I finished Dune (the book) and I have some questions *spoilers!*

Cafe Society
1

There will be spoilers for Dune and some of the other Dune books. So beware!

First of all, I enjoyed the book, but it didn’t engross me like the other 2 books I read recently (Ender’s Game and Dracula). Not to say Dune was worse, its a different type of book and have to be read differently, but parts of it dragged on longer than those other books.

The things I’ve heard about Frank Herbert’s epic saga in years prior was that it was a densely political booked framed by sci-fi. I would totally agree with that assessment. Dune is more about the struggles of politics and class of the people depicted than the eponymous desert planet. The sandworms, being huge parts of the mythology and catalyst for so many actions, are quite a small part of the storyline. They are there enough, I think, to not be a simple MacGuffin as their actions shape and facilitate action instead of being simply a prize to be striven for.

The sprawling saga does one thing very well that usually bugs the hell out of me. It introduces a lot of universe-specific terms and ideas, phrases, and objects without losing me in the process. This is only a personal pet peeve but too much talk about some unpronounceable alien term like Lisan al-Gaib or Kwisatz Haderach will have me rolling my eyes and zoning over each mention. Its not that I don’t like the ideas, but if there are too many introduced too quickly, it becomes a chore to remember what each one does and to integrate that idea into your enjoyment of the book. Mention a desert planet and I can relate, but mention a god-like being who knows the past and future and exists both living and dead and you better write that guy in well. Luckily, though Dune is dense with alien terminology, the book is vivid enough for me to follow even if I don’t still understand all of the motivations of the characters.

Paul is a great protagonist, even though the whole “Chosen One” thing has been done to death ever since Jesus decided to get himself killed. This was one of the few times where I’ve read about a whole Chosen One character without having flashbacks of Christian theology. I think maybe its because I feel Paul’s pain and his loss, having his House destroyed, father killed, assets seized, and seemingly the entire Imperium looking for him. Even his birth was like an accident, as Jessica was supposed to have borne a girl instead of a boy. As such, to me at least, he never achieves the sort of invincible messiah complex that makes the story hard to separate from existing religious myth. The bad stuff wasn’t just happening to him, it happened to everyone around him and even when he triumphed at the end, his victory is still tainted by the loss of his son.

Speaking of the messiah thing, one aspect of his ascent was still confusing to me. I should mention that I have the 40th anniversary edition of the book and there’s about another 50 pages of appendices in the back that I’m still reading, that might answer this and some of my other questions. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why Paul was such a reluctant messiah. In the first half of the book, he mentions that he found it uncomfortable that the Fremen see him as a potential savior. Given the enemies all around him and later the destruction of his House, why didn’t he immediately embrace it? He has visions of this jihad with the green and black Atreides banner flying high, but he shies away from it instead of immediately using it. Why?

Now I know from reading bits and pieces of the Dune universe that his son, Leto II goes on to rule for like 3500 years and turns into a sandworm god, was this Herbert setting that up? Because one battle with Paul and the Fremen on one side vs. a few legions of Sardaukar and Harkonnen doesn’t seem like something Paul should be afraid to embrace.

Another big question I’ve had from the beginning of the book is the Emperor’s motives. Sure, it is explained later that the emperor joined up with the Baron to get rid of Leto because he was afraid of his rising power, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. As the book says, whoever controls the spice, controls the universe, and whoever controls Dune controls the spice. If he was so afraid of Leto’s growing power, why didn’t he just let the Baron remain steward of Dune? If Leto was never put in charge of Dune, his power can only grow so much right? It seems like the emperor sealed his own doom as soon as he put the Atreides in charge of the freaking most important planet in the universe.

And I don’t get the Bene Gesserit either. A cabal of women with superhuman powers conspiring for some genetic breeding purpose of which only they know, yet no one thinks anything strange that Bene Gesserits are everywhere? Or, they think its strange but do nothing about it? It seems all of the Great Houses have rulers with Bene Gesserit wives or concubines, the emperor himself has BG Truthsayer.

And the breeding program, what’s the purpose? The Reverend Mother Helen Gaius Mohiam really freaked out when Alia was blabbling about her breeding program at the end (or was it Paul and Jessica blabbing about it? Those 2 scene took place like right next to each other). So what’s the big secret? They want a superhuman, so how’s that much different from what the Sardaukar is trained?

That whole thing with Alia didn’t make sense. Given Alia’s past lives memory and her powers, it seems like she’d be a perfect conclusion to the breeding program. But the Reverend Mother was terrified of her and wanted her killed because she was an abomination. I read that as simply because she wasn’t the one who created Alia, but more and more I think it doesn’t make sense. Why did she have such an aversion to her? If she’s not superior breeding, who is?

