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Dune
"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I remain."
"Survival is the ability to swim in strange water."
"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the ecosystem, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive."
Lamb
" 'Did you build this place, Balthasar?' I asked.
'Oh, no,' he said, without turning around. 'This was always here, I simply had to remove the stone that occupied it.' "
"It's very difficult to stay angry when a room full of bald guys in strange robes start giggling. Buddhism."
"If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes."
Head-to-Head
Characters: So we've got poor man's psychic desert Christ vs caricature Christ.
Oh, bother.
It's an endeavor to take writing as dry as in the Bible, stay even remotely relevant to the source material, and write compelling funny guys. Granted, the funniest guy of all who tells the story in Lamb is wicked fictitious (we assume), but he's still a good lens to view the scripture's main characters through. Dune's characters may have been fresh on its release, but if they were, they didn't stand the test of time.
Advantage: Lamb.
Setting: It would be so easy for Moore to have been complacent whilst writing Lamb, sticking to the rivers and the lakes that we're used to. But, he instead endeavored to chase waterfalls and cliffsides and lush fields and epic live-in caves and all sorts of heights of Earthly wonder. Arrakis is an arid planet with a full, rich setting complete with songs and politics and culture—facets not always covered in science fiction. Both writers could've mailed it in on their settings, and neither did. I'm giving Moore the nudge because he had an existing framework to write in and still managed to be spectacular. Constrained creativity is way harder than "hey, I made this planet!", even though both are plenty entertaining.
Advantage: Lamb.
Plot: Both books feature a guy becoming a messiah, more or less. Both are intriguing, but oddly enough, it's a little harder to telegraph the path in Lamb. Though it became sort of obvious what Moore was going for after the boys visited Balthasar, he tied it together in a way that was totally unexpected from the book's beginnings. In its own right, Dune is twisty, but it foreshadows pretty much everything extensively. It's a stylistic difference, and each has arguable merits. Typically, though, the more a book surprises me, the better.
Advantage: Lamb.
Ending: I didn't love Lamb's ending, nor the frame tale's ending within it. Dune ends with a great duel that blends Herbert's attentions to culture, politics and body language in a cohesive conclusion.
Advantage: Dune.
Language/Writing: Lamb is hilarious and Moore writes his punchlines well. Dune is routinely quotable despite simple language. There are a lot moore Christophers than there are Franks.
Advantage: Dune.
Philosophy: Lamb kind of pulls a catch-all style, paying visits and tributes to other old religions in a way that would really set Christ up to be the one true leader of men. Dune is rife with reflection on bureaucracy, religion, and is a large allegory (intentional or not) to Middle Eastern politics. Both touch on similar subjects, but Lamb does so in an endearing and lighthearted way, while Dune could cause sleep loss for cynics. As in Dune's round one match, I'm going with the one that's more comfortable to think about.
Advantage: Lamb.
Winner Winner Turkey Supper
Dune was certainly a feat in creative writing that's achieved classic, must-read status... it just hasn't aged so well. In this round, it faced a fresh take on another story that hasn't aged so great itself, but Moore's retelling is hilarious and lead me to consider spirituality more than any real-life religious text has in years.
Lamb fleeces Dune to move to the third round.
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