Dune: House Harkonnen - Hardcover

Brian Herbert; Kevin J Anderson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553110721 ISBN 13: 9780553110722

Publisher: Bantam Books, 2000

Synopsis

Dune: House Harkonnen continues t he unforgettable saga begun in Dune: House Atreides, as a vast array of rich and complex figures strives to shape a sprawling universe of mystery and vivid universe revealed in the thrilling pages of Frank Herbert's Dune.

Dune: House Harkonnen

At last Shaddam sits on the Golden Lion Throne, his precarious position as ruler of the Known Universe dependent on producing a male heir. But his leadership is further threatened by the ambitious Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, whose insatiable thirst for dominance leads him to plot against some of t he most powerful forced in the Imperium, hoping to elevate his own ruthless House to unprecedented heights of power. His primary targets: House Atreides and the mysterious Bene Gasserit Sisterhood. The Sisterhood are unaware of this threat as they prepare to culminate the work of centuries in the creation of a god-child who will sweep away emperors, houses, and history itself in a terrifying new order of religious tyranny.

The desert world Dune, the machine world IX, and countless other conquered planets groan under the numbing slavery of cruel new masters determined to exploit their resources - most notably the addictive spice melange found only on Dune. But small bands of renegades begin to fight back, lighting the spark of freedom against overwhelming odds. New, unexpected heroes arise: young and resourceful Liet-Kynes on Dune, wily and patient C'tair on IX, and the unyielding Gurney Halleck in Giedi Prime, driven to vengeance against his Harkonnen overlords.

For Leto Atreides, grown complacent and comfortable as ruler of his House, it is time of momentous choice: between love and honor, friendship and duty, safety and destiny. Leto has finally produced an heir to House Atreides, Victor, and will make whatever choices necessary to protect the young boy and ensure his legacy as Duke. Ultimately, however, for House Atreides there is just one choice - strive for greatness or crushed.

About this title

About the Author

Brian Herbert, the son of Frank Herbert, is  the author of numerous acclaimed science fiction novels, including Sidney's Comet; Sudanna,Sudanna; Prisoners of Arionn; The Race for God (a Nebula Award nominee); and Man of Two Worlds (written with Frank Herbert).  He has also written Dreamer of Dune, a comprehensive biography of his illustrious father.

Kevin J. Anderson has written twenty-six national bestsellers and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stroker Award, and the SFX Reader's Choice Award.  He also set the Guinness world record for "Largest Single-Author Book Signing."

From the Back Cover

Raves for Dune: House Harkonnen

"[Fans] rejoice in this chance to return to one of science fiction's most appealing futures."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Rich interweaving of politics and plotting made the Dune novels special. And Dune: House Atreides does its predecessor justice."
--USA Today

"A spirited and entertaining adventure--The real pleasure here comes from watching the authors lay out the plot threads that will converge in Dune."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"(The authors) have brought this classic saga back to an exciting and dynamic life."
--The Denver Post

"A rousing story."
--The New York Post

"The attendant exciting and myriad revelations not only make this novel a terrific read in its own right bull will inspire readers to turn, or return, to its great predecessor."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Dune: House Atreides is a terrific prequel, but it's also a first-rate adventure on its own. Frank Herbert would surely be delighted and proud of this continuation of his vision.
--Dean Koontz

"Written in a style so close to the original that it is hard to believe Frank Herbert did not direct it through some mysterious genetic link--I can't wait for the sequel."
--Rocky Mountain News

From the Inside Flap

House Harkonnen continues t he unforgettable saga begun in Dune: House Atreides, as a vast array of rich and complex figures strives to shape a sprawling universe of mystery and vivid universe revealed in the thrilling pages of Frank Herbert's Dune.

Dune: House Harkonnen

At last Shaddam sits on the Golden Lion Throne, his precarious position as ruler of the Known Universe dependent on producing a male heir. But his leadership is further threatened by the ambitious Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, whose insatiable thirst for dominance leads him to plot against some of t he most powerful forced in the Imperium, hoping to elevate his own ruthless House to unprecedented heights of power. His primary targets: House Atreides and the mysterious Bene Gasserit Sisterhood. The Sisterhood are unaware of this threat as they prepare to culminate the work of centuries in the creation of a god-child who will sweep away emperors, houses, and history

