Draug said something about Dune: Messiah being a good one, and it was actually my least favorite. I think the original Dune is the masterpiece and Children of Dune is fantastic. Dune: Messiah is the bastard child of the two that you have to read through to get from one to the other. I found it boring and had to force myself to finish it.
And for me to dislike it is huge, since my favorite character of the series is St Alia of the Knife, whom a lot of the story revolves around!

I'd call Dune more thorough than LotR. Herbert creates and describes the details of various governments and how they work together and the corruption and how it is viewed.... and so many more races....

Oh, absolutely. And the prequels really have been intriguing, especially the time of Duke Leto and crew (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and House Corinno). We get an understanding of how the ghulas came to be, how Emperor Shaddam came to power, and how the Bene Gesserit and Baron Harkonnen have a history together including the fact of *who* Jessica was and *why* she was supposed to have only girls for Leto.

People talk shit about Messiah a lot, but I never had a problem with it. I agree Children is much better. I really liked Heretics and God Emperor as well. Chapterhouse is a bit iffy.

If I had to rate them, I'd probably say:
Dune
Children
Heretics
God Emperor
Messiah
Chapterhouse

I'd say the Game of Thrones books put in a decent effort of historical thoroughness.

The prequels were OK, but I was very disappointed in Brian and Anderson's writing style. Which is odd, because I liked the stuff that Frank and Anderson worked on together.

Dune. Friggin' awesome! The first one is simply fantastic and one of the most comprehensive stories ever created. I read Messiah soon after and found it hugely disappointing. Even though I understand that it was important to the "big picture" ideas of the 1st, I found it immensely frustrating how he spends the entire novel trying to undo everything he did in the first. (shutting up now so as not to give too much away).

Children of Dune was much better but still did not come close to recapturing the brilliance of Dune.

I don't think we need to be too worried about spoiler alerts for Dune. : )

What did people think of the movies?

Haven't seen the one from the 80's. I thought the SciFi miniseries was pretty decent. Couldn't get through the Children miniseries. Tried 3 times.

Dune is on my reading list... i think i've seen every screen adaption, and played every game based on it (well both that i know of) and now my housemate has the book... i may eventually get around to reading it...

I liked both of the miniseries, although the one for Dune was better than Messiah/Children which they combined as Children.

The big screen version comes in a couple of flavors. The original is the best and David Lynch was right to remove his name from the "special edition" used on airlines and regularly shown on TV. I haven't had a chance to see the restored Director's Cut, but if Lynch's work is any idnication it should be an improvement to the roiginal while removing the voiceover crap and pre-movie scene cards added to the special edition.

@orathaic - Red them in order. Seriously. You will be lost in Heretics or Chpaterhouse if you haven't read up through God emperor first.

ok, i've only seen the original and 'special edition', i really enjoyed the special edition, partly because of how crap i was told it would be just before watching it...

still if there is a director's cut, that may be worth watching...

Agreed. And by "order" I hope Draug means the order they were published, not chronological from the story.

That's good to know about the movies. I'll try to find a copy of the original.

So, favorite character?

I've always been a fan of Baron Harkonnen. I loved how he had such a grandiose movie-villian-esque, while still being one of the smartest characters.

The special edition annoys me so much because it assumes the user is stupid. When a character comes into the scene, you don't have to say "Dr. Yueh - Imperially conditioned to be of the highest loyalty. You can tell an imperially conditioned physician by the diamond on their forehead". We aren't fucking morons! They did that to almost ever y character from Thufir and Huey to Duncan, Leto, Paul, Lady Jessica, Chani... Fucking stupid!

@fortknox: I'd call Dune more thorough than LotR. Herbert creates and describes the details of various governments and how they work together and the corruption and how it is viewed.... and so many more races....

LotRs is a follow-on story to his previous works. The history and details of how we got to the situations at the start of LotR is in those. Herbert put it all in together in a single story - that's one of the reasons I found Dune so amazing. Messiah and Children and the other follow-ons were poor by comparison and Chapter House especially was complete crap (IMHO).

The "House" prequels were non-entities as stories. By that I mean I can't remember anything that happened in any of them whereas I could write a plot outline for Dune right now and I haven't read that for around 10 years.

Agreed 100%

I can probably tell you the story of Dune Chapter-for-Chapter. Don't really remember any of the prequels at all.

The movies were pretty terrible. The 'weirding way' (which I always thought was a marshal art) was just voice modulation in the movie... the original was a catastrophe. The special edition isn't much better. The director's cut is better. The sci-fi series was alright and closer to the book, but the acting wasn't that great, IMHO.

