Dune is a science fiction franchise which originated with the 1965 novel Dune by Frank Herbert. Considered by many to be the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Dune is frequently cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in history. Dune won the 1966 Hugo Award and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was later adapted into a 1984 film as well as a 2000 television miniseries.

Herbert wrote five sequels, and the first two were presented as a miniseries in 2003. The Dune universe has also inspired some traditional games and a series of video games. Herbert himself died in 1986.

Beginning in 1999, his son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson have published a number of prequel novels, as well as two which complete the original Dune series — Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007) — partially based on Frank Herbert's notes discovered a decade after his death. The political, scientific, and social fictional setting of Herbert's novels and derivative works is known as the Dune universe, or Duniverse.

Set tens of thousands of years in the future, the saga chronicles a civilization which has banned computers but has also developed advanced technology and mental and physical abilities. Vital to this empire is the harsh desert planet Arrakis, only known source of the spice melange, the most valuable substance in the universe. Herbert's interest in the desert setting of Dune and its challenges is attributed to research he began in 1957 for a never-completed article about a United States Department of Agriculture experiment using poverty grasses to stabilize damaging sand dunes, which could "swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways." Herbert spent the next five years researching, writing, and revising what would eventually become the novel Dune, which was initially serialized in Analog magazine as two shorter works, Dune World (1963) and The Prophet of Dune (1965).

The serialized version was expanded and reworked — and rejected by more than twenty publishers — before being published by Chilton Books, a little-known printing house best known for its auto repair manuals, in 1965. Dune won the 1966 Hugo Award and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel.

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