When I finally got around to reading Seven Pillars, I wasn't too far in before I was convinced Herbert had the book on his desk the whole time he was writing Dune. So many minor similarities, little scenes that don't quite match up but if you squint they do. Even the arc toward eventually committing war crimes, while seeking some great end for the people he's leading, feels like a connection. But also little stuff like the early travel scenes in Pillars reminded me of early scenes among the Caladanians(?) in Dune.
I think the part where I went "OK yeah this was the reference when he was coming up with the core plot and character of Paul" was when I came across the part where Lawrence comes up with his novel guerrilla war strategy: he's sick, feverish, possibly dying, in a tent in the desert, tended by a few companions. When he comes out of it, he's got his Path. It's too perfect.
[edit] Incidentally, it's not clear to me this author has a good picture of Lawrence's background. Lines like this:
> In terms of clothing, Lawrence comes to accept the Arab dress as “convenient in such a climate” and blends in with his Arab companions by wearing it instead of the British officer uniform.
make me think the author isn't aware that Lawrence had already spent a lot of time in the Middle East (especially, IIRC, modern Syria—so, near Damascus) very shortly before the war broke out, and that was a big part of why he was recruited by British intelligence for the mission(s) in Seven Pillars. It was on an earlier, pre-war trip that he'd adopted Arab dress—unlike what's suggested (if not quite stated) in the film Lawrence of Arabia, he was already quite familiar with and comfortable in it.
I'm 100% onboard with the 'Lawrence of Arabia inspired Dune' theory but I think one of the cleverest things Herbert did with Dune is to introduce a 'visionary substance' (spice) into the otherwise austere Islamic-adjacent motif.
He not only shrouded the spice in ritual and religion (which isn't THAT suprising considering many human societies used visionary substsances, and Herbert was a child of the 1960s psychedelic culture too) but also give it a central place in the economy and functioning of the empire.
What if a visionary substance was the real deal that gave you insight and precognition? What a rebel leader took full advantage of such a substance? What if that was combined with religious fervour?
Dune is basically space war + outsider Messiah + Islam + psychedelics
Plus he also had the smarts to use plausible mechanisms to remove advanced computers (the Butlerian Jihad) and nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a historical event IIRC? it's been a while..) from the technologies available to the Dune universe. This allowed the exploration of all sorts of human developmental possibilities - the Bene Gesserit and mentats, advanced schools of martial art and mental discipline etc.
On the topic of the Butlerian Jihad, and its echo of the historic Islamic taboo on art representing living things - looking around the current world and bearing in mind how twisted out of shape our social conversation has arguably become so quickly given that iPhones only landed in 2007... you have to wonder whether it is such an outlandish idea. Looking at the news over the last few weeks and months makes me realise that it is incredibly hard to see outside your historical moment, until things just happen! There are many possibilities and reality can get weird...
The personal force-field shield was clever too. Removes bullets from the story, in favor of martial arts.
Force-field was innovative.
Every other fantasy-type movie in a modern setting I cannot take seriously...Avengers, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.
Like, just use a gun. Whatever you were going to attack with, put that in a gun, and attack at 45rpm, 3000 ft/s.
> Every other fantasy-type movie in a modern setting I cannot take seriously...Avengers, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.
> Like, just use a gun. Whatever you were going to attack with, put that in a gun, and attack at 45rpm, 3000 ft/s.
This is one of the many reasons why I like the Dresden Files universe. Wizards wield incredible power, but a wizard can still be brought down by a sniper.
The fields didn't fully allow knife fights. High speed impacts the shield would repel but slow but strong movements with a knife could penetrate it. The way the movie at least justified disabling the shields was that the Fremen were seen to use laser weapons which in the Dune universe would cause a mini nuclear explosion if they hit a shield.
> although the shields were fudged somewhat to allow knife fights
Right. Shields can protect against high velocity things, e.g. bullets or shrapnel. But not slow moving things, e.g. air and hands.
This contrivance means ancient weapons still have a purpose.
This effect is similar to non-Newtonian fluids. (In fact, there has been research into using non-Newtonian fluids for body armor [1].)
---
> It would also seem that mankind lost the ancient secrets of body armour.
There are a few instances of armor in the movies (Harkonnens, Leo Atreides and Gurney Halleck, one of Paul Atreides' visions), but the books make virtually no mention of it.
The in-universe explanation is that the fighting style was much closer to ninjas than knights. Which means light-to-no armor was preferred.
Nuclear weapons exist and are used, they call them atomics. I believe they are used to break into the city in the first book. The big taboo seems to be using them against people.
It's less a taboo and more about MAD. The superpowers can't use them against each other, because then they'll get attacked by other superpowers sort of thing.
Correct. They nuke the rock wall to let the worms through.
> and nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a historical event IIRC? it's been a while..)
If I recall correctly, they are banned from use on people because that's how the machines tried to annihilate mankind (it's been a while..)
> nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a historical event IIRC? it's been a while..)
They have them ("atomics"). If bored into the planet, they are powerful enough to split it.
The Great Convention (akin the Geneva convention) prohibited the use of atomics. A convention that...well, no spoilers.
> nuclear weapons (some sort of extreme taboo based on a historical event IIRC? it's been a while..)
They have them.
But there's a moral taboo and a practical MAD one.
are you telling us AI slop is not Haram?
> and Herbert was a child of the 1960s psychedelic culture
Was he really a child of this culture? He was in his 40s by the time Dune came out in 1965, with large parts of it written in the early 60s, when psychadelics seemed more of a fringe thing used in beatnik circles, academic labs and prisons.
OTOH, the concept of invaders seizing territory for spice or other unique natural materials (Dutch and Portuguese in the Moluccas, Japan annexing Taiwan) drugs shifting empires (Opium) and special substances and techniques needed for long-distance navigation (citrus, astrolabe) had been around for centuries.
