How Dune Inspired My Writing: The Danger of Getting What You Want
Dune by Frank Herbert inspired my writing more than perhaps any other novel.
But Frank Herbert was a prophet with a problem: He got what he wanted.
The celebrated author set out to build a trap, and it worked too well.
Dune, that labyrinth of Byzantine politics, ecological mysticism, and prophetic demagoguery, has become a Cassandra that defies its own dire oracles. It's a warning label that gets quoted like scripture; the final act of a Greek tragedy presented as an origin myth. And it’s a masterclass for authors in the dangers of getting what you want.
Let’s begin with the foundation. Herbert explicitly said that he designed Paul Atreides to seduce the reader. The point, he explained, was to make Paul magnetic, to draw readers in with the same gravity that draws the Fremen, the Landsraad; the entire Imperium. Paul is messianic. He’s the noble-born son trained in every discipline from Bene Gesserit nerve control to swordplay to prescient calculus. He’s everything a power fantasy demands.
And Herbert gave it to you on purpose so he could take it away.
"Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader's name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question."
-Frank Herbert, 1985
That’s the first trap.
Dune critics are owed at least one point: The novel’s unorthodox structure can be a stumbling block to more traditional readers. Paul wins too much, too fast. The Atreides escape Caladan and fall into the desert like Lucifer out of heaven. Paul loses his father, inherits an army, topples an empire, and becomes a god. Paul is a myth, then a man, then a myth again.
The story reads like a hero’s ascent—until you see the bodies. The Fremen jihad spreads like wildfire, igniting planet after planet in Paul's name. The newly crowned Muad’Dib tries to steer the tidal wave, then admits he can’t. Paul rules but doesn't control, a fact which he tells you in Dune Messiah. But readers didn’t want to follow him there. They wanted to build winter homes on Arrakis like snowbirds in Phoenix.
Which makes Paul an unintentional ex post facto self-insert for Herbert. Paul, too, got what he wanted, only to find it wasn’t what he wanted.
That’s the second trap.
Dune is one of those rare novels that transcended the medium to become lore. It is to science fiction what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy. But whereas Tolkien built a myth to reinforce the natural order, Dune takes the shape of a myth even as it dismantles mythology from within. That paradox between structure and deconstruction has led some readers to misread the entire story. They think Herbert meant Paul to be Aragorn, when in fact he’s Oedipus with better PR.
Because Herbert's point was never that charismatic leaders fail despite their gifts, but that their gifts are what make them dangerous. Charisma is the camouflage of tyranny.
Still, the misreading is understandable. Dune‘s style could charitably be called baroque. The plot is elliptical, often slipping the leash of traditional narrative arcs. Some critics, especially those of the more Aristotelian school, find Herbert’s structure frustrating (mark me down as one of them). Paul becomes emperor by the end of book one—then what? The sequels don’t offer catharsis; they offer consequence. If you wanted a classic payoff, you won’t get it. You’ll get a meditation on the burden of foresight, the failure of systemic reform, and the brutal inertia of human institutions. This is not Robert Jordan or Tolkien. It’s not even Zelazny. Herbert’s vision is too paranoid for that.
Related: The Ring Is Not What You Think
So let’s pause and give the structuralist critics their due. Herbert’s storytelling is ambitious, but it’s also uneven. Dialogue often lapses into monologue. Exposition crashes in on the plot like Shai-Hulud. The shifting POVs, the constant inner monologue, the epigraphs before every chapter—all can make the narrative feel unanchored, especially to readers trained on cleaner, classical arcs. And that choppiness invites misreading.
When the writer won’t sit still, the audience build their own framework. For many, Paul had to be a hero. The alternative—a messiah who knows he’ll kill billions and proceeds anyway—is too bleak to contemplate.
And that’s the third trap.
Once a character becomes culturally iconic, he becomes a mirror. Paul Atreides now stands in the same uncanny pantheon as Rorschach, Walter White, and Homelander. These are figures conceived as indictments but construed as aspirations. People don’t just admire them; they emulate them. Because it doesn’t matter what the author intended when the audience sees a conqueror with glowing eyes and thinks Cool!
