Dune

House Atreides is handed control of Arrakis, the only source of the spice melange, and is promptly betrayed. Paul, the duke's son, escapes into the desert and finds a new people, the Fremen, and a destiny he fears.

Herbert builds an astonishingly detailed universe: ecology, religion, politics and prophecy all interlock. The desert is not scenery but a system, and the book's real subject is how power, belief and resources shape history.

The first third is dense with terminology and the prose can be stiff, but persistence pays off. Dune is slow to read and enormous in imagination, and it has influenced almost every science fiction epic since.