Dune Messiah: How to write the perfect sequel

This article contains spoilers for Frank Herbert’s first Dune novel.

“They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”

~ Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

Think of the most famous sequels to ever grace storytelling: The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2, Catching Fire, Lord of the Rings; what do they all have in common? They all build upon their predecessors in meaningful ways. But when it comes to Dune Messiah, the question instead is what do they not have in common, as Frank Herbert drastically reimagined and reinvented the characters, world, and conflicts that the first Dune novel brought to the table.

It’s fairly easy to understand why Messiah got mixed ratings from both fans and critics after its original debut in 1969; taking place twelve years after the first novel’s end, we see our hero Paul Atriedes in a far different place than readers will remember him in. Paul is a messiah, reeling with the consequences of being a literal god amongst men. On one hand, there’s guilt, the blood of innumerable masses all falling on him and his legions of Fremen that have been released out into the universe. On the other, there is a coup being planned, one that works under the cover of Paul’s prescient vision that can see into the infinite futures. 

In this way, Messiah acts as a direct contradiction to Dune; the conflict is no longer about how the little guy defends himself from the empire, but the other way around. Paul is the villain, as is anyone who has the same amount of power he has. The difference is that he knows it and wants to change it. He is not complaisant, and truly believes that he is doing the best he can; thus, the pressure mounts endlessly.

Though this change threw off many readers throughout the years, it is not wholly unique to Messiah. The change itself starts in Dune, as Paul is frequently haunted by the vision of his armies being led onto other planets besides Arrakis, even his home world of Caladan, and those visions alone were enough to cause much of his character conflict in the first novel. His hand was forced, and though his character arc in Dune ends with him becoming emperor and “winning the day,” Frank Herbert’s meditations on power show that there never is a consequence-free happy ending; there is always a second part, a second thread—everything has a sequel.

If you were one of the brave souls who made it through Dune, it would be a massive shame to stop there. Messiah offers so much in terms of literary value, all within only a half the page count of the first. All that Paul and the other characters of Dune fought for in the first novel threatens to grow too heavy to carry, too burdensome to persevere through, and the stakes, quite honestly, are far higher than ever before. Messiah takes what we expect from a sequel and challenges every aspect of it, forcing fans to understand the other side of every coin.