The Road to Dune

Contents

The book includes an alternate novel based on Frank Herbert's original notes for his 1965 novel Dune. It also contains letters between Frank Herbert and his editor, the original article that inspired the creation of Dune—'They Stopped the Moving Sands'—as well as unused chapters from Dune and its sequel Dune Messiah (1969). Short stories in the Dune universe written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are also included. The alternate story, Spice Planet, was written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson based on Frank Herbert's original story outline for Dune.

It features House Linkam, a version of House Atreides, temporarily taking control of Duneworld from their rivals, House Hoskanner, the forerunner of the Harkonnens, to settle a dispute. The Hoskanners had a monopoly concession on the recently discovered Duneworld, but as melange grew in popularity, other Houses disliked the Hoskanners' wealth and pushed House Linkam to challenge them. The Emperor, secretly allied with the Hoskanners, orders Linkam to take over Duneworld for two years with the promise that if they produce more melange, they will receive the concession; otherwise it goes permanently to the Hoskanners.

The Hoskanners sabotage and thwart the Linkams, who enlist the Imperial Planetologist to devise a way to neutralize the sandworms and increase efficiency. The story shares many characters with Dune but is thematically different, focusing on decadence and drug addiction instead of ecology, finite resources, freedom, and religious fanaticism. The authors note that if Herbert had written a novel like Spice Planet rather than Dune, it would have been about the length of most paperback novels and might have been easier to publish.