Happy Birthday, Frank Herbert

A genius, and an idiot.

Dune is arguably the best sf book of all time, if one means that kind of adolescent wish-fulfillment action adventure story. And often I do. It's so brilliantly done. He's noble! He's dispossessed! It's a new world! They're freedom fighters! They're terrorists! There's all that new ecology to grapple with! There's all that cod-profundity! There's all that cool kit! And he's the Messiah! (Handy, that.)

The Dosadi Experiment (with my Uncle Jorge in it) is almost as good, except that the fundamental premiss of overpopulation is bollocks.

But as Dune went on and on and on and on, God, did it get worse. See below. Mind you, he never dreamt how bad it could get when his son and Kevin J Anderson got on the case...