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by Brian Scott Pauls
The following interview occurred November 6, 2026. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Brian Pauls: Welcome, Grace, to the Cosmic Codex. Very glad to have you here.
Grace Robinson: Thank you, I’m glad to be here.
Brian: I would like to start out and find out from you, before we get into your paper and Dune: what was the impetus for your interest in speculative fiction in the first place?1
Grace: I will have to blame my brother for this one. He was really, really, really into Star Wars growing up, and so every time it was, “What movie are we going to watch? What book are we going to read?” it was always Star Wars. Growing up with that, and especially with the Star Wars: The Clone Wars cartoon when we were kids—I remember Saturday mornings, we would get so excited because my mom would put it on the TV for us.
I’ve always been a big reader, and I read Dune for the first time when I was probably 12 or 13. I didn’t really revisit it until I wrote this paper, and it was really cool to reread the book and see what I missed when I was 12. When you read it for the first time at that age, you don’t understand all of the different things that are moving around and the bigger powers at play. So I thought it was a really cool book to reread, but also to write a paper about.
Brian: You mentioned you were a big reader. That is not as common as it once was, because there are so many distractions. You can spend your time on video games, you can spend your time on programming computers, you can spend your time watching YouTube videos—and that’s not to mention the distractions that have been around for years, like just television. So I’m wondering, what for you made you a reader, regardless of what type of genre or fiction or nonfiction you were reading?
Grace: It was definitely my parents. From a very young age, they encouraged us to read. Growing up, I always remember getting upset with my parents—“My other friends are doing XYZ things”—and my parents were like, “No, we’re going to read, we’re going to enrich our minds and not worry about what the other people are doing.”
I think it also helped to have them as role models. My dad doesn’t read books all the time necessarily, but he’ll sit and read the news for an hour every day. And my mom was a big reader growing up as well, so having her as a role model—“Okay, my mom reads all the time, so I’m going to read all the time.”
My favorite gift that I ever got, I think, was actually my first Kindle, because then I had every book I could ever want at the press of a button. That was kind of a game changer for me. Now I have a Kindle as well, and I have a Kindle stand and page-turner buttons that I can use to read. So I think there are ways now that make it easier to read.
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But it is hard when there are a lot of distractions. I don’t think I read very much when I was in my undergraduate degree, just because it’s so busy and there’s so much going on. Probably my junior or senior year, I was like, “Wait a minute, I really miss reading,” and then I picked it back up—reading for fun.
Brian: I think that’s natural. I’ve certainly gone through phases in my life when I have read less, even though I also started out as a voracious reader, and have kind of come back to it. It depends on what season of life you’re in. But kudos to your parents. I think it’s tremendously important, for not just intellectual development but development as a citizen, to be able to read, digest, and analyze complex information and make up your mind.
Speaking of that, you have gone into a rather complex, language-oriented field. You are a graduate student in law, is that correct?
Grace: Yes, I am.
Brian: Tell us a little bit about what led you down that path.
Grace: When I was in high school, I completed a mock trial program through my school, and it was one of the more fun things I had done in high school. I was a competitive swimmer, and when I blew out my shoulder, I needed to find something to do, so I ended up starting with mock trial. I wasn’t necessarily the best at it, but it was a lot of fun to be in a courtroom and present a case and try to win.
Going into college, I knew that I wanted something that made me more relatable to people, because—no shade to a lot of the attorneys, but some of the most incredible attorneys I know are also not the best at speaking with people or interacting as much. So I majored in psychology and sociology to get a better understanding of how people interact and how people work, and then decided to go to law school.
When I started law school, I wanted to do some sort of environmental law-type deal. At this point, I will be doing defense work for a few years and seeing where that leads me. I hope to someday write a book, but for now… yeah.
Brian: Did you, by any chance, do debate in high school?
Grace: No, most of my friends did. With the schedule of swimming, I wasn’t able to do it.
Brian: Oh, totally get it. I did debate, but I did no sports of any sort. Hard to be two different places on the same Saturday.
Grace: It is.
Brian: Where are you at in your graduate program? Are you close to finishing?
Grace: Yes, I’m so close. Law school is a three-year program. The first year, they scare you to death. Second year, they work you to death. Third year, they bore you to death. So unfortunately, I’m in that bore-you-to-death range.
