DUNE is a bit of a special interest of mine. So I will thoroughly enjoy this exercise, as I have a 9 year old, but I’ll aim for a 5 year old.

Backstory isn’t really relavant to Frank Herbert’s novels, but it is a fun one.

Humans have gotten really good with computers. So good, that they now attempt to make computers do their thinking for them. Some humans thought this would make their lives easier. Except it only allowed other humans with thinking computers to enslave them, and it lead to a big war.

The war ended up being between the thinking computers and last humans. We already had the ability to travel between stars, but it takes a long time. A really smart woman invented a technology that allowed protection from pew pews, and the ability to travel through space instantly.

The thinking machines didn’t have the technology. The only problem was that when the space ships used it to travel space instantly, a lot of the ships blew up because they couldn’t see exacrlt where the ship would travel.

The smart woman found that a new medicine, taken from the sands of the planet Dune, let her see all possibilities, briefly into the future. This allowed the ships to travel instantly. This helped the humans defeat the thinking machines.

After the war, humans decided that computers were very bad. So they created schools to train some people in ways to replace computers. Mentats were very good at math, had a lot of knowledge, and excellent problem solving ability. Suk doctors were able to do everything that machines used to be required to cure people. The Bene Gesserit were to help shape humanity to prevent stagnation and enforce the ban on computers.

The space ship pilots controlled the who universe though. And since the medicine they needed came from Dune, all the power of the universe was sitting in that single planet.

Far in the future, humanity is spread across space in a vast empire.

Long before the events of the book, humanity fought a long and bloody war against computers aka “thinking machines” which led to the destruction of all computers and a total ban on them.

Luckily there exists a substance called “spice” which enhances the human mind to incredible levels, allowing human brains to do everything from complex mathematical calculations to plotting courses for space flight. It’s only because of spice that computerless society and interstellar travel are able to exist.

Spice has a drawback, though: it’s incurably addictive.

It’s also only found on one planet, called Arrakis or Dune. As you can imagine, this makes Arrakis a strategically critical planet.

There are tons of other social, political, and religious details to the universe but this is the basic premise.

It takes multiple books to cover, so this is the very, very basics:

~12,000 years in our future, Humanity goes to war with “thinking machines.” The war lasted a while, humans finally win, and vowed to never create such machines again. Another ~12,000 years later, Dune takes place.

By this time, the “no AI/computers” is such a deeply ingrained belief, that it has made its way into literally every facet of culture: politics, religion, commerce/transportation, etc. Of course, having fast calculations is also really handy, so humans resort to selective breeding programs and strict social castes that result in human calculators (Mentats) and other specialized professions. Even that’s not good enough to do interstellar travel calculations, so some people are imbued with “spice” (discovered on one planet, Arrakis, the Dune planet).

It’s basically space magic mushrooms. Opens the mind like nothing else. That’s the only way to do interstellar commerce, so it’s the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, and whoever controls the planet gets enormously powerful, and also has a huge target on their back. Meanwhile, a maternal religious sect is running its own breeding program to get to fulfill some “chosen one” prophecy.

Magic space dust that makes warp drive work only exists on Giant Worm Planet. Warp drive only works when one of the mysterious navigators eats some, allowing them to “travel without traveling”. (Hint, they’re giant space worms, I can’t remember if this is revealed early in the books or not, but it’s right at the start in the movies).

Space Nazis in charge of worm planet made their emperor mad, so he gave the planet to a different clan.

Space Nazis hated that, so they attempt to sabotage the planet handover.

So do the natives of worm planet.

So do the worms of worm planet.

Worm planet natives win with the help of the “prince” of the clan that took over. Prince of that new clan earns the respect of, and becomes the leader of, the worm planet natives, who collectively fight off the emperor and the space Nazi’s combined forces at the end of book 1.

At the start of Book 2 (12 year time skip) the pince is the emperor of the known universe.

At some point after this he space prince’s son turns into a worm.