On the same note, is that why Jessica was so against Paul picking up a Fremen wife like Chani? Was she still thinking of the endgame for all Bene Gesserits, that Chani couldn’t bear a superkid and Paul had to go knock up someone of Imperial blood? That seems less like superior lineage and more like simply classism. With the Fremen rivaling the Sardaukar in terms of fighting prowess and toughness, with the spice coursing through their blood, why wouldn’t she think Chani could bear a worthy child?

So the old Baron was a fun character to read about. Cruel, cunning, clever…umm…creamy. But why did he see no potential in Rabban and put all his efforts into making Feyd Rautha his successor? Feyd didn’t really seem that impressive. Sure he’s a great physical fighter, but his intelligence was hardly ever tested in the book. The 2 plans he had thought of (first the fake gladiator battle and then the attempted assassination of the Baron) had Thufir’s help, didn’t it? I know the 2nd one did, I can’t remember if the first did. Eh, I guess its forgivable, he was played by Sting after all

Weird thought: Did Jessica change the Water of Life by drinking it and then spitting it back out? If so, eww…

And what’s the deal with no chapter numbers? Come on Frank, that’s really annoying! Makes it hard to reference specific chapters (“its that one where Paul fights that guy in the cave…”)

Ok, I know I’m no published writer. I’ve never had a classic novel read by millions. But it really really bugged me when Herbert kept using the word “lighted” instead of “lit”. Yeah, its a correct word, but still, it just sounds awkward (flame-lighted, lighted cavern, lighted by glowglobes…). At least use “lit” once!

People talk really weird in Dune. They even think weirdly. I don’t know what “Ah-h-h-h-h-h” is supposed to sound like. Is it a broken sound like talking into a fan? Or are you supposed to drag out the last syllable? And Fenring was just an over-the-top version of that. The guy sounds retarded

I don’t get Fenring. For a guy who at the end of the book, Paul admits could have killed him with a word, we get surprisingly little info on him. It was said that he was a failed Kwisatz Haderach because he’s a genetic eunuch, but he’s still powerful apparently. How did he fail? Why did he turn against the emperor at the end? So much unanswered questions about this guy

Lastly, from the very beginning, it seems Suk School conditioning was not worth the money people are paying for it. Multiple times it was mentioned that those who went through it are reliable Imperial agents as they cannot be turned, but correct me if I’m wrong but all the Baron did to turn Yueh was kidnap his wife. So Suk School conditioning is about as effective as no conditioning.

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Well.

One of the things you should know going into Dune is that a great deal of it has Islamic (or even pre-Islamic) roots. The Fremen are, IIRC, mentioned as being a people of Misr. Misr is a name for Eqypt though I forget how far back it goes. You have to see Fremen believes as filtered through 20000 years of quasi-Islam and isolation. If you recall when the voice of their past is heard one of their cries against the emperor is ‘THEY DENY US THE HAJJ!’ By moving them and denying them the hajj they could no longer take a pilgrimage to Mecca to see the roots of their religion. Once viewed with some understanding of islam some of the fremen points become much less opaque (at least to me). Hell, the term ‘mahdi’ that they use for Paul is directly from arabic and means ‘The one who will lead us to paradise’ or near enough.

As for Paul shying off from his destiny as he saw it he was dismayed at the death and destruction that the jihad would lead to. He saw the future and saw terrible acts in his name. By trying to avert that he was acting as a moral human and not a man of destiny. It’s humanizing, in a way.

I’ll leave some of the other questions to more conversant folks as I’m just speaking off the top of my head. But do try and view the fremen through an arabic/islamic lens for a greater understanding.

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I remember that! I thought it was kinda cool how there were so many Islamic references. Another thing was that the Fremen I think referred to themselves, the whole of the Fremen community, as the Umma, and that’s an Arabic word for the community.

And its 20000 years? Wow. I knew about the whole Butlerian Jihad and the 10000 years of history, but I didn’t know that there was another 10000 before that which leads us to…the modern 20th century? Quite a lot of time to keep track of

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Duke Leto was very popular with the members of the Landsraad. More importantly, Leto had developed a small cadre of warriors (Duncan Idaho, for example) who were as good as the Sardaukar. I would say those factors made Leto a threat to the emperor. The emperor’'s plan put Baron Harkonnen squarely in his power since the baron could not let afford to let the Landsraad know he had used Sardaukar.