I hear you, but I believe he publicly commented on psychedelics and visionary substances and their inspiration for Dune's spice. He studied the natives of North and South America which have many examples of these things.
I don't have a source handy, but can share what Paul Stamets recounted a personal conversation with Frank in his Mycelium Running book as reported on the Dune wikipedia page:
"Frank went on to tell me that much of the premise of Dune—the magic spice (spores) that allowed the bending of space (tripping), the giant sand worms (maggots digesting mushrooms), the eyes of the Freman (the cerulean blue of Psilocybe mushrooms), the mysticism of the female spiritual warriors, the Bene Gesserits (influenced by the tales of Maria Sabina and the sacred mushroom cults of Mexico)—came from his perception of the fungal life cycle, and his imagination was stimulated through his experiences with the use of magic mushrooms."
Totally agree with you on the invaders part. I think this is why Dune is so great, it blends A LOT of things together into a coherent narrative.
Plus oil geopolitics
Yeah, that's smart too. And how the "Spacefaring Guild" requires spice to navigate the best routes between the stars. Oil for transport. Everyone brought to their needs by Pauls' threat to switch off the oil supply. It's all so smart, Herbert was a hypergenius I think.
> Herbert was a hypergenius I think.
DUNE is (one of?) my favorite fiction reads and I have to resist turning all "fanboy" over it sometimes.
I love the sensation in DUNE that I'm inside a fully fleshed-out universe where the vision is so large I can't even see the edges, but here's one thread you might find interesting.
...that said...
I never really "got" the rest of the series. Never felt like Paul and his actions were acceptably justified beyond "yeah we would've all died out, trust me".
Separately, the whole, uh, female superpower thing came off as eye-rolling simp-nerd fantasy that wasn't up to the standard of the first book. It wasn't even spice-induced, it was just /muscles/ taking over mens' minds.
> Never felt like Paul and his actions were acceptably justified
I actually like what Hurbert did with paul. He made someone that was a god amongst man and then completely destroyed his legacy. Paul both was and wasn't a hero depending on the perspective of the person in the story. Herbert did a good job of showing the dangers of worshiping an authoritarian leader.
hahah are implying DUNE isn't historical non-fiction?!! ;) Thank you; fixed.
I've found that "escaping from one's editor and writing things you think are cool or sexy" is a common hazard of being a successful author, especially in SFF. Look at George R.R. Martin's complete inability to actually finish a damn book, or Robert Jordan's insistence on incorporating detailed descriptions of people's clothes alongside gobs of spanking and ceremonial nudity. And those are series I enjoyed despite their flaws.
It's been a while since I've read them, but I recall Heretics and Chapterhouse being better than God Emperor. Although also weirder.
The sex stuff is a bit weird and cringe, but they're still great books. I just re-read Heretics again as I'm making my way through the whole series again and frankly in many ways it's the best book of the series if you can get past the weird sex stuff.
There's plenty in there still about prescience.
Paul Atreides actions really are never acceptabl\y justified because the later books basically show them to be unjustified. Or at least contradictory. It's a bit confused, but he is shown to be a brutal genocidal dictator, and his son even more so... Paul even alludes to Hitler at one point... It's just that Herbert makes them the protagonist and makes it confusing for the reader how sympathetic they should be.
And we basically just have to take Leto II's word at face value that he was preventing humanity's extinction, but...
By the time of Heretics, Herbert was basically coming right out and saying that prescience in fact alters the timeline rather than "just" predicts it. Which is kind of crazy if you think of two things:
1) Every Guild Navigator using the spice induced prescience to plan and fold space is altering reality
2) Spice comes from an alien being. The only aliens in the Dune universe.
(disclaimer: I don't count Brian Herbert's books & and whatever might be in there... what I read of those made me not want to read more)
Yeah I like the first book the most. The series went off the rails.
> needs
knees
Ha yes! My phonetic spelling
Don't forget ecology
It bothers me that this doesn't actually sound that far from what a lot of folks seem to genuinely think? People are desperate for a panacea. But only if it works on the elites, it seems. Heaven forbid we come up with something that merely helps people lose weight.
Worse, a lot of people mistake euphoria moments for being right.
It’s compelling because of course that is what people want.
"we have prophets at home" : the prophets at home : ketamine and dmt fueled madness
My memory of the book is faded and relying on the recent movie. Why is the rebellion in your opinion Islam like. Dethroned prince, lost prince, rebellion against colonization, empire mining a colony are very much a common trope
The rebellion is literally called 'jihad' in the book. A very religious desert people engaged in jihad.
I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" at the Riverside Theatre on Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee in 70mm in the summer of 1962, the year it was released. I was overwhelmed ("blown away" as a term of art didn't exist back then but would be an apt description). I was SO thrilled when, after nearly two hours, the screen said "There will now be an intermission." Never heard of such a thing back then for a movie!
I note that the film is now available for rent in 4k. I'm gonna take a flutter and watch it on Vision Pro.
A friend raving about it got me to go see the 1989 reissue, and I was similarly overwhelmed/blown-away. The intermission only added to the sense of it being an event.
Last year, I dragged friends of mine to see it in the theater. They, too, were amazed. Now, we've been reading up on those times.
The reading list, so far:
'Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East', Soctt Anderson
'Seven Pillars of Wisdom', T.E. Lawrence
'A Peace to End All Peace', David Fromkin
A minor point, but it was hardly the first epic movie to have an intermission. Gone With the Wind has one, for example, and is a similar length.
It's such a great movie! The entire story of El Aurens is extremely fascinating.
Too cool. I've always wanted to watch this and you've inspired me.
