Series
Dune
Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Joan D. Vinge & Rosemary Border · 8 novels · 1 novelette · 11 short stories · 1963–2022
Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles opens with 1965's Dune, set on the desert planet Arrakis where House Atreides takes control of the only source of the vital spice melange and young Paul Atreides is pulled into a struggle over its politics and religion. Herbert carried the story forward across five further novels — Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune — following Paul's line over the following millennia, before Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson later extended the saga. Many other editions of these six novels are omnibus and box-set repackagings rather than separate stories.
Summary by Loreful, from public sources
A curated way into the series.
✦ Curated by the Loreful team
These are the six Dune novels Frank Herbert wrote, in the order they were published — one continuous arc, and the whole of the story as he left it. The other titles gathered here are companion pieces rather than missing chapters: early magazine versions and excerpts of the novels themselves, an abridged edition, a film storybook, and a handful of later short stories by other writers. The much larger continuation of Dune, also by other writers, runs as its own separate sequences elsewhere. Read these six straight through first; everything else is there for afterwards, once you know how much more of this world you want.
- Omnibus editions(8 editions)
Map
Dune at the centre, its books fanned around what holds them. Pick anything for its details, and zoom out for similar series in orbit — the reading order above lists the same books as text.
Stats
By decade
- 1960s5
- 1970s2
- 1980s7
- 1990s1
- 2000s1
- 2010s2
- 2020s2
Shape
8 novels · 1 novelette · 11 short stories
5 authors
reads like:science fictionpolitical intrigueother star systemsfar futuretenseadult
Mood
Grim and intense: 73% of this series' placed works, the catalog's 46%.
this series · the catalog · one dot = one book11 of 20 works carry a tone
Edges of the map
- Children of Dunedarkest
- The Road to Dunebrightest · calmest
- Dune (extract)most intense