Chronicling the real-life history of Dune isn’t easy. In writing and researching this book, I learned that much that has been written about Dune is either highly specialized, maximalist, or both. In other words, because Dune is so vast and cool, there’s a tendency either to focus on one aspect or, in focusing on multiple aspects, to document every grain of sand. So, in writing The Spice Must Flow, I took the opposite approach: to create a book that took a generous, and generalist’s, view of Dune. Learning about the history of Dune should be hard work for me to research, but it shouldn’t be hard work to read.
What I hope lifelong fans get from this book is a larger view of the sweep of the Dune phenomenon and how its journey is as improbable as it is amazing. I hope, by experiencing the real-life story of Dune, you fall in love with the science fiction world of the novels, films, and TV versions all over again.
The narrative here is the story of Dune, not just the story of Frank Herbert. To tell it, I have used a combination of primary and secondary sources, original interviews, conducted by me, with people including, but not limited to, Kyle MacLachlan; Rebecca Ferguson; Denis Villeneuve; Frank Herbert’s widow, Theresa Shackleford; Timothée Chalamet; and Alicia Witt, as well as several scholars and experts writing about Dune today. I have also extensively researched various magazine articles, recordings, commentaries, newspapers, scholarly texts, letters, and much more. I wrote, researched, and edited the bulk of this book from December 2021 to February 2023, though some interviews predate that process. Although my 2021 interviews with various cast and crew from Dune: Part One (2021) do appear throughout this book, Dune: Part Two was filming and/or in post-production as I wrote this book, while the HBO series Dune: The Sisterhood was still in development. Dune is always changing, which is part of the fun.
I have had The Spice Must Flow fact-checked by independent expert sources and cross-referenced my research as much as possible. That said, if there are factual errors, objective or otherwise, those faults are mine and mine alone. Still, I am a pop culture critic as much as I am a science fiction historian, so there is a degree of subjectivity to this book, which I’d like to think is in the spirit of the metafictional books that Princess Irulan wrote about Muad’Dib.
For newer Dune fans, I want this to be clear: This book is very much for you, too. For decades, the nature of Dune’s fandom and cult status made it seem like getting into Dune was hard, that the books were challenging, or that the various film versions couldn’t connect to a huge audience. Or, worse still, that somehow you had to be super well versed in the entire history of science fiction to “get it.” But Dune is for everyone, and it always has been. In reading The Spice Must Flow, I hope you find that to be true, now more than ever.
Walk without rhythm!
Ryan Britt
Portland, Maine
February 2023