A Geek History of Time - Episode 114 - Finally Dune Part II

Episode Date: July 3, 2021

So first thing foremost, I think being the addition of pant leggings is really when you start to see your heroes get watered down. The ability to go straight man, that one. Which is a good argument for absolute girls. Everybody is going to get behind me though, and I support numbers with those who love me. When you hang out with the hero, it doesn't go well for you. Grandfather took the cob and just slid it right through the bar. Oh god, Bob. Okay.

And that became the dominant way our family did it. Okay. And so, both of my marriages, they were treated to that. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, rage, I could. How do you imagine the rubber chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you, I could. How did you imagine the rubber chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you always had to have the sexual revolution.

It might have just been a Canadian standoff. We're gonna go back to 9-11. Oh, do we get over it? And don't ever stand in the book, it's a school. Agra has no business being that big. With the cultists, we all win. This is the heat that's been up on. There we connect. Here we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. There's a new electric trip here in California.

And I am a few days away from going on my first interstate trip in, well, cross country trip in quite some time. We're going to be visiting with extended family. Everybody we're gonna be seeing is vaccinated, which is good. And yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It is gonna be in Florida in June. Central Florida in June. So, you know, that's gonna suck,

but, you know, the trip itself, I'm very much excited about looking forward to it. There's gonna be members of the extended family, our little boy is gonna be meeting for the first time. Oh, always excited. So, that's gonna be cool. And Disney World. Ah!

We're doing Dumb O, we're dying a day. And I get to take him on the teacups. Nice. Which, as a a little kid that was my favorite thing in Disneyland, well that in the Dumbo ride, the big flying Dumbo. Yeah, both of which my wife has said no. Okay. Just no. Like you don't get to or she's hard pass. Got you. Because because she doesn't want to wind up vomiting in front of our son. No, okay. Did she understand that things will be spinning? So even if she vomits in front of him, it'll actually hit to her right. Yeah, we're there. Yeah, I don't think that would be a selling point. But yeah, so yeah, no, I'm very excited about all of that.

That's what I've got going on. Who are you? What's happening in your world? Oh, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a local Latin teacher at the high school level here in Northern California. I am not going anywhere or doing anything exciting I'm hoping to just kind of just gonna focus on me No, I'm actually and just in touch with like, you know what you need right now. Yeah, no actually what I'll probably end up doing is some deep cleaning of this house and Well, there you go. Yeah, I mean, you know, genuinely focus on the living space. Okay, continue teaching my kids Latin There you go. So that's the yeah today today was our little boys last day in daycare until August because I am contractually unemployed Okay, two months and in daycare until August because I am contractually unemployed

for two months. And yeah, there's, I'm both very excited about the adventure that's gonna be involved. And I'm looking on, oh, I get to be a full time parent. And there's kind of that, what am I gonna do with him for all those hours of the day? Kind thing going on I mean I've done it before I'm sure he's older and

more capable of things you will find that it's actually easier this year than it was last year yeah yeah I have no doubt so all right in our last episode yes we really didn't cover wrestling from 2001 to 2002 and I want. I can hear the collective screaming through time. Yes. Through time. I have not even taken any spice and I can hear the future right now. Okay, but because even without menthat powers, I could calculate that's gonna fucking happen. I could calculate that that's gonna fucking happen

Someday we do need to have a talk about Muhammad Hassan as as played by Mark Kobote God they could have done something cool. They did something worse and then they made sure it was an Italian guy playing Somebody swarvy yeah, it used to be that pro wrestler Indians were always played by Italians as well. It's just a thing that happened. And Russians and Russians oddly enough, like always. Okay, wait, hold on. Russians are swarthy. Yeah. Like floored. Okay, I can see. Like, like flush face. No, no, you would play, you would have Italians pretending to be Soviets. Yeah, I understand. Okay, yes. But yeah. Like, like, I have, I have neighbors and like folks working in my apartment complex who are

first generation, that's not what they look like. Nope. They're not. But if you're in Tennessee, it totally is. If they're wearing a red singlet with a hammer and sickle on it. You okay. But that's gonna be part of my Memphis wrestling as Uvra. Yeah, as mirrors Jacqueline Kennedy-O-Nasis's career as a professional debutante.

You know the funny thing about that is you're saying that is a joke, but I can totally see you do that. Yeah, make it. Enjoy that line. And make it, if not make sense Yeah, at least have a through line it could be followed. Yeah, yeah, but no last in our last episode We got apparently almost all of that out of our And then we got started talking about Dune. Oh, yeah, and we ended our last episode with you predicting Yes, what was gonna happen in the book,

what the book was gonna be about? Yes. And if I remember correctly, let's see, it was Empire and Decline. Yep. It was clearly bad people are in charge, but the people who were overthrowing them are gonna make it uncomfortable.

Yes. Okay. Their causes righteous, their methods might not be. Their methods might not be, okay. All right. And oil. Oil. Okay. Their causes righteous, their methods might not be. Their methods might not be. Okay. All right. Oil. Okay.

Your close everywhere, neat. You're on the nose once. So we'll get into it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, but I was, we left off. I was talking about the state of the World in 1965, the historical

context in which the book was published. And we had finished talking about disintegration of empires, which is why I was front of your mind there. And the State of the Cold War, I as an hour doctrine in 57, being a thing that would put the Middle East on American kind of radar. All right, so now I want to talk about the state of science fiction as a genre. Okay. In the time period. Okay, so yeah, so we have a context because part of what we're going to get into is how do you now affect the genre and so we need to know kind of where the genre was. Right. So in the early 60s, as I briefly mentioned last time, the pulps had died out.

The adventure story pulps, the ones with Robert E. Howard's boxer character, the gunslingers and the private detectives, and all of those things, those had either shifted into being like novels in the case of, you know, Dashel Hammett and, you know, noir detective stories, not stuff, or they'd just gone into comics. They'd become western comics. They'd become adventure comics. But science fiction, as a genre,

had kind of split off, and the science fiction, as a genre, had kind of split off. And the science fiction cults had turned into kind of smaller format digest digest magazines. Right, right. And by the 60s, the market was beginning to shrink because there had been this huge volume of stuff being put out in the 30s and 40s. Mm-hmm.

And like the appetite for this stuff had been voracious and you know it had been read kind of everywhere. And the audience was shrinking because media was now starting to compete. We see television showing up in the 50s, beginning to become widespread. And so there was already some competition from radio, but TV created this new avenue of competition.

This other thing that people were, you know, putting their eyeballs on rather than the pages of a magazine. And so, and so that market is beginning to shrink. Right. So, digests are getting fewer and fewer. And a really important figure during this time in science fiction publishing and in the genre is John W. Campbell, who literary science fiction types are gonna hear me say this and go,

well, I mean, yeah, you gotta talk about Campbell. And Campbell was this incredibly powerful, very important editor. Essentially. And he was a very, very big influence on the genre as a whole, based on the kind of stuff he was publishing. Other editors took cues from what he was looking for. Writers, of course, were taking his notes going,

okay, no change of the sub, do this thing. Right, right. And so we start seeing in the 50s, in the very early 60s, we start seeing the genre in large part, thanks to Campbell, moving away from planetary adventure, which was the overarching theme in the convention at the time of what a science fiction story was. And we're starting to move into being more sophisticated, more literary kind of work,

with fuller characterization and bigger ideas. This is the very, very beginning in the early 50s bigger ideas. This is the very, very beginning in the early 50s and then into the 60s, we start seeing the very beginnings of what we would call literary science fiction. We start seeing the beginnings of what we call soft science fiction. Okay, I'm going to need some terms there. Okay, so literary science fiction is exactly what it says on the 10. It is a science fiction story that is literary in nature and is focused on the internal character driven, you know, a literary story arc, you know, where you have, you know, there's more, there's more internal life to the characters. It's less like an early Shakespearean revenge play and more like Hamlet.