The book is still the best and one of my fav books along with Heinlein's Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Haldeman's Forever War (my first scifi novel), the short story "I am Legend" (for which EVERY MOVIE was so terrible in that they never explain what "I am Legend" means! It is one of the last lines in the story!), and almost every short story conceived in the (truly fucked up) mind of Philip K Dick.

I will admit something, though. After Children of Dune, I didn't read much of the others... it started getting waaaay weird when Herbert starting doing heavier drugs.

Well, I enjoyed House Atriedes, especially all the stuff with the Tlielaxu (however it's spelled) and the cloaked no-ship.

I could also put the 5 books that are the Hitchikers Trilogy in there as well as classic scifi, even though it is comedy. Douglas Adams was a true, complete, sincere genius. Why? Because I've read that book a dozen times, and every. single. time. I reread it? I find ANOTHER joke. He has jokes embedded in jokes, embedded in jokes. He's like the "Inception" of comedy!

Starship Troopers and Forever War are great, especially if you read them back-to-back.

Agreed about Dick. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him. I was shocked when I learned how many movies were based on his stories.

@Abge: "So, favorite character?"

I can tell you that Herbert was a fantastic writer, because I hate Harkonen... hate hate hate... Herbert wrote the character so well, the name elicits emotion from me.

But my fav is Alia. The abomination. She was so smart and strong (and cocky) externally, but had such a difficult (real) internal battle that she eventually loses. How badass would that be to be born with the intelligence and full lives of countless people remembered from the beginning?

I would have to question whether people who think LotR is less comprehensive than Dune have read the entire Middleearth literature. Not to start a big argument. I have read both only partially, but with the absurdly detailed histories, the multiple languages with alphabets, vocabularies, and grammar, etc., it would be hard to _top_ LOTR (not saying it couldn't be equalled).

No thanks. I have no interest in carrying Alia's burden, no matter how cool it makes me.

@abge: "I was shocked when I learned how many movies were based on his stories. "

Every decent scifi from 1970-2000... I'd say 60-80% were Dick or, as they say, "Philip K Dickian" movies. Seriously. He has an adjective name... including the middle initial. That's awesome!

Warning on the Forever War saga. I read Forever Peace which was good, but the end? It's like Haldeman decided he wrote enough and ends the book in 12 pages. That it is really bad. Really, really bad. In face, I'm going to spoil it for you so you don't waste your time reading it:
They keep undergoing weird crap happening to them, then all humanity except those on the ship vanish, so they decide to point in a direction, turn on their fastest FTL drive, and not stop. Eventually the ship stops completely, they meet 'God' who basically says they are trying to travel beyond the playground he created, hid all the humans in the grand canyon (seriously, Haldeman?), and then warps them home without a ship. Later on they find out that God changed Plank's constant and some general prove theories of quantum mechanics, so it'll be decades, possibly centuries before they'll be able to travel the stars again. The end. *facepalm*

Original Dune series was fantastic. Couldn't enjoy any movie version I've seen since though, but I bet they could do a good job of animating it nowadays. One thing that seems difficult in adapting those books to movies is how thick the books are, and how much backstory they're filled with.

Did you read the Accidental Time Machine by Haldeman? It came out pretty recently. Probably my favorite time traveling story after Primer (and Back to the Future, of course).

@smeck: I have. While the language is something unique to middle earth, Herbert goes into detail with governments, corrruption, various power groups, economy, and the extremely volatile balance in how they work together. Instead of a few lands, he has a galaxy of various plants, all with their own ecosystems and ways of transportation. And instead of the few races of middle earth, he has hundreds of races in the galaxy.

Think middle earth. Replace the 'lands' with 'planets' and multiply by a dozen (or two?). Multiple the races in middle earth by a dozen or two. Add in government (macro and micro) in explicit details, then economy (both macro and micro), then various powerful 'groups' and secret societies (like the space miners guilds, the space navigator guilds, the benegeserit, etc...), then corruption of all of those and you have an idea of what Dune encapsulates.

@Abge: Well, the forever war was a time travel book (realistic FTL travel). I'll definitely look for accidental time machine.

@FK, sounds exciting, and as I say, I don't deny that it's as comprehensive.
But does it have a detailed mythology for all of the groups? History of them since creation? Etc.? It sounds to me like it is focused on very different things (modernish politics instead of ancientish wars and mythology), but while that makes it different, I'm not sure it makes it more comprehensive.

However, I'll easily admit (again) that I could be wrong. The answer to the above may well be "Yes," and in either case, reading the rest of either Dune or Middle Earth is on my list, but I haven't done it, and so now is the appropriate time to shut up.