One of my favorite works of science fiction, not just because it was one of the first I read (by which all others are challenged to measure) but because of its powerful blending of mythology and science, the hero epic and ecology. True, though, that my sensibility about the work has changed--Herbert's 1960s-esque portrayal of desert cultures and of the feminine is so problematic that a quick GR review here would not adequately address it. Still, the laying out of prescience, the political machinations behind mytho-religious narratives, the complexity of multiple protagonists and antagonists pitted against one another, are all elements Herbert would explore more richly still in later works and which impress as a reader today. No simple moral binaries which plague derivative fiction here. A classic for the genre with aspirations to be literary fiction.