Dune

Geek-culture expert Ryan Britt takes us behind the pages and scenes of the science-fiction phenomenon Dune, charting the series' life from cult sci-fi novels to some of the most visionary movies of all time.

Last in Herbert's Dune trilogy, this ponderously realigns the surviving family of the departed (or not so departed) messiah Muad'Dib, Paul Atreides. Paul's sister Alia, one of the "pre-born" who carry the living memories of the entire Atreides ancestry back to Agamemnon, becomes possessed by the spirit of a long-dead forebear and embarks on a ruinous power game which threatens both the ecological basis of Dune's crucial spice trade and the lives of Paul's children, the nine-year-old twins Ghanima and Leto. Among the increasingly crazed intrigues of Alia and the risky intervention of Paul's mother, the twins struggle to master their perilous ancestral memories and more-than-adult mental powers. At stake are the precious ecology and ethos of Dune itself, with terrible consequences for the scattered planets of the Imperium.

This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices." Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence.

In the far future, a duke and his family are sent by the Emperor to a sand world from which comes a spice that is essential for interstellar travel. The move is designed to destroy the duke and his family, but his son escapes and seeks revenge as he uses the world's ecology as one of his weapons.