A Geek History of Time - Episode 359 - Dune vs Star Wars Part I

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

When I think nuclear annihilation, I think... La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la I'm gonna drink a metric fuck time of coffee and hope that I stop right before I start seeing sounds That's one of my one of my favorite I don't know if you know like yeah favorite awful thing I get it I get it Like bitch took the ice trees meanwhile this guy is going into a unicorn cave This is better than the what is the orientation of the chicken strapped to your head question the essential part of democracy to me is not that I should spend a lot of time in governing myself, for I have many more amusing things to do. But I want to be quite certain that I can change the

person who governs me without having to shoot him. That is the essence of democracy. You mean herge? Probably. Okay. Well, I mean, yeah. I don't know if that's just, you know, my inner drama queen. Okay, so this is really hard because you're talking about like serious, important things to you. The amount of jokes that like I think they're funny as shit. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California. I am also the father of a seven-year-old boy going on eight. And back before I met his mother back when I was married to my first wife, a long, long time ago, when I moved out on my own from my parents' house,

I took with me the baseball gloves that my father and I played catch with back when I was in junior high school. And I had, I don't know, I had a couple or three baseball gloves over the time that I played Little League. The last glove that I had was one that had been my dad's. and I took that glove and I took the one that my dad had used and I put them in a storage trunk and through every move I made, I kept them with me. But my son expressed an interest in playing baseball just a few weeks ago. And so my wife and I have signed him up for playing a little league starting when the season starts.

and my father-in-law heard about that and decided that he wanted to pay for my son's gear. He wanted to, you know, provide his only grandson with, you know, a glove and a bat. And so this weekend, I had the opportunity to play catch with my son. which is something I have been looking forward to since I found out he had been conceived. And you may be able to notice the tremble in my voice when I talk about it because it, it, yeah. So that's what I got to do earlier in the weekend, this weekend. And so I'm still riding the high from that. And how are you doing?

Oh, well, I'm Damien Harmonia. I'm a U.S. history and economics teacher here at the high school level in northern California. And I also loved baseball growing up. And when my son was born, the very next year, the Giants won their first World Series in my lifetime. And then two years later, they won again. and then two years later they won again. Right. During that time, I got him to like watch baseball games with me and stuff like that

and everything seemed to be sailing along. And then he found peanuts and he really liked the idea of baseball. I bought him a glove and I bought him the baseballs and stuff like that. And I don't quite know what happened, but I think just the realities having split homes, the realities of there's only so many hours in the day. And he has to dedicate a fair amount of energy toward schooling. such as his disability, that he really wants to just decompress and have his own time. And so it's just never been a thing that we've been able to do.

We have the gloves. We have the balls. But, you know, so I am at once happy and envious for you. Now, that being said, he's not like, I hate baseball dad. Don't ever talk to me about it. It just doesn't come up. It just doesn't, yeah. No, I understand.

But on a more mundane level, I've done something. So as you know, I have hardwood floors. Yes. Where my dining room is. And I have done something that it's one of those things. Well, how to put this? You ever have a muscle that spasms and you had no idea you had that muscle and it causes all your other muscles to be all fucked up?

Right. Yeah. I totally. The so-as muscle. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, yes. Yeah.

I do exactly what you're talking about. So I replaced the foot pads on my chairs in my dining room. Yeah. And my life is like measurably better. And all I did was just like unstick and then stick new foot pads on. And the old ones had gotten compressed and they, you know, all manner of cat hair and stuff like that. Yeah. So they just kind of ground in.

These slide in so nice. It's just like. Oh, yeah. It's like you yawn and your ears pop. You're like, oh. Oh, I didn't even realize I was three quarters deaf. Yeah. No, I just, a thousand percent get it.

This one little fix and then like dinner is just enjoyable on levels I didn't know I was missing out on. And that's the thing is I didn't know I was missing out on these things. Yeah. It's not like, you know, life was bad. But. Yeah. No, it's just so much better. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I 100% get that. Yeah. Like, yeah, that's, that's so relatable. So totally relatable right there. I mean, I think this is another one of those signs that I am firmly entrenched in the middle class, despite most of life's efforts to go otherwise. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. No, totally. That's such first world problems. But yeah. So, yeah, thousand percent. What do you got for us tonight? Because I got nothing. Okay.

