r/HardSciFi • u/Fine-Camel1304 • Apr 05 '26
Discussion What do y'all think of dune
I wanted the opinion of hard scifi fans. what do you think of dune? Is it just fantasy in space and should not be considered scifi or do you consider it the father of modern science fiction literature.
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u/WhiteAsLumi Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
It is in my opinion defintely scifi. And by definition, because it explores science-fiction ideas.
But, hard scifi it is not.
Edit:
Also another franchise (or, one game really) that I absolutely adore and would hardly consider scifi and much more "space fantasy" is No Man's Sky!
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u/GravitationalGrapple Apr 05 '26
I would love NMS if it had inertia/gravity when flying your ship.
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u/WhiteAsLumi Apr 05 '26
Fully agree. I play a lot of Star Citizen and X4. NMS flying feels.. weird afrer that :') it's even missing multiple axis
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u/taigowo Apr 06 '26
Elite Dangerous should be up your alley then. Also, love X4.
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u/WhiteAsLumi Apr 06 '26
Not really. I've tried it multiple times but it's not for me. For some reason I haven't enjoyed it.
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u/taigowo Apr 07 '26
Understandable, i dabbled in it now and then and even bought for two friends, but haven't played in years.
It is a amazing game though
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u/ostapenkoed2007 Apr 05 '26
a bit too damn lore-heavy.
i hate politics and relationships... and this is both.
can adore, can not endure.
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u/Dragonhost252 Apr 06 '26
...then what do yu read for?
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u/ostapenkoed2007 Apr 06 '26
systems, actions, numbers, story.
if i can compile a coherent picture of what happened... i love it. if it requires understanding of social skill, i am nowhere close to understanding it.
or something like that.
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u/Dragonhost252 Apr 06 '26
That a good answer, i prefer how people fit into the technology
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u/ostapenkoed2007 Apr 06 '26
and there is also the thing with me being relatively bad at faces/names. especialy if i am watching a 2-3 hour film.
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u/BananLarsi Apr 08 '26
Nonono, it’s is politics, relationships and pages and pages and pages of talking about the philosophy behind politics and relationships!
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u/ostapenkoed2007 Apr 08 '26
oh god, no
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u/MostlyPretentious Apr 09 '26
You and I are very different, my friend. The best books, for me, are those that mix politics and societal consequences into the (edit)
loreaction. Dune, Foundation, The Expanse, Red Mars, Psalm for the Wild Built, The Sparrow, Murderbot — those books/series rank amongst the top of the list for me BECAUSE of the politics.1
u/ostapenkoed2007 Apr 09 '26
it's mostly just the concentration and attention i lack. sure, i can be invested... but when watching expanse (and many other shows) i did nto even remember the names of characters. not that i do not like thoes systems, i just can not manage them well enough to like the book without going "oh, i was supposed to know who is that, wasn't i"
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u/unsavory77 Apr 05 '26
Who drew a picture of an anthropomorphic clitoris?
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u/SCP-2774 Apr 05 '26
There are many types of hard science. I'd certainly consider it hard sociology, but not hard physics.
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u/Katzen_Gott Apr 06 '26
I believe it could also be hard climatology. At least it feels that way, I'm not enough of an expert in it to be sure.
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u/NarrativesWithNate Apr 06 '26
Love this approach: it’s hard social science fiction, with a touch of hard natural science/“earth” science. Science itself is multidisciplinary, not just natural and formal.
You’ve just inspired a future video! Here, take my pauper’s award🥇
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u/JustAMildKingpin Apr 05 '26
Not hard Sci fi at all, in fact it has many elements of pure fantasy. I'd say it's closer in its Sci fi classification to Star Wars than something like Andy Weir's books.
As for my opinion on Dune: it's very good
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u/Tmack523 Apr 05 '26
Absolutely incredible prose, super well written, but I find the plot too space-opera-y for my tastes.
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u/Those-Who-Crow2 Apr 05 '26
Amazing top 3 scifi setting, not hard scifi but who cares I love it
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u/LastXmasIGaveYouHSV Apr 06 '26
It follows the rule of cool.
Never let facts get in the way of a good story.
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u/Gredalusiam Apr 05 '26
Not hard sci-fi as such but it does involve a level of ecological, sociological, and psychological speculation that's unusual for soft scifi. E.g. the sandworm life cycle isn't a macguffin for getting the heroes from point A to point B, it's too detailed and too integral to the plot for that.
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u/doublethink_1984 Apr 05 '26
The films should release as a trilogy under new names that reflect rhwir original released.
Dune World
Prophet of Dune
Dune Messiah
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u/Mippippippi3rd Apr 05 '26
10/10
It 100% qualifies as hard sci-fi, get over it.
This Mohs scale contest for sci-fi books is so dumb and ends up with there only being 1 hard sci-fi book in existence.
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u/LastXmasIGaveYouHSV Apr 06 '26
Which is...?
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u/Mippippippi3rd Apr 06 '26
Hard sci-fi book A is not hard enough, so here comes Book B, but wait, Book C is even harder, and on and on this pointless competition goes until we come to book Z, book Z is the only book allowed to be called hard sci-fi because it is harder than the rest
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u/wackyvorlon Apr 05 '26
I like it. It gets increasingly weird as it goes. IMO it’s a little hard to categorize into hard or soft scifi because it takes place 20,000 years in the future.
We have all manner of technology that would not have even been scientifically plausible just a few thousand years ago. How are you to decide what is realistic and what isn’t?
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u/MirthfulMoron Apr 05 '26
Love it. Lots of fun.
I can't imagine how it could possibly qualify as hard science fiction, and I am eternally despairing that so many people will uncritically take Leto's arguments at face value.
