BE WARNED: The newer Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson Dune* books deviate severely from the officially canoniozed Dune Encyclopedia. A lot of old-time Dune fans are ticked off at them for breaking with the extablished backstory.
F’rinstance, in Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson’s Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, everybody had a nondescript, limited form of FTL travel available before the discovery of Melange, that didn’t require anything special to operate and was completely different from the space folding done by a Guild Highliner.
In The Dune Encyclopedia, however, it was stated that space folding was the only available means of FTL travel. Before the Butlerian Jihad, instead of having Guild Navigators use Melange to see into the future and find a path that would allow them to arrive at their destination safely, the FTL ships used supercomputers to calculate their courses. (It would take an army of mentats decades to calculate a safe course for one trip, by which time the stars would’ve moved in relation to one another so their calculations would be worthless.)
I also find it interesting that the Dune series is one of the few sci-fi epics where humans are the sole intelligence in the universe, albeit many like Face Dancers, Navigators, et al are aguably separated to the point of being their own subspecies of human.
I did find it odd that Paul knew so many details of our history, including how many deaths Genghiz Khan and Hitler were responsible for. I know that history is better recorded in modern times than in ages before, but I still find it unlikely that people 20,000 years from now will be discussing Hitler, esp. when you consider how much of a lightweight he was compared to Paul (who’s Jihad had resulted in the death of over 40 billion people).
Earth is alluded to many times, especially when talking philosophically about the species.
They speak of “House Washington” (American) in the same way they speak of “House Atredies” or “House Harkonnen”. There were a couple other “modern age” Houses but I can’t rightly recall them. I think one was an allusion to the British and another to the Russians.
Well, I suppose people were probably discussing Genghiz and Hitler for quite a long time, so it could be that Paul knew them well because so many of his ancestors (whose memories he had) knew them well.
WAG: FTL is kind of chaotic, so calculation gets you so far, but prescience actually enables you to do it reliably. This would explain the ‘limited speed’ thing imho.
And the world on which the Fremen were on at the time no longer exists.
It doesn’t follow that the Hajj actually involved a trip to Earth. Earth had probably been destroyed by that point.
The Fremen (freemen) are very hung up on the idea that no one can deny them the right to move about as they wish. This could be seen as a lingering remnant of the original Hajj tradition.
It makes sense that Leto and his sister had memories stretching back that far, but does not make sense that the Bene Gesserit posses them.
IIRC, the witches pass their memories on when they die, and that is the only reason they have memories stretching that far back, from the beginning of the bene gesserit.
What books was it mentioned that they possessed memories going back to the dawn of humanity? It wasn’t Frank Herberts son’s books was it? (which in many cases blatently contradict the origional 5 books)
No, the Bene Gesserit have those memories for the same reason that Ghanima and Leto do - from the spice essence ceremony. The only difference is that the Reverend Mothers only possess the female memories.
Otherwise, there is no difference between the Reverend Mothers and the Kwisatz Haderach.
It is strongly implied in the first book that the Bene Gesserit were looking for something more than what they already had. Paul Atreides could not only experience both male and female ancestral memories, but he possessed the ability to see possible futures as well.
It would seem that the Bene Gesserit were breeding for a super-Mentat, a living quantum computer able to access and utilize higher-dimensional space.
Eh. Ignore almost everything about the later books – they’re clearly afterthoughts. I’ve read the interviews where Frank Herbert claims to explain why he wrote the Dune books, and (to my mind, at least) he’s obviously lying.
tracer, the Dune Encyclopedia is not canonical (read Herbert’s intro) and some material in it is clearly contradicted by the subsequent novels, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune (e.g., later Idaho gholas).
In one of the last 3 Dune books by Frank Herbert (as opposed to the spinoffs by his son), there is a discussion where one of the characters (Teg) is questioning if the Bene Gesserit are truly human… or if they are outside the human norm. To make his point he observes that a Guildsman can reproduce with a standard human, and though the offspring are physically different, they still are human (something he doubts about the Bene Gesserit, stating something to the effect that he wonders if it takes a conscious effort for his biological daughter to make appropriate social gestures).