Back when Frank Herbert read excerpts from Dune to his wife, especially the scene where Paul Atreides put his hand in the ‘agony box,’ young Brian Herbert didn’t realise how iconic some of the events in the books were. He sat by his parents, “not really knowing what was going on.” Years later, Brian would go on to write close to a trillion words with Kevin J. Anderson and continue his father’s legacy. At SDCC ‘20, the team revealed every Dune book that will be released this year, with promises for the next.
Herbert and Anderson are well known writing duos who have been collaborating since 1999, their first trilogy being Prelude to Dune: House Atreides (1999), House Harkonnen (2000) and House Corrino (2001). One of the duo’s big announcements for 2020 was teasing some artwork for BOOM! Studios’ graphic novel adaptation of Dune: House Atreides, produced in partnership with Abrams ComicArts. While BOOM! is spearheading the prequel trilogy, Abrams is all about bringing the graphic novel treatment to the original classic Dune in a three-part adaptation; Book 1 of the adaptation will hit the shelves on October 27, 2020. Graphic novel editor Charlotte Greenbaum from Abrams said the team is currently working on the next two books, The Prophet and Muad’dib.
Abrams ComicArts
Dune: Book 1
Artists: Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín, with cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz
BOOM! Studios (12 issue series)
Dune: House Atreides
Artists: Dev Pramanik (Paradiso) and colorist Alex Guimarães, with covers by Jae Lee (Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child) and Dan Mora (Once & Future)
The original books, along with the prequel trilogy, will also be reissued with new covers. Del Rey’s Executive Editor Anne Groell revealed new covers for the prequels (Prelude to Dune) scheduled for an October 27 release.
Del Rey
Prelude to Dune: House Atreides, House Harkonnen and House Corrino
Ace’s Senior Editor Jessica Wade revealed the covers for Dune: Books 1-3 and Books 1-6 boxed sets, which are now available online
Ace
Dune: Books 1-3 and Dune: Books 1-6
Cover Artist: Jim Tierney
Anderson and Herbert also teased The Duke of Caladan, the first in a new Dune trilogy. Tor Books editor Christopher Morgan revealed a mockup cover for the novel. The events in this book directly kickstarts those in the original trilogy so Paul Atreides, who was 15 years old when Book 1 began, is 14 in The Duke of Caladan. “These are pivotal events that lead right into Dune, and into the movie,” Herbert shared. On why the duo decided to tell this story, Herbert cited Paul’s complex relationship with his parents that allows more sub-plots to evolve.
Tor Books
Since these announcements were confined to the publishing industry, Herbert and Anderson also slightly spoke about their partnership with Legendary Entertainment for video games production. Earlier this year, Funcom (Legendary’s partner for the game production) disclosed that the ‘open world multiplayer’ games will take much longer to release than expected. These games were initially planned to supplement the movie in December.
“Dune, like our universe, is expanding, but we’re very conscious that we don’t want to expand it too far,” Herbert said. “We don’t want to come up with material that the hard core Dune fans will not appreciate.
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One can’t really blame Brian Herbert for continuing the Dune saga when his own father realized that it was a cash cow worth continuing even when he had nothing more to say. I read the original three books and then the unfortunate God Emperor of Dune, which I dubbed “the fourth book in the trilogy” when I reviewed it back in the 1980s. That so many more have been written since Frank Herbert’s death just shows that name recognition is everything.
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