Books Like Dune

Dan Simmons

Like Dune, it follows a group of travellers across a richly built future universe, with a mix of religious intrigue, political danger and a slowly revealed mythic core that rewards patient reading.

George R. R. Martin

It shares Dune's web of great houses vying for control of a vital resource, with alliances and betrayals driving every chapter and no character entirely safe.

Pierce Brown

Its rigid class hierarchy and rebellion against a ruling elite echo Dune's imperial power struggles, while its pace and sense of a vast, dangerous society will feel familiar.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin shares Dune's careful anthropology of an alien world, where culture, climate and politics shape everything, and her quiet, thoughtful tone suits readers who enjoy Herbert's ideas.

Kim Stanley Robinson

Like Dune, it treats a hostile environment as a central force, and its detailed attention to ecology, colonisation and political factions will appeal to readers drawn to Arrakis.

Jules Verne

It offers the classic sense of venturing into a strange, hostile landscape that Dune readers enjoy, with a steady build of wonder and danger in an older, adventurous style.

Frank Herbert

This is a sequel, so it is excluded.

Patrick Rothfuss

Its gifted, reluctant protagonist and its weaving of myth, legend and power echo Dune's themes of destiny and the burden of being seen as a chosen figure.

Octavia E. Butler

Butler's story of a young woman founding a belief system amid collapse explores faith and leadership in ways that resonate with Dune's religious politics and ecological concerns.

Isaac Asimov

Like Dune, it spans millennia of political decline and uses a scientific-seeming system to examine how empires rise and fall, offering a grander look at the same big questions.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Its sharp political argument and carefully imagined alternative society reward the same kind of patient, idea-driven reading that Dune demands.

Neal Stephenson

Stephenson's dense, inventive world and sharp satire of power and religion will appeal to readers who enjoyed Herbert's mix of big ideas and sprawling invention.