Frank Herbert-WTF [Dune related]?

I read a review of the series by Brian Aldiss concluding that the books ultimately centred on the Bene Gesserit. (This is the original six books)

I’ve always understood another objective of the Golden Path was for humanity to spread so far and wide through the universe so that it became vast enough to spread beyond prescience’s “event horizon.”

It’s hard to believe that it took over 3,000 years to make a fake melange, but I guess you can fanwank that Leto purposely disrupted the research until he was ready for it to be known.

I finished one. You are a better person than I.

At first, I thought “That wouldn’t require a fanwank…Leto would have been aware of all attempts to do so and could quite easily have disrupted it without having to call in extraordinary events.” Then I remembered that the Ixians actually had a prescience-opaque device, in which they created Hwi Noree, which is why Leto didn’t have the awareness to avoid the trap that she was.

I read the first book many years ago and I have no intention of reading the others, so go ahead and spoil me.

What exactly happened after Paul became emperor? Why was humanity doomed to extinction?

Bad news, longer than that, much longer… The idea was hatched by a then crown prince Shaddam and his friend Fenring. They convinced and manipulated Emperor Elrood to have the Bene Tlielax take over Ix, with the idea that the Tlielaxu could use advanced Ixian facilities to research tank made/grown spice.

I think there could be a decent debate over this, but I think it had to do with the fact that he was an imperfect kwisatz haderach. Instead of just being able to see the future he was able to set humanity on any of the future courses he saw. All those courses led to the destruction of Humanity, except for one, The Golden Path. Paul didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t steer humanity along that path (many reasons have been given earlier). Leto was able and willing to make the sacrifice to ensure the survival of humanity. And you can count me among those who love GEoD.

What exactly was the course of destruction that humanity was on? I thought I heard that after Paul became emperor millions of people began dying. What was causing those deaths?

I don’t think Paul was an imperfect Kwizatz Haderach as much as the very idea of a Kwizatz Haderach was a very bad idea. Paul did what most people would do: he wanted to predict the future so accurately that he could steer humanity on a course of peace, order, and lasting harmony. In doing so, he limited humanity to the point where it would have stagnated and gone extinct. I think his impulse was a fairly natural one, and he really thought he was doing the right thing. However, he was also aware of the Typhoon Struggle, which is what Leto had to endure in his stead, which would cause chaos, disorder, and the scattering of humanity. Ultimately this scattering, this upheaval, plus the invisibility to prescience that Leto bred in Siona, would save humanity.

Maybe Paul was too pure a Kwizatz Haderach. He was overbred. The wild strain of hybridism in the form of the Fremen genes gave Leto the strength, innovation, and breadth of vision to get beyond Paul’s limited views of what humanity’s future should be. The Bene Gesserit, in their arrogance, didn’t really think things all the way through, though something moved Jessica to disrupt their plans, to humanity’s benefit.

Pauls Jihad killed billions, but that wasn’t what was going to end humanity. If you go by the prequels, the real threat was a machine presence left over from the Butlerian Jihad. It seems that was what chased the Honored Matres back to the core of the old empire in Heretics.

It has been a few years since I read the books but here is the cliffs notes version:

[spoiler]Dune Messiah:
Paul let loose the Fremen to conquer the empire and started an agricultural program on Dune. They introduced the concept of a ghola, a reanimated corpse to bring back Duncan Idaho (with mechanical eyes) as a gift from the genetic tinkerers called the Ixians. Duncan, like all gholas, had no memories of his prior life. He tried to kill Paul but the act of trying to kill someone he loved in life caused his memories to return. Paul became trapped by his visions and could only follow the path that they showed him, which ended with him blind and going off into the desert, leaving his wife, twin children, and sister. Said sister ended up falling in love with Duncan.

Children of Dune:
Paul’s kids are also pre-born like his sister. It turns out preborns go crazy because they have all their ancestors trying to take control of their minds all the time. Paul’s sister lets Baron Harkonen take partial control in return for protecting her from the other personalities. She becomes more and more like him as time goes by. Paul’s children and Duncan see this happening. The kids try and escape her, and Duncan ignores it out of love. Paul comes out of the desert as a nameless blind prophet and starts causing problems for his sister. Things get complicated, and we find out about the Golden Path mentioned above and how Paul couldn’t face it so Leto had to. This involves Leto taking some of the remaining larval sand worms (the sand amoeba things whose names I cannot remember) and covering his body with them to form a sort of living suit of water reclaiming armor. They bonded with him giving him great strength and speed. He ends up emperor for 3500 years.