Well, I got a lot. So from the, from the George Carlin, these are the things I think about when I'm sitting at Home Alone and the power goes out department. I have the second installment in my series of mashups nobody talks about. And last time we looked at the Imperium of Man's Titan Legions versus the universe of battle tech. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And this time. Let me guess. Let me guess. No.

Um. F troop versus mash. That could be very entertaining, but no. No? Okay. I got two more guesses here. All right. All right.

Bewitched versus I dream of Jeannie. I would pay so much money to watch that. I would pay so much money. Okay. So much money to watch that. Okay. Let me try again. No.

Oh, let's see. It would be, Oh, Wall Street versus the Wolf of Wall Street. I'm sorry, what did you say? I was still busy thinking about Barbara Eden. Oh, Wall Street versus Wolf of Wall Street. Yes, no, no, okay. I'm out of ideas.

Okay. Sorry, I got, I got, I lost the plot there. You and Larry Hagman both. Yeah, oh, boy, let me tell you. Um, so nobody really mashes these two up against each other. Um, and even, and they don't even frequently when, when one of these, um, series, um, almost subgenres, really, uh, gets, gets mentioned. Like if, if somebody goes in deep on the lore in either one of these, the other one doesn't, doesn't come up. like as an influence or a or a or a or an outgrowth of even though they really should are they kind of like mutually exclusive if you like one you don't like the other or no clearly not you like both well yeah no no it's not it's not you know one of those one of those like well you know if you like lord of the rings you're really going to hate you know uh whatever something else starts at troopers yeah yeah um but it isn't it isn't anything like that it's just that

because of, and I'm going to get into this a little bit, but because of the nature of the stories, the original authors were trying to tell, original creators were trying to tell. They don't get mentioned in relation to each other just because the underlying philosophy is involved. Okay. So in one of these universes,

We have mystics who are capable of doing superhuman feats through long-term study and development of basic inborn traits. And in the other one, we have mystics or semi, not really mystics, quasi-gifted individuals. who utilize mysticism as a kind of cover for and key to unlocking inborn potential that they have developed through intensive study. So Fragle Rock versus Dark Crystal. I really like that, and that might have to be something I put together at some point. but no, I'm talking about Star Wars. Oh, okay, that makes more sense, yeah.

And Dune. I've heard of it. That's pitch perfect. Pitch perfect response. Thank you for that. Sure. So it's going to be basically a big fight and everybody stops. Go away.

I got sand in my eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's everywhere. Oh, I hate sand. It gets everywhere. Yeah, only one of the factions in Dune is like, no, sand. Yeah, no, sand, buddy. Sand all fucking day.

We're going to throw it in your eyes. We chew on it daily. Yeah, like, yeah, the fremen, the fremen respect to people. When you need to chew, but you want grit. There you go. Fremant gum, pure, unrefined. Yeah, boy. Um, and, and, you know, uh, the fremen do have a lot of grit as a, as a cultural

futuristic. I think we called it, uh, syncretism. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. All, all the syncretism in that, in that setting.

So I've talked about new. Even the kitchen syncretism. Yeah. Mm. Uh, I, that one doesn't even make me mad. I like that. Um, so we, I've talked about noon before. Yes.

Um, and I've talked about how. influential it is. And we've done things about Star Wars. We haven't spent as much time on Star Wars as you might expect us to. But we have covered stuff about the Star Wars universe. Yes. And so what you never see anybody talk about, you know, the classic one like I mentioned in the first episode of this series, the classic competition is, you know, Star Wars versus Star Trek who's going to win. Right. You know, and there's been published books where people, have taken that thought experiment and run different directions with it and what nobody has ever done is nobody has ever looked at okay well done done well think yeah yeah is wrong wrong wrong wrong vowel sound right but what what has never happened uh at least as as far as i was able to tell is uh there has not been an actual attempt to try to figure out okay if the universe of dune if the Imperium of Dune Went up against the galaxy Of Star Wars Sure Who'd win?

