Dune - First published in 1965, Frank Herbert wrote his classic science fiction novel Dune and its five sequels over the course of twenty years.  Of course, it took Herbert a full six years of research before he was able to complete the first Dune.  The books describe a world set in a future with a feudal interstellar society (we did not make that description up ourselves, for the record) in which complicated relationships exist between politics, religion, technology, ecology, and human emotion.  Dune would become the best-selling science fiction book of all time due in no small part to its assessment of the human condition.  

It has impacted science as much as it has the world of science fiction.  Perhaps in part because of its complicated storylines and characters, it has proven very difficult to translate to the big screen.  David Lynch famously adapted it to film in 1984.  The movie was considered anything but a success by most critics. A better-received television miniseries aired in 2000, and a documentary about a failed effort by Mexican surrealist director Alejandro Jodorowsky received a documentary treatment in 2013.