I'm Gilbert Cruz editor of the New York Times Book Review and this is the Book Review

podcast. This week I'm joined by

A film critic for the New York Times who joined the Times last November.

We're here to talk about Dune, the 1965 Science Fiction Classic by Frank Herbert, and we're also

here to talk about the two film versions, the latter of which was recently released

in theaters worldwide to critical claim

and pretty big box office returns.

Millions of people have read Dune since it came out nearly 60 years ago

and a lot of people have seen both of these films.

So this is going to be a pretty sort of full spoiler conversation for both book and

filmed.

You're warned, Forewarned is for armed. Alyssa, welcome to the Book Review Podcast.

Thank you.

It's good to be here. Alyssa, you wrote about the first of Thank you

wrote about the first of Denis Villeneuve's dune adaptations when that film was released in 2021. You were a critic for Vox at the time.

And before doing so, you read the book,

which has been really a mainstay

of the science fiction canon for a very long time.

So let's start there.

What did you think of the book when you read it?

It took me one full summer to read it. I had known that I should have read it before then.

My undergraduate was at a STEM school, so this was like one of the holy texts

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