Wonderful compliment to the Dune series, however...

books:


	• Dune Encyclopedia Willis McNelly Putnam Adult, 1984 - 526 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews
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highly recommended

A must for Dune fans!

My copy of the Dune Encyclopedia is from 1985 and I remember seeing it on the shelf at the bookstore and purchasing it without even looking at it first!

It gives excellent detail about the technology written about in the series and insight that really adds to the Dune experience.

If you can find a copy of this book it is well worth the read. I am just amazed it is selling for $50.00+ (I paid $10 for mine in 1985) It would be nice to see this come back into print so more people can enjoy an in depth exploration into this wonderful series.

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Wonderful compliment to the Dune series, however...

The Dune encyclopedia should be read by all Dune fans as it provides some answers to the questions raised in the first four books of the series. The book is quite exhaustive in its scope totalling over 500+pages with illustrations. Almost every subtlety here is discussed in depth from Alia's degeneration to the elemental makeup of prehistoric Arrakis.
However, Frank Herbert himself in the forward admitted that while he endorsed the encyclopedia it was by no means a definitive source being that it was a collection of-highly intelligent well thought out- fan conjecture.
And the fan bias/expectations show in some cases.
A few to list are:
*The behaviour of the Duke leto in buying a BG concubine when everyone in the Imperium trusted the Bene Gesserit only in respects to how far they could throw one.
-The fate of Scytale the Tleilaxu face dancer.
-Piter De Vries was the first to create and employ residual poisons, however all of a sudden everyone and their wetnurse in the entire Imperium seems to know about it and utilizes it.
-The only instances of homosexuality(in the whole of the Imperium mind you) showing up in Harkonnen ancestry and descent even with contrary evidence in regards to certain characters. *rolls eyes*
- Modified Duncan Gholas when Leto specified that he only accepted the unchanged, original.
-The involvement of the Bene Gesserit in the Wanna Marcus/Harkonnen/Yueh incident, which only serves to make them look like veritable idiots.
Other points of contention are less the fault of bias but rather assumptions being made about the series before it had concluded with Dune Heretics and Chapterhouse Dune.
The illustrations are also quite helpful in giving one a visual of the characters and some of the technology used in the Dune series.
All in all this compendium of fan enthusiasm should be enjoyed with a grain of salt. It is certainly a better alternative than Brian Herbert's mauling of the mythos. I would suggest purchasing a copy if at all possible only because a reissue of the encyclopedia will be one edited to fit the inconsistencies in the prequals and thus not true to the vision of Frank Herbert and the scholars who created this work in his honor.

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Irony

The first time I ran into the Dune Encyclopedia was purely by accident. I was on Morpheus (a P2P downloading site) and I typed down "DUNE" on the search bar, on the generated list was "The Dune Encyclopedia".

It took days for it to download because only one person was sharing it... meaning that not many people knew it existed and not many people have a digital ebook copy of this book.

Once it was finally on my computer I read as much as I could -- sadly my computer was experiencing many problems and crashed.

Sinse then, I've never been able to find another digital copy. I've resorted to purchasing a $30 one here on good ol' Amazon, however, sinse it's out of print and no publishing house is making any money off of it anymore, I say we as fans should force it back into print as an ebook.

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Super Reader

An overview of the places, people and technology in the Dune universe. This explains a lot of the detail of things that Herbert just mentions in passing, such as the scientists that invented shields, or space travel, or things like that.

It is very useful to gain a better understanding of all those finer points.

Holy Grail found!!

Just recently I found a good condition copy of The Dune Encyclopedia at a local used book dealer. I was completely shocked to have found it on the "recent arrivals" shelf in the Sci-Fi section. I grabbed it up and leafed through it to verify its existence. It was real alright. The fact that I bought it for only $4.50 is more extraordinary. Yes, $4.50 !!! They must not have realized what a treasure they had.
So keep looking everyone, there are still hidden treasures out there to be found.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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