Okay. Okay. So to give a literary analogy that we can kind of make that easier to understand. And so that's literary SF, which is now largely dominant and as the archetype for stories. You don't get a lot of John Carter of Mars, sword swinging, my, but this is, I give you a physical description of my hero and then I don't really spend an awful lot of time in his head.

Right, right. Now, no, no, no, you know, there's an awful lot of emotional, complexity, there's more depth to characterization. Right. So that's a literary science fiction. Okay. Soft science fiction is science fiction that deals with society and philosophy and social issues in a speculative way. Okay.

As opposed to earlier science fiction. Now, I'm not going to say hard science fiction because you can have a soft science fiction story that in common parlance is very hard. And I'm going to get into explaining that in a second. But soft science fiction as a subgenre is speculative fiction about social developments. If a story is primarily about what is the world going to look like with overcrowding and climate change in the next 30 years, the parts of it that are dealing with overcrowding and the social changes is going to be soft science fiction. Yeah, see, I always thought that's just what sci-fi was. So that's a subset. Okay. Because earlier, science fiction had been about, let's talk about the physics of this situation, a story like the cold equations. There's a very significant portion of the story in the cold equations that is all about physics and math

and we only have so much fuel in the ship. This is kind of how things have to go. Um, now the cold equations can also be looked at through soft science fiction lens because of the things that says about, right, right, uh, corporate greed and and industrial, you know, safety regulations and all that kind of stuff. And that story has been critique left, right, and center politically, economically, morally, by a whole host of people. Sure. But, you know, if you're talking about the physics of a problem, or you're talking about astral mechanics,

or you're talking about chemistry, right, or the mechanisms of faster than light travel. That is classical science fiction science fiction. Now the thing is when I say that you can have a soft science fiction story that is hard. There's also hard SF and soft SF in the sense of, are you writing a space opera story like Star Wars, which is basically science fantasy, hand waveium. Right. We'll explain, well, we have hyperspace, and that's how we get from place to place.

Or are you writing a story more like contact? Okay. In which, okay, no, no, we're gonna talk about the science that's involved in everything that I'm writing in this story has to be scientifically plausible. But it's really about someone's internal struggle or internal life.

Yeah, but all the science is the Martian, right, would be a really good example of a hard science fiction story that is still literary. Mm-hmm, okay. Okay. I wouldn't call it a soft SF story because it's the struggle this one guy has and it's man versus environment.

So it doesn't get so deep. It's a survival story. Yeah. So it's not in this vein that I'm talking about. Whereas, whereas if we looked at, say, pitch black, that could be considered more of a soft sci-fi because you are using that same problem the he-face to stuck on a planet Blah blah blah, but it's showing how everybody's personalities come out and how they deal with the thing. Yes. Okay. I see it and it's also Softer in the sense that okay, we're gonna take for granted that we have faster than light travel

We have prison planets. We have this that the other thing. Yes. yes. And it doesn't spend a lot of time going into the details of that. Here's how we got there. Okay, okay. It's a ripping adventure yarn. Right. It spends a lot of time talking about the interplay between these characters, how they're all going to react. Right.

So, so that's, that's what I'm, what I'm talking about, soft science fiction, when I talk about dunes, soft science fiction. Mm-hmm. It is sociological, philosophical soft science fiction. It is sociological, philosophical, soft science fiction. It's also literary because we spend an awful lot of time inside everybody's head. My god, these characters can't ever get out of their fucking heads. Well, why would you have the languages so flowy? Oh, god. So as you said last time, yeah, well, well, flowery. I don't know about flowy but but definitely elaborate

and and so that's that's when in the context of talking about Dune when I call it soft science fiction That's what I'm talking about now it is also planet it is straight up planetary romance, which is not Hard SF, okay romance, which is not hard SF. Okay. Um, he, he doesn't. Because it's not so much how he got there or how, or the weapons are made or anything like that.

It's, it doesn't explain how the spice gives you psychic powers. It's just, this is the spice that gives you psychic powers. We need those psychic powers because hydraulic empire. Right. Okay. Right. Okay. So that's, that's what I'm talking about there. And so during this time period,

we're prior to doing, we're starting to see the beginnings of soft SF. Okay. The very earliest kind of, you know, touching around the edges of it, we're starting to see the beginnings of it. And literary science fiction, same kind of way. Now, the genre was still at this time dominated almost entirely by white men. Now, Andre Norton was a major female voice in the genre already. CJ Cherry, Ursula Kayla, Gwen, we're getting published. So don't anybody at me about you just erased these critically important women in the Canada of science fiction? No, I know they were there, but again, remember. They were outstanding.

They were. But they were outstanding. Just like I said in the last episode, we remember them because they stood out and the overwhelming majority of authors at the time were male and the even more overwhelming majority were white. Mm-hmm.

Critics at the time were not giving Norton, well, Norton is a really special case. Norton got critical attention from beginning. But Cherian and Liguin, I can never remember whether to say her last name, Liguin or Liguin. Somebody please tell us on Twitter. They were getting published, but critics were not giving them the same attention as male writers. And the feminist ideas that were starting to appear in their work didn't get acknowledged until it didn't really start getting attention and really being

taken seriously until the 70s. So we're still a decade away from that. Right. And what a decade. But like it's it's it is a decade and number only. Yeah. You know in terms of actual change over time. It's it's a generation at least. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in terms of actual change over time, it's a generation at least. So Wikipedia estimates that women made up about 10% to 15% of published SF writers during this time period. There is debate. Apologists want to try to argue to me, it's unconvincing, but they want to try to argue that SF was always a welcoming place for outsiders. Uh-huh. To which I respond that Isaac Asimov, who's a Titan within the genre, was a known, uh, uh, what's the phrase, uh, trick step, uh, at conventions. The person that, like, if you're in the know, you know to kind of stay away.

Oh, yeah, we've mentioned this a number of times. That step is wonky, kind of give him space. Oh, okay, we've mentioned this a number of times. That step is wonky, kind of give him space. Oh, okay, okay. You know, that he was getting away with making rude jokes, touching women inappropriately, and like, beyond even the level to which that was background noise in generation, he was known as a dirty old man for years. And allowed to be more important. And was aided and abetted and enabled. This word I've been hunting for years. And it was, it was aided and abetted and enabled. This word I've been hunting for

there. And so you can tell me all you want that the space was welcoming to outsiders. And then I'm going to throw that back at you because that gets in the way of women being comfortable in those spaces, being able to have conversations with other writers, with publishers to make the kinds of social connections that lead to them moving up within Dejonro, within the industry. So yeah, so anyway, stepping off my soapbox there for a moment. But so anyway, that's kind of what was going on publishing wise Twilight zone Ended in 64 yep outer limits ran until 1965 right and I think this is important. Mm-hmm Star Trek didn't start until 66 correct

So the idea of Trek the particular philosophy, the particular, everything that was part of Roddenberry's vision is a different animal from what we see and do. Yes.

And so that's, they're not, the, they're two branches. Let's go say it's almost like. Of the tree, moving from similar root stock, but going philosophically into. There is an evolutionary divide right there between those two as they become separate species. Yeah.

Maybe in the same genera. Yeah, yeah. I don't know my taxonomy well, but I'm thinking Bonobo is versus chimps. I might even go back farther than that. Okay, so monkeys and apes. Monkeys and apes. Okay.

