Dune

The Dune saga began in 1965 by the pen of Frank Herbert. The story tells of the spice, a drug allowing interstellar travel (but also increases the lifetime and unlock the powers of prescience in some humans) located only on one planet in the universe, Arrakis. This drug is so rare and so necessary for interstellar trade that it caught the attention of powerful families such as the Harkonnen, the Corrino or the Atreides who initially were the victims of the fighting but eventually became the master of the galaxy (who has the spice, controls the destiny of the universe).
Frank Herbert was initially working on a saga in seven episodes, but he died before completing the last novel. The volumes of Dune are the following : Dune (1965), Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1976), God Emperor of Dune (1981), Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985).
In 1999, Brian Herbert (son of Frank Herbert) and Kevin J. Anderson took over the torch helped with notes, unpublished chapters but also preliminary work from the seventh volume unfinished. They created several new segments such as Prelude to Dune: Dune: House Atreides (1999), Dune: House Harkonnen (2000) and Dune: House Corrino (2001), Legends of Dune: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (2002), Dune: The Machine Crusade ( 2003) and Dune: The Battle of Corrin (2004), Dune sequels: Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007), both created from the work of Frank Herbert for the volume 7 and finally Heroes of Dune: Paul of Dune (2008), The Winds of Dune (2009), The Throne of Dune (2010) and Leto of Dune (2011). They also wrote a book The Road to Dune (2005), which combine their efforts and those of Frank Herbert.
On the adaptation side, Dune was filmed in 1984 (Dune, directed by David Lynch), but also as two miniseries, one in 2000 (Dune, directed by John Harrison) and another in 2003 (Children of Dune, directed by Greg Yaitanes). A remake of Dune is currently in preparation and is planned for 2012 (Dune, directed by Pierre Morel).