Twilight star Robert Pattinsons recent meeting with Peter Berg (Hancock, Friday Nights), who is directing the new big screen version of Dune, was reported by MTV and others as a sign that Pattinson is up for the role played by Sting in the 1984 David Lynch film of the book. As co-producers of the upcoming film, Dune authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are sworn to secrecy when it comes to details about the hotly anticipated 2010 movie. The truth is no one yet knows who will play the role of Paul of Dune.

Frank Herberts Dune is indisputably one of the 20th centurys most important literary works. Dune is to science fiction what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy, said Arthur C. Clarke. Makers of the upcoming Dune film agree that its the theme of finite ecological resources couldnt be more timely given the increasing threat of global warming.

It predates the original Star Trek. George Lucas admits Dune inspired Star Wars. Forty years later, Dune masterfully reinvents itself through the works of Herberts son, Brian Herbert, and fellow New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson. Next month millions of Dune fans will be rewarded with an epic new adventure from the Dune universe. A direct sequel to Frank Herberts Dune and Dune Messiah, THE WINDS OF DUNE returns to the original book’s most famous characters with the untold story of the survivors after the death of Paul Atreides. Herbert and Anderson focus their complex and riveting epic around Pauls mother, the dangerous and enigmatic Lady Jessica, one of the most compelling female leads in classic science fiction.

Herbert and Anderson are featured guests of honor at this months sold-out Comic-Con International in San Diego, and The Winds of Dune (the eighth book in the series they authored) is one of the most hotly anticipated reads of the summer. Publishers Weekly says: Fans of the original Dune series will love seeing familiar characters, and the narrative voice smoothly evokes the elder Herberts style.

Viewers Will Learn:

The notion of jihad is obviously much more controversial today than when Frank Herbert was first using the word, yet his books were eerily prescient of a future where cultures held radically opposite views on the concept of holy war. Have modern events changed or informed your conception of Paul Atreides jihad?
Is there relevance today for a story about a corrupt and decaying empire willing to install increasingly harsh measures to maintain control over its subjects?
What made you return to Frank Herberts original story, with this book directly following the events of his original novels Dune and Dune Messiah?
How do you collaboratively write together? Has it been challenging with two authors with different styles and strengths to co-conceive such a massive epic?

Brian Herbert is the author of numerous novels and short stories. The eldest son of science fiction icon Frank Herbert, Brian moved 23 times before graduating from high school. His biography of his father, Dreamer of Dune, was a New York Times bestseller. He has written numerous solo science fiction novels, as well as ten other Dune novels with coauthor Anderson.

Kevin J. Anderson is the author of more then 100 novels, 47 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists. He has over 20 million books in print in 30 languages. His books have won or been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader’s Choice Award, the American Physics Society’s Forum Award, and a New York Times Notable Book. He also set the Guinness World Record for Largest Single-Author Signing in 1997. Anderson has written countless novels for DC Comics, Lucasfilm and Chris Carters The X-Files. His latest two books set in the DC universe imagines the first meeting of Batman and Superman during the space age era. Kevins anthology of horror fiction with a humorous bite, Blood Lite, includes stories by Charlaine Harris (writer of the novels that HBOs hit series True Blood is based on), Jim Butcher and Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Observers continue to say that the Dune series parallels current events…Dune is an exact analogy of oil scarcity, said Frank Herbert. An orange spice mlange is their world’s most precious resource; it makes Interstellar space travel possible and extends human life, although becoming addicted to it is ruinous. The spice is only found on a desert planet – or Dune – called Arrakis (pronounced like Iraqis).

Arrakis is ruled by an evil emperor named Shaddam, with death squads called Fedayken. The global battle to control the flow of spice is the main struggle that frames all of Dune. Dune warns against messianic religious fanaticism, with references to jihad. In addition to David Lynchs 1984 film Dune, which starred Kyle McLachlan and Sting, two multiple Emmy-winning Dune miniseries, starring William Hurt and Susan Sarandon, are the most-watched programs in the history of the Sci-Fi Channel.{enclose the_winds_of_dune.mp4}