Re Feyd-Rautha: Beast Rabban didn’t appear all that intelligent to me. Remember the conclusion of the scene in the arena? Feyd-Rautha was able to rally the people to wild enthusiasm. That trait is frequently more useful in politics than a high IQ. Also Feyd-Rautha was able to understand the Baron and Pietr Vries’ machinations early in the book. AS for listening to Thufir, a sign of wisdom is being able to take advice.

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Paul saw the death and destruction that his messiah-hood would cause, and was not willing to take the steps that Leto II would take to inoculate humanity against totalitarianism.

I think the Emperor was setting the Duke up to fail - putting him in a position where Duke Leto would be seen as responsible for any problems that occurred with the Spice supply, and then making sure that such problems occurred.

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As for the Bene Gesserit, at the time of Dune, the breeding program wasn’t well-known to the general public. They were thought of as a religious/teaching order, who educated well-bred ladies to become the wives and concubines of the nobility. Which was true, as far as it goes. The fact that they were controlling the breeding of humanity was a secret. Remember how astonished Mohiam was when Paul correctly guessed what they were doing (breeding for a Kwisatz Haderach).

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It’s established that he failed for genetic reasons. He’s a failed Kwisatz Haderach because even though the Bene Gesserit did their best, it wasn’t good enough. If you bake a hundred batches of cookies, chances are a few of them will turn out badly. He was able to recognize Paul for what he was, though.

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Leto was popular among the nobles and the emperor could not move against him openly. By giving Dune to Leto, the emperor laid a trap that made it possible for him to use his personal troops against Atreides while the blame will fall on Harkonnen.

I think of them as I think of the Catholic Church in the middle ages. They’re a powerful political group in their own right.

Because a formal marriage to Chani would make it impossible for Paul to have a politically advantageous marriage. At the end of the 1st book he ends up agreeing to marry the emperor’s daughter because this helps legitimize him as the heir to the throne. He couldn’t do that with Chani as his wife.

Yueh was a special case. Remember, nobody considered that it was even possible that he could have been the traitor. Jessica was the prime suspect in Gurney and Thufir’s eyes. They explained a bit how they got around the conditioning but I can’t remember it off the top of my head.

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He didn’t put Leto in charge, really. Stewardship of Arakkis was only the bait in the trap, and Leto was only put there so he could get rid of him.

They’re useful. Everyone knows they’re up to something, but as long as what they’re up to doesn’t conflict with what you’re up to, it’s a win-win situation.

The Sardaukar are skilled fighters. The Kwisatz Haderach is nigh-omniscient. It’s like comparing a really nice pistol with an aircraft carrier.

It’s not merely superior breeding that they want. My guess is that it’s because if Alia had become a Reverend Mother in the normal way, the memories unlocked by changing the water of life would have been tempered by decades of mental training and who Alia is. But being a preborn, there is no Alia - she never had the chance to develop her own personality before being flooded with the memories of her entire ancestry.

Because marriage to Paul was a coin that could be sold to one of the other noble houses - as it was, in the end, with the political marriage to Princess Irulan.

Because Rabban is a dumbass. Feyd Rautha has the capacity to plot and scheme, but when Rabban finds something he can’t hammer into the ground, his only recourse is to look for a bigger hammer. He’s only useful as a foil to make the people of Arrakis like Feyd more, just because he’s not “The Beast Rabban”.

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The giving Leto I Arrakis is a bit puzzling, but it may have been inevitable due to the problems Rabban was having that were getting worse. Nothing must interfere with the spice trade. By moving before the Landsaard the Emperor gets credit. But it is a trap and everyone knows it. It makes Leto very vulnerable during the transition. So much so that despite all the precautions, he is killed anyway.

Paul tries to avoid his fate not only because he doesn’t want the killing of billions unleashed by his hand, but because he does not want the fate the ultimately befalls his son: to live thousands of years without his own humanity and never to die a real human death.

I agree with what others have said about Alia. She is an abomination because she is never a real person on her own, and will be controlled by one of her ancestors. And be at the pinnacle of power. The same thing happens to Leto II, but he has a less psychotic personality mediating all of his ancestors. Perhaps one available only through Chani.

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many of your questions are answered in later books, Dune was not a stand alone.

you the reader know more about the Bene Gesserit than most of the universe does.

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IIRC he conceived it as a trilogy and he wrote parts of the 2nd and 3rd before he was finished with the 1st, so yeah, more is revealed as you progress.

The Baron was a master manipulator, and had been feeding the Emporer subtle misinformation for years, the threat that Leto actually posed was different the what Shadam thought it was.

