This is the greatest fan project ever, and it's too bad it's so hard to find in book form(*). If you like Frank Herbert more than a little bit, read it. It's not the kind of thing to read straight through; just start somewhere and wander around.

I can't imagine a better fit of form and subject. n  Dunen was a not-actually-all-that-complicated fantasy-adventure story made unique by tons of atmosphere and a million little sketch lines of allusive background, giving the illusion that Herbert had actually written 20,000 years of future history. The Dune Encyclopedia turns this around and fills so much of the backstory that the plot of Dune almost disappears (or, in some cases, is contradicted: the encyclopedia is supposed to have been written thousands of years later, and they can't agree on what happened), and adds even more tons of atmosphere with a perfect imitation of Herbert's faux-scholarly epigrams. Some of it is just geeky world-polishing, and some of it is really narrative fiction in a different form (and some of it is both: the story of I.V. Holtzmann is a pretty good story, and the article on the Holtzmann Effect is such good fake science that I'm desperate for those things to be invented in just that way). There are several dozen contributors, and the fictional authors of the encyclopedia articles have unique voices too.

Besides being pretty faithful in its prose style, the encyclopedia also preserves a good sense of the feeling of Herbert's universe, which I would describe as textured, dry, savory, and kind of unpleasant. Nothing's shiny, not even in the so-grungy-it's-shiny mode. You wouldn't want to live there, but you'd really love to visit.

There's much too much of everything, and that's as it should be. Something I love about Dune is that as much as it plays up the Muad'Dib story as the biggest thing that's ever happened, it still (especially in the second and third books, which I like a lot more than most people do) acknowledges that none of these people really have any ultimate perspective, even if they live 3500 years; and that even though the people matter a lot to each other, eventually all their dreams and schemes will be misremembered, embellished or buried in trivia.

(* You can also probably find it online if you search for the title. It looks like the online version was scanned and then run through OCR with no editing, so it has some amusing typos of the kind you get with OCR. My favorites are in the entry on "House of Harkonnen": one guy was "murdered by his wife... when be left her for one of his male stoves", and another was "kilted by gladiators".)

Worth it if only for the list of Duncans, but contains so much more beside...

This material *could* have been the grounding for an epic continuation of the original books, but, instead, The Ungrateful Son and The Hack chose to make an ersatz, McDonald's version with water worms and ultraspice and stupid (*literally* stupid, as in unable-to-detect-blatant-clues) characters and Star Wars robots.

Unfortunately this masterpiece was compiled before Frank Herbert published his last two books of the series: Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse.

Perhaps the additional body of knowledge would've grown exponentially for the Editors to include and summarise the new entries in this single tome, making it worthwhile to expand it to a second volume.
But, alas, Franks's greedy son and his sidekick entered stage right and blocked everything to fit the ulterior narrative within their fanfic "canon".

Anyway, here are funny entries, very thought ones, and a lot of speculation but with great deal of respect to the monumental opus started with Dune.

Yours truly got lucky, this book is somewhat hard to get, paid dearly for a worn out copy, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is probably the nerdiest book I've ever reviewed for Goodreads, despite all the RPG books I've reviewed since I started using this website.

The Dune Encyclopedia is, as the name might imply, a chronicle of the events, places, people, and things in the Dune series, from Dune through to God Emperor of Dune, the latest novel in the series at the point it was published, though Heretics of Dune came out later that same year. That would make it interesting enough for someone who loves world-building as much as I do, but the real payoff comes in the presentation: it's an in-world encyclopedia, presented as a complication of historical records cached by the God-Emperor and discovered by later archeologists, and then edited together by a team of scholars. So not only is it a comprehensive encyclopedia, it's a comprehensive in-world encyclopedia set into the fiction of that world.

This is totally fantastic. The in-world nature gives it a much more interesting format than the various "authorized guides to [blah]," and it's constantly referring to books, poems, plays, the work of other scholars in archeological or historical journals, and other material in the Dune universe that doesn't show up in any of the actual books but would logically exist. The multiple scholars that compiled it, who sign the entries they're responsible for, mean that not every entry is written from the same perspective or to the same ends. The entry for Duke Leto Atreides is a relatively straightforward catalog of the Red Duke's accomplishments and biography, for example, whereas the entry for Lady Jessica Atreides--written by a different scholar--contains a short section about her life and then paragraph after paragraph of mystical speculation about her embodiment of the Mother, the Hetaira, the Amazon, and the Medial at different moments in her life and how that reflected on her relations with others.

There's a huge variety of information here. The melange entry has the chemical structure of the spice and the exact effects on the metabolism. There's one entry--the "Al-Harba Question"--that's devoted entirely to a parody of the Shakespeare authorship question. If you've ever wondered why it is that the Fremen speak essentially comprehensible Arabic, you can look into the Fremen language entry and learn the answer: because of the Reverend Mothers' ancestral memories and respect for tradition. There's also an entry for Galach, and while it's not as developed as any of Tolkien's languages, there's at least a pronunciation and conjugation guide for the main language of the Imperium.