I'm gonna make it a bigger split in that. Sure. In my own head, that's kind of how I see it. I just, you know, Gene Robbins and Barry trying to fuck everything. Yeah, well, yeah. So, well, you know, so he'd be a Bonobo and I'm trying to think, anyway, we could, some day we'll have to come up with a way to expand that analogy Another episode because I want to have that talk, but

um, so so on TV. Uh-huh. We've had Twilight Zone, we've had outer limits, which are both anthology series Self-contained which we're self-contained and and neither of which Number one, they never they never had no overarching arc correct and number two They they didn't because of budgetary issues and small screen you didn't see a lot of Sweeping galactic vistas the scale of all of the stories sweeping galactic vistas, the scale of all of the stories. Owing, owing to the size of that box, the scale of the stories was all very...

It's all soft. Very close, very personal, and it is all soft, so that's fiction. Yes. Stranger and a Strange Land by Heinlein, who remember I mentioned, Herbert said, is one of my dudes. Right. Who remember I mentioned, Albert said is my, I don't want to my dude. Yeah. Was published in 61. Okay. Now, brief segue to talk about stranger and strange land.

Because when we talked about Heinlein, I briefly got into it. Stranger to Strange Land is a, is a philosophical science fiction book. Uh-huh. is a philosophical science fiction book, where Heinlein riffs on sexuality, organized religion, politics, but mostly sexuality in organized religion. Those are like the two biggest things there. I just wonder what, how long the erection lasted for Gene Rodenberry.

I'm sure Gene Rodenberry read Stranger to Stranger Land. It was like, yes, this, all of this, oh my God. And the thing is, high line in the end comes around to reaffirming spirituality. Comes around to reaffirming. There is an order to the galaxy. There is an order of the universe. There is an order to the galaxy. There is an order of the universe. There is an intelligence to the universe and it is ultimately benign. That's interesting because I don't know if you remember but when we talked about Starship Troopers,

I'd mention that one of the sequels to the Starship Troopers movie because there were like two or three sequels. Yeah, yeah. One of them was just straight to videos. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. But one of them, and it was, it was the one that had to Paul in it. Yeah. The guy who played to Paul. I don't remember her name right now, but it'll, it'll come to me.

Do you have any play out? Yeah, yeah, Julian play out. Well, you've got a lot of, I'll go like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, Got it got a lot of questions about yeah, whether she was sure sure she always say yes Always say I said well, I said I don't know my brother always says that you know Yeah, he's really upset at the former attorney general bringing family name Yeah, yeah, but anyway, so Jolene Blalock was in the one where it is I mean, you know

It's still that world. Yeah, and it does come back around to like religion and spirituality are very much an important part of the human experience and therefore a good mathematical good in terms of good. Yeah, absolutely good. And so just interesting that Highline did actually write something that came to that same conclusion and now I'm starting to wonder if the directors were not trying to service that in some way instead of just kind of going off on their own and going, you know, I like Jesus though. So, good big. I'd have to watch to see. Yeah. So, um, and now that I've kind of, I mean, I haven't given away the plot of the ending, but I kind of, I've kind of given away, you know, the ultimate conclusion he comes to, but along the way, he makes a series of very sharp

satirical jabs that organized religion. And at, you know, the way that people wind up bending it to their own needs and then the interplay between morality and religion and sexuality. The simplification of the main characters of the religion that the main character winds up founding is everybody involved winds up being in one very large polycule within the religious community. And they don't just practice symbolic cannibalism the way Christians do. They actually practice. No, no, when one of the members of the community dies, we make them part of ourselves by putting them in the spaghetti, which was this like wildly radical, holy shit kind of controversial thing in the book. At the time, now we've seen so much more shocking stuff. Well, and they popularize it in the movie 8 Mile with M&M.

Yeah, vomit on a sweater already. Mom's spaghetti. Yeah, I'm not even... It's not mom's spaghetti. It sweater already mom spaghetti. Yeah, I'm not even it's not moms spaghetti. It's mom spaghetti, okay. Yeah, all right. Well, there you go. Yeah, there you go. Yeah No, no, not good not a good day sir. Okay so but You know he he he goes on this on this long riff about religion and religions that religions in interrelationship with all kinds of stuff.

And so there are some very, very big ways in which we can see this showing up in Herbert's thinking when we get into the philosophy that he gets into and explores in Dune. And also importantly, stranger to Strangeland became a huge youth counterculture hit. The phrase, can you grok that name part of hippie parlance? Right. Taken from the Martian language in which drinking is GROC. Okay. But what's important about that is Highline went off on kind of a linguist riff because there's so

many so much more depth of meaning to it. It's not just to drink something and and quench your thirst. There is quenching of thirst. There is absorbing something into yourself and making it part of you. Right, right. We talked about this with Thailand. Yeah, and understanding and all this other kind of stuff. And so that, that, like, whoa, man, that's deep,

which it is, I mean, honest, but that became part of the parlance of counterculture that became part of the vocabulary. At the same time as Eastern mysticism was being adopted in bits and pieces. We had a discussion about appropriation of it when we were talking about Star Wars. And so, stranger in a strange land, became this thing that was part of mass consciousness coming out of the science fiction genre. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Which is important later on down the line. Now, the other big book that was huge in the counterculture was Lord of the Rings. And not just in the counterculture. It was maimed, it was recognized in the mainstream, but it was huge and counterculture. Yeah, and even though it had been written so long before, it's college students that are kind of picking it up. Yeah, and Lord of the Rings that originally been published in the US in 57, the Hobbit, as we all know from Falcon and Winter Soldier was 37, but getting off the subject. And Lord of the Rings was hugely popular by the standards of John Refiction by 1965. 1965, it should be noted,

is the year that a paperback edition was put out in the US, which was the edition that I first read because my father had a copy of it. Okay. And the Valentine paperback edition from 65 frequently referred to as the hippie edition. Oh, because the artwork that was on it was incredibly evocative. Like really, really evocative, very, not abstract, but very, very impressionistic. not very accurate to anything that was actually in the books, but looking at it, there was a definite emotional message that came off, that came off the cover,

and it had a profound impact on my own imagination as a kid. And so overall, in 1965, we have science fiction that's going through this transition from we want to write stories to educate people about science and make it not feel like you're reading your vegetables. Right. To, no, no, if we're going to play with ideas, let's play with ideas. And while we're playing with ideas, let's also actually tell stories about people and do their internal, you know, talk about their what's going on in their heads and their emotional states, right, and develop actual characters. And we have science fiction being there in the mainstream and some things getting picked up and being popular. Sure.

And a lot of stuff still being very niche. And, um, you know, we've talked about, we did an excellent couple of episodes about the twilight zone. They were popular. They were, they, they were held onto by a subset of the population for a very long time. Sure. A lot of it. A lot of cultural touchstones. But at the time, they were never onto by a subset of the population for a very long time. It's a love-ed, cultural touchstones. But at the time, they were never must-see TV.

They were never huge ratings. Right, right. And the Lord of the Rings was mostly a youth culture, counterculture thing. And so that's the overarching environment in which Herbert went to 20 publishers before finally getting to Chilton and getting Chilton to agree to publish this serial of his that he had edited it into, or param serials that he had edited into a novel. And so I think the best thing to do next is to summarize as much as we can summarize it, the plot and universe of Dune. And I'm going to pause right here to allow

all of the Dune fans and the audience to get over the fit of hysterical laughter they're about to have because summarizing this is a joke. I'm nodding on the jokes. I genuinely thought you were summarizing. There is a shit ton going on here. So the summary of the plot of the book that I'm about to give, well, people are going to have a reaction to it. So anyway, Paul A Tridies, the heir of Duke Lato A Tridies by Lady Jessica, Uh-huh.

