Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco once said that “[a] novel is a machine for generating interpretations.” While most readers today will expect something straightforward out of a novel, with a plain path of growth and development for the characters resulting in a satisfying conclusion, there are still novelists out there who want the reader to figure things out for themselves.
Frank Herbert may have accidentally done this in the 1960s with Dune, writing what he thought was an obvious warning against a single leader having too much power. When the public largely interpreted his book as endorsing Paul Atreides’ ascension, he wrote Dune: Messiah to clarify his position on the matter. Readers still debate Paul’s morality to this day, even if Herbert wrote four more sequels to affirm his own take.
