SOURCE: "Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)," in Science Fiction: Ten Explorations, The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1986, pp. 79-99.

Manlove is a Scottish educator and critic who has authored several books on science fiction and fantasy. In the following excerpt, he compares Dune to Brian Aldiss's Hothouse (1962) and Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy (1951–53), arguing that the principal medium of Dune is the mind since "the whole of the novel … is bent on finding things out."

Frank Herbert's Dune is frequently viewed as a science-fiction masterpiece. It is in some ways a mixture of the mode of the Koran, the rise of a messiah, and the story of Lawrence of Arabia, who made himself one with the Arabs. It grew, Herbert has said, out of the image of a planet covered by desert sand, and from his wish to write an analysis of humanity's need for a messiah or superhero. Its origins were thus...