Frank Herbert’s prescience: Dune and the modern world
Senior, William A. 2006. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 17, no. 4: 317-321.
An introduction to a journal, this paper analyzes Frank Herbert’s Dune as an allegory for US and UK intervention in the Middle East. According to Senior’s argument, the spice which powers much of the universe in Dune is an allegory for oil, the planet of Arrakis is the colonized region of the Middle East, and Paul is the theoretical false prophet political leader come to intervene. Senior also argues that Herbert predicted the trend of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East as a result of imperialism.