In Frank Herbert’s Dune, fungi are hidden in plain sight

Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve’s movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 classic sci-fi novel Dune, is out in cinemas. For almost six decades, fans of the epic space saga have looked at it from many angles, from colonialism to religious fanaticism, but I was blown away to discover, on reading mycologist Paul Stamets’s book Mycelium Running, that “much of the premise of Dune […] came from his [Herbert’s] perception of the fungal life cycle”.

Let’s start with his language. When explaining…