First is how Wensicia is dealt with. She had Muad'dib's son, heir to the Imperial Throne, assassinated (or so everyone believed). Farad'n has her banished and, other than Ghanima wanting Farad'n dead...everyone seems fine with that arrangement.

Shouldn't there be far more general outrage? Calls for jihad, to wipe out the Corrinos once and for all for daring to slay the son and heir of the holy Muad'dib? Ghanima saying that she won't be satisfied with Farad'n, she wants Wensicia's water as payment for her brother?

I get that the Bene Gesserit want to mend the rift with a marriage alliance (to get back in control of their breeding program), and Alia's got her own schemes that involve leaving Farad'n alive so Ghanima can murder him and make her a pariah, and a fair amount of Fremen feel like the Atreides are nothing but bad news anyways, but it feels like everyone except Ghanima's just kind of willing to let the murder of their holy prophet's son and heir to the Empire slide. You'd think some priest somewhere would be willing to exploit it and call for a jihad in order to further their own power, if nothing else.

And that brings me to my second thing, which is: if Namri had been acting under orders from Alia to kill Leto no matter what he did...why didn't he? Gurney Halleck believed that the Lady Jessica had given judgement over Leto's condition to Namri. He could have just said "oh, he's possessed, trust me, our Fremen testing shows us this" and killed him.

Just finished Butlarian Jihad. Xavier Harkonnen is not only a hero but seemingly a normal human man. By the time we get to the time of the Barron of the primary book and movie fame, he is a giant floating, living submerged in goo etc.

is the transformation of the family’s biology discussed specifically in any of the other books?

Why does the baron mentions that “there are not satellites in Arrakis” (implying that there are satellites in other planets) if computers are forbidden? How can they have satellites without computers?

I haven’t read the books only watched the movies and now Dune 2 is my favorite movie of all time, so I don’t know if they answer that in the books

Thanks

Judt finished Children of Dune. I thoroughly enjoyed it as an end to the "trilogy", but can't seem to wrap my head around the idea of Leto II wanting to follow this golden path.

I might be misinterpreting the plan, but it seems like he's trying to do the opposite if what Paul did: plunge humanity in a dark age where space travel becomes even more limited than it was and they have no choice but to become strong people through hardship.

This just sounds like a different kind of orchestrated suffering than what Paul had put in place with his Jihad. But again, it is orchestrated suffering.

So why does Herbert seem to go back to this idea that "humans need to be forced into suffering for them to thrive"? He warns people about charismatic leaders but then his characters act in a way where they believe humanity will fail unless there's some crazy all seeing god figure there to pull the strings.

Is the idea that a fully organized society can never achieve full stability and must always go through rises and falls? Is the golden path a version of that idea but orchestrated and controlled by a supreme figure who can guide the chaos?

I'm confused

In Children of Dune, page 269, in the scene where Alia is convincing Ghanima to accept the betrothal to Farad'n, Ghanima says this: 'Everyone knows this. Fremen would spit at the mention of my name were I to consent to betrothal' Which is obviously meaning that Fremen would disrespect her, as spitting is a sign of disrespect... Right?
But as it's clearly mentioned in the first book, spitting is a gift of the body's moisture, which is prized by the Fremen, so spitting (for the Fremen) is a sign of respect.
But clearly, the aforementioned quote is saying that Fremen would disrespect her name.
Yes, I am aware that the young generations of Fremen don't prize their moisture as much as the older Fremen, however there are still a large amount of older Fremen who still believe in the 'old ways' (ie, treating water as if it's liquid gold)?

So is this an error? Or is this showing that I'm actually delusioned and so little of the old generations of Fremen are dead such that the message spitting is conveying has just reversed?

So in the 2021 film, Paul and Jessica discover Leto's ducal signet which lets them put the pieces together. In the David Lynch version, Jessica somehow senses that he's dead like she has the Force. Did David Lynch just get the Force and voice mixed up?

The way Paul and Leto II justify their tyranic governments is because they claim other futures will lead humanity to extinction. They have to rule and spread their visions so that humanity prevail.

I think the dictators we all know of had the same principles ? Are Paul and Leto really seeing all the paths in the future or are they only seeing the paths where they lead and the paths where humanity doesn't prevail and it clouds their judgements ?

