What about a naturalist tale that doesn't indulge in either sort of fetishism, the sort of fetishism that observes an artificial distinction drawn between "nature" and "development" and assumes uncritically that must be all there is? You've just inverted the sign, without noticing that the figures don't add up in the first place.

Like all life, we modify our environment in accord with our needs, and by itself there's no more harm in that than when beavers or wasps or crows or spiders or any other animals do it. The problem isn't that we're so good at improving our environment for ourselves, but that we suck so bad at avoiding damage to the ecologies we so modify. We can improve upon the latter without forswearing the former, which is good, because we might as well try to forswear breathing.

My point was not so much about the distinction between nature and development, although I think the distinction is far from artifictial (depending perhaps on what one means by "nature" and "development"). Rather, I was reacting to the seemingly common view that deserts are somehow worse than e.g. forests and that a naturalist would want to turn a desert green.

As far as your second point, that it is possible to improve our environment in ways that are reasonably ecologically-friendly, I generally agree. What constitutes environmental improvement vs damage will vary considerably from person to person however, and some things we may collectively view as improvements are much easier to implement than to reverse, so in fragile ecosystems (e.g. much of the desert in southwest US) we should think very carefully about whether our improvements are really a good idea.

In the context of the source material (the books by Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson), the 'greening' of Dune/Arrakis is a very broad plot theme. So, the comment is not one of 'green washing' but in keeping with themes of the series.

Full disclosure: Haven't read all the books, nor am I looking to after reading a bunch during the pandemic.

I've only read the first of the Dune books, and I do (somehat vaugely) recall the Freemen project to green Arrakis. My comment was intended less as a comment on the greening project in the context of Dune and more as a challenge to the idea that turning a desert green is a 'naturalist tale'. To me it sounds more like the tale of a property developer or industrial agriculturalist.

For this particular topic you should definitely read more of the books before commenting on the theme of the series. The GP is more thematically correct.

While true, it's also of course true that much of the desert in the world right now is man-made, a result of desertification due to human activity. The Sahara has virtually wiped out the Sahel. Some of this is natural (though, of course, it's debatable whether we want to simply allow "natural" processes) but a lot of it human driven. The Gobi is even worse. Even processes that take place at a breakneck pace are still barely noticeable in a human life, so most people are the prototypical boiled frogs.

And indeed, we learn that Herbert's inspiration for Dune was encroaching desertification in Oregon (largely caused by humans) and the geoengineering efforts to create a green belt to stem the tide.

Good point! I was mainly thinking of the desert of southern Utah and neighboring states, the subject of the book I quoted, and with which I have personal experience. That region is not free from its own human-caused environmental issues of course, but my understanding is that they are mainly different from the particular problems resulting in desertification in Oregon.

I guess a general point that may be worth making is that it's often useful to think in terms of protecting fragile ecosystems, be they desert or the victim of desertification.

The literal origin of Dune was managing the ecologically destructive propagative nature of desertification.

> What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans

This is a huge plot point of a bunch of the later dune books. Based on the comments here, almost no one has actually read them.

I must admit that I have only read the first book in the Dune series. I've heard that the first is by far the best of the series, and my reading list is long enough as it is, but I shall consider reading more of the series.

Anyway, my point was more about ecological conservation in general, and not much about Dune in particular.

I don't think the first book is notably better than the sequels. They're all quite interesting if you're into the wide-ranging categories of thought Herbert pursued (and was generally ahead of his time on).

> What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans?

Well, in the Dune source material it was terraformed into desert from a green planet. So, you know, returning it to green is perfectly fine.

Sure! And how great if a game could explore those kinds of tensions. We could have moral, social, and political questions as well. But in terms of novel adaptation, at least in the first book, turning parts of Arrakis green was one of the Freman dreams.