Travels with his father and his father's household from his birth world, the oceanic paradise Caladan to Arrakis, known colloquially as Dune, because it's covered by deserts. Okay. Dune is important because it is the only known source of the Spice Melange, a substance that extends life and grants psychic powers. Because of the spice melange, a substance that extends life and grants psychic powers.

Because of the psychic powers part, it's a critical part of the galaxy's economy because pre-cognition is required for spaceships to navigate at faster than light speed. And I would imagine also if you embarked the spice, then you would be able to, I don't know, with pre-cognition, know what people are wanting. And so, if your sister took the spice as a girl, she could tell you what you want, what you really, really want, and you would tell her what you want, what you really want. You really, really want. Yeah.

So, okay, that makes sense. Yeah. I am so angry right now. Good, good, good day, sir. God damn it. That's awful. What? That'd be a scary amount of spice really that that yeah Well, you know, you know, I'm pretty sure I'm actually I'm not pretty sure I'm certain that there is There are any number of memes that involve all of them with with blue and blue glowing eyes. Oh good. It's good

I'm sure like it has to be was it restricted to the wealthy though? Was it just posh spice? Oh Athletes sporty spice right as it were yeah Yeah, no, but house Harkin and uh-huh is full of redheads So there was a lot of dangerous and Paul's sister as as we said, was younger, so obviously baby's voice. Baby's voice, yeah. And you know, we'll get to that, because that's actually more on the nose than you know. So, Paul's father and most of his father's army wound up being killed by the family's ancient enemies, how Harkinan, with the help of the Emperor, who sees Duke Lato as a threat. Paul flees to join the indigenous population of Iraqis, the Fremen, with his mother.

Fremen. Fremen. That sounds really similar to a word for North Africans. I don't remember what the word is though. Not Bedouin, but I'm pretty sure it's just a contract of Freeman. Oh, okay. But we might look at it on a minute. Along the way, Paul finds out he's a super psychic, becomes the leader of the Fremen, ultimately overthrows the emperor and takes his place using control of the spice as leverage. Oh man.

He who can destroy a thing controls the thing. Fuck. What? Well, just like I had hoped, you know, and I had predicted, so, you know, I'm a little bummed that I was this far wrong. wrong, but little rich boy comes back using the indigenous peoples to just make himself, you know, in his family that had been slightly deposed. Oh, we got to get we got to get into the philosophy of this because because here's the thing. That's a summary of the plot of the first of the book. Okay. Stripped down to comprehensibility and I explained to you what literally happens in the story.

Right, right, right. In five minutes or less. Sure. Hold on. But to anybody who is a fan of the book, I just committed a crime because there are, there are so many details. You left out Tom Bombadil. Yeah, I left out, yeah, left out to summarize what I fucked up.

I left out Tom Bombadill and I left out the scouring of the shire, which I think is a bigger deal. Okay, yeah. And of course, we're talking inside baseball at this point, or whatever sport hobbits play. So I imagine rounders. Yeah, that makes sense. Just kind of.

So, so we need, so that's what happens in the book. Right. But there's so much more to the book than just that coming of age, planetary romance, revenge story. Mm-hmm. There's all this world building and there's all of these layers of intrigue outside of Paul and his mother and the Fremen and everything that's going on in Imperial

politics surrounding all of this. And like I didn't even mention Baron Harkinan and the ship that happens in Baron Harkinan's family. Like Baron Harkin and his nephews jockeying and Baron Harkin manipulating both of his nephews against each other. And we're calling a simpler time to like justify it because he's Harkin and back to that. Nicely done. I'm not even mad about that. That's good. So the universe of Dune is so big. And Herbert does this amazing job of making it feel vast and impossibly ancient and impossibly far in the future. Okay. And lived in. And

he does it with, because I've mentioned this before, the price of this is we get a whole lot of exposition from a whole lot of places. And sometimes it's incredibly ham-fisted, but at other times it's done in this really deft, remarkably well done way. Cool. And so my summary doesn't get to the ideas really deft remarkably, remarkably well done way. Cool.

And so, my summary doesn't get to the ideas that he's talking about, which are huge. As I kind of already said, at the plot arc, just that this is the story of Paula Treaties, is a pretty bog standard planetary romance, all-odd John Carter of Mars, but it transcends planetary romance because it speaks to huge vast themes and sociopolitical philosophy and history and genetics and Okay, fuck it. We just got to get started. Yeah, so the galactic potasha empire the overarching

Okay Setting sure is the result of thousands of years of human diaspora. It's a vast network of worlds that either were habitable from the beginning or were terraformed so long ago that everybody takes it largely for granted. One of the things that people keep bringing up all the time throughout the book, one of the mysteries about Iraqis is, why haven't they just controlled the weather to not make it an inhospitable desert over 70% of its surface?

Like we know there are weather control, like they refer to weather control stations. And part of the intrigue and part of the mystery of the planet and part of the reveal is, well, yes there are. And we got it. We learn what the machinations have been that have kept them that way. Okay. But so we know that establishes for us that terraforming is a thing that the technology exists to to reshape planets. But it hasn't worked on Dune. And one of the earliest conversations

that's an exposition in the beginning of the book is, well, okay, they have weather control, like why don't they just use weather control satellites? Well, you know, the magnetic field of the planet and the sandstorms, you know, destroy stuff. And it's just so, the explanation everybody in the universe has bought is, no, no, it's just so incredibly harsh that it's just not feasible, it's just too expensive, nobody can marshal the resources to have it done. So it is actually possible, but it is not practical. Yeah, okay. Okay.

Which is a really good hand wavy to do. Yeah, it's too. If you're going to hand w wavy and something that's yeah, that's a good one. That's an easy one to buy. Yeah. Um, and so I mean, we don't desalinate ocean water. Yeah. We have the ability. We have the capacity. Right. Uh, earth, mm-hmm. Never gets mentioned. Again, taking from right. Never comes up. Yeah. And well.

And diaspora. And it's happened in kind of in later books in the original trilogy or in the original series because it's more than three books. But in later books in this series, Paul's son, who, who, because the book moves through generations. Okay. Paul's son, if I'm remembering correctly, a couple of points, you know, has mentions, you know, the planet we all came from is so dimly remembered, we don't even remember where in the galaxy it is.

Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So, so, it's like the reverse of Battlestar Black. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, do you think BSG was kind of Responding to that I think I heard like oh, you know, we kind of like this idea. Let's let's invert it. Yeah, okay

I well, you know, it's it's a theme that that could could be you know We're gonna have these people hunting for earth because right, you know, it's so far in the future that they don't remember where it is right and I yeah, I's so far in the future that they don't remember where it is right and I yeah I think definitely based on the timeline. I think sure it could be taken from that um and and for me the fact that they never they like not even in passing Mm-hmm earth never comes up and of course the book okay the Imperial capital planet Mm-hmm doesn't actually get named, it's just referred to as the throne world. We'll find out later on it's the planet Kaitan. No Kaitan, sorry. Now the Emperor, the

Potta-Shah Emperor, shud on the fourth, rules from the planet Kaitan and his supremacy over the nobles of his empire is assured by the terrifying Sardakar who are his hardened elite soldiers whose cruelty and ruthlessness is legendary and whose origins and training are a very closely guarded secret. Is this where you get the space folding because so many of them can fit in a single Sardakar and you just let them out and they just keep coming out. Nice. Nice. Now it turns out the Emperor's legions

all come from the hellish prison planet of Salusa Secundus and their toughness and ruthless cruelty is a result of having been raised on a hell planet. Okay. Okay. I'm adhering so many echoes in other things. I mean, this is the really terrible version of pitch black, the sequel. You have the necromancers, the emperor of the necromancers, feararons, you know, and riddock being born of them and all kinds of shit.

So yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. So again, but this is also, and you haven't really touched on it yet, and maybe you will, but this seems really, really Hebrew. The sun being...

Really Semitic. Semitic, yeah. I would say Hebrew because you mentioned the diaspora. Okay. And I don't know. Well, I just use diaspora as a term. True, true, true. I use it in a very generalized kind of way.

But it does feel very symmetric and that the sun is very, very important. You know, like S-O-N, not S-U-N. Yeah, yeah. So. Well, and that's also that's also a trope because we're talking about an intergalactic aristocracy and genitorial. True. Yeah, you're right. I think there is a very strong influence from Lawrence of Arabia. Okay. Yeah. And so we're seeing. A European, a European aristocratic set of ideals, commingling with very, very clearly, like the Fremener clearly exb's for the Bedouin.

Okay, yeah. So that's more what was going on in Herbert's imagination in his head here. And so the Emperor has this army of terrifying super soldiers. I know I said Semitic. I'm sorry to come back to this real quick. His name's Paul. Yes. So there's you know, there's some stuff going on there, but okay anyway. So so terrifying super soldiers. Yeah, okay. Now it's as I already mentioned, yeah, they're they are as terrifying as they are because they've been raised on a death world and then trained to be finatically loyal to the emperor because he's the one who's going to take them and make them elite and get them out of this hellhole world. And because of because of their upbringing, because of the hardship they've been through

their worth, you know, 20 ordinary men and all this, you know, silence and stuff. Now speaking of fighting men within this universe, combat is, science, stuff. Now, speaking of fighting men, within this universe, combat is a very retro affair, swords and knives. Single combat. Single combat or a masked combat with hand-hand weapon.

Oh, wow. And the reason for this in universe is high-speed projectile weapons have been rendered pointless by personal force fields The technology exists Right, you have a shield generator. Oh, I remember that I mean if shield generator on your belt right one of the things that keeps coming up is you know the slow knife pierces the shield Right, so you you have to fight with a certain level of finesse You know, and so there's a great deal of skill involved in

shooting a warrior and They touched on that in Clone Wars teaching Sagar air to throw a grenade when he was a teenager to throw a grenade under The shield generator of a droidica. Okay. Well, there you go. Yeah, and yeah, so again Influences being too fast it bounces off the shield too slow. It doesn't get there. It doesn't get, yeah, you just gotta get it. Yeah, you gotta get it. Yeah, just right. And so, if you, and now energy weapons do exist, they have las guns. Okay.

But if you hit a shield with a las gun beam, it generates a fusion explosion that is highly unpredictable, but universally lethal to both the firework and the target. Well, but if it's from the distance, does it just travel back? The reaction is unpredictable. At the very least, it's going to travel back along the path of laser beam and burn both of you in radioactive flame. Okay. Alternatively, everybody around you could get really unlucky. And no, no, you just set off an H bomb.

Right. You just killed like, oh, seven people. Even more. Because your George Laskund be all the way back to you. Nice. Nice. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And so I love this dodge.

Okay. This talk about hand-wavium, this gives us an interstellar aristocratic empire that is built around all of those tropes from the age of chivalry. In a setting where that shouldn't make any sense. Right. Because you do have such technology. You have faster than light. You have a personal fucking force.

Like, you have the ability to create a force field, which as far as anybody can figure out, essentially violates all the laws of physics as we understand the moral. Like, energy just doesn't work that way. Right. So you can do that. You have faster than light travel.

You have all, you have weather control. You have faster than light travel. You have all, you have weather control. You have all this magic technology, but you still have an entrenched noble class with armies of fairly elite hand-to-hand combat warrior. Knights. Like, you know, there's something about it. Wouldn't make sense if you didn't come, you have to come up with an explanation of why that is. And of all the solutions anybody's come up with, I look at that, I'm gonna go, all right, that one I'll buy.

See, it's interesting too, because I remember, like there's essentially, and you know this better than I, during medieval times, there's an arms race between weapons and armor. Oh yeah. And every time armor gets a leg up, somebody comes with a better weapon. So oh, you found armor that doesn't pierce. We're gonna bludgeon you.

Oh, you found armor that stands up to bludgeoning. Here's a stick. We're just gonna fire it really fast at you. You know, and then oh, you gave up on on everything and now you're just sending guys out wearing shirts when you could have been wearing quilted armor again, which was standing up to slashing, but now we've moved on. This world is one in which the armor one, not the weapon one. Yeah. I find that interesting. You know, in in political science back in college, one of the central themes that we got into talking

about was the balance of power between defensive technology and offensive technology and the effect that has on politics when defense is in the ascendance. When I can just sit here behind the magi no line and how I fuck you. You can do me. I have all the entrenchments. That's a very different environment from I figured out blitzkrieg fuck all of y'all. Right. You know, the calculus that political actors on go through. Oh, it was all about it. All of it.

Yeah. It is dramatically different when, okay, no, the energy expenditure involved in using violent action to gain our goals is worth it. As opposed to we're going to get stomped. Right. Or not even we're going to get stomped, but no, no, we'll win. But the amount of energy we're gonna have to expend is huge.

Right. You know, leads to stalemate, leads to cold wars. So you get, I mean, basically if you have defense as being ascendant, you have essentially cunning as being your main weapon and you have treaties and diplomacy as being your main... Two of... Two of...

Two of tools of conquest, two of... Because I'm thinking of Troy. Yeah. And then I'm thinking of all the shit that Romulus did. Um... Jesus, that guy was such a brilliant prick. But like, you know, and I'm thinking of the Ottoman Empire, you know, and the fall of Constantinople.

Yes. You know, and stuff like that. And the use of plague bodies and shit like that. Yeah. You get, yeah, like, oh, you can stand up to your, this here, uh, siege? Cool. Reappointing your water. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. The dirty trick spragade gets much, much more important. And by the way, speaking of, we got multiple dirty trick spragades in the Potashai Empire. Oh, good good. Everybody really is a dirty trick spragade. So the first dirty trick spragane. So, the first dirty trick spragane we're gonna talk about is the Benny Jeserit who are

a sisterhood. It is an all female society. Okay. And I say society in the sense of organization, not culture, because they're part of the overarching culture. Mm-hmm. But there are quasi-religious sisterhood who have made themselves indispensable to the nobility by learning to read people in excruciating detail. Mm-hmm. Sisters of the Benjezerat are trained in walking into a room and reading somebody in a matter

of moments into or three verbal exchanges. They've got you figured out. Yeah. And so in this setting, that's really, if you have a Betty Jesuit as your again, that steps up your cunning. Yeah. Yeah. And so they are trained in multiple languages.

They were trained to be, you know, diplomats, managers, you know, soft power manipulations. Now they are also simultaneously, and this is kept, they keep this close to the vest. Everybody suspects it. And the Betty Jesuit consistently Herbert, like over and over and over again, uses the phrase Betty Jesuit, which characters continually use that phrase over and over and over again uses the phrase Benny Jesuit which I was gonna ask continues to use that phrase over and over to the point that two of the major characters Lady Jessica and Thufir Hawa she calls him on it when he stops himself short of saying it to her face she says no no no say what you're gonna say

yeah I know you say it right Which okay, yeah, and then spoiler alert she shows him just exactly how powerful she is because what they're able to do They not only can read you instantaneously Once they've read you they can manipulate the pitch and intonation of their voice to essentially compel you to do shit. So think the clerics bell command, you know, sit down. Right, right. And they will know exactly the pitch to get right straight to your lizard brain. To get that too, you're right, right. And you will not be able to not sit down. In Jessica and Paul's escape after Lato and the rest of House of Traiti's are betrayed

and killed, invasion. At one point, they're being hauled out into the desert to be killed and dumped in the desert. And they've got two pilots, one of whom has been intentionally rendered deaf. So because they know she's a vintage resident and they know they can do so we're gonna make sure. It's like a different version of Unix. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, but only one of them is deaf She gets a read on both of them Mm-hmm and and the one pilot who is not deaf. She says oh gentlemen You don't need to fight over me And a second later he's reaching across the cockpit cuts the other guys throughout wow so yeah, yeah the cockpit cuts the other guys through. Wow. So, yeah. They are also, and this only people who are trusted by the sisterhood know this one, they are trained in muscular and nervous control of their own bodies.

