Ellis Weiner’s National Lampoon’s Doon parodies Frank Herbert’s Dune, which had become a part of the collegiate zeitgeist. William F. Touponce compared Dune’s impact to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which the Harvard Lampoon similarly parodied as Bored of the Rings. Like that earlier parody, Weiner’s work roughly follows the same plot as the original he’s parodying, though with a great deal of wordplay. For example, Duke Lotto, the head of House Agamemnides, must move to Arruckus, or “Doon,” the Dessert Planet composed of sugars and the only source of beer in the galaxy. Doon is also home to the deadly pretzels and the native Freedmenmen. Lotto’s son Pall and his concubine Jazzica travel with him, with Pall joining the Freedmenmen and taking the name Mauve’Bib after the purple napkin all Freedmenmen wear. Meanwhile, Baron Vladimir Hardchargin conspires with Shaddap IV, the Pahdedbrah Emperor for control of Doon.

Puns and pop culture references abound, with Frank Herbert’s CHOAM transformed into NOAMCHOMSKI. Baron Hardchargin obsesses over the designs of architect Jonzun Fillup, a reference to Philip Johnson who designed 550 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Weiner also includes references to the hokey pokey (pg. 78) while the Emperor’s daughter, Serutan, whose name is “natures” spelled backward, references a laxative of the same name from the 1930s through the 1960s (pg. 179). Like Bored of the Rings, much of the humor in Doon is dated and the running joke about restaurant work and beer grows stale over the course of the novel, though Weiner wisely kept the book short so that the humor doesn’t completely outstay its welcome. Fans of Herbert’s Dune may seek this if they want a complete collection, but, like Bored of the Rings, it was intended for a college demographic decades ago and does not have the lasting power of the work it parodies. ( )

A brilliant parody of Frank Herbert's Dune. Weiner's mimicry of Herbert's style is dead-on accurate. How he managed to successfully parody a huge tome in such a relatively slender book is beyond me.

I'd tried to read Dune at the age of ten, and I simply wasn't ready; I cried and threw the book across the room (not something I had ever done before or since). I bore a grudge against Frank Herbert for years. When I read Doon, I was delighted at the skewering of Herbert's style and plotting.

And yet...somehow, it led me back to Dune again. I was much older by then, and now I was ready for it; the humor of Doon added a leaven of humor to Herbert's extremely complex and dense masterpiece.

Doon lampooned Dune, literally, but not by tearing it apart. I'm not quite sure how to explain it, but Doon actually enhanced Dune, at least for me. Needless to say, you should read Dune (or at least a good chunk of it, as I did) before reading Doon!

I can't help but wonder if Herbert read Doon...and if so, what he thought of it. He's not considered one of science fiction's great humorists, but I've caught a few in-jokes in his works (read the appendices to Dune carefully and you'll catch one or two). I'd like to think he'd have enjoyed Doon. ( )

It's actually better than "Bored of the Rings," the classic of the genre. It successfully lampoons the Herbert original in both plot and style, while inventing an ecosystem involving beer, giant pretzels, and cocktail peanuts. How many books can make that claim? ( )

Doon is a parody of Dune, Frank Herbert’s masterpiece. If is supposed to be funny. Unfortunately, it is not. Oh, it has its moments. The character and place names are amusing. But that’s about it. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/991806.html

This is the story of Pall Agamemnides, the Kumkwat Haagendazs, known to his followers as Mauve'Bib, and how he used the Freedmenmen of the planet Arruckus to take over the galactic empire by controlling the planet's vital export: beer.

Anyone familiar with both Bored of the Rings and Dune will be pretty unsurprised by this book, which takes deadly aim at the pretensions of Herbert's epic masterpiece. No need to go into details, but here's one lovely piss-take of the inspirational quotations that start each of the chapters in the original:

What sort of man was Duke Lotto Agamemnides? We may say he was a brave man, yet a man who knew the value of caution. We may say he was possessed of a highly refined sense of honour - yet, like all leaders, was he no less capable of acts duplicitous and sleazy. We may say this, we may say that - indeed, we may say anything we want. We may say, for example, that he was not a man at all, but a highly evolved bicycle. See? We may say just about anything.

- from "House Agamemnides: Historical Perspectives and Worthless Digressions", by the Princess Serutan.

Not quite as laugh-out-loud hilarious as Bored of the Rings but a damn good effort. ( )