Frank Herbert's 1963 Dune is to science fiction what The Lord of The Rings is to fantasy: the most popular, most influential and most critically-acclaimed novel in the genre. Herbert's novel was a revelation: before Dune, even the most well-written science fiction had been mostly "wonderful gadget" stories, or political commentary expressed through exaggeration. It had never occurred to anyone that science fiction could offer the literary depth of Dostoevsky, the intricate "wheels within wheels" intrigues of Shakespeare or so deeply fulfill the heroic epic form behind Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Le Morte D'Arthur, The Mahabharata, and Beowulf.