![]() Of course, the geographical expanse of Iraq-erm, I mean Arrakis-is hostile, yet home to a strange and almost mystical nomadic native people, the Fremen. The year is 10,191, and our insatiable humankind has colonised the vast expanse of planets throughout the known Universe. The story of Dune unfolds against a desolate desert landscape, the planet Arrakis. ![]() ![]() I voiced this hesitation to a colleague (whom I suspect to be at least a bit of a sci-fi and fantasy escapist), who encouraged me to write it despite my misgivings, because as academics we are all too often so turned towards our own navel-gazing-why not write something that doesn’t take ourselves too seriously. Frank Herbert’s masterpiece of course, regarded as a foundational text of the Science Fiction genre, is inarguably rife with orientalist motifs and imagery. A Saidian orientalist critique of Dune is far too easy. ![]() It feels a bit beneath the urgency of the topics we ordinarily lend our time to in lensing the Middle East and Northern Africa-the whole heart-breaking aftermath of foreign imperial ambitions. I hesitated on writing this piece, a critique of Frank Herbert’s seminal contribution to the literatures of speculative fiction. ![]()
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