Are you curious about a list of every single emperor of the known universe from the time of the Butlerian Jihad through the ages to the God-Emperor? You can find it! Fremen poetry? It's in here, with examples! An explanation of how shields work, why they blow up when shot with a lasgun, and how the same principle that makes shields work makes interstellar travel and communications possible? Yep! The reason that Dune has a breathable atmosphere despite barely having any vegetation at all couched in an explanation of sandworm biology? You got it! The specifics of the Bene Gesserit training program? The way Fremen dress in their sietches? The number of votes each House Major has in the Landsraad? That's all there, along with pretty much any other question you might ask.

One thing I love is the way that the scholars compiling the historical documents filter everything through their own socio-political understanding. At that point, the vast majority of human history has been a feudal imperium under the single rule of an emperor balanced by a council of noble houses, and that view gets extended backward even to times when it's not appropriate. For example, in the Atomics entry, there's a reference to the first use of atomics in war being during a "provincial dispute" between House Washington and House Nippon back during the semi-legendary days of the First Empire. Elsewhere, there are notes about that conflict being the impetus for House Washington seizing the imperial throne from House Windsor.

Another bit that I found great is the history of the Butlerian Jihad. In Dune, there's not really much explanation about it except the idea that thinking machines were limiting humanity's potential and only by divesting themselves of their crutches could humanity really determine their destiny, which makes sense because applying that to messianism and prescience is one of the major themes of the Dune series. The Dune Encyclopedia's more expanded version doesn't go into too much detail, but it does have some suggestions of a machine conspiracy to perform a breeding program to make humanity into a sub-sapient race of slaves, though it's possible this was only occurring on a single planet. Then religious revulsion for what the Butlerians found there turned what was originally a small rebellion into a full-fledged jihad that swept the known universe.

There's also some evidence that the child Butler was going to have was going to be the Kwisatz Haderach, but was scheduled for an unnecessary abortion by the machines to keep humanity under their thumb. Robo-thumb. Cyberthumb? Whatever. I'm not as much a fan of this, but it would be just like the Bene Gesserit to attribute every major historical event to their influence. The entry about them has data on them going to back to Terran history and groups of Bene Gesserit manipulating everyone from pre-history through the colonization, the Jihad, the Imperium, and beyond.

This is apparently non-canonical now, but since the canon is really stupid, with telekinetic sorceresses and thinking machines being evil because what is love and basically none of the themes of Herbert's original works, The Dune Encyclopedia will forever be my canon. Though admittedly, even in Herbert's published works there are some differences--see above about this being published the same year as Heretics of Dune.

Oh, there's also a nice exploration of the imperial feudal system, and how it actually takes a lot of effort to maintain space nobles and a space empire, it's not just a natural state that governments fall into. And there's even a bibliography of all the fictional books used by the fictional scholars at the end.

Basically, I wish that every universe that I really like had one of these to go with it. World-building is one of my favorite parts of reading about invented universes, and The Dune Encyclopedia brings that in spades. It's a niche product, but in that niche it's unparalleled. Highly recommended.

Not canon, but interesting as all get out. Works best if the reader "picks and chooses" what they consider canon out of it. Some of the entries you'll like, others you'll think "that's not how I picture the universe working."

Interesting and detailed. I quite enjoyed this.

Like many have said, it preceeds the books by Brian Herbert and thus an argument about "is this cannon or are Brian Herbert's stories cannon?" begins with a desire to declare some sort of supremacy. Honestly it is a matter of what you are looking for in a story.
What this encyclopedia does is make the world of Dune come alive by giving us an understanding of Frank Herbert's universe. His son can write stories about the universe of Dune, but this Encyclopedia fills in all the little minute details that fans enjoy and obsess over. I had a very early copy and the illustrations alone were fantastic images that complimented my ideas of Dune as a young teenager.
Most of all I recommend buying it for the illustrations.

A collection of sanctioned, academically themed Dune fanfiction, Dune's glossary on steroids. The adherence to the encyclopedia format, and the quality of the entries, varies, but I found only a few entries unreadably bad (G.E.'s "Truthsayer" and "Reverend Mother" being almost pure gibberish), but the majority were worth reading, plus it's an encyclopedia. You're not required to read everything. I read in whatever order I liked and didn't bother to read most of the Fremen technology entries. Can be read (for now) on the internet archive, and it's unlikely to be reprinted any time soon.

The entries have a wide variety, consisting of histories of the factions, biographies of major and minor characters, descriptions of various bits of technology, and more. It makes a perfect antidote to the contraction of the main series books, suggesting that there were in fact people and places away from and other than Arrakis. In particular I enjoyed the entries on the Bene Gesserit, which claim they have been in existence more or less since the dawn of civilization, and had a shadowy hand in several of the more major parts of galactic history, heightening the irony of their plan going so badly awry with Paul and Leto. There is also the story of I.V. Holtzman, a pre-Butlerian scientist who had his personality copied into a paranoid starship, and ended up divulging most of the discoveries that would enable the coming galactic empire over the course of several cometary orbits, only to be destroyed by the Butlerians before he could make his final unifying revelation.

