Unanswered Questions From 'Dune' (open spoilers for 50-year-old book)

Cafe Society
41

The weirding way, to me, is just a fancy name for what is essentially ,wuxia-type martial arts, again a largely one-on-one affair.

I think we can tell how the Major Houses militaries work by the rank afforded Duncan. It speaks to an organization where personal skill with the blade is considered important.

I imagine Dune militaries to be more akin to the Acheans and Trojans than anything else. Basically gangs of armed men rather than drilled robots.

The word used for the Harkonnen troops Kynes fights, bravos, also evokes more Renaissance Italian street fighters than Roman legionnaires IYKWIM.

42

The Prequel House novels, House Atreides, House Harkonnen, House Corrino have a great deal of Fenring. Not so much as a failed KH - but as being smart, manipulative, and very much a male BG in attitude. As for Paul, Fenring has fundamentally the same sort of BG physical training and skills, with decades more experience. So if prescience cannot be depended on, Fenring would likely beat Paul. I’d say more, but that would be spoilering the more recent novels rather than the original works.

But not everyone wants to look at the prequels or sequels.

43

Personally, I agree with David Lynch’s switch over to having it be some sort of ki-energy weapon. Having faster than light traveling space farers fighting by punching each other is silly.

Star Wars’ use of swords is mildly acceptable because it’s not meant to be a particularly serious work. Why Herbert went even more neanderthal, I really don’t understand.

44

Eh, I think it’s more a regression to combat meaning something, and the whole mythos. We do talk about a society that has a War of Assasins (caps in the original) and aristocrats mostly abiding by the Great Convention. A backlash to the horrors of prior excess. Plus, it keeps the (quite literal) peasants from ever being a threat - they aren’t going to have shields (expensive) or other defenses against lasguns, slugthrowers, or be highly trained in hand to hand.

As for author intent, you can always take Wikipedia with a huge grain of salt, but it indicates that Herbert was fascinated by IRL sand wastes and ecology, combined with Native American mysticism, questions about messianic beliefs, and a belief that feudalism may well be the natural state of man. You take those, and build your world backward to justify the story.

For a more direct influence -

Herbert drew heavy inspiration also from Lesley Blanch’s The Sabres of Paradise (1960), a narrative history recounting a mid-19th century conflict in the Caucasus between rugged Islamized Turkic tribes and the expansive Russian Empire.[7] Language used on both sides of that conflict become terms in Herbert’s world—chakobsa, a Caucasian hunting language, becomes a battle language of humans spread across the galaxy; kanly, a word for blood feud in the 19th century Caucasus, represents a feud between Dune’s noble Houses; sietch and tabir are both words for camp borrowed from Ukrainian Cossacks (of the Pontic–Caspian steppe).[7]

Herbert also borrowed some lines which Blanch stated were Caucasian proverbs. “To kill with the point lacked artistry”, used by Blanch to describe the Caucasus peoples’ love of swordsmanship, becomes in Dune “Killing with the tip lacks artistry”, a piece of advice given to a young Paul during his training. “Polish comes from the city, wisdom from the hills”, a Caucasian aphorism, turns into a desert expression: “Polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert”.[7]

If you’ve read much Herbert, he’s very much into the details of what he writes, often to the detriment of the actual story/action. He reminds me of Tolkien that way - the story is a way to share his universe and thoughts.

45

I just spent way to long trying to figure out how Poland is still a place in the Dune universe.

46

Oh, because humming people to death is soooo much more “serious” :roll_eyes:

The weirding module was only surpassed in ridiculousness by the heartplugs, the bug juicebox and the cat milking.

The thing is, they’re not faster-than-light spacefarers. That’s kind of the point.

The ones who are faster-than-light spacefarers do their fighting by economics and proxies.

I don’t see force fields as particularly “neanderthal”, and all Herbert does is explore the consequences of the tech he’s added.

47

Give that the dreadful House Atreides claimed Leto was a direct descendent from Agamemnon, Space Poland isn’t a stretch at all

48

I always liked the shield technology. Unlike “magic” shielding, it makes a hand wavy sense and the limitations flow out of the notion that the shields are a force field that creates a resistant force proportional to the energy incoming. With objects, below a certain kinetic energy per unit surface, the object passes. With points and blades, the energy is concentrated and the only way to penetrate is to be moving slowly. For blunt objects or very light objects (like air molecules) the kinetic energy per unit area is small and they pass through at higher speeds. And when a high energy laser hits the field, that level of energy creates overload and feedback leading to catastrophe on both ends. At the very least, it is less magicky and more self consistent than a lot of “hard sci fi” technology I’ve seen.

49

I always thought that ‘weirding way’ was just a Fremen term for the fighting prowess of Paul and Jessica, they didn’t really have a word for it.

The thing is, the Baron is the real Big Bad. He manipulates the emperor with misinformation into backing him against house Atreides, his long term plan is for one of his descendants to usurp the throne from House Corrino. When it’s falling apart, the emperor accuses the Baron of faking the dispute entirely and being allies with Leto, he’s hardly the puppet master.

One thing I disliked about the Lynch movie is reimagining the Baron as a clown.

