Dune Has a Desert Problem

The article seems to complain about the blending of cultures from human history in a future galactic civilization. However, this is precisely what you'd expect if different groups left Earth and mixed in surprising ways as they migrated from planet to planet. For example, see the syncretic 'ZenSunni' cultural tradition in the Dune books.

Good science fiction (in my opinion) isn't just about technological advancements in a future world that just happens to be socio-politically identical to our own. In fact, the most dated and ignored science fiction of the 1950s has just this problem - a stultified 1950's society transplanted to outer space, somehow unchanged over the centuries.

In science fiction, you get to play with not just future technologies, but also future societies, future religions, future races and cultures, future ecosystems and so on. The author of this piece doesn't seem to grasp that concept, or that the reason for the persistence of the Frank Herbert Dune books is that they aren't fixed in the social era in which they were written.

"Orientalist?"! Ugh. I want to throw up with all this faux racism sophistry. One things for sure, the article is very much modern Occidental -- desperate to cast anything as a social injustice in order to gain popularity (today's measure of news worthy).