I made a joke to someone the other day. I was like, “You know, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s going to be okay.” And they’re like, “No, girl, that’s the bar exam. That’s a train, and it’s about to hit you.” So right now it’s a different season, because I’m a little bit bored with some of the stuff, but I’m also not necessarily wanting to take the bar exam right now. I’m trying to just enjoy this season.
Brian: Yep. And every career has fun things about doing it, and every career has not-fun things about it.
Grace: Oh, absolutely.
Brian: But I wish you good success when you do take the bar.
Grace: Thank you, thank you.
Brian: So, you have written a paper that I want you to tell us about, and it brings together two strands of your life: reading and your law education. Why don’t you tell us about that?
Grace: Yes. At the beginning of my second year of law school, I got to take a class called Water Law with one of my favorite professors ever. As part of the class, you could either choose to take the final or write a paper. So I wrote the paper, and my professor gave us a lot of creative freedom as to how we wanted to write it. She said, “As long as it touches water law, I don’t care what you write about.”
I came up with some thing about data centers that I was going to write, and then all of a sudden I was watching the newer Dune movies again, and I just had a moment where I’m like, “Wait, why don’t I write about that instead? That sounds way more interesting.” So I basically went through the Dune books and pulled what the Fremen said about water discipline, and related it to our modern-day water law, and how we can use those principles to better our own environments.
Brian: You recently presented at the Sturgeon Symposium at KU, and I was there, and I was fascinated by what you had to say.2 One of the things that you tied together with all of this was the idea of the Muslim tradition of Sharia water law. Do I have that right?
Grace: Yes, Sharia water law. It was really interesting to research and learn about. I come from Oklahoma, so it’s a very Christian area, and that wasn’t ever something that was talked about, especially in school. When I was looking at Frank Herbert and where he was pulling inspiration from, it was very clearly the Middle East. So I started looking into the Sharia water law principles, and I found a lot of them to be pretty beautiful. It’s something that we don’t necessarily see written out explicitly, at least, in the other major faiths.
Brian: Certainly it was a revelation to me, because we hear a lot about Sharia, and almost none of it is flattering, and a lot of it is propaganda. But never had I heard that it had anything to do with resource distribution, in particular water. So can you explain some of that history for our listeners?
Grace: Yes—and I’m not going to claim to be a 100% expert on Sharia law or anything, so if I get something wrong, please let us know.
Brian: Sure.
Grace: The Muslim faith has a lot of ritual purity and cleansing-type practices. And when you have a group of people that live in the desert, it takes a lot of grit to be able to live in that environment, and also a lot of respect for the natural environment, because when you’re crossing the desert like they did, there’s not a lot of water to be found. So they place a very high priority on water and on making sure that everyone is able to access it.
The coolest thing I learned was that they have a hierarchy of who gets water if there’s only so much water in the well, and it’s always prioritizing humans. So if we’re at an oasis, and the oasis has gone dry, and there’s enough water for maybe a couple of things, it would first go to you and me. We would get water first because we, as humans, have the right to survival. After us would be our animals—if we have animals with us, they would then get to drink. And then, if there’s no water left, there’s no water left. But if there is, then it can go to agricultural or other endeavors, and then, very lastly, industrial-type stuff.3
Brian: Wow, that is so pertinent today, with the discussion about data centers and water rights. And I think something that you mentioned in your presentation is that water rights in the American West are handled very differently, in that it’s looked at as personal property. Or, in some cases, if I remember correctly, it’s a common resource, but you can basically take ownership of that common resource if you start using it, and then you have prior precedence. Is that correct?
Grace: Yes. If we go back in time a bit to, let’s say, the Gold Rush: you have all of these people that are moving out, and they’re hoping that by moving and doing these things, they’re going to make it and get really rich from the gold they’re finding in abundance. But in order to get the gold out, a lot of the rivers that were naturally there had to be diverted and moved into other areas so that they could mine for gold. And if that was the first person to move the water away, that’s where it goes now. That’s the prior appropriation system: the first to take it, the first to make it theirs—that’s where the water goes now.4
So in the West, we see complete areas where the rivers have been diverted. The underground water table has also drained, because if there’s no river flowing naturally on top of it, we’re going to see a lack of groundwater underneath.5
Basically, we have these civilizations that were built in the desert that were not necessarily built to be sustainable. Over time, we continuously see that we’re having more droughts, we’re going to start having water issues, and then you start to plant agriculture that is not meant to be in the desert, and it’s taking up more water. So we are starting to see a kind of collapse in what is sustainable for our water supply.
