Interesting for all the die-hard Dune fans (especially the first version of "Dune"), but nothing really spectacular. I enjoyed reading "Spice Planet", it was great to have the opportunity to see how the book evolved in Herbert's mind. Even the chapters that had been edited out from other Herbert's books were an amusing read. The second half of the book, however, including three short stories by K.J. Anderson and B. Herbert about the war with "thinking machines" (Bulterian Jihad), were quite dull and lacked the real "Dune" feeling.

The softly cutting soprano smell of sage climbed a desert night lush with stars, and there came a stillness so unaltered that the moonlight itself could almost be heard flowing across sentinel saguaro and spiked paintbrush.

The Road to Dune is a rich supplemental volume for explorers of the Dune Universe!
A blend of fiction and non-fiction components. A fitting tribute to the legacy of Frank Herbert and the world he created.

Favorite Passages:

Forward
Frank believed that poetry was the apex of human language; he also believed that science fiction was the only genre whose subject matter attempted to define what it is to be human.
______

In the Old English, "poet" was "shaper" or "maker." Frank Herbert was a Maker on a grand scale, the most loyal friend a person could ask for - and a funny, savvy, first-class guy. He continues to be missed.


Preface
Once we started the laborious process of sifting through these thousands of pages, we felt like archeologists who had discovered a verified map to the Holy Grail.
And this was just the material in the attic of Brian Herbert's garage.
It didn't include the two safe-deposit boxes of materials found more than a decade after Frank's death . . .
In addition, Frank had bequeathed dozens of boxes of his drafts and working notes to a university archive, which the university generously opened to us.
. . . .
The wealth of newly discovered material was a Dune fan's dream come true.


SPICE WORLD - The Alternate Dune Novel
The spice is a lens through which one can see the entire universe.
_____

Adaptation is an art form, and it is the single-most important aspect of being human.
_____

"I'm alive! I can see the future and the past. But which is which?"


The Letters of Dune
ESP is one of my interests to the extent that I have done considerable reading on it in what I would call the quasi-scientific end of the field.


ALIA & THE DUNCAN IDAHO GHOLA
These things I tell you: the sequential nature of real history cannot be repeated precisely by prescience. We grasp incidents cut out of the chain. That is why I deny my own powers. Eternity moves. It inflicts itself upon me. Let my subjects doubt my majesty and my oracular visions. Let them never doubt eternity.
______

"When force closes the mouth of inquiry," Duncan said, "that is the death of civilization."


THE HUMAN DISTRANS
Paul thought of the ancient ritual, mystical, tangled with folk memories, old words, old customs, forgotten meanings - a bloody play of ideas across Time. Ideas . . . ideas . . . they carried a terrifying power. They could blot out civilizations or become a blazing light in the mind to illuminate lives across the span of centuries.


BLIND PAUL IN THE DESERT
His mind quested, Mentat fashion. Patterns of knowledge glistened there. Mermaid hair might wave thus, he thought, beckoning . . . beckoning the enchanted hunter into emerald caverns . . .
His life seemed to stretch out as long as the existence of the universe. Prescience already had granted him an infinity of experiences. But the real flesh condensed, lay finite and reduced his emerald cavern to stilltent beginning to drum with the pulse of a wind. Sand chattered like pecking birds against taut surfaces.
_______

Well-remembered stars occupied their positions in the sky, but they no longer represented directions to him nor could he think of them as signposts. There was merely space all around him laid out against an enormous background of Time. The stars peered past him and through him like the empty eyes of his subject people. They were the sealed eyes of ignorance, always seeking to avoid their responsive status as human senses. They were the eyes from which nothing escaped.


A Whisper of Caladan Seas
Listen to the hypnotic, throbbing songs of unseen murmons hiding in a fog bank that ripples across the calm waters.
_______

In the velvet shadows of a crisp night on Dune, Fremen scavengers dropped over the ridge of the Shield Wall into the rubble. Stillsuits softened their silhouettes, allowing them to vanish like beetles into crevices.