20 years ago when I was living in Shanghai, my girlfriend was a member of the communist party (meritocratic she was enrolled because she had great grades). She had regular meetings with a small group of members of the party and they had regular discussions after being told to watch certain movies.
Lawrence of Arabia was one of those movies she had to watch to later discuss with other members... So we watched it together, had great discussion about it. Later when she went to meet with the other party members, they discussed the cult of personality surrounding the character and the use of guerrilla tactics.
(Another movie they all watched like this was 7 years in Tibet)
The parallels with Lawrence are obvious, but I find that the character of Paul Atreides follows some older models as well.
Towards the end of the first book of Dune he has become an almost mythical figure, a Moses using his divine insight to lead his people to freedom, or a Mohammed throwing them into a global war of conquest.
That ambiguity is perhaps the book's greatest achievement: Paul's actions are only justifiable if the reader believes in him completely (he has really seen all possible futures and picked the best one) or not at all (he just wanted revenge and could not have foreseen the consequences).
Interesting to note that the recent Villeneuve adaptation seems to lean heavily into the latter interpretation (Paul and Jessica especially are ruthless and want revenge/power) while the Lynch adaptation was probably more of the former (Paul really wants to do good).
Eh, that isn’t how I saw the movie at all.
They didn’t want revenge/power, they had no choice but take it or die. It’s even said explicitly in numerous places in the movie.
That's what makes the rest of the series so fun!
Samuel Butler's 1872 "Erewhon" fiction book which features a society which banned all complex machines because of a prior machine intelligence uprising is the direct, and directly referenced, inspiration for the "Butlerian Jihad" in the Dune book series.
Frank Herbert said him self in an interview that Dune was inspired from Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch and that book is the story of Imam Shamil of the north caucasus.
Was looking for this comment, thanks. There was also a very lengthy article by s.o. about the fact which traces the origins of many details.
The presently discussed article ‘Paul Lawrence of Dune’ sound as if written for political goals, rather than actual understanding of the origins of Dune.
While we're on this subject Imam Shamil had an interesting contemporary counterpart figure that I think deserves more recognition:
I read Sabres of Paradise and it absolutely had a lot of parallels with Dune, and was a major source. Good book too
Many writers of genre fiction rely on their audience having read fewer history books than they have. I saw people online calling George Lucas a prophet for depicting the decline of the Republic in the Prequels, but he really just read a couple of books about Ancient Rome. And dragons and zombies make the premise of "what if the Mongols invaded during the War of the Roses" a lot more exciting.
Originality is overrated though, so I don't mind. One of my favorite science fiction novels, The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester, is transparently based on The Count of Monte Cristo.
A comment mentions it, but Sabres of Paradise is another key component to understanding Dune as a referential text as it pertains to imperialism and religious fervor as an insurrectionist response.
Lol. More like Dune lifts wholesale from Sabres of Paradise, translating the stories about Imam Shamyl into space, only adding some bits of LSD inspired trippiness. If anything, Herbert toned down the historical accounts. On the other hand, Lesley Blanch went for the dramatic over the historical in Sabres. The story about the Sultan that drowned his son's mistress, for example, was from a Greek movie version.
Yeah, it can't be understated how much was lifted. Chakobsa, the Kindjal, etc. Shamyl even acts like Atreides with regards to how he uses "visions" to drive important political decisions.
The article makes reference to Tim O'Reilly's excellent Frank Herbert.
That book is well worth reading by anybody who wants to better understand Frank Herbert, and is available for free at https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/.
I wish there was some logic to the O'Reilly's website, I occasionally stumble upon great material such as this, thank you.
Thanks for that. Some of Dune books read more like political science really...extraordinary body of work
There’s even a part at the beginning of Lawrence of Arabia film where he puts out a match with his fingers, and throughout, Lawrence proves his ability to overcome pain. Very reminiscent of the Gom Jabar.
Wait, is putting out a match with your fingers a superpower these days? I can do that very easily, and it barely hits a 2 on the 0-10 pain-scale.
Weird brag but yes, I would guess most people would not just tank putting out a match with their fingers. I suppose it might depend on the match though. The big wooden ones would probably hurt more than the thin little ones that don't light half the time
[dead]
"The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts"
Superficially, there is a sequence in the film where Peter O'Toole's very blue eyes appear to glow: https://youtu.be/nBiZu5C6lCo?t=12219
Insane the full movie is just there on YouTube.
> The 1962 film based on a romanticized version of Lawrence’s journey... rested on the idea of the ‘white savior,’ whose role was to lend a sympathetic ear to oppressed peoples and provide assistance to improve their lot in life.
I really think this is the wrong interpretation of the end of that movie.
This didn't sit well with me either.
In the movie, Lawrence tries to resolve his apparent split loyalties by bringing the Arab and British interests into alignment and has a couple of initial exhilarating successes, but he ultimately fails, badly. Neither the Arabs nor the British live up to his idealistic expectations. The British use him in ways contrary to his intentions. He also discovers that his own idealism is compromised by his egotism and sadism.
The beautiful, dramatic desert landscape, the danger of Lawrence's mission, the high political stakes for the Arab tribes, and the historical context of war all help create an illusion of the possibility of heroic transcendence that is deeply inspiring, but in the end, it is all human and mundane: human vices at the small scale and human politics at the large scale. There is no transcendence.
I can see how some people walking out of the theater might have only remembered the feelings stirred up by the beautiful cinematography and the epic score, and forgotten absolutely everything else, but I think it's a better movie for sweeping the viewer up into that feeling before dropping them down into the political squabbling, betrayal, disappointment, and tragedy.
The movie pretty explicitly has Lawrence trying to deal with these split loyalties and has him specifically aware that the result of his actions as a British officer end up screwing over his Arab allies.