There are detailed descriptions of the biology of both Face Dancers and sandworms, which funnily enough both contradict remarks by Leto II. He says that the Face Dancers are more like colonial organisms than human beings, while the Encyclopedia Face Dancers are merely highly modified humans, and speculates that the sandworms were moved to Arrakis from elsewhere, whereas the Encyclopedia claims they were naturally evolved from native worms when the planet was more Earth-like.

Some entries are parodic of historical research. The first entry for Paul Atreides is a document casting doubt on his claimed Atreides-Harkonnen-B.G. ancestry, instead suggesting he was a native Fremen who later concocted a false ancestry to build his legend and legitimacy. An entry on a complicated calendrical system to harmonize month names across the Corrino empire, ends with the punchline that the calendar was never widely implemented, and even where it was, corruption of the names rendered it useless for its original purpose. The entry for the "Crompton Ruins" describes what is clearly the Ixian settlement outside Leto's empire, which became the source of a serious belief they were the work of an alien intelligence. Almost every entry ends with a "further references" section citing in-universe historical documents, which are compiled in a several pages long bibliography at the end. Bafflingly, there is no index.

There are a handful of serious holes, however. Planets are severely neglected, with places like Caladan, Giedi Prime, and Kaitain receiving no direct description, while others like Arrakis and Ecaz do. Muad'dib's Qizarate has no entry. An apparent aversion to repetition between entries (understandable) leads to information being awkwardly split. Despite the claimed reference at the end of the "Great Houses" entry, there is no "Corinno, House" entry, and the history of the Corrinos is distributed among the "Sardaukar", "Atreides, House", "Corrin, Battle of" and various entries about the empire. Irulan's entry is almost entirely about her writings, totally neglecting her role in the assassination attempt on Paul or Chani's poisoning. While there was a clear editorial effort to keep the story straight and minimize direct contradictions between entries, the level of certainty about events is less strictly controlled. For example, Ghanima's entry holds it as fact that Irulan tried to seduce Ghanima's oldest son, while Irulan's entry records it as a mere slanderous rumour.

The situation of Earth isn't too clear. It was apparently inhabited and under imperial control into the time of the Corrino empire, as the original Zensunni were taken from there as an imperial levy, but it has no entry, nor does the "First Empire", which is the retroactively conceived government existing from the time of Alexander the Great (rendered "Aleksandr" (missed opportunity to use the Arabic reanalysis "al-Iskandr")) until the first unreliable FTL travel. The "Family Atomics" entry seriously garbles the history of the period, projecting the feudal structure of the Corrino empire to Earth circa WWII, and misrepresenting people as Houses (Washington, "Steel", Zedong, de Gaulle), but also the amusingly apropos Windsor and Abraham, while the "Harkonnen, House" entry correctly notes Nicholai II as the last tsar of Russia.

There is at least a useful timeline at the beginning, from which we can say that the solar system was colonized between our AD 2100-2600 (taking 14255 BG = AD 1945), outnumbering Earth's population 20 to 1, a planetoid struck earth in 2798, after which Ceres became the centre of civilization, and Earth was reseeded with life and set aside as a park in 2840. In 3196 the secret of FTL travel was discovered, with 10 worlds in the empire by 4000, a thousand by 5000, but Ceres was destroyed by rebellion in 5095. From then to 8638 a dark age reigned, when Holtzman waves allowed FTL communication. By 11178 the galaxy had been reunified into a new empire. The Butlerian Jihad ends in 16092, and the Corrino empire's year 0 corresponds to our AD 16200 (there is a year 0 listed, but isn't clear if BG/AG calendar actually includes one, who cares we love off by one errors). Dune then starts in AD 26390, and Leto II dies in AD 29924, with the Encyclopedia being published in 31740.

The back of the book identifies the 43 contributors to the Encyclopedia, spelling out the initials that are appended to most entries. Confusingly, the Dr. Willis E. McNelly of the cover is NOT the W.E.M. of the credits, but W.M., with W.E.M. being one Walter E. Myers (who appears to also be a professor). Most entries have an initial credit at the bottom, but not all. At first I thought that signified that they had been written by whatever the next initial was (i.e. if 1 is credited to A, 2 and 3 are uncredited, and 4 is credited to B then B wrote 2, 3 and 4), but I'm pretty sure I found at least one case where two successive entries were both credited to the same person, so who the hell knows. None of the credits look like authors known to me, though my suspicion that "Victoria Lustbader" must be married to Eric Van Lustbader turned out to be right.

Finally, it is claimed the Fremen can nut without jizzing. Thank you Dune Encyclopedia.

If you've read Dune and you enjoyed it, you'll love this book. It explains all the background information, and how the various people, places, things, institutions and customes cam to be the way they are in Dune. As you read it, everything clicks into place. It's set out like a real encyclopaedia, but you can just read it cover to cover like any book.

so much better than the corpsefucking shite created by Brian Herbert

Buy this for me, please?

The information was written (and it is most certainly not canonical) before God Emperor was complete. I liked it well enough, but its rarity makes it worth owning.