Customer Reviews

The Dosadi Experiment

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2 star:		(2)
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Frank Herbert deserves his rep as one of the greatest science fiction writers. Dune, his most popular book (with 2 film adaptations) is an incredible epic. This book, however, is something that has stuck with me and improved with every reading. It a superior work in a lot of ways.

Some spoiler-free background:

Like a James Bond in the future, 500-year-old Jorge McKie is an agent for the government. The government in question is the ConSentiency: an amalgam of all sentient races in the galaxy worknig to keep the peace. This alone is an incredibly difficult prospect, for surly a race with a different biology and a different culture would come up with a different set of laws. How could such a thing as a ConSentiency exist? Making things more difficult are two relatively new uphevals: 1> that stars are sentent beings, and 2> stars themselves allow instant travel from place to place in the galaxy.

And now, as our story starts, the uneasy peace is threatened by an experiment: 200 years previously, a race of aliens has created Dosadi: a poison planet inhabited with kidnapped humans and aliens who have had their memories erased and been dumped on the planet to fend for themselves. How will they survive when cut off from the rest of the galaxy and not given enough resources?

The makers of Dosadi hope to learn how to improve their own race, but their creation becomes something else entirely. It is horror enough that this world exists, but what to do with the experiment? McKie, with the fate of the entire planet in his hands, is ordered to visit the planet and discover for himself.

All of this is revealed in the first few chapters, and I won't go into any more plot detail. The beauty of this book, though, is the extremes of the ConSentiency and Dosadi; and the truly alien nature of the aliens. Herbert fills the ConSentiency and Dosadi with many layers of meaning that unpeel before the readers eyes. McKie is a character who has dedicated his life to reaching for the alien shore (his expertise is in alien law and ethics). When McKie travels to Dosadi, he will find how life-altering his vocation can be.

I'd also like to add that few authors could write a book that includes a courtroom drama so completly alien and so compelling.

This is a wonderful book. Some passages ring so piercingly that you just have to put the book down and absorb them. Dosadi is an unpleasant world, to be sure, but it works as a nice stand-in for our own. And there are a ton of ethical questions abounding in this book, not that Frank is one to hit you over the head with them. For in addition to all of the philosophy and metaphysics, it is a ripping good yarn.

Note: "The Dosadi Experiment" takes place in the same universe as "The Whipping Star" and "The Artful Saboteaur", but it is NOT a sequal and it can be read on its own.

Enjoy!

Yes, Frank Herbert wrote other novels than the "Dune" series. Of these, "The Dosadi Experiment" is by far one of the best.

Dosadi is an artificially populated planet with a dark, dark secret. Jorg X. McKie, who was introduced in a companion novel "Whipping Star" is sent to investigate the goings-on on Dosadi, an assignment that could very well lead to his destruction.

Dosadi is a toxic planet, where survivors live either in an overpopulated fortress of a city and survive on their wits, or struggle to live on the poisonous Rim, where the very soil and plants are enemies. The people of Dosadi are tough indeed, but they are a lot more than just tough survivors. They hold a desperate secret that could upset the balance of the rest of the galaxy.

McKie's struggle to survive and to discover Dosadi's secrets make for a really exciting tale. The characters are vivid, creative (all kinds of sentient species) and very interesting. If you love good science fiction, this is a must-read.

If you read Dune (or almost any other Herbert book) you know that one of his favourite themes is that of the sequestered/closed society in a harsh environment. No one ever did it as well.

_Dosadi_ offers a lot. It offers a very interesting alien race (well, more than one, but one that gets the most attention) that is truly alien, with a fascinating legal system that questions the basic assumptions we start with. The plot unfolds like a sunrise, letting out bits of information gradually until the reader comes to understand just what a monstrous timebomb has been created by shortsighted beings. The protagonist and other main characters are well-described and interesting, as is the interplay among them.

This is not light reading, but if you like fiction that inspires you to question your assumptions, this is one of the best examples of same. Especially recommended to those with an interest in the topic of law and legal proceedings, or to anyone who has already decided they like Herbert's style.

The Dosadi Experiment is a brilliant, and complicated book. The concepts Herbert indulges in here will keep you pondering for weeks, months and years after you read it. Essentially an experiment is conducted on a planet enclosed behind a created protective barrier called the 'God Wall' to keep the inhabitants from leaving. A series of hostile conditions are created complete with toxic waste, hunger and war. The inhabitants are all unknowing 'test subjects' in a grand experiment, and develop into the most dangerous people in the universe, frightening their creators with their abilities. As events unfold, the inhabitants of Dosadi actually learn how to pass through the 'God Wall' unleashing themselves on the universe and the culmination of the tale winds up in the most unusual trial you will ever read. All in all quite a facinating exploration into a broad new territory for Herbert, marking him as one of the great pioneers of the genre of Science Fiction. This book is currently out of print and the copy I have is very old, but it is well worth searching used books stores to read this one. It is actually Herbert's sequel to 'Whipping Star'.

This is a very difficult novel for me to review. It is brilliantly written and extremely deep in a philosophical sense. Too deep, in fact, for me to simply read and enjoy. I read for pleasure and this book requires either extreme intelligence or more effort than I'm willing to expend strictly for pleasure reading.

I read and enjoyed Dune very much. One of my favorite novels of all time. This novel is very similar to some of the sequels to Dune (God Emperor of Dune, Chapterhouse Dune) which I felt got too bogged down in deep philosphical discussions that quite simply lost me.