Not to mention the scene where he tries to pass as an actual Arab, the results of which aren't those of a stereotypical "white savior" story.
I can't really say it's not a "white savior" story but it's a subversive enough take on it that I'd recommend it to people who are turned off by white savior stories. The movie has much more depth than that.
It's very much the British Empire view of the world. Read Kipling's India tales.
Done. It's got nothing to do with this movie, though.
Considering the British supplied weapons, explosives and tactics to the Saudi uprising "white man saviour" is not far from the truth no?
I don't know why it is considered politically incorrect nowadays to say that the world as we know it was shaped by white people. Deng Xiaoping himself constantly told his own comrades how fucking pathetic China had become. And nobody could argue with him.
The movie makes if fairly clear that he is a political tool to help Britain win the war. And he receives the provided assistance to help win the war, not to improve their lives.
Its only Lawrence himself who romanticizes his own journy and hopes preserve some form of democratic nationalism. Only to be then synically stabed in the back literally everybody, the tribal leaders, the english politicans and of course the arab rules.
My favoirte part of the movie is when the english leader and the arab rules both agree that its good that he is finally gone. This is the origin of the modern battle inside of the middle east between islamic populism (muslim brotherhood) and ruling dynasties (Saud).
The movie made this very clear and expicite, and Lawrence himself knew that this was his role, even when he tried to do the best he can for the people he liked within these constraints.
With recent events I’ve been thinking about Dune lately. Once you start to compare what happens in dune to what is happening now, it's rather unpleasant.
Prescience allows for the complete domination of humanity, but to some degree we already working on pre-prescience. Privatized intelligence companies have grown as part of our corporate surveillance state. These companies, like palantir, act as “truthsayers,” divining the state of reality from incredible amounts of information for those with the money to buy it. America has companies that rival countries in terms of power, and these intelligence companies that service them can act as king maker and influence, subtly or directly, with some very giant levers.
The US government is closer to the Landsraad, each house is a corporation, each CEO a duke or baron.
Peter Thiel is likely the reverend mother architect of a recent messianic rise to power.
I am not 100% sure exactly what the Bene Gesserit were supposed to represent, but on a deep level I think they represent intelligence agencies like the CIA.
Social Media has a lot of overlap with “the voice.” With A/B testing various groups with divisive messages, to see what divides most effectively, it creates a means of control. Nobody was commanded to show up on jan 6, but the “command” to do so was heard. This is very in line with frank Herbert’s idea of what the voice was. A/B testing messages on humans at scale is like learning the voice.
We now have Cameras, RF Receivers (blue tooth/driver's license detection), phone backups, website logs, and a host of other surveillance all centralized, maybe not directly, into the hands of private intelligence. With all these sources of information we are getting closer and closer and closer to prescience. We are still limited by computing power to make sense of all the data, but the god emperor of dune was not. With the rise of AI, we now have the potential for a thinking/processing agent with no sense of morality to be assigned to every single individual, in order to carry out the absolute crushing of any nascent dissent before it can become cohesive enough to threaten those in power.
We are dangerously close to uncheckable totalitarian rule. When our rulers do something we don't like, they will laugh and say "what are you going to do about it?" Every potential weapon purchased will be fed into their "prescient" machine, so will every communication with another individual, and every use of transportation. When your personal AI agent determines you are at risk of "doing something about it," an example will be made of you.
> We are dangerously close to uncheckable totalitarian rule.
I'm not sure we need to look to the future for that. North Korea has really shown that modern weapons and 80s era intelligence and propaganda methods, applied brutally enough, are enough to keep ~20 million people under extreme poverty and deep obedience for 80+ years now, with no signs of stopping (at least not from internal pressures) any time soon.
Most political scientis have always understood that regimes fail when the ruling classes are devided. You don't need 80s era anything to make it work. And you don't need to be as Brutal as North Korea is.
Its very rare that people overthrwo the government, and even then, its mostly because most of the ruling classes don't try to stop it.
That's the difference between Soviet and the Peoples Republic. In one, the army came out and stopped people, in the others it didn't.
The other alternative is replacement by of forign actor of some kind. Either military, or by influencing the local elites.
It's not enough, you also have to take into account specific culture and circumstances. The same as in NK could have happened in several other countries in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia), Africa and South America (various communist dictatorships) and Europe (all countries behind the Iron Curtain). So why only North Korea?
I believe the answer is the hereditary nature of the North Korean system. That is what is different in North Korea compared to those other countries.
It leads to a country that is essentially a slave society. The owner is the Kim family. The other top people are overseers. The population are slaves. Propaganda and censorship of the outside world maintain the system.
This was true of the other Communist countries also but I think the hereditary nature keeps it going. It’s the only thing that distinguishes North Korea from the other Communist states.
I never said Koreans in general have a slave mentality.
I was saying North Korea is akin to a slave society. In terms of the organization. The other Communist regimes were like this too.
> into totalitarianism in almost the same way democracy collapses into oligarchy
And yet we have democracies that are 100s of years old and are still far more democracies then oligarchies.
While no communist state ever came even remotly close and essentially were never not totalitarian.
> Communism becomes a scare word that means authoritarianism which taints marxist ideas
Because Marxist idea are bad. That communism and all ways to get their lead to mass slaughter SHOULD taint his ideas.
He even privately admited that millions of people will die for his vision but he was sure that somehow once on the other side you would defently live in a utopia. Of coure he himself never bothered to explain how this happened beyond some vauge (and completely historically inaccruate) mussings about history.
> By using the word communism to describe authoritarianism, you damage the ideas necessary to prevent democracy from the same fate.
No it doesn't. The idea of democracy does not depend on any way on the ideas of communism and socialism.