One of their biggest powers, one of the things he keeps coming back to is the level of iron control they have, oh, okay. Their own like they can, they can essentially it's biofeedback, which was starting to be a big thing in the 50s and into the 60s. They're able to, you know, the legends that came out about, you know, meditating monks in Nepal, being able to, you know, slow their own heart rate to accrawl. Right. And interacadetonic state of, in this book, they've studied and they can do that same kind of stuff.

It also means that they look really unassuming and the ones that are really senior in the sisterhood are all old women and look like old ladies. But if you get into a fight with one of them, they will render your dust tets. Because in the amount of time it will take for you to swing at them. Number one, they know when you're going to attack because they can read you. Right. They read you. Yeah.

And they have such control over everything that they can just, you know, they can dodge, they can grab, they get there. They are way, like they're not unstoppable, but they're way more dangerous than you would think. Right. Right. And so Paul's mother, the lady Jessica, is a Benny Jesuit. Okay.

And we know this from the first couple of pages of the book. So it's all women that do this, but they're not Vestal Virgins, right? No, no, no, quite the opposite, because they're goal, which is a secret, which only their closest allies know, or their tools really. No is the Betty Jesuit are working to maintain specific gene lines within human society. And so they will be trained and then sent off to work for a noble house.

And they will be the consorts. And most of the time, they bear daughters. Okay. Because this is a heavily macho, you know, section society. Daughters aren't gonna wind up getting sent off to combat. Right. And the whole goal is to try to preserve certain,

certain bloodlines. Many bedgages are at sister's lady Jessica. Amongst them don't actually know who their mothers are. Oh. And they don't they don't know their own parentage. Okay. And spoiler alert, the book is over 50 years old, so it doesn't really count. We find out that Lady Jessica is actually the daughter of Baron Vladimir Harkinan, who is the one working to engineer the murder of her husband, because the Benny Jesuit want to try to preserve the genetics of house of treaties and the genetics of house Harkinan. Okay.

Because their ultimate goal is to try to breed a Messiah, the Quizzat's Haderok, who's going to be able to do all the psychic shit they can do, which we'll get into more of their psychic stuff in a second, and then more who will surpass them. Gotcha. Essentially, a reverend mother of the Benny Jeseret has awakened her perception, has awakened her, she's passed through the doors of perception. Right. Opened her third eye. Opened her third eye and she is able to remember things in ancestral memory. Oh, okay, cool. Her own ancestry, the mother's superior and and Reverend mothers have come before her. She's able to look back through that memory into the far past and that that's also very useful as advisors because they have this and they have the potential to do this incredibly long view. Now the thing is

they're only able to look down the female line. The male the the male line is, is, if a, if a, if a Reverend mother tries to go down into that part of memory, that will consume her, render her, render her insane, render her canotonic killer, what happened. So, and so the quiz dots, hot rock is going to be a male, essentially, mother superior, Reverend mother, who will be able to look down both paths. So there's a few things there. One, when you have a group of Gibbons,

the females make up these conversations. But the females make up the majority of the troop, and males will come in and stay for about two months, get laid as much as they can, but then the females will start saying no, and then the males will move on. And then more males will come in, and it's to preserve their genetic diversity, actually.

But the females are choosing their mates, and so there's that aspect of it. Also this 100% echoes to me the witches of Dathamir. Yes. Well, the more the witches of Dathamir are 100% echoed this, the more they look at the timeline. But the witches of Dathamir, and then also I was thinking of, I lost it though. It was another it was another Star Wars-y thing but I've forgotten because of which is a deathmere took such focus in terms of that. But very much some of the same powers, some of the same goals. Yeah. You have a

lot of that. I just find that very very very interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, so Paul, we find out very early in the book. Paul was supposed to be a girl. Okay. The sisterhood had told Jessica... You're gonna have a girl. You're gonna bear him only daughters. And Jessica fell in love with Lato. And gave him a son. Well, no, and she could choose. Oh, here's the other thing I wanted to point out. Yeah.

You know that, and friend of the show, Tessa will point this out as well. Yes. You can trace DNA along the mother's line. Yes. Don't think you can trace along the father's line as, well, to get back to your common ancestry. Yeah, they're there are

traits that show up on the Micromasone, right? So like we know we know we know we know we know descent from Genghis Khan being such a common thing Right because of specifically traits on the white chromosome. So there is there is some of that but yeah, based on based on our understanding of genetics now, we know that that the haploid groups that you're going to be looking for for, you know, deep ancestry are going to be maternal DNA. There's going to be, they're going to be maternal. And then you have mitochondrial DNA. That's the thing I was thinking about. Which is, which is a whole separate thing, which is so large, so much less changed than everything else in a code. Well, and then it also, I'd said earlier,

this is a Hebrew story, or it has a lot of Hebrew overtones. Again, you trace it back from the mother's life. No one else is, and you're breeding for a male Messiah. They weren't breeding, but the Messiah, that's kind of a do. Of a Messiah. Yeah. I would also point out that the Celts were matrilineal. That's true.

Largfully because of their outlook on sexual practices within their culture. Right. We have no, we can't be sure who the father is. Yeah. We can assume. Yeah. But we're all out of the fields, but we know we know who you popped out of

So we know you're descended so so when we go to train you to be right right in our society We're gonna send you to your mother's brother because we know you're related to him. Yep Yeah, you know, which is also trying to hope he actually Yeah, well it doesn't surprise me. Yeah, yeah so so the the Benichand and you mentioned, I think this is a good place to bring it up. You mentioned the GOM JABAR. I did last episode. I mentioned GEMEDAL. The needle. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. So

the Benichezerit have a test called the Gom Jabar. Okay. And it's one of the very first things that happens in the book is Paul, who is 15 at the start of the story. The Reverend Mother, Gaius Helen Moheim, shows up. The whole household is in preparation to make the move from Caledan to Iraqis. So the whole place is a mess and everybody's running around. But in the middle of all that, Gaius Helen Moheim who is the Emperor's Truthsayer. So she's part of the Emperor's household and She is Lady Jessica's teacher and superior. Interesting set of names. Gaius is Roman. Helen is Helen.

And then Moheim, I mean again, again, it's a medic. What we see over and over again within the book is a lot of sync criticism. So we hear about the orange Catholic Bible. Okay. Okay. The Fremen follow Zen Sunni religion. Okay. Zen Sunni. Right. Zen. Yeah. So again, these are things that are these details that get thrown out that give us a very quick picture of just how far in the future we're looking at. And we can see, okay, we know this is a site that is descended from our own, but it's way different. And there's a lot that we know has happened that we don't know how it happened.

But here we go. Again, some of this stuff is amazing and some of it is just so fucking heavy handed. And so she shows up. Guy is Helen Mohim shows up and she's there to give Paul a test. Okay. And she's there to give Paul a test. And he says, what is this going to test? She says, we're going to find out whether or not you're a human. And she says, here's a box. And he says, what's in the box?

