Frank Herbert's magnificent Dune chronicle sprawls across countless planets and tens of millennia. In creating the Dune universe, he created one of the richest and most complex universes ever created in science-fiction--an expanding saga that transports readers to a world of wonder that equally mirrors many political and theological issues plaguing our own societies.

Herbert's true genius was in creating this extremely complex, vast universe in such intricate detail that it all feels real to readers and the issues and themes that his characters deal with are easily identifiable as problems we all face today.

While the main novels in this remarkable saga concentrate on major events and major characters, a universe this complex begs for additional stories, filling in all the details that may sometimes get overlooked in the telling of the main saga.

Tales of Dune collects eight such stories, ranging from the period of the Butlerian Jihad (the revolt against "thinking" machines, more than 10,000 years before the events of "Dune"), to the time of young Paul Atreides under the tutelage of the Ginaz Swordmaster, Duncan Idaho, to a story set during the events of the novel Dune, to the very end of Frank Herbert's epic future history.

Here are some of the missing pieces from one of the grandest sagas science fiction has ever seen.