Brian: Like building golf courses in the desert.
Grace: Yes, that’s a really great example. And the newest thing to hit the news is definitely the data centers. Those take a lot of water.6 People are a little bit concerned about that, because a lot of times, from what we see on the news, some of these contracts are not necessarily specific as to, “Well, if the water is running low, who’s going to get the water?” In Sharia water law, the people get the water first. But the way these contracts are written—and kind of hidden behind maybe NDAs or whatever—we don’t know who’s going to get the priority if the water runs out.7
Brian: So, is water law just one part of Sharia law? Or is it the whole thing?
Grace: Sharia law has a lot of other aspects that I’m not nearly as familiar with, that are a lot more toward the religious side. For my paper, I really only studied the conservation side—how there’s dominion over the earth, and we’re supposed to be good stewards of the planet that we’ve been given.
Brian: Okay, so that’s why you always say that phrase, “Sharia water law,” because that is what we’re specifically talking about.
Explain, then—and I know where you’re coming from, but maybe for someone who hasn’t read Dune—how Sharia water law appears in the text and the narrative of Dune.
Grace: We see the Fremen, who are a desert people. They are also very oppressed, and as a result they’re very hardy, very resilient, and they are really, really, really great fighters. And they have such a disciplined principle around water, down to the clothes that they wear and the way that they act—the currency being water counters. I give you a water counter, and this represents water that’s in the sietch back home.
So they have a very high level of respect for water, and also for the fact that the natural environment around them doesn’t have any water. If they were to go out without their stillsuit, they would probably be dead very quickly, and that’s a water burden on their tribe. They also have this idea that your body is your own, but your water belongs to the tribe.
Brian: It’s evident from Dune itself and from the books that follow that Herbert was modeling the Fremen society on Arab and, to a big extent, Muslim societies.8 So I take it from what you’re saying, it’s a logical leap to say he knew what he was doing, and he applied it in this situation, but it was based on something that happens in the real world, in that part of the Middle East, in the desert. This is how people live, and this is how they support their communities and make sure that this resource goes to where it’s most needed. Is that a fair summary of your point there?
Grace: Yes.
Brian: Okay. Something else that you mentioned in your presentation: when Dune was published in the ’60s, and then in the ’70s and ’80s as it continued to grow in popularity, spice was often seen as an analog for oil—which I think certainly was part of what Herbert was talking about.9 But as we move forward in time, and climate change begins to take more of a toll, you have a different interpretation, or at least a different perspective: there’s another way to apply this. You can look at it as spice, or you can look at what they already do with water. Can you talk to us about, from that perspective, what’s the most critical resource on Dune, how does that play out in the book, and what does it have to say to us in real life today?
Grace: What’s important to the rest of the galaxies and all of these other people would be the spice, because without the spice, there’s no space travel, and without space travel, the Guild—the giant monopoly—is not able to make more money and travel through space. So for them, spice is going to be the most important resource.
But when you think about humanity and survival, the most important resource is not spice. It’s going to be water. You can go three or so weeks without food, but you can only go a few days without water. So there’s this idea that, at the end of the day, what is more precious than spice? For humans and for all life, it’s water.
Brian: Well, very good. Your paper sounds fascinating. Is it publicly available anywhere?
Grace: Not yet. Fingers crossed it’ll get published, but I will keep you guys in the loop.
Brian: Okay, yeah, definitely. If it ends up getting published, shoot me an email. I would love to be able to read it and to share that with interested readers.
One question I like to ask before we go, of someone who is a reader and someone who reads speculative fiction: is there a short story or a novel or series—it doesn’t have to be strictly science fiction, but in the speculative fiction collection of genres—that you feel is maybe either not very well known, or maybe people have heard of it, but it’s not as widely read as you think it should be, and you’d just like to recommend it to the listeners?