Like Critical 1 says about the BG, you, the reader, know more about the spice than most of the players. The Guild navigators and the BG dependence on the spice was a closely guarded secret. The government thought of it as nothing more than a lucrative mining concession. It’s roughly analagous to the US government forcing BP out in favor of Shell for all mideast oil production only to have someone in the company unite the whole region politically and militarily under themself.

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Because billions, even possibly trillions, would die in that Jihad - entire planets laid waste, the order of the galaxy ripped apart. Paul is a good man, he’s particularly empathetic by both birth and training. His reluctance is perfectly understandable.

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Yes.

Did you get that some of the mumbling was actually a secret language?

I’ve read it as twofold - he has just enough prescience to know that killing Paul would unleash completely unrestrained Fremen on the galaxy and also totally fuck up the three-way order of power, and also he was actually more loyal to his wife and the BG than his friend the Emperor.

I’ve always considered this the absolute worst part of the entire (non-Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson) series.

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Giving the Arrakis fiefdom to Leto allows the Emperor to wash his hands when the Harkonnen attack and kill him, allowing him to say that it was just a simple act of inter-house warfare and that he had no part in it. The time between when the Atreides take over and when the trap is sprung is too brief for Leto to really take advantage of the fiefdom - he’s still learning their customs, and trying to figure out how to do through benevolent and honest leadership what the Harkonnens have been doing through brutality and intimidation for over a century.

More to the point on Paul’s reluctance, he’s also beginning to see glimpses of what he comes to refer to in the sequels as “the Golden Path”. Since you haven’t read those yet i’m going to spoiler it, but to put it briefly;

Paul is starting to realize that the terraforming project his father started is already having an irreversible effect on Arrakis’ ecosystem, and that the long-term effect of it will be the extinction of the sandworms, the collapse of the galactic economy, and a catastrophic civil war that will likely lead to the extinction of the human race. There’s only one way that this can be prevented - and ultimately, it’s not a course of action he’s willing to take.

Re: the Reverend Mother calling Alia an abomination, having the memories and personalities of thousands of ancestors rattling around in your brain is a dangerous thing, especially if one of your very recent ancestors is a murderous, sociopathic pedophile like Baron Harkonnen. Reverend Mothers go through decades of training and conditioning before they’re able to take on Other Memory without going mad - Alia had it foisted on her before she was even born. In these kinds of cases, it’s possible, and indeed likely, that one of the ancestor-memories floating around in her head could subsume her own personality and take control of her body, and that’s the Abomination that Mohiam is afraid of.

Regarding the Gesserits themselves, most of the galactic leadership DOESN’T trust them - anyone who’s anyone know that everything they do serves their own agenda and nobody else’s and that they can’t be trusted any farther than you can throw them. They’re so well-entrenched in galactic society, however, that they have no choice but to tolerate them, and any Great House or emperor that tried to defy them would end up on the wrong side of a revolution against them due to the influence they have over the common folk. They have an entire bureau, the Missionaria Protectiva, set up for exactly this sort of purpose - to quickly convince any group of people, anywhere in the world, that God and the Gesserits are on their side. The dying Reverend Mother who passes her Other Memory to Jessica is one of their agents.

Fenring’s presence in the book is more of a side note than anything else that even I missed the significance of it on the first read-through. The Bene Gesserit’s original plan, which Jessica derailed, was for her daughter to be mated with Countess Fenring’s son by Feyd-Rautha, and that that child would become the Kwizatz Haderach and also put an end to the feud between their Houses. He’s essentially a spectator in a massive plan that’s revolving around him, but which he is insignificant too. Tragic, really.

Herbert never addresses the Suk school again after the first novel - my personal fanwank is that Yueh’s betrayal was such a shock to the system that people lost confidence in Suk conditioning and the program came to an end not long thereafter, but I don’t know how canonical that is.

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That one battle wasn’t what Paul was afraid to embrace. What Paul was afraid to embrace was a literal Holy War. Paul was seen as a literal Messiah by the most powerful fighting force in the universe, a force that controlled the lifeblood of the universe. The Emporer managed to control literally one third of the universe’s power with his Sardaukar. Now consider that there were many more Fremen than Sardaukar, and that the Fremen were much, much better fighters. Old men, women and chidlren caught in an ambush by fully equipped and trained elite Saduakar routed the Sardaukar and would have killeed them al lif they hadn’t been able to flee.

