20 Things You Didn’t Know About Dune

18. It Was Originally A Serial

Like most works of genre fiction in the mid-to-late 20th century, Dune was initially serialised. Analog magazine published the story in two parts and eight instalments titled ‘Dune World’ and ‘Prophet of Dune’ respectively between 1962 and 1965.

It comes as no surprise that the story, infamous for its dramatic length, would initially have had to be cut into more manageable chunks to draw in casual readers. It was also common practice in this period to do so; a literary trend that went out of fashion in the later years of the 20th Century.

Whilst everyone from the likes of H.P. Lovecraft to Raymond Chandler all had to serialise their work back then to make ends meet, I think we can all agree we got the best version of the story in the final published book.