Related: Color-Coding Character: What Writers Can Learn from Breaking Bad
Herbert’s trap worked. It caught us. And then the springs rusted.
And that, once again, is the danger of getting what you want.
Due credit to Tolkien, here. Much of Herbert’s problem stems from the fact that we’re living in a myth-starved age.
Now, Herbert was aware of the situation. Dune was his answer to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, that linear hero’s arc that Hollywood has strip-mined for decades. He wanted to show the rot inside the golden bough. But modern readers—particularly those raised on pop culture that flattens every figure into the same linear formula of origin, rise, and vindication—don’t have the critical tools to dissect a story that deliberately withholds vindication. Paul wins, yes, but in winning he loses his soul, his family, and the future.
A potent anti-humanist strain suffuses Herbert’s text. And not the cheap pessimism of Gnostic revulsion or the nihilism of post-cyberpunk bugmen. Herbert’s anti-humanism is ecological, systematic, theological. He warns you that no one, no matter how gifted, can beat the system from within. A system corrupt enough to need drastic reform is also corrupt enough to absorb any reformers. Paul isn’t the exception; he’s the example. He sees every path, and they all lead to death. His only choices are those of David choosing between famine, conquest, or plague.
But!
There’s a tension in Dune’s pessimism—not enough to redeem Paul, but sufficient to save the text.
Consider: Herbert could have written a colder story. He could have buried every shred of sympathy beneath cynical machinery. But he didn’t. Instead he let Paul grieve. He let Jessica wrestle with her conflicting allegiances. He gave Stilgar honor. These aren’t anti-heroes. They’re people. The tragedy hits precisely because the tragic characters aren’t ciphers. Herbert may have hated demagogues, but he didn’t hate people.
And that is why the Herbertian warning has, at least in the short to mid-term, aged better than Tolkien’s mythologizing.
If you have ears to hear it.
Or eyes to look out your window.
Like Tolkien, Herbert doesn’t say power corrupts. But only because that would’ve been too easy. Dune says power seduces. It makes you think you’re the exception—that you can ride the worm, steer the jihad; shape the future. But as Dune itself warns, even seeing the future won’t save you from it. Because the trap isn't in failing, it’s in getting what you wanted.
Herbert advised that the first step in avoiding a trap is knowing where it is. Left unsaid is that you then have take the other steps.
That’s the lesson Herbert wanted us to learn. The problem is, he wrote it too well. His hero was too magnetic. The world was too immersive. In crafting the perfect mousetrap, Herbert built a palace, and now we live in it.
And for many, that's the real betrayal: Not that Paul fell, but that we still wish he hadn’t; not that Herbert warned us, but that we didn’t listen.
And not that Dune was misunderstood; that it was loved—even by those it tried to warn.
The literary equivalent of Elden Ring
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> Once a character becomes culturally iconic, he becomes a mirror. Paul Atreides now stands in the same uncanny pantheon as Rorschach, Walter White, and Homelander. These are figures conceived as indictments but construed as aspirations. People don’t just admire them; they emulate them. Because it doesn’t matter what the author intended when the audience sees a conqueror with glowing eyes and thinks Cool!
The patient zero for this type of character was Milton's Satan.
As someone who has gone through Dune on audiobook while on a cross-state commute (Maryland to Virginia), I will admit that the philosophical and ecological stuff simply went over my head. What really told me that something was up with Muad'dib was the ending when he got into a sham "marriage" with Princess Irulan but Chani remained the "real wife".
Even though I was rooting for Paul I always felt the arrangement was screwed up, especially since Irulan's voice was peppered throughout the book through the intro quotes. Jessica had this monologue that sounds neat on the surface but all I see is a man who can't make a decision. Either marry the Princess and put away the concubine or refuse the Princess' hand in marriage to marry the concubine. But Muad'dib did neither because all that power made him think he was "the exception to the rule" (as you alluded to).