{"id":17470,"date":"2021-10-21T17:01:43","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T09:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/how-the-dune-science-fiction-saga-parallels-the-real-science-of-oregons-dunes\/"},"modified":"2021-10-21T17:01:43","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T09:01:43","slug":"how-the-dune-science-fiction-saga-parallels-the-real-science-of-oregons-dunes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/how-the-dune-science-fiction-saga-parallels-the-real-science-of-oregons-dunes\/","title":{"rendered":"How the \u2018Dune\u2019 science-fiction saga parallels the real science of Oregon\u2019s dunes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Timothy
Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson star in \u201cDune,\u201d a movie based on sci-fi author Frank Herbert\u2019s book. The tale draws in part upon Herbert\u2019s experiences in the Pacific Northwest. (Warner Bros. Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The deserts of Abu Dhabi and Jordan play starring roles in the blockbuster sci-fi movie \u201cDune,\u201d which premieres this week in theaters and on HBO Max \u2014 but the origins of the classic tale go back to a different set of dunes on the Oregon coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cDune\u201d creator Frank Herbert spent much of his life in the Pacific Northwest, from his childhood days in Tacoma to his stint as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer\u2019s education editor. (When I worked at the P-I back in the 1980s, some of my fellow copy editors could still reminisce about Herbert\u2019s habits.)<\/p>\n

In 1957, Herbert spent some time researching what he hoped would be a magazine article about a U.S. Department of Agriculture project to stabilize the shifting sand dunes near Florence, Ore., by planting invasive beachgrass. The article was never finished, but according to \u201cDreamer of Dune,\u201d a biography written by Herbert\u2019s son Brian, the idea of transforming the dunes made a huge impression.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad realized he had something bigger in front of him than a magazine article,\u201d Brian Herbert wrote. \u201cHe sat back at his desk and remembered flying over the Oregon dunes in a Cessna. Sand. A desert world. He envisioned the earth without the technology to stop encroaching sand dunes, and extrapolated that idea until an entire planet had become a desert.\u201d<\/p>\n

From that initial thread of an idea, the elder Herbert wove six novels, published between 1965 and 1985. Since then, Brian Herbert and  longtime sci-fi collaborator Kevin J. Anderson have written more than a dozen of their own \u201cDune\u201d sequels and prequels. (The latest was published just last month.)<\/p>\n

The newly released movie covers just the first half of the original \u201cDune\u201d novel. But in subsequent books, Herbert traced how fictional scientists tried to green up the desert planet of Arrakis \u2014 and how that brought about unanticipated, even problematic consequences.<\/p>\n

Strangely enough, that part of the story parallels what\u2019s now happening amid Oregon\u2019s dunes. It\u2019s a case of life imitating art \u2026 imitating life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels very extreme and sci-fi when you see it in a movie or in a book, but it\u2019s also just like real U.S. government land management,\u201d said Rebecca Mostow, a graduate research assistant at Oregon State University.<\/p>\n

Sand vs. grass<\/h4>\n