So basically the Fremen were unstoppable militarily, and unless Paul was very careful they would conduct a crusade across the universe in his name, killing, raping and pillaging. The deaths from the battles alone would be horrendous, but the resulting political and economic chaos would have been even worse. And all this would have been done in the name of Paul, and in the name of House Atreides, a house that had spent millennia building a reputation of fairness and justice. If this had occurred Paul would have been the responsible for not only the death and destruction, but also for utterly destroying everything that his ancestors had built.

That is what Paul was trying to avoid. Even after the battle with the Sraduakar, Pual was still terrified of the Jihad that would result if he were killed by Feyd, and he remains terrified right up until he dies.

Nope.

The Emporer remained one of the three equally balanced powers of the universe because of his Sarduakar. There weren’t many Sardaukar, but those few could take out any individual house with ease. That was how the balance of power was maintained. The Emporer couldn’t take on all the Houses combined, none of the Houses individually could hope to take him on.

The problem was that Leto had managed to construct a training regime to produce troops just as good as the Sardaukar. If that technique ever became common knowledge the Emporer was finished. No longer could the threaten the Houses with the Sardaukar because all the houses would have troops that were able to defeat them. Added to that Leto was personally popular with the other Houses, so even a small contingent of his Elite troops, combined with the standard troops of the other houses, would have seen the Emporer’s power base evaporate.

The trouble was that Leto hadn’t done anything wrong. There was nothing illegal in training high quality troops. So the Emporer had to get rid of him, but he had to do so with total deniability and he had to do so fast before Leto realised he was defeated and passed on his training secrets to the other houses. There was no way that could be done safely while Leto remained on Caladan. The family had been there too long, they population was too loyal, the spy network was too effective. Leto had to be gotten off Caladan.

However the Emporer couldn’t just order Leto to move to some barren moon. He was popular and he had done nothing wrong. The only way he could be made to move without arousing suspicion from the other houses was to be offered an apparent reward. Since Caladan was such a rich planet, Dune, with it’s wealth and the Choam directorate that went with it, was one of the few rewards that was plausible. That it was recently a Harkonnen stronghold only helped matters.

Left to his own devices on Caladan, Leto would have grown to be a serious challenger to the Emporer and disrupted the balance of power, even though that was never his intent.

The BG don’t want a superhuman. they want Jesus Christ, almost literally. They want an individual who essentially has access to all the knowledge of humanity for the past 30, 000 years, who has perfect knowledge of the future and who will inevitably inspire all of humanity to follow him as a Messiah.

That’s so far beyond the Sardaukar that there is no comparison. The Sardaukar are no more than elite athletes, they aren’t actually superhuman. The KH is literally superhuman.

Nope, because Alia is female. Females can only access the female side of the race memories. That’s the whole point of the KH: a male with past lives memories.

Alia isn’t superior breeding though. Any child at all placed in her position would have the same abilities. Any randomly selected female embryo form any two *Homo sapiens *placed into Jessica’s uterus would have turned out the same. that;s kinda the problem. Alia has all those abilities and was never tested to see if she was human, something that the BG have religiously avoided for millennia, and with good cause as you will find out in the sequels.

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Not quite. Alia ends up with access to the same abilities that Paul has as the Kwizatch Haderach – she has access to the male Other Memories (hence, becoming possessed by Baron Harkonnen), and she has prescience (for a brief while).

Whether she has those abilities because she was Preborn, or if that was another miscalculation of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, we don’t know. It’s unlikely that the BG suspected that the daughter they wanted from Jessica would have the prescience and male Other Memories.

However, the BG only loathed her because she was a Preborn abomination, something they’d had many problems with in their own past. Jessica should have known better… but Jessica was kind of dumb for a BG.

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No, Jessica was aware of the potential for Alia being preborn if she engaged in the Water of Life ritual. But she felt she had no choice…the only way to assure safety for her and Paul (and fetus-Alia) was to succeed RM Romallo (the Fremen RM) and fit them into that niche. They were very much in danger of being rendered for their water…the Fremen didn’t scruple at murdering outfreyn. The non-Fremen would not only use up supplies that were necessary for the Fremen, but would be a liability if the sietch had to flee the Harkonnens, not knowing desert survival or water discipline as well as Fremen. So Jessica needed to cement their place in the sietch and had no choice about the ritual.

19

However, Jessica could have aborted the pregnancy. IIRC all the Bene Gesserit were capable of that. And particularly so as a Reverend Mother, since she then basically had conscious control over her body chemistry.

But, she was too sentimental about Leto, again, so she kept his kid even though she knew what she’d doomed Alia to.

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Yes, exactly. Read the entire saga.