[safety1st]

While Dune can certainly stand on its own as a great work, it's best appreciated as a critical response to the utopic techno-determinism of Asimov's Foundation series. The discourse between these two series contains some of the most interesting ideas ever penned in science fiction. I think you'd need to read at least the first three Foundation books and the first four Dune books to get a handle on it, but this is a good primer: https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ch05.html

[c0pium]

The main difference is that Foundation is great and Dune is mediocre.

[omnimus]

The great thing is that many people think exactly the opposite.

Dune is in many ways antithesis of Foundation. And in makes sense being written after it.