In Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film adaptation of Dune, humans live in settlements across the universe, but what happened to Earth in this science-fiction future? The film leaves Earth’s fate a mystery, but its history is found in both Frank Herbert’s original Dune Chronicles novel series and the expanded literature. By the time of the events that take place in Dune, Earth has experienced thousands of years of turmoil, leaving it an entirely transformed place.
In Dune, Duke Leto of House Atreides is assigned to lead the human colonies on Arrakis, a desert planet where the invaluable substance “spice” is harvested. While this appears a politically advantageous move for House Atreides, it is actually a trap set by the Emperor of the Known Universe and House Harkonnen, Atreides’ rival, who intend to wipe out Duke Leto and his family to secure their rulership of the interstellar human empire. The heir to House Atreides, Paul, escapes assassination and finds sanctuary with the Fremen, the locally-inhabiting community. He commits to join them and bring peace to their world, rebelling against the empire that forsook him. In essence, Dune is an account of the human empire’s expansion thousands of years after leaving Earth, for reasons of conquest and necessity.
Earth is rarely mentioned in Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles. The God-Emperor Leto II acknowledges the planet as no longer existing, which the religious Bene Gesserit confirm, calling Earth “gone.” Besides references to historical Earth leaders and art, Earth appears mysteriously erased. In the expanded literature, however, a fuller explanation is presented. Historically, Earth existed just as it does in current reality, until about 24,300 years before Dune, wherein humans began exploring and conquering other worlds.
According to the history established by the Dune books, during the growth of the empire, Earth was supposedly struck by an asteroid, which devastated the planet. While Earth’s environment was eventually restored, the planet was designated a nature preserve. Approximately 13,000 years later, Earth was designed to house the genocidal supercomputer Omnius; the resulting war between humans and machines drove the humans to destroy Earth with nuclear weapons, leaving it desolate. When Dune properly occurs, Earth’s environment has yet again been revitalized, although the planet is minimally occupied and mostly disregarded. The final fate of Earth, as accounted by the original Dune book series, is revealed as once again uninhabited for unknown reasons, perhaps for good.
While Earth’s devastation may seem terrible, this actually helps Dune succeed as the landmark science-fiction work it is. In the film, human civilization is very severed from its home-world roots. The nobility exists in outer space, or as impermanent residents of colonized worlds; Paul Atreides’ people move as the empire dictates in order to maintain human civilization. Commoner people exist as subjugated, struggling communities; the Fremen of Arrakis in Dune are semi-nomadic, forced to have adapted to their arid, dangerous world, implying that they weren’t always native. Humans no longer consider Earth their home, and their expansion to exotic worlds causes the technology and behaviors of their futuristic society to necessitate more imaginative storytelling.
While Dune is a story of the struggles of human expansion across the universe, Earth plays a surprisingly insignificant role in the tale. This may be for the best, however, as Earth’s ruin drives the story to reach new innovative heights. The loss and subsequent disregard for Earth allows Dune to have some of the most innovative, unique world-building in the genre. Just as human civilization needed to abandon Earth to reach its galactic potential, Dune needed to leave Earth behind to be truly groundbreaking science-fiction.