Reviews

As the young Duke Leto Atreides seeks to live up to his late father's expectations, his rivals plot to bring about the downfall of House Atreides. Plots and counterplots involving the debauched Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, his Bene Gesserit enemies, and the treacherous schemers of the enigmatic Bene Tleilax escalate the tension among factions of a fragile galactic empire. Though power seems to reside in the hands of the emperor and his elite armies, the fate of many worlds hinges on the destiny of a single planetDthe desert world known as Arrakis, or Dune. Continuing the story begun in Dune: House Atreides (LJ 10/15/99), coauthors Herbert and Anderson reveal the prehistory of the late Frank Herbert's classic Dune novels. Strong characterizations, consistent plotting, and rich detail provide this second of a trilogy of prequels with the same evocative power of the original novels. Libraries should anticipate a demand from old series fans as well as newcomers to the world of Dune. Highly recommended.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In Dune: House Atreides , three men struggled with the demands and temptations of power. Shaddam Corrino conspired to acquire it, Baron Harkonnen seized and extended it, and Duke Leto Atreides struggled to hold it with justice and mercy. Unbeknownst to those three, Pardot Kynes and his son, Liet, led the Fremen in the secret battle to make Arrakis into a green paradise. Ten years later, Shaddam sits on the Peacock Throne, Leto has married the exiled daughter of Duke Vernius of Ix, and Baron Harkonnen, a victim of biological warfare, decays a little every day. Even the exorbitantly expensive Suk doctor, Wellington Yueh, can't cure the childless baron. To consolidate his clan's future influence, the baron turns to the family of his despised, outcast brother. Abulurd Harkonnen, a man of integrity and kindness, has survived his vicious relations by withdrawing to an icy world of furred whales and arctic monasteries. His sons show the vile Harkonnen temperament, however, and repair to the baron for encouragement. Meanwhile, Duncan Idaho trains with the elite sword masters of Ginaz, and Lady Margo Fenring, wife of Arrakis' imperial ruler, makes secret contact with a Fremen priestess. The power all these characters wield has great effect. Whether it be insinuating a lady in waiting into the Atreides household or secretly aiding rebels on Ix, each action lays another stone in the remarkable construct of the world of Dune, which Herbert's father began. Despite its huge cast and complex story, the second Dune series is proving to be exceptionally accessible and entertaining. Roberta Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WHEN THE SANDSTORM came howling up from the south, Pardot Kynes was more interested in taking meteorological readings than in seeking safety. His son Liet--only twelve years old, but raised in the harsh ways of the desert--ran an appraising eye over the ancient weather pod they had found in the abandoned botanical testing station. He was not confident the machine would function at all.

Then Liet gazed back across the sea of dunes toward the approaching tempest. "The wind of the demon in the open desert. Hulasikali Wala."

"Coriolis storm," Kynes corrected, using a scientific term instead of the Fremen one his son had selected. "Winds across the open flatlands are amplified by the planet's revolutionary motion. Gusts can reach speeds up to seven hundred kilometers per hour."

As his father talked, the young man busied himself sealing the egg-shaped weather pod, checking the vent closures, the heavy doorway hatch, the stored emergency supplies. He ignored their signal generator and distress beacon; the static from the sandstorm would rip any transmissions to electromagnetic shreds.

In pampered societies Liet would have been considered a boy, but life among the hard-edged Fremen had given him a tightly coiled adulthood that few others achieved even at twice his age. He was better equipped to handle an emergency than his father.

The elder Kynes scratched his sandy-gray beard. "A good storm like this can stretch across four degrees of latitude." He powered up the dim screens of the pod's analytical devices. "It lifts particles to an altitude of two thousand meters and suspends them in the atmosphere, so that long after the storm passes, dust continues to fall from the sky."

Liet gave the hatch lock a final tug, satisfied that it would hold against the storm. "The Fremen call that EI-Sayal, the 'rain of sand.'"

"One day when you become Planetologist, you'll need to use more technical language," Pardot Kynes said in a professorial tone. "We still send the Emperor occasional reports, though not as often as I should. I doubt he ever reads them." He tapped one of the instruments. "Ah, I believe the atmospheric front is almost upon us."

Liet removed a porthole cover to see the oncoming wall of white, tan, and static. "A Planetologist must use his eyes, as well as scientific language. Just look out the window, Father."

Kynes grinned at his son. "It's time to raise the pod." Operating long-dormant controls, he managed to get the dual bank of suspensor engines functioning. The pod tugged against gravity, heaving itself off the ground.

The mouth of the storm lunged toward them, and Liet closed the cover plate, hoping the ancient meteorological apparatus would hold together. He trusted his father's intuition to a certain extent, but not his practicality.

The egg-shaped pod rose smoothly on suspensors, buffeted by precursor breezes. "Ah, there we are," Kynes said. "Now our work begins--"

The storm hit them like a blunt club, and vaulted them high into the maelstrom.






THE POD'S ANCIENT SUSPENSORS hummed against the Coriolis howl like a nest of angry wasps. The meteorological vessel bounced on swirling currents of air, a steel-walled balloon. Wind-borne dust scoured the hull.

"This reminds me of the aurora storms I saw on Salusa Secundus," Kynes mused. "Amazing things--very colorful and very dangerous. The hammer-wind can come up from out of nowhere and crush you flat. You wouldn't want to be caught outside."

"I don't want to be outside in this one, either," Liet said.

Stressed inward, one of the side plates buckled; air stole through the breach with a thin shriek. Liet lurched across the deck toward the leak. He'd kept the repair kit and foam sealant close at hand, certain the decrepit pod would rupture. "We are held in the hand of God, and could be crushed at any moment."