I've only watched the movies and read the first book, but the details of how they achieved the prophecy are a little fuzzy to me. Unfortunately the wiki is quite sparse on details.

Can anyone tell me in detail the lengths the bene gesserit went through to fake the prophecy?

I understand logically why lasguns may still exist, but on they scale they do doesn't make sense to me. We still have bows and arrows but we don't use them in active warfare, and considering lasguns cause an nuclear explosion when they hit shields, I have to wonder how they didn't completely go extinct in combat.

By the time of Heretic's a Scattering has occurred where Humanity has spread into a small corner of the universe. Countless galaxies across hundreds of millions of lightyears are teeming with human life. According to Heretic's there were megatrillions lost in the mad dash away from Leto II's 3.5kyr tyranny. Taking that number literally that's on the order of 10^16 or hundreds of quadrillions. This astronomical number of people all left via spaceship. Yes, they didn't all leave at once, and some of them jumped directly to habitable worlds, but a good portion of them never stopped what they called The Seeking.

The Seeking is what those of the Scattering called their never ending expansion out into the universe. This wave of humanity pushed the boundaries of the known for over a thousand years.. It is in these foldspacecraft that the majority of Humanity lives. Even before Heretic's spacecraft are massive structures on the scale of O'Neill cylinders. Each foldspace ship has all the square footage to become self sufficient, holding stores and equipment needed to survive indefinitely in the void.

In many ways, a foldspace ship is the ideal place to be in the Dune universe, especially if it has a no-shield. It allows travel anywhere within an expansive universe while offering a self sufficient environment to sustain a modest population. The no-ship taken by Sheeana and her purists has room for a hundred plus a small desert big enough for modest sized sandworms. The ships are so massive that entire communities can travel and live within them.

He says: "I tuned it myself" when he gives Paul his thumper...

Does he mean that he programmed it to get a bigger worm, or am i reading too much into it?

I must have watched David Lynch's Dune when I was somewhere between 10 - 13 or so. I had definitely watched and rewatched the original Star Wars trilogy countless times before watching Lynch's Dune...so Star Wars was very formative in shaping my young mind's opinion of science fiction. I can't remember whether I read the Dune book before or after seeing Lynch's movie. At the end of it all, though, I deeply loved Dune, the book, and I was quite neutral in my assessment of Dune, the Lynch movie. I definitely did not hate it, and neither did I like it; but it left a lasting impression nonetheless.

Anyhow, moving forward a couple of decades, and it seems as though the phrase "He who controls the spice controls the universe" from Lynch's movie has somewhat percolated through the zeitgeist: it makes an appearance here and there every so often in pop culture. It's a succinct, memorable phrase, with a bit of an earworm quality, that sums up the essence of Dune's future-feudal society.

I'd wondered whether Denis Villeneuve's Dune movies would include any similar such catchphrase, especially since Villeneuve's aesthetic is more grounded and realistic, which I'd presumed meant Villeneuve wouldn't be deliberately trying to insert dialogue with an intent of creating something "catchy" or meme-worthy. I also thought, honestly, that it would be hard to come up with a catchphrase more succinct, comprehensive, and memorable than "He who controls the spice controls the universe."

But I think Villeneuve's movie did manage to create something at least somewhat comparably succinct, comprehensive, and thought-provoking with the line "Power over Spice is power over all." Against my expectation, to my mind, it manages captures the same spirit of "He who controls the spice controls the universe," yet is quite unique and memorable in its own way.

Curious what other Dune fans think, and if any other phrases or lines of dialogue from Villeneuve's movies had this same impact on you: something able to distill the essence of the Dune universe into something you found deep, maybe mildly profound?

Hey there.

I’m current re-reading the Dune series for the first time in probably a decade, and I’m now about halfway through Dune Messiah. One passage I have completely forgotten about is, after Paul meets with Edric, he speaks to Stilgar and mentions how he needs to brush up on his history, and suggests he read about some “emperors” from earth, namely Genghis Khan and Hitler, and then he ruminates on the two for a moment, especially Hitler.