She says, pain. And she tells him and she uses voice on him. Oh, okay. Which he has been trained by his mother to know when it's being used and to be a little bit resistant, but guys tell him, oh, I am she's so much. She's so much.

80 levels higher. Yeah, that is like he tries, but he winds up shoving his right hand in the box. And step one, cut him on the box. He feels, he feels an itching, first a tingle, the turn, he's in the hands and turns into a burn. And he envisions like the flesh peeling off, just in black and flesh peeling away and he's certain that he's going to pull away a stump, but he sits there and he takes it and he takes it and he takes it and he takes it and sweat beads up all over his butt.

Because after his hand is in the box, she says, the needle I have at your neck is called the gum jibbar. If you move, if you try to remove your hand, I will prick you with this needle. And the poison on it will have you dead before your body hits the floor. And he says, you know, my mother won't let you do that. My mother will call for guards. She says, your mother is the one

guarding the door for me to do this. Oh, damn. She underwent the same test. Oh. And she passed it. Let's see if you can. Wow. Okay. And by the way, what he's doing

is what guy use MOOC used did because my hand, my right hand failed me when I tried to kill, kill King Porcena. Yeah. And I'm still that I killed his scribe. This is the hand that failed me. This is the hand that goes into the fire. And he sticks it into the fire in porcena's like oh fuck is going on here Really yeah, and then they pull him out and and they're like who the shit are you? And he and because you know they said oh we've caught you You tried to why'd you kill the king scribe? I was like, I'm sorry. I was trying to kill your king. I bet I'm out And then they catch him and he's like ah this hand failed me, you know, and he started hokey-pokey um, and then they pull him out and Porcenta's like,

this shit's going on here and he's like, you know, I'm just an average Roman. There's a lot of crazy or motherfuckers back there. You might kill me. But there's gonna be 10 more of me coming after you tomorrow. Porcenta's like, right, we're packing up, everybody, let's go. These stakes are too high like, right, we're packing up, everybody, let's go. These stakes are too high, pulling out,

and let's get, and he goes back, and he tells everybody what happened, because it was the siege that was happening, because goddamn, Tula's Sastilius is picking fights, and they're like, guys, what happened? He's like, well, you know, I did all this, and I burnt my hand off, and they're like, ah, from now on, we'll call you a lefty.

That's the story, but it's, either they call them Skywola, Mookyous Skywala. But Gaius Mookyous Skywala. Oh, yeah, so, but the name Gaius and then he's gonna stick his hand in a thing. Yeah, okay. I don't know how extensive Herbert's classic education was, but.

Back then I got a feeling it was. Probably, we will better know more probably. Yeah. So, okay. So anyway, the the lesson and the philosophy that comes out of all this is eventually because she she could read his reactions. Right. So just you through sheer empathy, she kind of starts sweating too because she realizes how much how much he's actually going through, because the longer his hand is in the box, the worse it gets, the worse it gets.

And eventually she pulls the needle away and says, all right, yeah, take your hand out. You pass young human. And it's all totally fine. And it's all totally fine. And it worked through nerve induction. And it was, sure. And she said the lesson here is,

an animal would chew off its own hand to escape the trap. A human would remain and wait to kill the individual that had set the trap. Okay. So again, cunning, thinking, you know, the ability to think multiple steps ahead. Right, right. You know, all that kind of stuff being stressed and and it's remarked very or right at that point early on in the book. It gets remarked. He got farther than any man child ever has. So they just kill the shit out of all the man children that they do this to. We don't know for sure. Or they read these kids so bad so well that

they're like, okay, no one is going to quit. And then I'll pull it away. Or they, they put them through the test. And the ones that don't do well enough get the gum jibar. Okay. Because we know there's another character. There's another character shows up who's relatively minor, but kind of important. Okay. Doesn't have a lot of time in the book, but please vote. Is this work role in the plot? No, no, another man. Oh, I think he said it relative who's minor, so.

Oh, nice, nice. But another character, Count Fenring, who was a near miss at creating a quizatz-Hodrock, shows up in the book. He was the beddegenerates failed, Todorock shows up in the book. He was the Ben and Jesuits failed, almost did it, but couldn't quite. Got you, okay. And so we know where we can surmise,

he's been through it and he's 20 years older than Paul. Sure, sure. So clearly they didn't stick him. Right, so they probably have to kill a certain amount so that people know this shit matters. But again, they could, have discretion. Yeah, and and you know, nobody said it has to be you know, stand for two minutes with your hand there. It's whatever they say. And if they're reading you, then they know what your breaking point is and they could pull it off just at the last second and give you a renewed sense of self. Yeah, whatever. Kind of depending on what their goals are. I like it. I like it. All right. So so they're they're working to try to breed the quiz dots hot rock. Uh huh. And at the very beginning of the book, we find out it's possible. Paul might be the quiz

dots hot rock. But but guy is hella, my high, I'm tells Jessica, don't get your hopes up. Okay. Don't because, you know, we can, we can find ways to protect you. We can find ways to protect him because we've spent literally generations trying to preserve these two bloodlines. Right. We had hoped that we could marry your daughter to the harkin and air, unifying the two bloodlines, preserving that way. You fucked that up. There's really heavy handed with the you dummy. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, yeah, how did you fall in love? Why did you have to do this? And, um, and, and so

anyway, but it's like, we're going to do what we can. You know, you're one of us. We're going to, we're going to do what we can to protect you. Sure. We, we have, you know, stuff in place on on a rackis already to prepare for you. We'll do what we can to try to save him because he's important. He just proved he's a human, so he's worth something. Sure. But his father is dead. Like, we can't do anything for him.

He's going into a trap. Okay. He knows he's going into a trap. He thinks he's going to be able to find a way out of it. No. And he's not. No, he's fucked. Right. Okay. Okay. And so that's that's our introduction to the Benny Jeseret. That's our introduction to Paul being the quiz hotterock. Okay. Like all of this happens within the matter of a couple of pages. And so it's really important character details. It's really important world building details. But again, to make the plot something I could summarize in less than five minutes, you know,

we gotta have to summarize around it. Okay, so now in the setting, we have one of the most important advisers within the Atreides House is the men tat Thufir Howatt, who is Paul's teacher, Paul's tutor, one of his trainers in tactics and security, less in the physical art of knife fighting and more in strategy and like warfare studying history of warfare. Right.

Here's a problem, figure out how to solve this problem, you know, logical thinking on that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. And men tats are humans who have been trained to sift data and analyze it at incredible speeds. OK. To replace thinking machines, which were outlawed after the Butlerian jihad in the ancient history of this universe.

