your science fiction story, but it’s important to ground everything else around it in reality. Like Herbert, you need to consider the realistic consequences of something somewhat magical (like the Spice, or the Force in Star Wars) might have on technology, religion, and society as a whole.
I hope this deep dive into the depths of Dune will help you formulate your world as you work on your contest entry. I would also highly recommend watching the most recent film adaptation of Dune, which displays many of the worldbuilding facets listed here beautifully. Don’t forget, submissions to our worldbuilding short fiction contest are due August 19, 2022, 11:59 PM EST!
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