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J.R.R. Tolkien disliked Dune “with some intensity”

ByDan Selcke|
A portrait of JRR Tolkien taken on 9 Aug 1973.This was the last photograph taken of Tolkienin the Botanic Garden, Oxford, next to hisfavourite tree, the Pinus Nigra. He died lessthan a month later.Shelfmark: MS. Tolkien Photogr. 8, fol. 122Credit: © The Tolkien Trust 1977
A portrait of JRR Tolkien taken on 9 Aug 1973.This was the last photograph taken of Tolkienin the Botanic Garden, Oxford, next to hisfavourite tree, the Pinus Nigra. He died lessthan a month later.Shelfmark: MS. Tolkien Photogr. 8, fol. 122Credit: © The Tolkien Trust 1977

The Lord of the Rings is the foundational fantasy series of the 20th century. Dune is the foundational sci-fi series of the 20th century. Now fight!

Maybe it’s because of Amazon’s upcoming TV series, but lately we seem to be learning a lot of hitherto unknown facts about The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, or at least, some old facts are getting spread around anew. Just recently, author John M. Bowers posited that Tolkien may have written his genre-defining trilogy while procrastinating on his academic work. (Would that all our procrastinations were that fruitful.) Now, the @SecretsOfDune Twitter account has posted a page from Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist by Oronzo Chili, which seeks to understand this literary titan by perusing his bookshelf. And in going through Tolkien’s old letters, Chili gained some insight into Tolkien’s opinion on other genre-defining books of the day.

I’m talking about Frank Herbert’s Dune, a towering sci-fi classic that influenced everything from Alien to Blade Runner to Star Wars. What did Tolkien think of it? Read on:

So the pertinent quote comes form a letter Tolkien wrote to someone named John Bush in 1966, a year after Dune was published. Bush, for whatever reason, had sent Tolkien a copy of Dune, and the author wasn’t exactly bowled over:

"It is impossible for an author still writing to be fair to another author working along the same lines. At least I find it so. In fact I dislike Dune with some intensity, and in that unfortunate case it is much the best and fairest to another author to keep silent and refuse to comment."

So Tolkien wasn’t a fan of Herbert’s heady space opera. I’d love to ask him why. Speaking as someone who’s read both works more than once, I definitely prefer the warmth and open emotionality of The Lord of the Rings to the chilly precision of Dune, but that’s just me.

Anyway, both of these franchises are about to come back to the fore in a big way, with Amazon’s LOTR series on the one hand and Denis Villeneuve’s new movie adaptation of Dune on the other. Whether you prefer sci-fi or fantasy, it’s a good time to be into genre.

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