Hunters of Dune

Product Information

https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/wqb31/how_the_hell_do_i_read_the_dune_series/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=comments_view_all Artificial Human: Any Tleilaxu-creation, including the Face Dancers, Gholas, clones, some Mentats, and human-animal hybrids.

Creepy Uncle: The Baron, completely obsessed with his young nephew. Somehow worse that he considers him an adopted son.

Video game adaptations:

Dreaming of Things to Come: Paul has dreams about the future (including later events on Arrakis) before gaining his full prescient ability. So does Leto II.

Spice of Life: The Spice itself, which is the most valued commodity in the entire universe. To a lesser extent, water on Arrakis (the planet where spice is harvested). Frank wrote both as a metaphor for water itself and oil. Slavery, sexual or otherwise, is an accepted practice in the Dune universe. Irulan recounts the story of secretly seeing Fenring offer Emperor Shaddam a female sex slave, only for Shaddam to politely refuse. Feyd also has several female sex slaves (but, to be fair, the Baron has male sex slaves as well). Never Speak Ill of the Dead: When Paul kills Jamis in a duel, the other Fremen refrain from speaking ill of Jamis, even though he had a history of violence and unethical actions (i.e., killing Harah's first husband so that he could marry her). On the other hand each of the members of the band has at least one good memory of Jamis and Harah praises him as a good provider and a good father to both her sons, including the one by her first husband, and wants to know if Paul means to do as well by them.

Justified in that Paul and the Fremen were closing down all spice production on Arrakis, and that included the smugglers; it was therefore highly likely their paths would cross. Paolo did exhibit bits of prescience as he grew. The chief of these was a vision of an older version of himself looking up at him, as the one down on the ground slowly bled to death. When Paolo reached the age of 10, he and the reborn Baron were brought to Synchrony to have Paolo's martial arts training completed by Erasmus. Death World: Both Arrakis and Salusa Secundus are so deadly that simply surviving them develops the two most feared fighting groups in the universe, the Fremen natives and Sardaukar soldiers. Herbert wrote in 1964-1965, when superweapons were all the rage in the shadow of the Cold War. First laser was patented in 1959-1960, first functioning examples fired in 1960-1962, Goldfinger was released in 1964.

BH and KJAs Dune books seem to not get a lot of love, but I'm curious if anyone on this subreddit thought those Dune "sequel" books were worth reading. Culture Chop Suey: A classic example. Millennia of galactic colonization have created completely new unrecognizable ethnicities and modified versions of current Earth religions. Cyanide Pill: Yueh gives Duke Leto a poison-gas tooth so that he can kill the Baron Harkonnen. This makes Leto something of a kamikaze — but an unsuccessful one, as the gas only kills Piter.

Film and television adaptations:

Language Equals Thought: The Fremen culture has dozens of words describing various types of sand, and Liet-Kynes intentionally introduces a language based in the terms of ecology, with the express purpose of making the Fremen into an army of terraformers. Fantasy Gun Control: Firearms exist in large numbers but they have been rendered as secondary weapons due to the prevalence of personal force shields. Force shields can, however, be penetrated by close combat techniques, so those are the dominant means of warfare. Laser weapons are also highly limited since a laser beam hitting a force shield cause both the gun and the shield generator to explode with enormous power. Which means that some uses of shields are only practical because shooting them with lasers is physically equivalent to using nukes. Trilogy Creep: An interesting example. Dune was actually conceived as one long book, with the sequels Dune Messiah and Children of Dune fitting directly after the first. Messiah was fleshed out while writing Dune and eventually became its own novel, which due to its expansion then warranted Children to be expanded as well and also became its own book. God Emperor of Dune and the last two in the series, Heretics and Chapterhouse are genuine examples of a trilogy creep, though the fact that the story is now over 10,000 years past in the originals, it's fair to say that they're a trilogy of their own. Higher Understanding Through Drugs: The appendix to Dune lists several "awareness-spectrum narcotics" that increased the user's understanding and mental abilities, including melange (by Guild Navigators), the Fremen "Water of Life" (which affected Paul Atreides and his sister Alia), and the drugs used by Bene Gesserit Truthsayers (who were Living Lie Detectors). When human-kind and machine-kind had sufficiently exhausted themselves in their all out war, the Enhanced Face Dancers would rise up and take hegemony over the universe. In the meantime, Khrone and his hundreds of millions of Enhanced Dancers did their bidding of their Machine Masters, and replaced many leadership positions throughout human-kind.

Genetic Memory: Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers (and Wild Mothers such as the Fremen's and Rebecca) get genetic memories of all their female ancestors, the Kwisatz Haderach gets them for all his ancestors, as do children of these two. Gholas can gain past life memories this way too, by being manipulated into doing something their original self would never have done. Later, when the ghola of Leto II went to commune with the sandworms that were in the hold of the ship, the ghola of Thufir Hawat went to guard him should the giant beasts turn on the young man. The worms reared up when Hawat entered the hold, and immediately killed Hawat, and showed him to be an Enhanced Face Dancer. This led to a ship wide search for other saboteurs that might be involved in subversion. To question everyone aboard at the same time, all of the inhabitants of the Ithaca were called to the main assembly hall. Really 700 Years Old: Heavy use of spice can extend lifespans by a factor of three or more. The Emperor Shaddam is described by his daughter Princess Irulan as looking around 50, though being in his late 80s. He dies due to work-related stress rather than old age.The group, which consisted of Sheeana, a ghola of Miles Teg, and notable others was released; but the gholas of Stilgar and Liet Kynes stayed behind to help the bitter natives adapt to the encroaching desert and the ever increasing number of sandworms on the world. Idaho did make himself vulnerable to the watchful eyes of Omnius and Erasmus, in their guises of Daniel and Marty, and the Ithaca had to fold space again to safety. Guild Navigators breathe great quantities of melange/spice, giving them limited powers of prescience, enough to find safe passage when their ship is traveling faster than light. The general population doesn't gain this benefit. The Bene Gesserit take this to the extremes. With complete control over their biochemical makeup, they can slow down or speed up the aging process at will or choose to look younger or older while chemically being another age. They rarely take advantage of this, however, because such power can be intoxicating and dangerous. If someone outside the inner-Bene Gesserit organization were to notice the true extent of their powers it could lead to their destruction from superstitious outsiders as well as loss of influence over the Empire. Leto II ends up doing this, living up to 3,500 years before being (willingly) assassinated. Leto II: It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.