30 Challenge II - Favorite Book

I could easily go back and find something I adored from my childhood like "Harold and the Purple Crayon' or the "Chronicles of Narnia" But they have not been the ones I have returned to time and time again. I hated sad stories from the past like the 'Little Match Girl' where someone poor ended up suffering and dying at the end. Hell, even "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator" started and ended with poverty stricken children.


No, I need something full of adventure from a time totally unknown to me. Where great and powerful armies fought to claim what legally belonged to one. I needed my story to have a powerful messiah like figure at it's center on a dry planet near the ass end of space. There would live a desert people who would hold a prophecy that a man would come from the outter world and lead them to true freedom. The book, of course is DUNE. Writing in the mid-sixties it can stand out it's own with any syfy tale any of the greats like Clark, Brandenbury, Tolkien or Asimov could have created.


I love the political intrigue combined with ancient tribal legends. I like the pure evil of the characters who all discover at the end that the are not as smart as the being they have created by bioengineering - only one generation too soon. There is honor, revenge, power, and love and an ending (after the third book - Children of Dune) that totally ties everything together and sends man into a brave knew age - A Golden Path that one day must itself be destroyed. Pretty heady stuff.


Both film versions have enthralled me even the much panned version by David Lynch. The six hour syfy version that encompassed the first three books is also terrific. I look forward to the upcoming feature being developed by Darren Arronofsky who created another one of my favorite films - the 'Fountain".