God Emperor of Dune is the fourth book of Frank Herbert’s six-part series, The Dune Chronicles. Herbert passed away before completing the seventh book, and the author’s son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson resumed the series’ narrative. God Emperor is unique from the saga’s other novels in its setting and structure. Brian Herbert explains in the introduction of the 2008 Ace/Penguin edition that his father intended the work to function as a bridge between two trilogies. By having Leto’s reign last thousands of years in between the two eras, Herbert creates the context to explore myth-making and the long-term effects of human decisions, a theme that highlights the series’ ecological allegories. Scholars have compared Herbert’s epic science-fictional world-building to J. R. R. Tolkien’s work in the fantasy genre, and The Dune Chronicles is frequently cited as an early example of the subgenre known as ecological science fiction or climate fiction (“cli-fi”).

According to scholar William F. Touponce, Herbert wrote the original draft of God Emperor primarily from the first-person perspective of Leto, which explains the predominance of internal monologues, aphorisms, and political/philosophical musings from Leto’s perspective.