Will our world look like in the Dune? The first ecological sci-fi was inspired by risky interventions in the landscape and excessive mining – Denník N

Dune has been said not to be filmed well, but sold-out cinemas and good reviews of the latest version by director Denis Villeneuve suggest that the latest film version has delighted fans of the cult novel and people who have never heard of it.

The story of the writer Frank Herbert deals with the power struggle over who will mine the psychedelic spice “spice melange” on the planet, which allows space travel. But it also shows the impact of mining on the country. It changes it for the worse.

That is why Duna is considered to be one of the first ecological sci-fi novels. The author also dedicated the book to ecologists themselves.

“I dedicate to people whose efforts transcend the abstract world of ideas and influence ‘reality’ – ecologists of arid areas, wherever they are, no matter how they work at any time. I humbly and with admiration put this attempt at prognosis at their feet, “Herbert wrote in 1965 and could easily repeat it today.

Dune – a report that never came out

Herbert was always close to environmental issues. How writes for the New York Times, a history professor at Northwestern University, Daniel Immerwahr, “had the source of Dune’s environmentalism next door.”

The author had close relationships with members of the Quileute and Hoh tribes who live on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. Indigenous communities have been affected by the environmental damage caused by industrial production in the United States the most. He transformed their warning that this problem could have a global scope into today’s cult novel.

However, Herbert was probably most inspired to write the book incident from a time when he was a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In 1957, the editors sent him to write about the system