Oh, and just so people know Dune is in episodes 113 to 120 Of our archive So just so you know Yeah. So First of all

Need to establish Some of our meta ground rules here Okay For the purposes of this discussion, we are not going to discuss any of the prequels or sequels to Dune written by Herbert's son and Kevin J. Anderson. Okay. I do not, as a rule, tends to agree with Tico from Penny Arcade on a lot of things, particularly not when it comes to taking ownership of one's mistakes in a public forum. but I do agree with him on this point and Damien let's let's I want to pause this for a moment

while you check the chat okay well that was that was that was a hell of a comic so three panel comic explaining why you don't like the idea of of let me ask you this actually Okay. So the comic is talking about how people have taken Dune and just ruined it by trying to carry it forward. Do you disagree with the very effort of doing that by someone who's not the author? Do you disagree with even just the author doing that much later? Or do you disagree with the actual this iteration of that? And you don't have a problem with it per se, but you do have a problem with this iteration of it? Because that comic, despite. all the colorful language that it uses. Yeah. Despite all that, it does kind of leave the door open to ask which of the three is the problem. Yeah.

Who's fucking the dog and who's holding its head? Yeah. So my issue with the Herbert's son and Anderson series is Herbert had. is Herbert had a very clear in his own head. Sure. As much as it's potentially impenetrable to anybody who was not Herbert, he very clearly had a very strong set of ideas and philosophies and things that he was interested in examining.

Sure. And as I mentioned in the original series, Dune is a really deep political, philosophical, you know, jam session. Yeah. He gets into some really,

really heavy duty ideas. And, I mean, you can argue about how effective he is at having a message about any of it, but it's really clear that he's playing with some really, really deep stuff.

Yeah. And the, the sequel, and prequels that were written by those two. The EU of Dune. The EU of Dune does not do that. It is very much Kevin J. Anderson, well known for writing Star Wars novels, decides he's going to work in the universe of Dune. And I don't mean that.

Not very good Star Wars novels, by the way. Now, it's not entirely his fault because at the time there were like four that were good. but but yeah so like Anderson Anderson is a spec writer and like I do not say that as a pejorative thing I know it may be coming across that way no I mean it's we don't dis line cooks either yeah kind of the line cook of writers of of fiction writers put him in a kitchen and he'll he'll adapt to whatever you're cooking and he'll do a good job of it

Yes, he will put out. He will put out an appetizing meal. Yes. Yes. And the thing is, I read the first two or three of the prequels. Mm-hmm. And I enjoyed them, but I realized about two-thirds of the way through the last one that I read that it didn't feel like, like all of the names matched up. And it was scratching all the itches for wanting to see these characters.

before, you know, the novels that I remembered, but it didn't feel like a Dune novel. And that sounds very similar to how Kevin J. Anderson played in the Star Wars EU. Yeah. And he was kind of one of the foundational pillars of the Star Wars EU as well. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. Okay, so I come back to my question, though.

Is it this iteration that bothers you? The concept of a... It's a little of column A and a little of a column. column B. Okay, which which column is A and B because I offered so you did. You did. Are you cool with an author coming back to their work years and years later and trying to continue it forward? Trying to revisit or continue it if if the elder Herbert had had you know not died and had decided he wanted to revisit this universe I would not have had no that's that's it's his sandbox to play with that's you know but his son doing it is his problem and the the way it's carried out is also a problem there there is a an element of his son doing that that smacks of the the estate is

running low on money and I need to do something. Which like, and I don't, I don't mean to be attacking Brian Herbert personally at all. But I'm just saying that's the, it feels a little crass to me as an outside observer. If Herbert, if Brian Herbert had joined the Navy before becoming a writer, would that have made it okay? No. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah.

No. So. So if, if I may, J.R. Tolkien's son doing. the Simarilla Sesperilian You're such a heathen The Simarillion Yeah that

And Lost Tales So Sure The qualitative difference there Wait he wrote A story about Sonic having to find his sidekick No

Oh No No No Just no All of my nopes Thank you Sure

No But he's the Lord of the Rings It makes sense Just no I mean There's no There was never a title An egg is like an eyeball

I mean No No Okay Not going there Not doing that Okay Not gonna happen

Not at this junk check Yeah So With With Tolkien And The Book of Lost Tales.

