While Herbert did include a fair amount of Deliberate Values Dissonance for the time he himself was writing in so that the setting of Dune would feel different, and while the books have some pointedly sharp elements pressing against the culture of the time, there are still elements of the early books, in particular, that mark the books as products of their era and might feel strange to readers half a century or more later.
- Although Herbert's overall treatment of gender roles is complex and part of the point, there is one element that rather sticks out: whenever a man learns the secrets of the all-female Bene Gesserit order or its offshoots, the men are shown as being inherently superior in these arts without exception, and exploiting this in-universe is actually part of the Gesserit plan. While it's implied that the chosen man actually needs to have centuries of genetic manipulation behind him in order to be able to learn such secrets (Paul, Leto II, the Duncan Idaho gholas and Miles Teg are all complete anomalies brought about by genetic engineering), as well as some token mention being made of the situation being reversed earlier in history, in practice the narrative consistently demonstrates an ideal of male superiority. Apparently the male psyche is too horrific to be looked at by a female consciousness. In the 21st century, the worst and earliest examples of this in the series can seem almost comical, but in The '60s the idea of total male superiority was still omnipresent - it's the whole reason the women's liberation movement existed - and for an author born in 1920 and writing in the 60s, this approach and philosophy would've been largely mainstream and presupposed.
- An exiled prince is thrust out into the desert with his mother, slowly but surely earns the trust of the sun-darkened inhabitants of the desert, eventually rising to become their leader and their prophet, and leads them to glory against their enemies with the actual mystic, foretold powers he possesses. Today's readers, upon starting the book, may assume the original Dune is playing the Mighty Whitey card just like Lawrence of Arabia. Those who are drawn to the novel through the 1984 film may also assume such. However, the book and the rest of the series famously turns this trope on its head a good deal, as the prophecy and Paul's abilities are entirely the result of thousands of years of human machinations, the coming galactic Jihad is unambiguously presented as an inevitable, terrible thing, and Paul and his family then need to deal with the consequences of all this (and the 1984 film glossed it all over). In the 60s, though, Mighty Whitey was only just beginning to become a Discredited Trope and examples prior to and contemporary to Dune's release were ubiquitous, and indeed still part and parcel of Anglophone young adult adventure (which is the original book's genre, at least on its face, before getting more complicated). Also, if we're bringing skin color into it, it's arguably a Subverted Trope already: the Atreides complexion is said to be "olive" like the Fremen (with the Duke Leto in particular being "dark olive"), and the very name Atreides, meaning "son of Atreus", hints that they have distant Greek ancestry (their direct descent from Agamemnon son of Atreus is confirmed in Children of Dune through ancestral memory), not to mention their bullfighting culture relating them to Spain; all of this makes it debatable if they are actually "white" (in the sense that they should be considered Mediterranean rather than fully Caucasian). This can't be debated for the actors cast as Paul, however, being all of them white.
- The first sequel novel can run into a problem very different from the previous point, upon extrapolating this: as Paul makes use of the Fremen as a conquering army to enforce his control over the Empire, the Fremen engage in deliberate, wanton destruction and rape which lies in stark contrast to the structured, "civilized" feudal violence the Houses had practiced earlier. While Herbert does not shy away from the psychological damage this inflicts on everyone involved, including the Fremen, especially in The New '10s and beyond it's very possible to read this depiction of the Fremen as a breathtaking anti-Muslim (and specifically anti-Arab) racist allegory. While this doesn't seem to have been Herbert's intent, "outsiders" invading and destroying "civilization" was another ubiquitous trope of fiction in the first half of the 20th century and it's little surprise he made use of it.
- The opposite case could be made about the previous point too. With groups like the Islamic State, the Taliban and Al Qaeda on everyone's radar, it's become increasingly harder to read fanatical mujahidin as good guys, and while in the story Fremen are not presented as good guys per se, they are still the protagonists' main allies and a solid source of favorable comparison to the decadent Harkonnens, Corrinos and the rest of the Imperial peoples. The latter division also presents Fremen in a light that enforces classical Noble Savage traits, like being closer to nature, maintaining a tough-but-just meritocratic society, and being ultimately superior in battle to their enemies in a way connected to their also superior virtue, while at the same time overlooking their archaic gender dynamics (like polygyny and trade of wives as booty), which are not condemned or addressed in the story. The result is that modern readers might feel uncomfortable at being suggested to root for them, either due to the brutality they spouse or to the outdated cultural stereotypes that in other circumstances should have served as redeeming qualities.
- The nature of the Fremen being pure warriors superior at fighting compared to the remainder of the galaxy because of their harsh living conditions is an old trope examined deeply in this essay
. One of the conclusions is that such analysis is not actually about the primitive peoples like the Fremen themselves, but is an old and outdated trope that it criticizing the modern society for being "decadent". - Herbert was mostly able to keep his homophobia (to the point of disowning his younger son for supporting gay rights) out of the books, but the brief moments portraying Baron Harkonnen as a Depraved Homosexual who lusts after his own nephew are quite uncomfortable these days.
- Despite being set thousands of years of the future, the setting has a clear lack of futuristic 'laserguns' common to the genre. Herbert found an in-universe justification for this by having the beam of a lasgun, when striking a shield, would cause a nuclear explosion killing both target and gunner, so no rational person would ever use them lightly. This makes a lot of sense when you realize when the first book was written during the cold war, when the US and USSR had the nuclear weapons to utterly destroy one another, but mutually-assured-destruction ensured anyone pulling the trigger would die in nuclear fire just like the target, and fortunately for all rational minds kept their cool. But that was before the rise of fanatical terrorism, which resulted in suicide bombers and other fanatics that would gladly martyr themselves in order to kill as many of the enemy (or even their civilians) as possible. Moreover, since then armies are more conscious of friendly fire and accidental discharges, which you can never fully prevent. As such, having everything protected by something that blows up in a mushroom cloud the moment someone is crazy or careless enough to hit it with a type of gun that is uncommon but hardly rare, would seem rather insane. In fact, this happens soon enough in the series, and highlights the difference between the unjust and unfair but somewhat civilised feudal future and the jihad being even worse in almost every way.