I am a very well educated person and no idiot, however I'm definitely not smart enough to fully appreciate this novel. I read the book and followed the story line, but feel like I missed so much of the underlying meaning that it was a waste of my time. I could probably read, reread and ponder many sections and ultimately gain a greater appreciation, but I'm challenged sufficiently at work. I read to relax and decompress. This is not relaxing reading.

Bottom line: If you are very intelligent and/or a deep thinker who reads in order to broaden your mind or challenge yourself, this novel will certainly do the trick. If you read strictly for pleasure and want science fiction, read Asimov instead. This book is Dune on steroids.

What do get when you secretly place a population of highly intelligent volunteers on a harh and poisonous planet, erase their memories and cut them of from the rest of the galaxy by the "God wall" for centuries? How long would it take for their superhuman descendants to get even?

Herbert excells in what he does best: creating a complex situation, new and well worked out societies, layer upon layer to discover in high tension situations, a protagonist who starts as the unadjusted outsider, but ends up being the catalyst and more. Of course a comparison to Dune is easily made, but Herbert remains very creative and continues to surprise his readers. I won't go into the plotline here, but Herbert explores: the effects of high intelligence, a new view on justice and the justice system, unnatural selection, immortality and transcent intelligence. Enough to set the mind in motion.

Drawbacks are, in my opinion, the typical Herbert opening, introducing to many persons and plotlines for comfort, that will only be truly appreciated in a second reading. And the somewhat flat characters that are more vehicles to carry the plot, than that they are well rounded persons one can relate to and feel sorry for.

There are books you go back to read because they grow foggy in your memory and you yearn to rebuild the experience you that you recall. Then there is a book like the Dosadi Experiment that you read once a year to re-learn the hard lessons and to expose life to but another facetted mirror. Nothing you can read, including the other works of Herbert, will prepare for you for this work. It will overwhelm and draw you away from this place to fully judge all the lies before you. Nothing is above questioning.

Expect to read some pages twice or three times, to fully savor the twist in your mind. The last 6 chapters are as good as anything written in any genre, expect to re-read those to find the real meaning: That to be innocent is to be but a pawn.

Scour used bookstores, cause it's out-of-print. My copy is at least 15 years old and I'm here shopping for a dozen to give away. Shame I have to do it now one store at a time.

It's rare to find a book that combines such complex ideas with such an engaging story. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. Now that I've finished I continue to ponder the ideas expressed in the book.
Dosadi explores some of the same issues of power that Herbert explored in the Dune series. The futuristic world he created isn't as detailed as Dune, but I came to really care about the characters in Dosadi despite the fact that they aren't as well developed. On one level it is a fun page turner but the underlying, though provoking questions it raises makes the book truly interesting.

The Dosadi Experiment is Herbert's second greatest achievement (after Dune of course) (I have read probably 99% of his works). It is set in a universe populated by several conflicting alien races. The 'hero' Jorj X McKie is a human who works for BuSab - the Bureau Of Sabotage, a secret service set up to slow down the wheels of government. He is summoned by the Gowachin, a froglike species, to help them deal with their experiment on Dosadi which has gone horribly wrong. Dosadi (surprise, surprise) is a largely unhabitable planet, apart from one City into which are 80 million beings are crammed - all either Gowachin or Human. The conditions are so harsh that the people have become super-tough : McKie, BuSabs best agent, is treated like a gormless cretin when he first arrives. The plot follows his attempt to discern the nature of the problem and fix it, in Herbert's inimitable style. I CANNOT believe this book is hard to find - it is definitely one of the best pieces of Science Fiction writing I have read.

This novel is apparently out of print, which is a shame. This is one of his best books--easily the equal to Dune and God Emperor of Dune. Herbert explores one of the perennial themes of history: governmental power and its misuse. The misuse herein is on an exceptionally massive scale; only Stalin's horrors are comparable. A rogue elite within the Gowachin government sets up an experiment that creates a race of super barbarians trapped on a poisonous planet subjected to artificially engineered shortages that creates conditions of endemic warfare and extreme exploitation. (The historical parallels are the German and Arab barbarian eruptions into the Roman and Byzantine Empires.) As is usually the case with governments, it wasn't thought through at all. Even the most basic consequences seem to have eluded the decision-makers. Herbert skillfully explores many of the same themes that he did in the Dune books, but without the mystico-eco sub- and super-texts. The book is very talky, which I enjoy. If you're looking for a sci-fi actioner, this is not the book for you. If you like to spend hours contemplating the above-mentioned themes, pick this one up. I have no idea how this book originally sold, but, obviously, not well enough as it is out-of-print. This is probably due to lack of promotion on the publisher's part as well the public's shallow indifference to anything lacking a big "name" (that Sidney Sheldon makes millions is proof enough of my thesis!).

The book is part of a larger series that began with a short story called "The Tactful Saboteur" (which can be found in a collection of Herbert's short fiction called "The Worlds of Frank Herbert" of which I happen to have an autographed copy) and a short novel called "Whipping Star." This universe was a multi-species one with fascinating aliens called the Gowachin, the Pan-Spechi, the Wreaves, the Palenki and others. The most interesting are the idea of the Calebans-think jumpgates as living beings and you begin to get the idea-and the Gowachin legal system. I entertain a hope-probably in vain-that his son has other novels and stories in his possession that some day, if only on the web!, might see the light of day. If anyone out there knows of other published stories in this universe, please email me. Apparently, commercial disinterest or his untimely death prevented Mr. Herbert from fully fleshing out this universe. Maybe. Someday, another author will be given a chance to more fully explore this vision of the future. Any sophisticated sf fan should really enjoy the textured nuances his best work so richly possessed.