Heretics of Dune

The fifth of the six Dune novels, published in 1984, set fifteen centuries after the God Emperor’s reign ends. Humanity has Scattered across the galaxy and the factions that survived the collapse — the Bene Gesserit, the Tleilaxu, and the returning Honored Matres — contest what is left of Arrakis and of the old order’s genetic and religious programs.

Context: on a16z’s list this is volume five of the S-tier Dune entry, in the stretch they describe as fast-forwarding thousands of years. Read as institutional history, it is the sequel that asks what happens to a design after the designer is gone and the plan has to survive people who never agreed to it.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from, where the year is given as 1982; corrected here to 1984.
• a16z — the firm whose infrastructure team curates it.
• Frank Herbert — the author.
• Dune — volume one.
• God Emperor of Dune — volume four.
• Chapterhouse: Dune — volume six, its direct continuation.
• Historical Futurism — the research lens.