That was taking notes that existed and and putting stuff together from, from Tolkien's own, from John Ronald Ruhle's own, uh, uh, work. And Herbert didn't leave notes behind for his son. Herbert did not leave. I mean, there were a couple of like notions kind of sitting around, but it wasn't anything like the volumes of material that were, that were left over. Okay. And a lot of what Tolkien's son did also involved publishing of the notes and the development and essentially the historiography of Middle Earth in addition to the Silmarillion and the Book of Lost Tales.

Okay. And so there's a scholarly difference here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And the, yeah. And you read the Silmarillion and it.

really genuinely feels like a middle earth set of stories the the the the the lost tales really feels like a middle earth set of stories it has the same feeling of John Ronald rules hands on it I realized that I've guided you accidentally into one of the things I love which is trolleyism a little bit really I'm like I'm like trying to find the line of where you're like okay but what if it's what if it's five five felons you know it's yeah what if it's a baby but he's going to die tomorrow you know just so I mean yeah yeah and I apologize but also I'm not sorry because I find this shit fascinating yeah no I because like now I'm like okay so because of the amount of notes

that he did and he didn't do it as like it's he's releasing here's what my dad did and here's here's a few transition paragraphs in between the blank spots that he didn't do yeah that's cool because it's largely the source whereas yeah what brian herbert did is he he was like okay this is literally my dad's sandbox and here i go yeah yeah and just whole cloth you know or very close to whole cloth and kevin j andersen warmed his way in so yeah oh i see what you did there and it's And in this context, I approve. Ah. So, so, yeah.

Okay. The, the, the, the, and the direction that the universe got taken, the deep ideas that Herbert was originally writing about, about religion and politics and right. Development of society and like racial, human racial, that is to say, species, destiny, you know, all that kind of stuff, all that, you know, bong rip and go whoa dude kind of you know heavy duty stuff that he was that he was working on just isn't there it doesn't have anywhere near the intellectual weight okay and and if you're going to write a dune story needs to have that intellectual weight i mean you can't sandbag this yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna

rip on herbert a little bit for for some of the some of the choices he made here in the process of comparing these two universes. Brian Herbert or? No. Oh, no, no, because you, that's right. You're, that's, that's, that's. No, we're not, we're not.

Yeah, no. That, that does not, that does not count. That did not happen. We, we are, we are going to be looking at, uh, the, primarily the novels, but there's some interplay where we've got to kind of take the movies, some of the movie stuff into account. Okay. As well.

And it's only fair that we take the movie stuff into account because Star Wars, of course started out as a film. Yeah. So if we were like, well, no, we're only doing the novels over here and we're only doing the movies over here, then like I don't feel like that would be intellectually honest. Okay. So we're not doing EU books for Star Wars either. We have to rely on some sources that came out of the EU for technical details. Oh, sure, sure.

But Lucas never bothered to develop. Now, he never bothered to develop, but while he was in charge, he still had an entire mechanism by which to approve of all the stuff. So Luke getting a girlfriend, her running away, her coming back later, all these kinds of things. Those were things that Lucas approved of. Yes. So, or he agented people to approve of. To approve of them. And based on a massive story Bible.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Leelinchie, Keeper of the Holocron. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool.

We're about to say blessed is, blessed be his name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? And we can do that. Peace be unto him. Yeah.

Yeah. You know I'm cool with that because. Yeah. I just, I realize that. The only thing I know about him is that he kept the shit that I like. And what if he's like the worst person in the world? He's just like an absolute prick, right?

Right. So I haven't heard anything like that. Nor have I. But I also. I intellectually on until if I'm going to be intellectually honest here I haven't gone looking. Yeah. That's true. So fair.

Yeah. So anyway, we, we are not going to be looking at any of the extended universe stuff for Dune. We're going to be looking at the. And really, I'm only going to mention some of the stuff after the second or third novel in kind of in passing. Well, and in fairness, if you. You added up the word count of the Dune novels and the entire EU of Star Wars. You're within a hundred of each other. Yeah, you're with it.

You're within a couple of dozen pages. Yeah. They are fucking doorstoppers, aren't they? So, yeah. So mostly, most of what I'm going to have to talk about comes from gets introduced in. would be a better way to say it. The first two or three books of the Dune series, the original books. So that's Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.