This book compiles a variety of Dune and Dune-related material of varying levels of quality into a single volume. The unifying factor is that they are generally related to Frank Herbert's writing process and development of Dune.
The first part is a novel called "Spice World." Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson found a rather detailed outline for a proto-Dune novel and decided to finish it. Although I would've been curious to see the actual outline, they do clarify some of the elements pulled directly from the outline, such as character names. It is interesting to get a glimpse of what might have been, although one will very likely conclude that what might would have been inferior. Simply put, the world of "Spice World" is simply not as deep or profound as that of Dune. It is noteworthy as a steppingstone to greatness, but hardly a strong novel on its own merits. Perhaps the most noteworthy element is that the proto-Leto character, Jesse, is the lead, while the proto-Paul, Barri, is only a minor player.
This section takes up most (more than half) the book.
Second, are a series of letters written to and from Herbert, along with his notes on the journal article that inspired him to create Dune. There are some interesting tidbits here, but ultimately this section feels a bit too short to be truly impactful.
Third is the most interesting part of the book: deleted scenes. A variety of cut snippets from Dune and Dune Messiah are presented here. Most of the Dune scenes are dialogue between characters. There are some interesting insights into the creative process, even if there aren't deep lore revelations. The most interesting bit may be the confirmation that "Fremen" is from "free" + "men." There are fewer Messiah bits, but they are more substantive. Notably, this includes
very different fates for conspirators against Paul and Paul himself.
Overall, there is definitely some good material here, but quite a lot of padding to make the book sizable as well.

There's a lot to like in this book if you're a huge Dune fan, but probably not so much if you are only a casual fan. The "Spice Planet" novel based on Herbert's original outline is an interesting look at what might have been had Herbert chosen to write Dune as a typical sci-fi yarn of the era, but we are fortunate that he scrapped it in favor of the masterpiece we all know and love. As a writer, I found the correspondence section, which provides a window into how Dune came to be, very compelling. That, along with the deleted scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah, are the best parts of the book. Finally, the short stories at the end are enjoyable if you liked the Butlerian Jihad trilogy, which I did.

Dune fans will feel like wanting for more.

The book has three parts. My advice is to read it in a Cortazarian way, á la Rayuela, starting with the second part (The Road to Dune, page 193) which is written by the master himself. It opens with very interesting correspondence between Frank Herbert and colleagues and editors. Also there is a couple of letters with his ecological approach on controlling sand tides.
Anyway, the treasure are the unpublished scenes and chapters from the first two books of the series -Dune & Dune Messiah- that provides a deeper insight of the BG's witches, more about the encounter of Paul Atreides with the Reverend Mother. Also there is a better depiction of Lady Jessica's abilities and awareness, and an alternate chapter on Alia that makes one think of the unexplored possibilities of her intriguing character.

Next read the first part, which is written by the McDune duo. The alternative Dune novel hast its moments but in the end is a very lame intent of a page filler. One could be forgiven for keep on thinking for fuck sake, ten thousand years in the future and still they can't manage to have a Six Sigma Master Black Belt -like yours truly- to solve the spice mining production problems, avoid losses and improve processes along the value chain? Well that's the core of the challenge for one duke Jesse Linkam and his concubine Dorothy.

The final part are short stories by the aforementioned McDune pair, one staged in the lost battle of Arrakeen, the remaining Atreides forces are trapped in a cave and most of them come from Caladan. The next threes stories are set in the Butlerian Jihad. The previous edition has an additional story of a reverend mother in Buzzell, about the time of Chapterhouse Dune, that is missing in this paperback.

The five stars by the genius of Dune Frank Herbert are brought down to three by the McDune duo.

