"Dune" by Frank Herbert

Set within the feudal interstellar society of the far future of the human race, Dune tells the story of the struggle for control of the desert planet Arrakis (otherwise known as Dune) and it's production of "spice" (also known as melange), an extremely valuable psychoactive substance used for several purposes. Duke Leto Atreides, the ruler over the House Atreides on the water-covered planet of Caladan, is granted control of the planet Arrakis in exchange for Caladan by the Emperor Shaddam IV of the ruling house Corrino. The granting of Arrakis to Atreides is a politically-motived move by the emperor to destroy the duke, who has gained popularity in the Landsraad, an alliance of houses whose power rivals that of the imperium. The emperor provides house Harkonnen, a rival to Atreides led by the devious Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, with powerful Sardaukar imperial troops in an effort to destroy Atreides before the house is given sufficient time to organise defences after moving in on Arrakis. Harkonnen and Sardaukar troops are aided by a traitor within house Atreides and take control of the planet, killing the Duke while his son Paul and lover, concubine and mother to his only son and heir Lady Jessica escape into the desert. Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, an ancient order of women trained in the art of mental power over others. Myth tells that a Bene Gesserit will eventually give birth to a male Bene Gesserit known as the "Kwisatz Haderach", a kind of prophet with the power to see past, present and future all at once. Paul is believed by some to be the Kwisatz Haderach, and has already shown promise through the Bene Gesserit training received by his mother. Jessica and Paul are greeted and taken in by the Fremen, native desert-dwellers on Arrakis that are fierce fighters and hold strong ties to the native giant sandworms of Arrakis whose movement and breeding cycle and responsible for producing the spice on the planet. The Fremen ingest spice as part of their diet and it plays an important role in religious ceremony, granting a degree of prescience to those who use it. The myth of the Kwisatz Haderach spreads amongst the Fremen and they rally behind Paul, believing he will lead them to victory against the occupying force of House Harkonnen. Paul consumes the Water of Life, an essence of spice in a test of whether he really is the Kwisatz Haderach and gains the power to see future events. He witnesses the Fremen defeating the Harkonnens, regaining control over Arrakis and going on to wage a terrible interstellar Jihad against the imperium and the rest of known space. Led by Paul, the Fremen attack the Harkonnen stronghold on the planet defeating the overlords and capturing the emperor himself, who was on the planet to oversee the final destruction of the Fremen and gain ultimate control over the production of spice. The emperor is forced to abdicate and grant control over the imperium to Paul when he threatens to use his control over the Fremen to destroy all of the spice of Arrakis, which would have devastating consequences for the rest of the galaxy.

Dune is a dense and complex book that knits together a tapestry of invented ancient history, myths, rituals, language, cultural and religious references. The novel describes in rich detail the environment and ecology of the Arrakis desert and marries this to the detailed culture of desert-dwelling Fremen to who water is valued above all else; all daily activities revolve around it's conservation and the water in one's body is considered the property of the group in which one travels. The book also explores the complex political life of the great houses and the imperium with rivalries, back-stabbing, double-crossing and "Kanly", a system of strict rules and customs pertaining to feuds or vendettas. Between the chapters, the novel is filled with passages taken from invented historical texts that exist in the time following the events of the novel, written by the Princess Irulan, the emperor's daughter who was betrothed to Paul Atreides after the emperor was forced to abdicate.

A quote by Arthur C. Clarke about the novel "I know nothing comparable to it except Lord of the Rings" really rings true; it is unique in it's construction of such a detailed world with it's own style that I've not seen anything else like in all I've read. Admittedly I don't read a lot of fantasy, and I assume that the level of detail of these aspects in Dune is perhaps more commonplace within this genre. I really liked the vivid picture of the desert world and the associated ecology; I think this must have had at least some influence on other authors' work such as Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. I think one of the main reasons for the book's success and popularity is that it creates a very engaging "hero's journey" in Paul's ascendancy from young prince in exile to all powerful ruler of Arrakis. It's interesting that Herbert has stated that he wanted his story to carry the message "beware of heros" and to provide a sort of critique to the classic version of the hero's journey. This is probably something that comes out more in the sequels set in the same universe.

