Re-read this to chill out after the spectacularly unsatisfying ending of Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two. Herbert is just so GOOFY. I don't think I noticed when I read this in high school that it's barely a novel, more like a padded-out short story, and indeed it appeared in three parts in Galaxy. Since I just wrote my post on Ubik, though I read it a month or so ago (? who knows? It's all a blur) it strikes me that Dune Messiah is quite Dick-ian, as it blurs the line between the actual and Paul's visions, and especially when the bizarro figures from the Bene Tleilax---a villain who can be anyone! a kooky dwarf!---get thrown in the blender. For that matter, like Ubik this one constructs an elaborate life-after-death scenario too.

Also, this time around it's suddenly very obvious to me how closely Robert Jordan read Dune. Rand al'Thor borrows a great deal from Paul Atreides, visions, maimings, twin children, and all. I guess there are only so many ways your messianic super-powered hero / Mary Sue can get into real trouble.

Esprit de l'escalier: and of course the Aes Sedai are the Bene Gesserit translated into Fantasyland and making the grotesque sexism more fully explicit and (magically) essentialized---which is impressive, because it was already fully e and magically e. in Herbert. Are these epics of mass-market response to the organized feminist movement?