I understand that this puts Dune in a context for us for the first time, and we’re now to understand that Dune takes place in our “world” but far in the future after humans have left Earth behind and branched out into the galaxy.

For some reason though, it takes me out of the story for a second, it’s kind of a jarring moment that feels weirdly out of place. How do other readers feel about this part? I don’t feel like I ever see it mentioned.

Hello Dune friends,

For a long time now I have searched for a specific quote, probably a poem from Paul about loving Chani. I remember it’s about Chani being the anchor of his life through a storm or something like that.

if anyone has the specific quote that would be fantastic, i remember writing this to my current wife when we were teenager.

Thank you

I watched the Villeneuve Dune 1 and 2 movies on a Turkish Airlines flight. The start of the movies had a text saying something like "This movie has been edited for content". This probably means some scene was censored. However, the plotline still seems coherent. So I am asking, what could've been censored from the movies and was it anything important?

It's a game I've wanted to make for some time now since I read the third book of the original series. It hit like a truck in my mind! I've never been religious but the Golden Path lives inside my mind rent-free. Please try it out! Maybe there are some ttrpg players here too :D

https://itch.io/jam/one-page-rpg-jam-2024/rate/2921669

También tiene versión en español en la página.

Cover

There is an exchange between Leto and his Duncan ghola about the use of shields that goes like this:

"If you intersect the force field with a lasgun beam, the resultant explosion rivals that of a very large fusion bomb. Attacker and attacked go together."

Moneo only stared at Idaho who nodded.

"I see why they were banned," Idaho said

IIRC Duncan intentionally sets a trap for the harkos by leaving an activated shield in hopes they'd tag it with a lasgun, so he already knew this. I also thought this was just common knowledge in his time.

Is the ghola being intentionally obtuse here? if so why?

Or is this a plot hole?

Or am I an idiot?

edit: I'm an idiot.

What's the point of having all the power, money, secrets of the world, live long life if you are confined in a tank for the rest of your life ?!?!?!?

Why on earth would anyone choose to become that? Are navigators manupulated at a young age that living in a tank is an honor?? And you have blurry vision of orange all the time

Well even if you were manipulated won't you realize soon how insane and uncomfortable it is? That's worse than a fish cuz fish at least have friends. Plus how do they even take shower, eat, brush teeth, use bathroom ... etc ?

I mean that fishform itself is already disgusting but what bothers me more is the fact that you are confined in a freaking tank for the rest of your life. It is a job I am willing to take when I am 95 a but absolutely no sooner.

Edit : I see a lot of comments that is merely reiterating they do it for power, know universe. Im talking about confinement yet no one even mentions it. I guess you are all brainwashed(no offense) by Frank Herbert?

spoilers

I am on my second read through of the series and I keep on coming back to the question of why there were no more emperors after the death of the god emperor. I thought Siona assumed the mantel of emperor since she inherited it after the worms death. No emperor was mentioned in the later books, are we to assume the BG rule in their place? I thought the whole point of the BG was to be the secret rulers of the houses and empire?

At the end of Dune Part 2, when Paul says “lead them to paradise” Stilgar closes his eyes and has kind of a flat look on his face while everyone else is cheering. Is your interpretation that he’s somber knowing what’s about to happen, or is it the complete opposite and this is like a wet dream to him?

Edit: wet dream, got it. Thanks!

Having played Emperor: Battle for Dune game as a kid and even now again, and having read the books up until and including CoD, I would want to know if there will ever be a role for Ordos in the books plot, since the game seemed to be based on the lore? They have all these cut scenes between missions and I find it hard to believe they just invented it?

I just never read about Ordos in the books. Funny thing is Ix and Tleilaxu are mentioned in the book, and in the game they seem to be secondary cogs that ally or serve the Ordos, which make me wonder even more why Ordos themselves are not mentioned. Is it something to come in the next books? I am not looking for spoilers just the basic information IF Ordos will ever be brought into discussion at all or play a part in the books. Much like a yes or no question, and if not, do they appear in any of the other books his son wrote? Thanks!

Is it possible to find a copy of Dune + Dune: Messiah as a single book? Would love to own one, as single story—as Frank Herbert intended—as opposed to reading it like two different books.