Who took 31 pages out of my copy of Dune?
Posted on: January 31, 2007
One of my current obsessions is the amazing universe of Dune, and it just so happens I recalled recently that I purchased the tome from a thrift shop ages ago, but had never gotten around to reading it — life, as they say, got in the way.
Thanks goodness I found it tucked away in a drawer. And then, after seeing the 1984 movie adaptation by David Lynch, I began to read the novel. In retrospect, it's a good thing I saw the film first, because no less than 31 pages are missing — 123 to 154. It's very odd, because I examined the spine, and while weary and cracked with folds, there doesn't appear to be a discernable gap where pages might've just… fallen out. Furthermore, the novel is replete with bizarre typographical errors: on some pages, lines of text are repeated in a smaller typeface. At first, I thought it was a deliberate effect, but seeing enough of them has me thinking otherwise.
Besides the oddities, however, I'm up to page 248 now, mostly read in my spare time. What a great book it is! My edition was printed in 1975, shortly before Children of Dune of the original trilogy came out, and one phrase I note on the back cover which really stands out is how Dune is described as "imaginative literature".
It's easy to see where a lot of later sources, and sci-fi tropes — apostrophes and hyphens in alien names, feudal societies in space, effectiveness of antiquated weapons in the future, sandworms, unified religions, etc. — got their inspirations.
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Be my friend!
January 31st, 2007 at 8:14 PM PST
Some of the printings had some pretty egregious errors. I've got four copies of the book. The only complete and correct one I have that I am aware of is the one I read when I was four (a present from my father).
January 31st, 2007 at 10:58 PM PST
I agree Tateru.
I remember getting this book from the school library around the age of 12 and there were all kinds of errors in that copy also. so it must be a publishing company error.
But to be missing 30something pages? That's the pits, baby.
Bling On
Orchid
February 1st, 2007 at 12:03 AM PST
That looks like a copy of Dune I had at one point…and I also had the one that was a tie-in to the David Lynch film. I can't recall any typographical errors in either of those, but I have a copy of Herbert's earlier novel Under Pressure (a Clancy-esque submarine thriller with strong psychological angles) with some real beauts…
February 1st, 2007 at 7:22 AM PST
Funny. I just popped in my DVD of Dune last week and started hunting around for my book. Must be the spice in the air.
February 3rd, 2007 at 10:38 AM PST
Synchronicity! Frank Herbert's an interesting author for me, because arguably, the Dune books are the best-known of his oeuvre, and he's done some others with similar themes. I loathe to call him a one-hit wonder, but the Dune epic peak so highly above others. It's like, if the general public was asked, "Name books by Stephen King", there'd be at least a handful.
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:32 PM PST
There's another one Frank Herbert did, actually with his son, Brian, called Man of Two Worlds. In some respects, stylistically, it's very Dune-like, but it's a different kind of story altogether. In it, the scion of a huge corporate empire, who's also a newspaperman and inventor, has an encounter with a youthful member of a very powerful race–the race that actually thought the Earth into existence. They are forced to share one body, and have to cope not only with Machiavellian schemes on Earth but with the impending threat of the erasure of the entire planet…
February 4th, 2007 at 8:40 AM PST
Erbo, that's the first I've ever heard of that book. Sounds pretty grand. Looking it up now…
February 6th, 2007 at 7:47 AM PST
Has there ever been a book as unique as Dune? It wasn't just how "creative" he was, but the fact that he extrapolated humanity's potential, developped from skill, to such an nth degree… it's inspiring. I found when reading Dune my mind began pattern-extrapolation-overload like a mentat… except probably much less accurately.
February 11th, 2007 at 12:08 PM PST
^ I wholly agree, and my obsession with the saga of Dune is far from over. I'm in the process of getting a Guild Navigator av (in itself a far-flung extrapolation of today's GPS-assisted navigational processes).
Mentioning "Mentat" appears to be a sure way to draw bright people. Fitting.