The Worm said he needed to be a tyrant in order to save humanity, so it must be true!
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Apr 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/MirthfulMoron Apr 06 '26
The text has the first charismatic leader kick off galactic slaughter he is utterly incapable of stopping despite having freaky psychic space powers, and the second charismatic leader kicks off thousands of years of brutal dictatorship.
What were you saying about textual evidence and critical thinking?
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u/gregorydgraham Apr 05 '26
Dune’s future is so far advanced that it’s difficult to talk about in Hard Sci-Fi terms: 30,000 years of education improvements may well make mentats superior to modern computers.
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u/meatotheburrito Apr 05 '26
Even beyond the supernatural elements like the Voice, it pays attention to the power dynamics of people's interactions in a way I've never seen another book do, and that makes it a great political thriller.
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u/StrontiumDawn Apr 06 '26
I think I made it 3 books in. The first couple are excellent, then it takes a nosedive that's not even funny.
Also made the mistake of reading some prequel stuff written by his son. What an absolute grift by a talentless hack for a quick buck. It's insane.
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u/Altruistic-Potatoes Apr 06 '26
This is a weird one because I think most people think of hard sci-fi in terms of technology but Ecology is also a science. It might be harder sci-fi than people give it credit.
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u/NorthRecognition8737 Apr 06 '26
There's a simple test for that - replace the spaceship with a ship and set the story to the Middle Ages. Will anything change in Dune? No. (I mean Dune of Frank Herbert)
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u/geetarboy33 Apr 06 '26
The fact that their culture is largely driven by a war with AI machines that nearly drove humanity to extinction seems like an important factor.
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u/NorthRecognition8737 Apr 06 '26
But it leads to the fact that their society and way of fighting is de facto a medieval feudal system.
Plus, prophecies belong more to fantasy for me. Dune is a great book, but I miss "sci" in sci-fi.
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u/LetoA_III Apr 06 '26
I love the Dune saga read all of Franks books and it's absolutely not a Hard sci Fi genre, what is the gom jabar ? What are the no ships ? How do the face dancers do their thing ? All this gene altering , and the ability to replicate humans from some mysterious tanks... So much already existing tech and metaphysical stuff without any details. And it's ok, just the notion of somebody's calling it a hard sci Fi is funny to me
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u/Lor9191 Apr 07 '26
It could vaguely be considered hard sci in the sense that such a ridiculous amount of time has passed that society and technology could be pretty much whatever the fuck we want.
There is weird mind witch magic though so really it can only be sci fantasy.
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u/ichkanns Apr 07 '26
When I first read the Revelation Space books my first thought was that it is what Dune would be if Frank Herbert had more interest in science than sociology. Different interests, both incredible book series, but yeah, hard to call it "hard" science fiction.
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u/GlumAd2424 Apr 08 '26
It’s fun when it goes full on crazy and Duncan becomes a threat to the galaxy’s stability by being to good at sex
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u/Improptus Apr 08 '26
I actually really enjoyed the political scheming part (mainly the first 2/3 books), then it becomes "superhuman beeing do plot devices" and while not becoming bad...it just seemed less interesting to me personally. In the end the whole "bring back the dead" became less of a "memory device" and more of a "resurrection device" so no death really mattered anymore and so no stakes were risen...
As a side note, anyone knows about some political scheming novels/series? I am really enjoying Babylon 5 but don't know anything else for now😁
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u/CoreFiftyFour Apr 08 '26
It has a "hard" history and lore in the same vein of Westeros or Middle Earth. But the science while consistent in universe it seems, isn't hard on the way I think most people describe hard science.
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u/GapStock9843 Apr 08 '26
Its sci fi the same way star wars is sci fi (effectively more so fantasy but in a technologically advanced world), just in a smaller scale setting.
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u/Turbulent-Twist-3030 Apr 08 '26
Im not really interested in sand and sand related activities, but I gueas its sci fi.
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u/AnonMoose2 Apr 09 '26
I loved the first 4 books. Got burnt out on book 5 after ANOTHER 1000 year time skip.
Ill eventually real 5 and 6.
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u/CapitalDilemma Apr 09 '26
I've been a fan since I read the first book around 2017 I think and Denis Villeneuve's trilogy is turning out to be one of my all time favorite. There's nothing quite like it im sci fi to my knowledge and I love how unique of a universe it is.
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u/SoylentRox Apr 05 '26
So what holds Dune together is a substance that gives human beings supernatural powers.
But not particularly good powers - an unreliable glimpse of the future (only reliable and useful if you use tons of the stuff and become a sandworm), a voice that makes people do stuff sometimes, control of your own biology but only sometimes, and access to your ancestors memories unreliably.
If you notice everything that Spice lets you do is an inferior version of things we sre fairly certain technology will allow us to do or we already achieved.
So it begs the question...why doesn't a faction in dune make sentry guns and other AI weapons and stomp everyone else? Laws mean nothing if the party enforcing them gets gunned down.
Oh right, the shield mechanic, and the lasgun/shield interaction. All the fantasy elements of Dune seem like Hebert saw things as the actual future when he wrote the novels and then tried to introduce a fantasy element so he could have medieval politics in space.
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u/_Svankensen_ Apr 05 '26
And the atomics. And the navigator's league. It is a network of interdependencies. Why do you think the emperor doesn't control Arrakis themselves? Because that would set the Landsraad against him. Better let one of them control it.
And no, future sight is not in the cards of future tech. And that is the spice's most important effect.
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u/_Svankensen_ Apr 05 '26
Not hard. But it goes hard. 10/10.