And what about the Butlerian Jihad? It was a war against Thinking Machines, devices that would do the thinking for people. People were becoming less critical, they stagnated, left all that thinking work to machines, which meant that the technocratic class that controlled these machines effectively controlled mankind.
I think Frank Herbert would have a field day with our modern era of algorithms.
Future always seems to flip-flop between utopia and dystopia, but that usually just ends up being myopia.
*as some variant of Paul archetype rises and returns the branch to a coherent timeline.
I have to ask does anyone know why the site asks "Are you between 13 and 15 years old?"
Rather odd both the question and the specificity.. Would this not be the same as asking; "Are you 14 years old?"
Not to mention I almost clicked "Yes" thinking it was asking the more common "Are you at least this many years or older?"
> Would this not be the same as asking; "Are you 14 years old?"
"between x and y" normally includes the endpoints.
For example, if someone asks you to pick a number between 1 and 10, everyone would pretty much agree that 1 and 10 are acceptable choices.
The ambiguity of such questions drove me up the wall as a child.
My mother has a story about how I would ask about future events as "the day after the day after the day after the day after the day after today", which in my mind was much clearer than "in X days" why it wasn't clear how rounding occurred.
Clearly, this set me up for a career involving off-by-one errors.
Ha! That's truly funny and obeys some kind of comedy rule about taking the story one way and then veering in a different direction. Well done, indeed.
Our daughter used to say "yesterday's yesterday" when she was 4ish and I really liked it.
Norwegian has the phrases "fra og med" and "til og med", where the "og med" means "including". So "from and including Monday" removes the ambiguity.
Okay, but if you say "pick a seat between Steve and Paul" I'm not going to sit in either lap.
They would be technically acceptable yet they would feel exceptional
I'm convinced Herbert had some deep knowledge of psi phenomena. His descriptions of truthsayers reading people, timelines, race consciousness, and prescience are very similar to real experiences. His emphasis that it emerges through a combination of genetics and training of subtle awareness, plus the suggestion compounds could provide access to a state that could be sustained without them - also ring very true. The exploration of its paradoxes (destructiveness and utility of prophecy), and the contrast of those intuitive skills with the pure analytical ones of the mentat (or even of thinking machines) are also very deep. I think the idea that humanity's future involves a deeper engagement with and interplay of all these forces is also super likely. Perhaps he was friends, through his naval service, with people in the UK's version of Stargate (US psi and remote viewing programs). Surely there was such a program, tho I'm not aware of any releases of information about it.
Herbert and similar are the release of information, the main "psi phenomenon" explored over the XX century being precisely the remotely induced belief in "psi phenomena". That rabbit hole goes deep, though I have my doubts as to whether it leads out.
No, psi predates modern sci fi and experiences of it are not generated by that. Belief is easy to find in preceding centuries too
I'm not talking belief either, I'm talking praxis ;)
IME, what you refer to by a Greek letter is either "just there" as part of one's perceptual and cognitive functioning, or "just isn't" - the latter obviously being the predominant case, being more adaptive for survival in a newly Enclosed world. One even has some degree of control as to enabling or disabling it. Without guidance as to avoiding its many pitfalls, though, it's still very easy to end up in a psychotic state, or some other uncomfortable frame and shape. Subsequently, the manifestation of cosmic love commonly called "natural selection" does what it's known to do...
(My pet theory is that Abrahamic faiths, the promotion of Christianity to state-religion, and the consequent Dark Ages, were all parts of a sort of mass political reaction to people overdoing that sort of thing. Took a bunch more centuries than expected to even force it underground, though. And, as these things go, it reemerged nearly simultaneously in the form of the indigenous knowledges of colonized folk, who were subjected to more of the same violence, and then some.)
What was being tested last century is whether the so-called "they" can switch it on or off for you, remotely; authors of fantastic literature, even if not directly informed from "on high", happen to be in a good position to sense these workings and conduct discourses on them. Makes for good business, too, since it is only natural for humans to want some enchantment in their lives. However, the background psychological pressures of living in perpetual encirclement naturally (well, mimetically) drive people to compartmentalization, such as the confining of these experiential coagulates into the sphere of "fictions" (if not outright "delusions", the distinction being, for the most part, simply of medium of conveyance.)
Thankfully, as we all know, fiction is something that doesn't exist, and it doesn't take much to realize how this statement cuts both ways.
Thank you! :)))
i just got downvoted for saying elsewhere that this "needs an /s" - but this either does, or you need some help.
I was walking by the sea the other day and saw a man drowning.
"You need help," I said helpfully. Mercifully, even!
perhaps he was just waving
Sorry, I didn't mean to belittle your experience, or the guy's demise.
I was making a bit of a heartless pun of sorts on Stevie Smith's poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46479/not-waving-but-...
> you need some help
That seems a bit strong given all the wild stuff believe in a religious context.
Don’t even need religion to see wild stuff, or to know that your intuition has something to it beyond calculation from experience.
Thanks for the help!
Concerning truthsayers:
It is absolutely the truth that a liar will automatically have a difficult time knowing when another person is being truthful. They will both automatically tend to believe the person is lying and not know how to recognize the signs that a person is being completely truthful.
It's the opposite of an honest person being more easily conned. It's not in their expectations, because of their own lack of devious ways.
That's part of the reason that dictators rise to power on the backs of the gullible -- most people are just not that utterly ruthless, dishonest, or mean-spirited. All these GOP folks being fired and deported by Trump are just incapable of comprehending either how vile the man is or how stupid they are (which is why he targeted them with his cons).
And America would be in a better situation right now if more Americans had their heads out of their asses enough to know that that is a bad, bad dude, who cares about one and only one person: himself and those that serve him.