"That's what your mother would say," the Planetologist said without looking up from the skeins of information pouring through the recording apparatus into an old datapack. "Look, a gust clocked at eight hundred kilometers per hour!" His voice carried no fear, only excitement. "What a monster storm!"

Liet looked up from the stone-hard sealant he had slathered over the thin crack. The squealing sound of leaking air faded, replaced by a muffled hurricane din.

"If we were outside, this wind would scour the flesh off our bones."

Kynes pursed his lips. "Quite likely true, but you must learn to express yourself objectively and quantitatively. 'Scour the flesh off our bones' is not a phrasing one would include in a report to the Emperor."

The battering wind, the scraping sand, and the roar of the storm reached a crescendo; then, with a burst of pressure inside the survey pod, it all broke into a bubble of silence. Liet blinked, swallowing hard to clear his ears and throat. Intense quiet throbbed in his skull. Through the hull of the creaking vessel, he could still hear Coriolis winds like whispered voices in a nightmare.

"We're in the eye." Glowing with delight, Pardot Kynes stepped away from his instruments. "A sietch at the center of the storm, a refuge where you would least expect it."

Blue static discharges crackled around them, sand and dust rubbing together to generate electromagnetic fields. "I would prefer to be back in the sietch right now," Liet admitted.

The meteorological pod drifted along in the eye, safe and silent after the intense battering of the storm wall. Confined together in the small vessel, the two had a chance to talk, as father and son.

But they didn't....

Ten minutes later they struck the opposite sandstorm wall, thrown back into the insane flow with a glancing blow of the dust-thick winds. Liet stumbled and held on; his father managed to maintain his footing. The vessel's hull vibrated and rattled.

Kynes looked at his controls, at the floor, and then at his son. "I'm not sure what to do about this. The suspensors are"--with a lurch, they began to plunge, as if their safety rope had been severed--"failing."

Liet held himself against an eerie weightlessness as the crippled pod dropped toward the ground, which lay obscured by dusty murk. As they tumbled in the air, the Planetologist continued to work the controls.

The haphazard suspensors sputtered and caught again just before impact. The force from the Holtzman field generator cushioned them enough to absorb the worst of the crash. Then the storm pod slammed into the churned sand, and the Coriolis winds roared overhead like a spice harvester trampling a kangaroo mouse under its treads. A deluge of dust poured down, released from the sky.

Bruised but otherwise unharmed, Pardot and Liet Kynes picked themselves up and stared at each other in the afterglow of adrenaline. The storm headed up and over them, leaving the pod behind....



AFTER WORKING A SANDSNORK out through the clogged vent opening, Liet pumped fresh air into the stale confinement. When he pried open the heavy hatch, a stream of sand fell into the interior, but Liet used a static-foam binder to pack the walls. Using a scoop from his fremkit as well as his bare hands, Liet set to work digging them out.

Pardot Kynes had complete confidence in his son's abilities to rescue them, so he worked in dimness to collate his new weather readings into a single old-style datapack.

Blinking as he pushed himself into the open air like an infant emerging from a womb, Liet stared at the storm-scoured landscape. The desert landscape was reborn: Dunes moved along like a marching herd; familiar landmarks changed; footprints, tents, even small villages erased. The entire basin looked fresh and clean and new.

Covered with pale dust, he scrambled up to more stable sand, where he saw the depression that hid the buried pod. When they'd crashed, the vessel had slammed a crater into the wind-stirred desert surface, just before the passing storm dumped a blanket of sand on top of them.

With Fremen instincts and an inborn sense of direction, Liet was able to determine their approximate position, not far from the South False Wall. He recognized the rock forms, the cliff bands, the peaks and rilles. If the winds had blown them a kilometer farther, the pod would have crashed into the blistering mountains, an ignominious end for the great Planetologist, whom the Fremen revered as their Umma, their prophet.

Liet called down into the hole that marked the buried vessel. "Father, I believe there's a sietch in the nearby cliffs. If we go there, the Fremen can help us dig out the pod."

"Good idea," Kynes answered, his voice muffled. "Go check to make sure. I'll stay here and work. I've... got an idea."

With a sigh, the young man walked across the sand toward the jutting elbows of ocher rock. His steps were without rhythm, so as not to attract one of the great worms: step, drag, pause . . . drag, pause, step-step... drag, step, pause, step....

Liet's comrades at Red Wall Sietch, especially his blood brother Warrick, envied him for all the time he spent with the Planetologist. Umma Kynes had brought a vision of paradise to the desert people--they believed his dream of reawakening Dune, and followed the man.

Without the knowledge of the Harkonnen overlords--who were only on Arrakis to mine the spice, and viewed people only as a resource to be squeezed--Kynes oversaw armies of secret, devoted workers who planted grasses to anchor the mobile dunes; they established groves of cacti and hardy scrub bushes in sheltered canyons, watered by dew-precipitators. In the unexplored south polar regions, Fremen had planted palmaries, which had gained a foothold and now flourished. He had built a lush demonstration proj...

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553110721
• ISBN 13: 9780553110722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 603