God Emperor of Dune:
Leto, now a sand worm with a human face, rules the empire with an iron hand from a now green Arakis. All other worms are extinct and Leto controls all spice, and therefore all space travel. He keeps ordering more Duncan Idaho gholas, and always has one on hand. This is the Golden Path that he wants. He basically hold humanity in check so they will struggle against him and never want to submit to a messiah again. His genetic program ends with people who cannot see in the future, which allow them to kill him in a way that turns him into a bunch of sandworm larvae, each containing some of his consciousness. Prescience is now useless and humanity explodes outward beyond the empire in all directions.

Scary post note from later books: Leto still functioned after his death for many years. He had stashed special computers he could use to record what he did and why. He was able to telepathically record his thoughts for centuries before his consciousness became to fragmented as the worms reproduced by division across the re-deserted Dune.

The next book picks up something like 20,000 years later with some of the scattered humanity returning to conquer led by a hyper agressive offshoot of the Bene Gesserit. They begin to kick ass and take names until a combination of a new and improved Duncan Idaho and an Atraidies descendant who is on the edge of evolving into a new type of being defeat their scouting element, blowing up Arakis in the process. Then things get confusing.[/spoiler]

On preview, in FH’s books, the doom of humanity is to stop expanding and become dependent on prescience. It is mentioned that humanity first exploded outward after throwing off the tyranny of the machines. They needed a new tyranny to throw off that was even longer and more oppressive. That was what Leto provided.

Jonathan

Thanks a bunch, Strassia!

I’ve always felt that Paul was terrified of his prescience. He tried to avoid it at several points, but he never could get rid of it. He didn’t want the jihad, but he couldn’t see any way around it. Leto, being a pre-born Abomination and a twin (don’t discount the connection he and Ghanima had–it helped them both a lot) was able to see through the threads of prescience better than his father and thus could guide humanity more effectively. He was prone to theologizing too much.

I’m a minority here in that I love the prequels and sequels. As long as it’s a good story I don’t care. (I do think that the end of House Corrino strayed a bit too far into WTF territory). I’ll forgive a lot for Norma Cenva.

I don’t think the “pearls of awareness” in the sandworms was ever really explained by anyone. I think it had something to do with the way Sheeana could control the worms at the end, but it remained vague and spooky-magic all the way to the end.

In Sandworms of Dune, the ghola Leto II woke up the pearl of awareness in the sandworms kept in the no-ship’s hold and guided them in their destruction of the machine city. In the end, he went into the largest worm and was presumably digested so the awareness could sleep again. Seems it was a bit too much for him.

I was just watching the video for Weapon of Choice, and I had never before noticed the line

I guess I can tell people that I am not uncoordinated, I am just part Fremen.

also the title of the song comes from Dune, “Don’t be shocked by the tone of my voice
Check out my new weapon, weapon of choice”

Or come on down to Chez Caladan, home of biscuits made from Rabban’s Own™ “Squeeeeeeeeeeze Them” biscuit dough.

I prefer Guerney Halleck’s Bar and Grill, with the live baliset music and the ink vine wine.

Yes, I laughed when I first heard it since most people would have no idea what it meant. Fatboy Slim is obviously a Dune fan.

I am compelled to post a link to one of the greatest comics ever: Birdsign.

No, I really gave up reading anything about it so as not to spoil my memory of the original.

Absolutely. Like the phrase “multimilennial autocratic dictator”.

Terrible isn’t it? I foolishly read the spoiler too.

Implied within this also was that the bureaucracy of the Empire was ultimately the driver that controlled humanity’s boundaries, and the dooms were the result of the inevitable stagnation and failure of the Empire, taking down all with it (sort of a fall of Rome analogy).

The terrors of the Golden Path forced a diaspora that outpaced the ability of the Empire’s to control or expand with it.

The Empire would not expand because it relied on the Guild Navagators for keeping the Empire together, and the Guild Navagators were tied to Arrakis for the spice. They had reached the “million worlds” that the Guild could logistically reach with that constraint on them, and stopped. All of the Empire’s nobility were also addicted to the spice, and likewise constrained.

(although there are hints of Houses going rogue and setting up on planets beyond the Empire; don’t recall if those were in-canon or in the Dune Encyclopedia, though)

Since Leto II controlled the spice supply, and Ix created machines as alternatives to Guild Navagators, upon his death the constraints on the region that could be exploited for habitations were gone. Thus, the Scattering.