All that said, the first step to recognizing liars is to be brutally truthful, especially with yourself. The worst lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves.
[ETA: ps: I love you, my friend. Keep shining your light!]
Yeah, self-awareness is necessary for these abilities. It's also a form of subtle awareness - that level of introspection and awareness of inner emotion and thought helps you comprehend other people. Like Van Gogh training himself on self-portraits, to then paint and see others. You need it, definitely! Well, at least it helps. I disagree with you on Trump, but I guess we can still be friends right?
No.
That which you do to the least of my brothers, you have done unto me.
No, but I'll teach you how to not be a loveless, narcissistic destroyer of happiness, like that purblind fool.
That doesn't mean I don't love you, but I am commanded to love you less than the people whose oppression you countenance.
Hitler was both self-aware and a hateful fuckhead. Self-awareness is worthless without a compassionate heart.
The willfully ignorant have no peace to give.
Lawrence of Arabia may be the influence of the character, but the Nabataeans, of Petra fame, are surely the main influence of the Fremen. (excuse the LLM summary)
Economic Foundation
- Nabataeans controlled lucrative frankincense and myrrh trade routes
- Fremen controlled the essential spice melange on Arrakis
- Both commodities were incredibly valuable and strategic resources
- Trade of these rare substances provided economic and political leverage
Desert Survival
- Both expertly adapted to harsh desert environments
- Developed advanced water conservation techniques
- Created hidden settlements (Fremen seeches/Nabataean rock-carved cities like Petra)
Social Structure
- Egalitarian approach to gender roles
- Women in significant leadership positions
- Tribal hierarchies based on skill and contribution
- Strong communal survival ethos
Trade and Resistance
- Controlled strategic resources in challenging terrain
- Maintained independence through economic and military strength
- Used desert environment as defensive advantage
- Resisted external imperial powers
Technological Adaptation
- Innovative survival technologies
- Deep understanding of ecological context
- Specialized equipment for desert survival
- Advanced navigational and trading skills
Other people have documented Herbert's obsession with the californian ecology movement and dune re-establishment. I think he took things happening in small scale and used them as filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale.
Oregon not California.
https://niche-canada.org/2020/04/24/frank-herberts-ecology-a...
The Oregon dunes are a great place to visit (at least, I enjoyed them) - not like anything else you'll find in North America.
And you can tell people you've been to the dunes that inspired "Dune" :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Dunes_National_Recrea...
> I think he took things happening in small scale and used them as filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale.
I think this must be a common thing that good scifi authors do. I saw a talk by William Gibson many years ago where he mentioned something very similar, he called it "part of his science fiction toolkit".
Kim Stanley Robinson is carrying the story forward.
Mostly based on The Sabres of Paradise...
Paul is based on Shamyl 3rd Imam of Dagestan from that book
It's an interesting article with some contrasts I hadn't considered, but as a tangent, why does the site think it needs 200% CPU constantly, even when not scrolling, just to show me a wall of text?
Interesting to see that Isaac Asimov's Foundation isn't mentioned anywhere. The Wikipedia-article says the following[0]
> Tim O'Reilly suggests that Herbert also wrote Dune as a counterpoint to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)#Asimov's_Foundati...
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East Book by Scott Anderson
One of my favourite books on the topic
Robert Evans did an introduction to the life and deeds of Lawrence a while back, which I thought was interesting.
First episode:
Lawrence of Arabia was also a story about how superpowers abuse people and use them as chess pieces stabbing them in the back. But at least the Saudis had the last laugh.
The trick, Muad'Dib, is not minding that it hurts.
I was surprised how much more subtle in many ways Lawrence of Arabia was compared to dune
Reality is more subtle than fiction.
Dune is desert warfare of the WWI era. Modern desert warfare is rather different.
So 40k is Lawrence of Arabia, neat.
The whole concept of Paul atreides seemed entirely orientalist, in Edward Said's coinage of the term.
[dead]
This showing up here at the same time articles about the push for tourism in Saudi Arabia showing on major news outlets.
[flagged]
[flagged]
Compared with what, for god's sake? Explosions, mad Arabs, trekking across the horrible desert, dim British superiors doing the dim British thing, dubious Turkish sexual practices, etc. This is boring??? Though I must admit O'Toole does camp it up a bit too much.
Camps it up too much?! Exactly the right amount.
Except the negotiation scene with Auda. He always seemed a touch too sarcastic in his delivery there, and it makes Auda seem foolish, which makes the scene worse. Like that one awkward cut in the middle of Jaws, this bugs me every time I watch it. Made even worse because the scene’s also wonderful, but that flaw… frustrating.
But god, the rest? It makes him otherworldly, magnetic. In a movie full of larger than life characters (omg, the real life bio of Auda!) you can see how so many mark him early as someone to be wary of, and others underestimate him (he’s clownish!) and others follow him.
Well, I did say "a bit" - and it is obviously a brilliant non-boring film.
Actually, this has made me put "Pillars of Wisdom", which I never read before, on my Kindle to-read list.
Yeah, I wasn't really trying to push back too hard, just taking it as a chance to banter about a movie I really like :-)
Some of it's acting styles, too. You can see it in lots of the characters, a bit of what reads as over-acting today. More stage influence. Having watched a lot of older movies, I get the sense both that film acting styles developed (not necessarily improved, but, maybe) over time, and that for a long while more styles were within the range of "normal" that an audience might not be surprised or put-off by, while today the range of normal styles is much narrower and you rarely see other approaches outside of really niche films or some foreign film markets (Indian cinema!)
Pillars is great, highly recommended. It's extremely different from the film, too—where the film presents a practically mythic figure (and his fall) and is bent entirely toward that purpose, the book is (perhaps contrary to what one might expect) relatively humble, even self-deprecating, and grounded. And Lawrence's writing is outstanding, clear and full of beautiful sentences, phrases, and passages—his fancy education really paid off in that department.
