The Road to Dune

He came curiously to the realization that he no longer cared where he was in the universe. He felt that he had lived a preassigned role and come to the end of it without an audience. There should be applause, he thought, but there's no audience. Well-remembered stars occupied their positions in the sky, but they no longer represented directions to him nor could he think of them as signposts. There was merely space all around him laid out against an enormous background of Time. The stars peered past him and through him like the empty eyes of his subject people. They were the sealed eyes of ignorance, always seeking to avoid their responsive status as human senses. They were the eyes from which nothing escaped.
-Paul Muad'dib
The Road To Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

This excerpt is a part of the original ending of Dune Messiah, which was edited out for publication reasons. The Road to Dune is a storehouse of treasures, featuring deleted bits and pieces of Dune and Dune Messiah. It gives the reader an insight of the master's thoughts and views at the time. This collection also includes the original notes for an article about sand dunes enroaching a small town in oregon, and the steps taken to harness the problem(a special kind of grass with roots that interlock underground, similar to the growth of mycelium). It is interesting to note that countries smack dab in deserts such as Israel were immensely interested in the innovations made in Oregon, so interested that they sent experts overseas on a fact-finding expedition. This is the very endeavour that inspired the Dune novels.

The Road of Dune also includes the original Dune novel intended for publication, entitled The Spice World, with familiar characters with unfamiliar names. The Spice World was written to conform to the publisher's view of the expected length of a science-fiction novel of the time. Thank god Herbert decided to forge on and write the longest science-fiction novel known at the time, refusing to sell out to the expectations of the time. After over twenty rejections by publishers just because it was too long and too complex, an editor at Chilton (known as the publisher of auto repair handbooks) took the risk and brought Dune into publication. The editor lost his job because of this, but thanks to his insight, one of the greatest novels ever published hit the bookshelves. The Road to Dune also includes four original short stories by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. The short stories span the Dune saga, from Dune by Frank, the prequel Dune novels by the duo, and the Legends of Dune, also by the duo. This book is a worthy read if you are a hardcore fan of the Dune novels.

I also have heard that the duo is working on a seventh book, detailing the events after Chapterhouse: Dune, where Duncan and Sheena have escaped into the next universe with the last surviving sandworm, from which the spice flows. I dont know the veracity of this, considering the authors are very busy with their own projects these days, though the thought is nice...