There are no computers in Dune. There are humans who have been trained and or drugged, or some combination of the two to act as computers navigators right consume vast quantities of spice and have a certain amount of mentat like training in order to look into the future and analyze things in order to navigate it faster than light speed. Sure. Mentats are human computers. They're humans who have been trained over the course of their entire childhood into their early adulthood to take data and make third and fourth and fifth order calculations and suppositions based on. And the butlerian g-hod is an explanation for why we have these things. I mean, the function that men tats and sook doctors, and I mean, the Benjezzer and

another example of kind of the same thing, it's humans being trained to a level of superhumanness in some category, right? In some, in some ability in some set of abilities being transcending their humanity. Okay. So there's there's a very strong streak of post-humanism or transhumanism. I don't remember which one better applies here in what Herbert was talking about. And so the reason the in-universe explanation for this is that sometime in our future artificial intelligence is pulled a judgment day. Turn on humanity and then there's this massive war across a

thousand different star systems because humanity is spread out vastly during this time. And so there's this huge war between humanity and the machines, and at the end of the Butlerian G-Hod, the machine, the all sentient machinery, all complicated electronic computers get destroyed, and thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind Okay, is is a phrase out of the orange Catholic Bible in setting it is literally holy ret thou shalt not do this Okay, okay, and so to replace computers

Which during Herbert's lifetime a which during Herbert's lifetime a computer had gotten small enough that you could, that it would take up a corner of a large room. And so this is again another example of kind of the failure of science fiction writers to have enough imagination to look far enough into the future. To get to miniaturization, to get to min, you know, we get to get to miniaturization, to get to miniaturization, to get to the level of power involved in modern computers. Sure. And so again, but there's heavy duty post humanism going on. And the last example I want to get to before we break at this point, because we're getting close to kind of our our our

normal rhythm. Yeah, rhythm is the navigators guild. Okay, we mentioned them a few times. Sure. The navigators guild pilot massive ships called Highliners. And a Highliner is this huge vast essentially like a huge vast cargo box. Space-derageable. Space, yeah, essentially, that other ships, frigates, which will be the size of a large building, think like a skyscraper, that's the size of a frigate in this setting. There will be dozens or hundreds of frigates in the belly of a frigate in this setting. And there will be dozens or hundreds of frigates

in the belly of a high line. And the navigator high level navigators are almost never seen by normal humans. Their appearances kept a secret. They swim literally in a tank that's kept, if they're in a planetary gravity well, they have suspenser globes so they don't actually have to fight against gravity because they spend 99% of their life outside of a gravity well and they float in a cloud of spice gas.

And over time, this causes them to lose their humanity. Okay. Partly because they spend all of their time in this expanded state of consciousness, looking into the future kind of reflexively all the time. And because this immense amount of spice they're imbibing extends their life span so there could be hundreds of years old. Sure.

And it changes their body. They wind up becoming fish- like with elongated webbed and hands and feet and their features get distorted. They don't wind up looking like the creature in the Lynch movie. Okay. And in the original novel, we don't see that level of guild navigator. Okay. We don't see that level of guild navigator. We don't see that level of guild navigator until the second book in the series. Okay. And he doesn't look like that.

Okay. That's all Lynch, Carter, Freudian, honest. So, and now the navigator's guild has control over the space lanes. If I'm a noble and I have a feud with another noble house, and I want to take territory from another noble, I have to get my army aboard ships and then pay the guild to carry my army from my planet to the other guy's planet in order to fuck him up. Right. Okay, and the guild essentially acts as the market term being an honest broker. It's like, well, all right, here's the fee. You go from here to here. You go from

here to here. Yeah. They do differentiate rates for military expeditions versus regular trade. Sure. There are throwaway lines made when Harkinan with the Emperor's support invades Arrakis. The Emperor repeatedly talks about, do you have any idea how much money I had to spend to the gill to transfer I'm going to be literally says at one point I'm going to be paying that debt off for years and it usually says that to a representative of the emperor like no no no no no I'm keeping the emperor's secret here don't try to don't try to bully me right do you know like no no the emperor like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm keeping the emperor's secret here. Don't try to, don't try to bully me.

Right. Do you know? Like, no, no. The emperor gave me his sardicar, but I'm the one taking all the risks. I'm the one spent all the fucking money. Right. Don't come here trying to push me to the fuck around.

Like, no, no. I'm the money guy. Yeah, it doesn't wind up working. But anyway, and so the guild has this monopoly over interstellar trade. And so Dune is incredibly important to them because it's the only place that the spice can be procured. Okay. And I think we're going to stop there before I get to start talking about the houses of the lands rather show them or the fremen or any of that stuff. Okay.

So, what do you take away from this at this point? Well, okay, so he writes this in the early 60s and it's published in 65. Yes. So, and at that point, we're still about 15 years, I think, from Said writing Orientalism. I think. Sounds about right. But at that point, there is a lot of Orientalism. And it sounds like he's going right along with that. This is prior to the really huge step up in terrorism.

Yeah. So it's not like there weren't conflicts. There's, you know, in 67, there's a war and stuff like that. But like you still have this fetishization of the East on some levels. Well, it's exoticism. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, say you'd said, it's, you know, Orientalism. And you have this at the time when Europeans are extricating themselves from these spaces

too. So I just, I find that little interplay interesting. And yeah, putting women into positions of tremendous power sounds very much like soft sci fi, we're going to invert this aspect of society. Yeah, you know, that makes some sense. You know, my own critique of it is, and we're going to get into this in more detail when we get to talking about themes, but there's a lot of the trope of mighty whitey involved in this. And a big part of that is a baked in level of sexism. It's going to take a male figure to be the right who can see down both lines. Right. You know, and to anybody to a male writer in the 1960s. Of course it does. Well of course, like I mean, come on. That's just

there's just a set of assumptions baked into. Yeah. World view involved in that. Yep. But like, you know, as a modern critique of it, like, you know, that's kind of sexist. Also, the female organization is the one obsessed with maintaining bloodlines and nurturing genetic material. Right. But they're doing it in a very devious feminine way. Devious feminine way. There is a vert reference to feminine way they there's there is avert reference to you know them regularly using sex and you know marriage as their tools right I mean it's it's way 60s like it's it's it's very much product I'm not timing that in that sense and

If somebody was gonna try to explore these ideas today, I'd really like to see somebody take the concepts that are involved in this from a non-European, non-male point of view, and fiddle with these tropes from a different viewpoint. And then, I'd love to try to do it, but I'm a Sess Hat white guy. Right, right. So, like, I don't have the genuine lived experience

to really, to feel like I would be genuinely doing that. So, I wish somebody else would though, because I'd love to see the other viewpoints. Sure. That could come out of it. Yeah, so that's, you know, we focused a lot on the women who's the group's bandages. We focused a lot on them, so I think that's that's most of my takeaway. Okay. Got anything for people to read? Not this time. Okay, no, I don't,

how about you? I do actually. We talked last time about the fall of a bunch of empires I told you about my the sauce pot I have for Patrice Lamumba. Yeah There is a book called the assassination of Lamumba by Ludo Duet It's awful and it's really well done. Don't get me wrong. It's fantastic. His story is gut wrenching. Yes Okay, it's It's really awful. Like the detail that it goes into is very hard, but it's an important read. Okay.

I absolutely recommend that. So where can people find you on the social medias? I can be found on social media at EH Blalock on the Twitter machine. I can also be found at that same address on Instagram. And I can be found as Mr. Blalock. They call me Mr. Blalock on TikTok, on which I don't do an awful lot,

but you know, you can look me up there. And where can they find you? You look for me at DAH Harmony. I'm both Twitter and Insta. You'll find me there. You can also find me every Tuesday night at 8.30pm, Pacific Standard Time on Twitch.tv, forward slash capital puns.

Those are enough. Well, now there's also my YouTube show that I do with Ian McDonald. And it's on YouTube. You just type in Marvel Strike Force, Excelsior Gaming, and you'll find us. And it's a lot of fun. It's just kind of me hosting him and making dumb jokes. So it's a lot of fun.

Yeah. So for a geek history of time. Oh, wait, we haven't told him where you can find. You can find both of us collectively at Geek History Time on Twitter, also at our website, geekhistorytime.com. Also, you found us already. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button. And while you're at it, you can tell people

to find us on Spotify, Stitcher, and the Apple iTunes podcast app. So find us there, subscribe, rate us, review us, let us know what you think. Throw stuff into the Twitter's to let us know what subjects we should cover. If you just want an episode that's only one episode long, it's self-contained, for instance. We used to do that. Challenges.

Yeah. Anyway, so for a geeky-saving time, I am Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s. And I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time, keep rolling 20s.