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I'm only speculating, of course, but I'm beginning to wonder whether Dune Messiah was Frank Herbert's " I Am Not Spock " moment. (Maybe I should take the more literary path and suggest it's his Arthur Conan Doyle moment?) I started rereading Herbert's Dune novels recently and have just finished Dune Messiah . I've read Messiah before (at least twice that I remember), but I've never been struck by how… disappointing… this book was compared to its predecessor before today. It's almost as if Herbert looked at everything that made the first book good, and stripped them out for its sequel. His main character, Paul Atreides/Muad'dib, has gone from heroic young man to dour Imperator, cursed with the gift of prescience, and a near infallibility brought on by that knowledge of the future. (Frankly, nothing could be more boring than a central character that's invulnerable to change.) His friends and cohorts from the first book are all ei