Dune short stories

By Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's 1985 short story "The Road to Dune" appears in the collection Eye. Presented as a pilgrim's guide to Arrakis, it features illustrations by Welsh artist Jim Burns. The narrative is set after Shaddam IV's fall and Paul Atreides's rise to power in the original novel. The text tours Arrakeen's key locations, such as the Grand Palace and the Temple of Alia. Accompanying images and captions depict items and figures from the novels, including Paul's personal ornithopter, an Ixian glowglobe, Princess Irulan, Duncan Idaho, and Reverend Mother Mohiam.

By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

A Whisper of Caladan Seas, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, first appeared in the 1999 edition of Amazing Stories. This story marked the first official Dune publication after Frank Herbert's death and was the initial collaboration between his son Brian and Anderson. It was later included in the 2001 collection Dogged Persistence and again in the September 2005 anthology The Road to Dune. The narrative is set during the Harkonnen assault on Arrakis as depicted in Frank Herbert's original Dune.

It follows a band of Atreides soldiers who become trapped in a cave within the Shield Wall near Arrakeen. Among them is a master storyteller who shares tales of Caladan, the water-rich ancestral home of House Atreides. When Fremen warriors later discover the cave, they find the soldiers have all died by drowning—an impossible occurrence on the arid world of Arrakis. In December 2021, Boom!

Studios released a one-shot comic version of this story, adapted by the same authors. Hunting Harkonnens, also by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, was initially released online in 2002, just before the publication of the first Legends of Dune novel, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. It later appeared in the 2005 collection The Road to Dune. The story follows Ulf and Katarina Harkonnen, along with their son Piers, who are traveling to Salusa Secundus.

Their ship is attacked by thinking machines commanded by General Agamemnon, a cymek. The vessel suffers heavy damage, and the twenty-year-old Piers is forced into an escape pod. He lands on Caladan, where he encounters a group of primitives who help him seek revenge against the cymeks. Whipping Mek, by the same authors, was published online in 2003, preceding the second Legends of Dune novel, Dune: The Machine Crusade.

It was later collected in The Road to Dune. The story centers on young Vergyl Tantor, who serves in the Army of the Jihad on Giedi Prime during the Butlerian Jihad. His mentor and adopted brother, Xavier Harkonnen, arrives with a damaged fleet of warships needing repairs. Eager to engage the Thinking Machines, Vergyl is delighted to meet a mercenary from Ginaz who uses a captured machine for training exercises.