As an author creates a work of fiction it is normal to do a lot of revising. Entire sections and chapters may be removed or added. It is also not uncommon for others to get into the creative act and that was the case with Dune. Frank Herbert's agent, editor and publisher made demands about revisions. They demanded that chapters be removed and the ending changed and so forth. After Herbert's death a lot of this excised material along with many notes were found in his papers. It was enough to show that Dune could have been a lot different. This book is a compilation of some of that material. Some of it has been rewritten and filled out by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson and some of it is as Frank Herbert left it. Now, the decisions about what was to be removed was based on the opinions of not only Frank Herbert, but also his editor, agent and publisher. I am not one who thinks that all opinions are equal. If, for example, my doctor recommended surgery I would not seek a second opinion from my plumber. There is much to be said for the professional opinion, but how much is it worth when it is about a work of fiction? Well, it certainly determines what gets into print, but are there things that do not get into print but should? It seems to me that the opinion that really counts when it comes to a work of fiction is the opinion of the ultimate consumer, the reader, and that these professional opinions are valuable only insofar as they predict the opinions of the end consumer. Bearing that in mind, as an end consumer myself, my opinion is that a lot of these out takes are better than the final product.

By the way, the book also contains some original Dune universe short stories by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson which are also far from shoddy.

I really liked the 'Spice Planet' (Duneworld) novel this book opened with. It wasn't nearly as long or complex (or good) as Dune, but had a lot of similar (and similarly exciting) material, but was set much more like a 50s/60s pulp sci-fi novel in complexity and length. I also enjoyed the letters between Frank Herbert and his agent, editor, and publishers which gave a very interesting insight into his goals in writing and the process of the writing of Dune. After that I thought the quality and cohesiveness of this book started to fall. There were many scenes and chapters edited out of early drafts of Dune (and Dune Messiah), and then several short stories by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, based on outlines and background envisioned by FH. The cut scenes were mildly interesting--especially the ones that had been cut from the later drafts of Dune--some of the early cut scenes didn't make much sense, or add anything to the original novel. I think the short stories would have made more sense in a short story book on their own, or in the writings nearest to which they occur (e.g. BH and KJA's 'Butlerian Jihad'). That being said, they didn't ruin the book... just seemed tacked on (like the excerpt of the then-forthcoming 'Hunters of Dune') in my opinion. I'm under the impression that there were other short story precursors to Dune that FH wrote... I think they would have fit marvelously in this collection. This book has piqued my interest in reading the FH biography, which I'll have to pick up at a used book store.

This book, among other things, has a copy of the original Dune short story, and it is a terrible story! It is, however, rather interesting because even in this old abortion of a manuscript, you can see Herbert's legendary focus on the hidden currents of power. It is also interesting to see where he developed some of the character ideas, before he took his philosophy - altering trips into the wilderness.

I can not wait for the movie.

its no surprise that i am a Dune nerd. i've read nearly all of them. i've even read other Herbert books and have enjoyed them. so, i guess im a Herbert nerd. im not as big of a fan of the newer dune books that Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson have authored, though. this was a mix of both. i know that sounds strange, but there are tidbits of all three in here. what drew most of the readers were the deleted scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah. those were alright. but when you read them, you figure out why they were deleted: they didnt agree with the final draft. there were age differences and numerous discrepancies. they were still fun reading, though. most of the book, however, is a novella based on Herberts original notes. it was entitled Spice Planet. this was Herberts original plan, since most scifis of that time were short. he took a big risk by publishing his book the way it was, and no book publisher wanted it. he actually had to go to a magazine and first published it in three sets; hence, the three sections of Dune. i didnt like Spice Planet, though. it was too campy and general. it wouldnt surprise me if it was just a ploy to get fans to bite at another of the BH/KJA books. oh well. it was okay. you can live without it, though.

A must read for any true Dune fanatic

This book is for the Dune connoisseur, which I'm not; not really. It was interesting to hear some of the earlier drafts of Dune put together as a novella but I find the copy put into the hardcopy medium to be much more complex and interesting.

And not being a lover of the short-story format, I didn't enjoy the rest of this book, other than knowing there were pieces the 3 authors crafted to fit around and in between pretty much all of the books.