Dune

Dune is one of the most expansive and imaginative works in science fiction — a story about power, ecology, religion, and survival set on the desert planet Arrakis. Herbert’s world-building is unmatched: the political machinations of noble houses, the mystical Bene Gesserit, and the Fremen culture feel fully real. Reading it made me think about how resource scarcity shapes civilization, which maps surprisingly well onto thinking about constrained distributed systems.