Abstract

This article provides a reconsideration of Frank Herbert’s dystopic perspective, through the careful analysis of “Dune” and “Dune Messiah,” the best-selling science fiction novels. Narratively unveiling the detrimental impact of colonizing imperialism motivated by religious doctrine, “Dune” and “Dune Messiah” compel their readers to denounce conceptions of the religious and the spiritual preventing the respectful formation of the human body, mind, and spirit and opposed to evolutionary understandings of the universe, biosphere, and human history. “Dune” and “Dune Messiah” offer critical principles and resources to produce emancipating notions of the human and spiritual practices contributing to the emergence of a more ethically and ecologically sustainable society and world.