He also penned a translation of the Odyssey (but not the Iliad) which happens to be a personal favorite. I stumbled on and read it well before I realized it was him, since he published that one under the pen name "TE Shaw", which I didn't recognize. Not a tightly-faithful translation, not a verse translation either, but reads very modern in the telling, without feeling anachronistic or losing the sense that you're reading an ancient epic, if that makes sense, and also not far enough away from the original text to be a retelling rather than a translation.
Well I can certainly imagine the kind of person who sees writing about such things as boring, and do wish that kind of view had more sway over people.
Warfare, spycraft, and statecraft are, on some level, immensely stupid affairs; that's exactly why one of them even gets termed intelligence.
Compared to..citizen's kane, godfather, 2001 a space odyssey, basically any of the older "top" movies.
[flagged]
>unlike what's suggested (if not quite stated) in the film Lawrence of Arabia
The scene from the movie is based on this passage from chapter 20 of Seven Pillars, which suggests that while he was familiar with Arab clothing before the war, there was a period of time when he was in British army uniform during the Arab conflict, until he was asked by Feisal to change into Arab clothes:
"Suddenly Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in and out of Feisal’s tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once, very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more decent in the desert."
Also, the below quote is from the introduction, which I might add is perhaps the most beautiful introduction I've ever read. I sometimes go back just to read it:
"In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me, At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith. I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed’s coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do."
The discrepancy is easy to explain; Frank Herbert never owned a copy of Seven Pillars but was instead inspired by a manuscript of desert adventures that he’d found on a train as a boy whilst holidaying in the UK.
I see what you did there.
(those who don't follow: you can catch up on the Seven Pillars wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Pillars_of_Wisdom or like basically any biography of Lawrence, various forwards, et c.)
Clever.
What's ironic is how people often point to plot points in many franchises (Star Wars, GoT, etc) as being derivative of Dune... Yet Dune itself is fairly derivative of other works
It’s even more stark the further back you go. When the printing press was invented, it didn’t usher in a new era of creativity but instead the first few centuries resembled modern Hollywood: shameless sequels and reboots. By far the most popular books were translations of Greek classics and rote derivatives of the Arthurian legends. It wasn’t until the first iterations of copyright and a few other cultural shifts that a “professional” writer class was born and started to expand on the creativity of our stories. Until then publishing wasn’t profitable enough to support a real creative process, so they cribbed as much from existing canon as they could to make ends meet. See how long it took science fiction to properly develop into a literary form, for example.
That's the third major use of the printing press.
The first was for catholic indulgences.
The second was for religious propaganda during the European wars of religion.
> When the printing press was invented, it didn’t usher in a new era of creativity but instead the first few centuries resembled modern Hollywood
It ushered in massive creativity! The early printshops were innovation hot-beds and quickly developed textual things that had never existed at scale before, like dictionaries, newspapers, political cartoons, encyclopaedia, technical drawings / manuals lacking copy errors, local maps, etc.
> how long it took science fiction to properly develop into a literary form
How long do you think that took? There's a wide range of possible dates for each endpoint, but I don't think it reaches a century.
The first book I concur but the series goes in directions I would never have predicted in multiple places in later books, off the top of my head - books four and five stand out in memory, though he laid the groundwork in the first book.
Sure, but when was the last time anyone claimed a major franchise was ripping off God-Emperor?
On Star Wars and derivations... Bertram Thomas' Arabia Felix, about his crossing of the Empty Quarter, listed some names of stars, transliterated from the arabic.
The north star, was written as Al Jedi... the Jedi. It goes a step further, in that it's arabic which translates as the kid (as in a goat, but the same way Hans refers to Luke).
I'm not sure how much is coincidence, but reading about Thomas preparing to travel by starlight, it struck me as being remarkably reminiscent. I guess there are no original stories.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Fac...
A tale as old as time
This has relatively little relevance to Dune, which is basically the story of how the worse dictator in history rose to power (only to be surpassed by his son's 1200 year reign of tyranny).
The fremen jihad killed 61 billion people across the empire, including the sterilization of 90 whole planets, per details in Dune Messiah (quoting from a wiki, I don't have this kind of memory). It may be that life in the empire after this was over returned more or less to the same as what was there before, for those that survived - though I don't think the books go into any significant detail. Life on Dune was definitely better than it had been under the Harkonnens, but this is not necessarily true across the empire.
> Was not this the real moral of the story? Resist stagnant empire and explore the universe?
I think this is somewhat the general idea, but more specific. His main message is that charismatic leaders, even the ones with the best of intentions as Paul certainly was (and Leto II, though in a more complex way), are extremely dangerous and should not be trusted or followed. The empire overall would have been an unquestionably better place if Paul had been killed in the desert (except that perhaps the Bene Gesserit would have led people in an even worse direction if their plans had succeeded at the time). Arrakis itself would have been in a better shape if the fremen had risen up and overthrown their oppressors, but had otherwise stopped at that.
> Was not this the real moral of the story? Resist stagnant empire and explore the universe? Basically the same as Foundation that is book from the same era?
I think the "moral" of Dune shifts pretty dramatically between Messiah and Children. Dune and Messiah are essentially a warning about charismatic leaders reshaping the world in their eyes, abusing religion and faith to do so, and harming all humanity in the process whilst losing their own. Paul Atreides is not a desert mouse, but a sandworm that consumes all in his path. This isn't even subtext, it's basically stated explicitly both in the text and in later writing/talks by Herbert himself.
In the later books I think it shifts a bit to a story that one must lose their humanity in order to save it, and it's important that Leto is not Paul.