Grace: Sure. For context, I went from reading all the time to going to college and not reading as much, and then having a break where I wanted to get back into reading. But I was only reading serious stuff at school, so I needed something that was a little bit more—for me—romance. So I read Jennifer Armentrout’s Obsidian books. It’s about these aliens that end up on Earth, and then, of course, she falls in love with her neighbor. It’s really cute, but at the end of the day they end up in Area 51, and there’s a whole bunch of government involvement. I think that was probably one of my favorite books that I read at that time. She has other books now that are way more wildly popular, that are more in the fantasy genre, but I really enjoyed this series, at least at the time.
Brian: And it’s called the Obsidian series?
Grace: Yes, Jennifer Armentrout. [Obsidian is the first book in Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Lux series.]10
Brian: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the recommendation, and I’m sure some of our listeners and viewers and readers will as well.
So Grace, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on. I can’t tell you how fascinating this is to me, both as someone who likes to read real-world news, and who also loves science fiction and thinks that Dune is one of the greatest series that has ever been published—and I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks that. The fact that you have put all of this together in a way that actually says something to us now about what is happening, I think is fascinating. Great job. I really appreciate you doing this and coming on to talk to me about it.
Grace: Of course, of course. And are you going to see the new movie [Dune: Part Three] in a few months?
Brian: I definitely plan to go see it, yeah. I have not been successful in convincing any other members of my immediate family that they should be into the Dune movies. I tried showing my wife and eldest daughter the first Villeneuve movie that came out a few years ago, and I think they were both asleep before the end of it, so I may go by myself.
But I want to see it in part because I feel like Dune Messiah is an under-read book, and it’s a shame, because I feel like you can’t really understand what Herbert was saying in Dune until you read Dune Messiah.11 I’ll admit that when I was 12 or 13, whenever I first read the Dune books, I did not like Dune Messiah, because it’s so different from the first book. But then, as an adult, as I learned more about what Herbert was actually saying in the whole series, I went back and read it, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah—this is the essence of what he was trying to say in Dune.” But it’s so easy to walk away from Dune thinking he was saying something else, especially about Paul Atreides, the main character. But boy, he corrects that in Dune Messiah, and I think if somebody doesn’t read the second one, then they really haven’t read Dune.
Grace: It’s going to be fascinating to see what people end up saying about this new movie. From the research that I did, when Messiah was released, Herbert got a lot of negative reviews and feedback and comments about the story.12 It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out, because we have an entire new generation of people who have probably not read the books but are definitely obsessed with the movies, and I don’t know if they know what they’re walking into when they go to this next movie. I’m excited to see what creative choices they’ve made, especially with Chani’s character. That’ll be interesting. And I’m really excited to kind of wrap it up.
Brian: Can we agree that Zendaya is just killing it as Chani?
Grace: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think it’ll be really interesting, though, because based on the teaser trailers, she has taken an antagonist role to Paul, and I think that’ll be a really cool lens to see this story through—especially since in the book, she’s just on board with it.13 For the people who haven’t read the books and don’t know what to expect, I think her perspective will at least guide them into being like, “Oh, he’s the bad guy.”
Brian: Yeah, she has definitely taken a much stronger role in these movies than she did in the book or any previous movie. Well, I guess we will both find out when it hits. Isn’t it coming out in December?
Grace: Yes. I have a final the next day, but I’m still going to the movie.
Brian: Okay, excellent. Well, I hope you love it. And I hope that, if your paper gets published, maybe you can come back on and tell us about that journey, and maybe then we can talk a little bit about what we thought about the movie.
Grace: Absolutely.
Brian: All right, thanks, Grace. Appreciate it. Take care.
Did you see Paul as the hero of Dune when you first read it? How do you see him now? Please comment below!
Artificial intelligence tools performed multiple tasks in the creation and publication of this article.
This month, I’m sharing my thoughts about Michael Flynn’s Prometheus Award-winning novel In the Belly of the Whale on Club Codex, where any Cosmic Codex subscriber can follow along, comment, or ask questions.
Here’s my latest comment in the discussion thread:
”I’m not certain taking the first chapter to introduce multiple characters works as well as Flynn would have liked. To me, it reads like notes that should have entered the narrative more gracefully. Perhaps the takeaway here is, if you’re tempted to entitle you chapter, Role Call, rethink your novel’s structure.”
