As a massive Heinlein fan I’ll say Starship Troopers because I think that’s a fascinating discussion about what you owe your country or the price of citizenship. Since Heinlein is my favorite author I’ll pick another one as well.. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick. I know he had drug issues and this book is an interesting look at the cycle of drugs and addiction and the ending was tragic but also very realistic. I like that the movie included his tribute at the end.
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Dune. Frank Herbert was an absolute genius, and those books are an extremely well-realized fictional universe, full of a whole host of thoughtful moral and philosophical themes.
The man also just has world building that gives Tolkien a run for his money. It's not until you read some of his books outside of the Dune universe that this really become apparent. They say mastery is being able to repeat a masterwork and that's what he does in his other literature.
I really enjoyed Dune. I have the next two in the series but haven’t read them yet. I can see how George Lucas was influenced by it. Is the recent movie any good? Also would you recommend the full series or just Dune?
I'd recommend all of the ones written by Frank Herbert. There were a couple done after his death by his son working with other authors, but they're nowhere near as good.
The film is a decent adaptation, and it actually stays true to some of the important themes. I'm not optimistic that they'll be able to keep that up with the next ones though.
Herbert himself only made references to the Butlerian Jihad in his main saga, although he was pretty detailed about some of it. His son Brian wrote a sort of historical novel about it with Kevin J Anderson, but the quality of the writing is not as good as Herbert, and I don't really think Brian Herbert understood the main idea behind the historical layout of the Dune universe.
Frank Herbert was highly skeptical of authority in general, and viscerally opposed to anything he perceived as an attempt at social engineering or central planning. The Butlerian Jihad, or revolt against "thinking machines," ostensibly happened because they were trying to plan out everybody's life for them, and the whole main theme of the actual Dune novel series was about freeing humanity from being ruled over by people who could see the future. Two sides of the same coin.