The Dosadi Experiment

As I'm not a fan of [b:Dune 234225 Dune (Dune, #1) Frank Herbert https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434908555l/234225.SY75.jpg 3634639], this is my favourite book by Frank Herbert. I have reservations about it, but I reread it now and then and always seem to enjoy it.All fiction, especially science fiction, is akin to stage magic: the author tries to persuade you that his powers (of imagination, understanding, and intelligence) are greater than they can possibly be. In reading this book, I'm more than usually conscious that what I'm seeing is trickery. Some of the main characters are presented as abnormally intelligent (presumably more intelligent than the author), and all of the characters have grown up in societies alien to us, making them more than usually incomprehensible. In bringing them to life and telling their story, Herbert is perpetrating a fraud, because he can't possibly understand what he pretends to understand.I don't believe either that he has a genuine understanding of the Gowachin legal system, although he delights in presenting it as spectacle. In fact, I doubt that the system as presented would work in any society, although perhaps I should give it the benefit of the doubt because the Gowachin are not human.Despite all this, Herbert does his magic competently enough that the illusion is not shattered. Readers can imagine that there's a planet called Dosadi populated by dangerously super-competent people who've lived their whole lives under constant stress, and that our hero Jorj McKie is so adaptable that he can both master the bizarre Gowachin legal system and rapidly learn how to live on Dosadi without having grown up there.Incidentally, we're told that McKie is dark-skinned and of Polynesian ancestry, although the story is set in a far future in which various non-human intelligent species are known; human skin colour and ancestry seem minor cosmetic details by comparison.What is it about this book that attracts? I suppose the people of Dosadi are appalling but fascinating—and vaguely plausible—while Jorj McKie and the Gowachin legal system are implausible but quite entertaining.The ending of the story is not too bad, but there's something not wholly satisfying about it. Herbert wanted it to end with a firework display, and it does, but I'm left with a vague feeling that it could have been better somehow.