Science Fiction

I'm not mad. Just disappointed.

I kid. Everyone has their own tastes and flavour preferences. I'm a fan of the book and also think Villeneuve did a pretty bang up job with Part One.

All sci fi ages poorly, some ages more poorly. Dune has the advantage of being a universe where they fought a war with computers, thus they've more or less been banned. This helps them avoid references to aged tech like most sci fi, giving it a bit of a reprieve there. If you read novels that were contemporary with it, you'll find a lot of rooms full of tapes for computer systems, and similar. But perhaps that is more your style.

Personally, I dislike "psi" powers in my sci fi. And Dune, like many others in its era, is obsessed with this notion that "you only use 10% of your brain... imagine what you could do it you unlocked more!?" Modern neuroscience has completely pooh-poohed the idea, but if you read anything classic sci fi, you need to tolerate it. In the case of Dune, I tolerate it because the world building is worth it.

I absolutely agree about Herbert not being a good storyteller or writer. I found it a difficult read simply because of the prose, and I really didn't like his use of an omniscient narrator. I don't really like omniscient narrators in general, but I found Dune's narrator especially difficult because of how freely it switches between characters. I often found that if my focus slipped even slightly, I'd realise a couple of minutes later I had no idea whose perspective the narrator was giving any more and have to backtrack paragraphs or even pages to work it out.

I think I perhaps appreciated the book more than you, but I didn't find it an enjoyable read. It certainly gave me a greater appreciation of the film, though, which I also very much enjoyed! And I'm glad I read it simply because it's such an influential book in a genre I love - it's interesting to see how so many things have build from its foundations.