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book details / updated June 22, 2026

Dune

by Frank Herbert

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Dune set the template that most modern science fiction politics still borrows from: desert ecology, feudal houses, and a messiah narrative that Herbert himself meant as a warning, not a celebration. It's denser and more political than its blockbuster adaptations suggest.

Cover of Dune by Frank Herbert.

why track this in moth

Herbert's Dune saga runs six books deep (and beyond, with his son's continuations); Moth's series tracking is useful if you're planning to go further than book one.

Book facts

Genre
Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy, Epic, Paranormal & Urban, Action & Adventure, Science Fiction
Publisher
Penguin
Published
August 2, 2005
Pages
704
Reading time
13 hr 59 min · ~34 nights at 25 min/day in Moth
ISBN
9780441013593
Language
en

Publisher's summary

Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece: a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides, who would become known as Muad'Dib, and of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

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