50

I wanted to pop in here to say if anyone has any interest at all in the setting and lore of Dune I cannot recommend enough the source books for the Modiphius Dune RPG. Even if you care nothing about playing the game (I have never played it) the main book has hundreds of pages of timelines and back story about the history of the Imperium, the other factions etc. I also have source books about the Houses and Lanstraad and the Emperor and they are all interesting just as reading. I have never read any of the novels but really like the setting and got even more interested because the board game Dune Imperium plus the recent movie and these books have been great.

51

In the Lynch movie, they show the Baron receiving a reply from Leto rejecting the Barons overtures. The Baron yells about how he had followed the forms and been rejected. Therefore shit was about to get real. I wonder what might have happened if Leto had strung the Baron along by not immediately rejecting him outright. The Atreides could have had time to consolidate their position in their new home by delaying the Barons attack while “the forms” were being followed. Negotiations could have been stretched out for months. But of course, the Atreides thought they were about to engage in a standard assassins war. Not the all-out assault of the Harkonnens (and Sardaukar). And they didn’t know about Yuweh. He really was worth ten legions of Sardaukar.

52

IMHO, and taking into account the rest of the information, nothing. Basically, kanly is the form for the limited, very often multi-generational vendettas between the Great Houses. It’s to keep the collateral damages from such fighting limited, especially in light of the generational conflict. Fundamentally, the Baron is offering to settle, despite the fact that (from hints in the OG and explicity in the prequels) having arranged for Leto’s father’s death, not to mention the various acts against all the top Atreides advisors (Gurney and Duncan especially) prior to their joining the house.

It serves Leto poorly to just agree to let “bygones be bygones” and if anything, arguably would have made things worse, as that weakness would destroy the partnerships he had built in the Landsraad. Fundamentally, the Baron is saying “Make peace or we’re going to destroy you!” and Leto thinks they’re serious, but that he’s sufficiently prepared to turn it around.

The fact that the Emperor is helping ensure the fix, and that the traitor is in place means that the Baron has no real reason to settle. He’s just playing the game, as he always does. And if Leto had caved, he would likely have had no problems finding a new justification, demanded some payment that Leto could not have met and it proceeds with minimal delay and a weaker position for Leto. Being the Baron, he would likely have demanded Paul be sent to him for fostering, or Jessica as tribute (after all, she’s not a legal wife nor a noble).

No matter what, Yueh was an almost unbreakable cheat for the conflict - even in a more settled situation, the unbroken trust would have left him with access to the shield generators and the Ducal family. More time might have left the battle ever so slightly less one-sided, but the results were set with Yueh and the sadukar.

Granted, the wildcard would have been the Fremen, but no one knew the numbers and prowess of that factor, and it is extremely unlikely the Duke could have earned their full confidence in any timeframe the Baron would have allowed.

53

Yeah, I guess the Duke would want to avoid looking weak. And not knowing about the imminent attack meant he didn’t know that there was anything to delay.

54

Leto (the first) is in many ways one of the most tragic characters in the story, especially if you consider the prequels. He’s actually more wise than most, and almost certainly would have had a happier life if he had been born a commoner, a situation he once tried to seriously consider (gross oversimplification). His birth into a great house gave him tragedy after tragedy, his larger than life father lost due to his own arrogance and Harkonnen and other influence, his relationship with his mother destroyed, his first love lost to political upheaval and her own obsessions as well as his first son, his ability to love and trust crippled by all the above… it just goes on and on and on.

At least he was blessed with good friends, and died believing he was accomplishing something…

Massive spoiler if you want to know more about what I mean by other influence, you’ve been warned:

His mother, a member of house Richese, facilitated the death of his father, which further crippled his ability to trust, along with his father’s teaching about political needs over romance.

55

Just an additional nuance, The BG could only see the female line memory. The KH was supposed to be able to see both male and female ancestral memory as well as an ability to bridge space and time with prescient ability.

56

Herbert did this more than once in the Dune series. The Fedaykin were another example, with Herbert borrowing the term from the Fedayeen:

57

Also, while nobles used European titles socially, like baron, count, and duke, the important title was Siridar, or planetary governor, which Herbert cribbed from the British Raj, which the British cribbed form the Persian title Sirdar or Sardar.

58

He cribbed the names, but also in-universe the various peoples and their languages are supposed to be future descendants of real Earth languages which explains the various Arabic, Persian, Latin, Hebrew, etc. words. The Fremen are stated to have Sunni Muslim origins, for instance, possibly among other roots.

59

Keep in mind, words might not actually be what we read. The common speech in Dune is Galach but it is presented as English. Tolkien did something similar in that Westron was the common non-Elvish speech but was presented as modern English. The character names in their own language were:

Bilbo Baggins = Bilba Labingi

Frodo Baggins = Maura Labingi

Samwise "Sam" Gamgee = Banazîr "Ban" Galbasi

Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck = Kalimac "Kali" Brandagamba

Peregrin "Pippin" Took = Razanur "Razar" Tûk

It’s possible that Herbert pulled a similar technique and invented words using existing languages and phonemes to evoke the nature of the invented languages.

60

In the backstory there was a massive attempt to syncretize all religions, so even people who think they are Sunni Muslims probably have features of other religions in their current faith.