Imagine a world that's nothing but desert!
A big advantage to setting a sci-fi world in a desert is that it's easy to conceptualize, compared to a geographically and culturally diverse world like Earth. That's not to say you can't include diversity...
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Twenty-one thousand years is a very long time.
Consider that the pyramids are only about five thousand years old, and then think about how much change humanity has experienced in that time. From stone tools to space travel is a huge leap. Now try to imagine what the leap could look like going from basic space travel to a future twenty-one thousand years from now.
That is where the Dune stories are set. In a universe where interstellar travel has been made commonplace as the result of the discovery of a substance, formally called melange, known as Spice that grants humans with a vastly extended life span and, for some, a bit of prescience. In the stories, written by Frank Herbert, the use of Spice has been well established. Humanity has established, once again, an empire based on the feudal system that spans the stars.
He provides a fascinating view into one possible way that humanity could evolve in that time; physically, mentally, and socially. The admixture of cultures, languages, and religions create a society that is entirely unlike, yet hauntingly familiar to, our own.
This evolution reflects some massive events that occurred in the millennia between now and the time of the stories. For example, millennia earlier the Butlerian Jihad was the result of a massive rebellion against Artificial Intelligence and cyborgs known as Cymeks that arose out of computer technology. Therefore computing machines were outlawed and human Mentats were trained that had the mental skills necessary to replace computers.
The stories revolve primarily around two competing houses that have had a long history of conflict with each other. House Atreides and House Harkonnen are these two houses. The initial story, Dune, starts with House Atreides moving to the planet, Arrakis, assigned to them by the Landsraad (the empire's ruling body) where they are replacing House Harkonnen as caretakers of the only planet where Spice, is found.
Arrakis is a desert planet, thus the nickname Dune. There is an entire society that has learned to exist in the arid wilds of the planet, far from "civilized" imperial society, known as the Fremen. If that looks a whole lot like "free men" then you're certainly paying attention because they definitely do see themselves that way.
Paul Atreides is the central figure of the first few books. He is the result of centuries of selective breeding that is intended to create the "Kwisatz Haderach". To understand this it's useful to know that today's genetic science has developed within the storyline into two major schools of thought.
One, espoused by the semi-religious society known as the Bene Gesserit, study human genetics carefully and have maintained thousands of years of genetic records of vast numbers of people. They then "encourage" (some would say manipulate) people into producing children with the goal of specifically enhancing some particular trait or capability.
The second, espoused by the Tleilaxu, engage in a much more aggressive type of genetic manipulation and modification. Centuries of genetic manipulation have resulted in the Tleilaxu being seen as the creepy people that nobody can like or trust. Their genetic engineering pushes hard at the boundaries of what most people find to be morally acceptable. The Tleilaxu are famous for being able to synthesize almost anything organic in their axlotl tanks. This includes artificial organs and even entire clones of people, known as gholas. To illustrate how hard they push on moral boundaries we learn in the later books that the tanks are actually Tleilaxu females that are brain-dead and their genetically modified wombs produce the organic goods that are sold by the Tleilaxu. This explains why the Tleilaxu are so xenophobic and why their females are never seen in public.