Overall a great book and easy to see why it's considered on some lists to be the most popular science fiction novel of all time.

"Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time; so the book begins. Billy experiences sequences from his life in a random order. Lying down to sleep as a middle-age man he wakes up as a prisoner of war in Germany in the Second World War; moving through a door way, he is an old man in the future and hearing a song, he is back in his childhood. At one point in his life, Billy is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians, an alien race that experience time as a fourth dimension that they can move back and forward in as they please. They keep him in a zoo for several years with Montana Wildhack, another kidnapped Earthling and movie star, with whom he mates with. They explain to him the nature of time and that it's not all linear and moving in a single direction so that when someone dies, it is only in that part of time that they are dead but have been and always will be alive in another part of time. So it goes. As a young man, Billy attends six months at college to become an optometrist, before being drafted into the war in Europe. After the war, Billy returns home to Ilium, New York and marries a rich optometrist's obese daughter, and raises two children. Years later Billy is the sole survivor of a plane crash, which leaves him comatose for several weeks, during which his wife dies in a car accident while rushing to his hospital bedside. After recovering, Billy goes on to tell the world about what he has learned about the Tralfamadorians and the nature of time before he is assassinated by a laser-beam while giving a public address on UFOs in 1976 after World War Three. He had always known this was how he was going to die because he had visited his death several times. During the war Billy was captured by the Germans in the battle of the bulge and sent to work in Dresden, where he witnessed the allied firebombing of the city on the night of the 13th February 1945 that was responsible for killing over 25,000 civilians. Billy along with the other POWs and four guards survived the attack inside an underground meat locker, slaughterhouse-five, which had been their temporary home during their service. Edgar Derby, a fellow POW is tried and shot for stealing a teapot from a collapsed bomb shelter while helping to clean up the city after the attack, and one morning, not long after, the war is over and Billy finds himself a free man. While walking the streets, a bird says to Billy "Poo-tee-weet?"; so the book ends.

Slaughterhouse five is a somewhat semi-autobiographical account of the Second World War and the firebombing of Dresden; Vonnegut was actually an American POW in the Second World War and witnessed the fire-bombing, escaping the ensuing firestorm by staying inside the disused slaughterhouse as Billy Pilgrim did. The opening chapter is written explicitly from the voice of Vonnegut himself where he talks about the bombings and his struggle to structure a novel around his experience. Throughout the rest of the novel, events are narrated and often Vonnegut identifies himself in the story: "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book". The novel is satirical and is at times both funny and harrowing; events are described in loose detail, the facts are stated straight up from the start and then down the track the story returns to each event and describes it in more detail. The satire and absurdity of the story seem to be a sort reaction to the horrors of war witnessed by Vonnegut and the inability to write anything sensible about a massacre (likewise Billy and Eliot Rosewater turn to the topsy-turvyness of science fiction while recovering from post-traumatic stress from the war). Similarly, one interpretation of Billy's uncontrolled time travel is that it is a product of the trauma he has sustained during the war. The novel explores the notion of determinism and free will; Billy is taught by the Tralfamadorians that all moments in time simply exist and have always existed the way they are and that of all the species in the universe only Humans have any notion of the concept of free will.

This was a great read; short and immensely readable. I loved all the little humorous vignettes of Billy's life and the characters in them. I really liked all the different characters Vonnegut paints such as the nasty, rugged-up Roland Weary and his delusions of grandeur, Paul Lazzaro and his lust for revenge and the weird and jaded Kilgore Trout. The novel is all the more amazing because a lot of the events really happened and were witnessed by the author. The novel has only a loose claim as being science fiction; it's more a sort of post-modernist satire where the time travel and aliens are more mechanisms that are symbolic of the post-traumatic stress experienced by the central character (and presumably the author). Still really glad it was on the list such that I got to experience it. Recommended reading.