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F. Herbert, Dune (Chilton, 1965), first serialized in Analog as “Dune World” (December 1963–February 1964) and “The Prophet of Dune” (January–May 1965). It won the first Nebula Award for Best Novel and shared the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel. See “Herbert, Frank,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and the Science Fiction Awards Database.
The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas held its 5th Annual Sturgeon Symposium, “Changing Words, Changing Worlds: SF as a Literature of Resistance,” on October 15–16, 2026, at the KU Hall Center for the Humanities in Lawrence. See “2026 Sturgeon Symposium.”
N. I. Faruqui, “Islam and water management: Overview and principles,” in N. I. Faruqui, A. K. Biswas, and M. J. Bino (eds.), Water Management in Islam (United Nations University Press/IDRC, 2001). Faruqui gives the order of priority for water-use rights as haq al shafa, the right of humans to quench their thirst; then the watering of cattle and household animals; then irrigation. The passage does not mention industrial use.
Water Education Foundation, “Appropriative Rights,” Aquapedia. California’s appropriative rights date to the Gold Rush, when miners diverted rivers and streams and posted notice of their claims at the point of diversion; the California Supreme Court recognized the practice in Irwin v. Phillips (1855). In a shortage, the most recent claim is the first to be curtailed.
T. C. Winter, J. W. Harvey, O. L. Franke, and W. M. Alley, “Ground Water and Surface Water: A Single Resource,” U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1139 (1998). Where a stream is a source of ground-water recharge, the circular’s foreword notes, withdrawing water from the stream can deplete ground water, just as pumping ground water can deplete streams.
A. Shehabi et al., “2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL-2001637 (December 2024). The report puts U.S. data centers’ direct water consumption in 2023 at 66 billion liters (p. 57), with an indirect water footprint from electricity generation of nearly 800 billion liters (p. 58).
For examples, see M. Adams, “Data center water fight spotlights non-disclosure agreements,” WVTF (Virginia’s Public Radio), February 26, 2026, on a water authority that withheld a data center’s contracted water use under an NDA until after a court ruled against it; and D. Hawkins, “NDAs are hiding data center deals, drawing ire from locals—and attention from lawmakers,” Gulf States Newsroom, via OPB, August 27, 2026.
T. O’Reilly, Frank Herbert (Frederick Ungar, 1981), chapter 3, “From Concept to Fable: The Evolution of ‘Dune,’” posted online by the author. O’Reilly describes the Fremen’s language, clothing, and customs as Arabic in detail, and adds that Herbert also drew on the peoples of the American Southwest and the Kalahari.
Willis E. McNelly, in The Dune Encyclopedia, wrote that the series can be construed as a thinly veiled allegory of the world’s appetite for petroleum. See J. Romeo, “The Ecological Prescience of ‘Dune,’” JSTOR Daily, November 15, 2021. Herbert’s own analogy ran through water rather than spice: “The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity,” he wrote in “Dune Genesis,” Omni, July 1980, p. 74, where he also equated CHOAM with OPEC.
J. L. Armentrout, Obsidian (Entangled Publishing, 2011), followed in the Lux sequence by Onyx (2012), Opal (2012), Origin (2013), and Opposition (2014). See “Armentrout, Jennifer L,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
F. Herbert, Dune Messiah (1969), first serialized in Galaxy, July–November 1969. See “Herbert, Frank,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
John W. Campbell, who had serialized Dune in Analog, refused to publish the sequel; see T. O’Reilly, Frank Herbert (Frederick Ungar, 1981), chapter 7. Brian Herbert, in his 2007 introduction to Dune Messiah, writes that many readers resented Paul’s fall and that National Lampoon named the Galaxy serial its “disappointment of the year”; see the publisher’s excerpt (Ace, 2020). Not every early notice was hostile: G. Epps’s review in The Harvard Crimson, March 11, 1970, recommended the novel.
Dune: Part Three, the final installment of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation, is scheduled for release on December 18, 2026; its trailer shows Paul and Chani at odds. See C. Valentine, “Everything to Know About ‘Dune: Part Three,’” W Magazine, March 17, 2026 (updated October 27, 2026).
