As you all know, the lasguns and personal shields in the Dune series produce a striking effect if they interact. Whenever a lasgun beam intersects a shield, a massive thermonuclear explosion takes place.
(Spoiler for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson :
The glossary in the back of Dune says that such an explosion occurs both at the shield and at the lasgun, while Dune: The Butlerian Jihad shows the explosion occuring only at the site of the shield. But that’s not the nit I’m going to pick here. )
Of course, due to such a catastrophic result, the Great Convention expressly forbids any lasgun-wielding soldier from intentionally shooting anyone wearing a personal shield.
But what I want to know is: Why not make shield-lasgun bombs? Just rig up a cheap shield projector and a cheap lasgun inside a cheap shell casing, and activate them remotely. BOOM! You’ll do as much damage as an atomic weapon, without having to muck about with expensive, messy, and forbidden atomics.
You know, I could’ve SWORN that the shields and other spinoffs of the Holtzmann Effect were discovered after the Butlerian Jihad. I am so pissed that I lost my copy of the Dune Encyclopedia!
To answer your question, I don’t know. I had that thought myself.
Well, what do you know? I have a paperback copy of The Dune Encyclopedia sitting right here on my bookshelf next to the Frank Herbert books!
According to its entry on the Holtzmann Effect (page 310), in 3832 B.G., I.V. Holtzmann published the theory that would lead to the development of the Defensive Shield. According to that same book, page 141, The Butlerian Jihad didn’t start until 200 B.G. (Note that B.G. years go backwards, so 200 B.G. is 3632 years after 3832 B.G…)
Note that the names, events, and time periods listed in The Dune Encyclopedia differ dramatically from those described in B. Herbert/K.J. Anderson’s Dune: The Butlerian Jihad.
I think it’s safe to say there’s virtually no correlation between “The Dune Encyclopedia” and the new Dune series books begun by the author’s son. I noticed the wide divergence with the very first book, when Leto’s bio and ancestry in the encyclopedia bore no relation to events in “Dune: House Atreides”. Oh well.
tracer:
Of course, you’re right. There would be endless ways of rigging such situations to look accidental, as in Dune where Idaho deliberately left an active shield knowing the Harkonnens were using lasguns. Even a 0.1 kiloton explosion would be tactically very useful and it would be ‘dial-a-yield’ (despite the alleged variability, Idaho had strong confidence in the likely effect of a lasgun hitting a big shield at full power).
I suspect the answer is that Herbert conveniently ignored the possibilities for intelligent correlation of the available technology, because it would mess up his vision of a society that had returned to swordfighting.
Which is one reason I will not give Herbert fils the satisfaction of even laying hands on any of the “prequels” after reading the first one. I know the Dune Encyclopedia wasn’t official canon, but it had the elder Herbert’s approval. I refuse to think of the prequels as canon, regardless of how much philosophical wrangling the Herbertling wishes to throw up as cover for handing his father’s intellectual handiwork over to Kevin “Star Wars Hack” Anderson.
