There’s no doubt that The Lord of the Rings is the first fantasy book of the 20th century, just like how Dune relates to science fiction and now back in the cinemas with Dune: Part 2. It all seemed to have gone off according to plan until the Twitter account SecretsOfDune shared page tonkins library oronzo chili, tat summarises few letters written by the author where he talks about other well-known works of the genre, including Frank Herbert’s Dune.
A Calm Yet Forceful Viewpoint.
When Dune was released, it deserved its rightful place in the pantheon of science fiction historical dramas, influencing multiple forms of artistic media, among them Alien, Blade Runner and most particularly, Star Wars. This is not to suggest that the author most responsible for the most successful epic space saga was overly enthused. Though in a letter Tolkien wrote to John Bush in 1966 over a year after the publication of ‘Dune’ I would harbor a bias towards that deep and heavy…I can’t find the words of expressing that”.
Nor are the reasons for his discontent clear. For example, it is known that he was a very strong Catholic including influencing C.S. Lewis into Christianity, and it could be assumed that this would be in conflict with Herbert’s more cynical view taken.
Tolkien himself remarked that The Lord of the Rings is essentially a religious and more so a Catholic type of a material, and has faced some criticism over using Christian themes. The case of Dune is quite the reverse as it incorporates, experiments, and subverts the concept of Abrahamic religions availing a pretty different and radical view of the heroic and religious themes.
It is irrelevant whether it was because of that ideological conflict or just a wish to avoid hard work, but the fact remains that these two cultures still influence the masses. On one hand, we have the multimillion- Amazon series The Rings of Power, deterring its dominantly on the other hand, box-office takings of the new adaptation of Dune by Denis Villeneuve.
After all, the two fluids of imagination, ie, now science fiction and fantasy, are even doing better than once before courtesy of those creations. People portraying their views on how Tolkien differs from Herbert does not in anyway spoil the readers ingestion of the respective works but rather is an added bonus to the discourse pertaining to their works.