It is interesting to note the progression of women in my father’s Dune novels. Female characters get stronger and stronger as the series develops, and in Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune, women are running most of the important planets in the Dune universe. By that time, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood is the most important political power, although it is a more austere age, without the grandeur and pomposity of the Imperium back in the days of Shaddam Corrino IV, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, or the tyrannical God Emperor, Leto Atreides II. The glories of the desert planet Arrakis are long gone as well, and the sandworm species has been moved off world, where it may not survive.
Thousands of years before the events described in Heretics of Dune, the God Emperor set mankind on his “Golden Path” and scattered civilization across countless star systems, as if sprinkling human seeds in the wind. But now, in Heretics of Dune, evil, supremely powerful women have emerged from the Scattering and threaten the Sisterhood. They call themselves “Honored Matres,” which is ironic because there is nothing honorable about them. Individually and collectively, they can outfight the Sisters, so that the Sisterhood—like the sandworms—seems in danger of being wiped out. The brutal Honored Matres appear to be unstoppable, and there are rumors about their origins. Could they possibly be descended from failed Reverend Mothers, making them the dark side of the Sisterhood? Or could something else be at play, something even more sinister that has been generated in the secret breeding laboratories of the fanatical Tleilaxu?
Heretics of Dune is a remarkable, cerebral excursion through the most fantastic universe in science fiction. In this novel, as in God Emperor of Dune before it and Chapterhouse: Dune afterward, the author explored layers that he originally interwove into the action of the first novel in the series, Dune—layers containing important messages about politics, religion, ecology, and a host of other interesting, timeless subjects. The last three novels he wrote in the series are intellectually stimulating, and sometimes the action almost seems secondary. Huge battles, and even one that is environmentally catastrophic, occur behind the scenes.
As I wrote in Dreamer of Dune, the biography of my father, Heretics of Dune was actually intended to be the first book of a new trilogy that would complete the epic story chronologically. It is set thousands of years in mankind’s future, long after the events in Dune. Before his untimely death in 1986, Frank Herbert wrote the first two books of the trilogy (Heretics and Chapterhouse), but he left the third unwritten. Using my father’s outline and notes, I eventually co-wrote the grand climax with Kevin J. Anderson, but it required two novels for us to do so—Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007).
Heretics of Dune is the beginning of that extraordinary, climactic adventure, a giant leap in time and space beyond the novels preceding it. In this novel, you will meet a diverse and complex cast of characters, inhabiting worlds that stretch the imagination. It is a journey into what my father liked to call one of humankind’s “possible futures,” showing where we might very well be headed, into a tableau that is at once terrifying and exhilarating. Even with its complexities, Heretics is a page-turner, a novel that will not disappoint the most critical of Dune fans. After reading the last page of the book, you will want to go back and read it again, revisiting old friends in a fantastic realm that never quite leaves your thoughts.
Brian Herbert
Seattle, Washington
June 24, 2008
Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How? traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.
—THE APOCRYPHA OF ARRAKIS
“Taraza told you, did she not, that we have gone through eleven of these Duncan Idaho gholas? This one is the twelfth.”
The old Reverend Mother Schwangyu spoke with deliberate bitterness as she looked down from the third-story parapet at the lone child playing on the enclosed lawn. The planet Gammu’s bright midday sunlight bounced off the white courtyard walls filling the area beneath them with brilliance as though a spotlight had been directed onto the young ghola.
Gone through! the Reverend Mother Lucilla thought. She allowed herself a short nod, thinking how coldly impersonal were Schwangyu’s manner and choice of words. We have used up our supply; send us more!