This is the final answer.
True, but the references in Star Wars to spice (spice mines of Kessel in the original, a reference to striking spice miners in Attack of the Clones) is pretty much only from Dune. Unless they were mining oregano or something.
The Dutch East Indies was literally "mining" spice ( cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric ) from SE Asia for European consumption and packing ship with gold bullion in exchange.
There were many actual "spice wars" fought in the region to wipe out competing crops, to build alliances, and later betray those local allies, etc.
"All the spices", save for tea, coffee, and sugar, which continued to be imported in quantity. And are addictive to boot.
A century or so later, laudenum.
The spice trade itself didn't shrink so much as it was subsumed by other trade, I think, particularly as shipping capacity, reliability, and safety increased.
The airquotes on "mining" would signify to some that literal mining with excavators, screens, crushers, etc was not intended rather an operation that was literally on the scale of mining with an economic return on par with gold mining a rich vein.
Others might disagree. English is a fun language.
What cannot be disputed is the significant increase in national wealth brought home by the Dutch operations in what was known as the Dutch East Indies.
Batavia ( now Jakarta) was the capital of the VOC's lucrative spice trade for 3½ centuries.
Ships laden with tamarind, mace, cloves and nutmeg – at that time worth more, gram for gram, than gold - sailed from there to the Netherlands and often wrecked on the Western Australian coast returning with gold.
It's the value per weight part that merits comparison with Spanish aquisition of gold in the new world.
"Mine" can also imply "exploit".
nowadays (past few decades) 'mine' (and farm) are often used in place of gather, esp. when it comes to game communities, e.g. 'mine' wood in 'warcraft III'. Farm any sort of materials, equipment, reputation, etc. So I suppose it's not that far fetched.
Figuratively "mining" spice
Harvesting, perhaps. I’ve never heard it referred to as mining
It's derivation all the way down.
That's what renewed my passion for reading; revisiting texts with contexts in mind, history, intent, etc.
I feel the education system really fails people with these little bits
All creative work is derivative.
I had friends that raved about Dune. Think they actually read the book.
Later saw the movie and kept thinking there would be a twist. Was largely disappointed but the mother starting a holy war was a bit intriguing.
Keep watching the movies, you will love the next one :-)
adding to this... Avatar is often thought of as unique, but it's a blatant copy paste of Timothy Zahn's "Manta's Gift"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216441.Manta_s_Gift
Avatar the movie franchise? The most common thing you'll hear people say about it is that it's "Pocahontas in space".
Related Herbert audio interview on the origins of Dune. Sorry it’s a YouTube link. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A-mLVVJkH7I
The part of that interview that's stuck with me after I listened to this last year was his comments about the feudal system (at around 38:30 [1]).
So, tribal organisation is a natural organisation of humankind. We tend to fall into it, given any chance at all, given the proper stresses, or given the proper lack of stresses.
[1]: https://youtu.be/A-mLVVJkH7I?t=2314
This should be the transcribed copy of that interview http://www.sinanvural.com/seksek/inien/tvd/tvd2.htm
The part relevant to the OP:
FH: Well, one of the threads in the story is to trace a possible way a messiah is created in our society, and I hope I was successful in making it believable. Here we have the entire process, or at least the large and some of the subtle elements of the construction of this, both from the individual standpoint, and from the way society demands this of you. It’s the references in there, you know, that the man must recognize the myth he is living in, because the creation of an avatar is a mythmaking process. We’ve done it in our…in recent times. Look at what’s happening to John F. Kennedy.
WM: O, sure.
FH: Who was a very earthy, real, and not totally holy man…so here we have a likeable person, now, you see…
WM: Yes.
FH: But real in the flesh and blood sense who by the process of emulation becomes something larger than life, far larger than life, and I’ve just explored all of as many permutations as I could recognize in the process.
WM: Oh, I-I caught overtones of Lawrence of Arabia in the thing, for example.
FH: He could very well become an avatar for the…for the Arabs.
WM: Right.
FH: If Lawrence of Arabia had died at the crucial moment of the British…
WM: Say, when Allenby walked into Jerusalem.
FH: Yes. If he had died…if, for example, he had gone up and killed the people who were destroying his breed, walked into that conference and said, Gentlemen, I have here under my javala a surprise, Bang! Bang! Bang! and he had been killed…
WM: He’d have been deified.
FH: He would have been deified. And it would have been the most terrifying thing the British had ever encountered, because the Arabs would have swept that entire peninsula with that sort of force, because one of the things we’ve done in our society is exploited this power…Western man has exploited this avatar power.
I do think it's unfair when people claim Dune is a straight retelling of T.E. Lawrence's story. For instance I think the messianic aspects are drawn from other episodes in history, like the Mahdist War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
If you really wanted to you could say even George RR Martin was influenced by it.
(Game of Thrones spoilers below)
Look at the character arc of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. You will find some similarities there too both with Dune and with Lawrence of Arabia. But with a female character rather than a male.
Alot more parallels than that
Starks = Atreides, Ned = Leto, Catelyn / Sansa = Lady Jessica, Paul = Jon/Robb, Duncan Idaho = Benjen, Gurney = Aemon Targaryen / Jorah Mormont, Chani = Ygritte / Arya, Jamis = Tormund, Dr. Yueh = Littlefinger
Lannisters = Harkonnens, Tywin = Baron Vladimir, Joffrey / Jaime = Feyd / Rabban (to some degree, traits are mixed between these characters)
At some level you can map any epic to any epic.
Are you saying he knew their ways as if he was born to them?
> make me think the author isn't aware that Lawrence had already spent a lot of time in the Middle East
it is actually mentioned in the article. you misread here, with the point being that knowing how to do something is not the same as accepting it for a normal activity.