And then after that, we shift to the reign of Lito the second, and he becomes a human dune worm hybrid. Like you do. And, yeah. and lives for 10,000 years, and it gets really trippy and to kind of keep things grounded and also because there's not really a whole lot of,

there's not really a whole lot that goes on in that universe that would affect the, okay, if they threw down, how would this go? That really happens after the first two or three books. There's the introduction of another group, another faction that is interesting, but kind of complicated to talk about So,

sure. So now both of these universes, properties have multiple films associated with them. Yes. Star Wars, of course, started out as a film franchise. And now has expanded into television and expanded into novels around the time that you and I were in high school.

And so Dune, it's important to understand that, Dune came first. Dune, as I mentioned before, but just for a quick, you know, recap. Dune was first published in 1965 by Chilton. The same people who taught us how to fix our Toyotas. Yes, yes, precisely. Which, like of all, but, you know, it took off.

And now it's been, you know, reprinted by multiple other publishers since Star Wars, open in theaters 1977. Now, they're rooted, as I started to say before, they're rooted in two very different sets of ideas. Herbert was interested in

the terraforming aspect of the original novel, which is that the Fremen are engaged in a covert terraforming project that they expect to take generations.

And, you know, Leet Kynes, the judge of the change, is, you know, planetary scientist who inherited the job from his father, who was a planetary scientist, you know. Sure. And so there's this ecological angle involved, like from the very beginning of the story, because Herbert looked at the Oregon Dunes and a project that was going on there in order to stabilize them using grasses and, you know, trying to essentially trying to. to terraform that feature on our own planet. And so he started with that as kind of part of the scientific conceit.

And then from there, he introduced elements that turned the story into a giant parable about religion, empire, and oil. And it, it, there are multiple different political and religious, threads running through the story and the science fiction elements of it are there to allow for the thought experiment. If that makes sense. So, you know, the organizations of people with psychic powers or semi-psychic powers and the, you know, pre-cognition and the spice being this, you know, wonder material that everybody needs. It's obviously, you know, a stand-in metaphor for oil. Right.

And so, you know, he he's looking at, you know, the politics of hydraulic empire and control of this resource and imperialism and, you know, corporate interplay. Like there's, you could write multiple feces on this book and lots of people have. And, you know, depending on what interpretation you take of it and how seriously you take Herbert himself, like sometimes what he tried, like his reach exceeds his grasp in some places with this stuff. And in order to get to his thought experiment, he invents some really kind of goofy shit. And I say this with love because I love the series. but if you think too hard about some of the science fiction elements, they kind of fall apart.

Well, that's true. Almost all sci-fi, right? Well, yes. Unless you're going to write really boring fucking sci-fi. Yeah, well, unless you're committed to writing something really high on the most hardness scale, and you really, really, really find a way to make it compelling. Like, really hard science fiction can be really good, but it's harder to do. Do you think that his looking at spice and obviously oil because, I mean, he's writing Dune in the 1960s.

So, I mean, America, hegemony or actually Cold War, the entire military runs on oil. He'd been a Navy man. So he understands the importance of oil. Yeah. All that kind of shit. I mean, hell, we turned an entire country into a dictatorship so that they would give England oil. Yeah. Um, so do you think that that also coincides with, um, like, because there's like this mystical aspect to the spice on some levels, you think that coincides with kind of like the, the, uh, the increased efforts at like cloud seating that started happening in the like the, the, the 40s and 50s and 60s.

Like we're going to shoot like, because in the 30s, they're like, we're going to throw dynamite in the air. And that's going to burst the clouds and we're going to get rain. Right. But then like by like the 60s, like the early 60s or late 50s, they were like, I think it was actually like mid 40s, but either way. Yeah. We're going to put silver in the air. Like they started experimenting with like metallurgy in the air.

Yeah. And do you think that that was kind of feeding into his conception of it? I'm sure it was probably feeding into it somewhere. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, we can't say how conscious any of it was. But I think Herbert, Herbert's particular precognition of his own was the recognition of the power of control of oil resources. Okay.

Which like, you know, politicians were politicians and military planners and everybody were already, you know, busy. making plans and and making moves based on that because of the importance of it as a resource. But as a meta idea in the popular consciousness, it wasn't a thing yet. Okay. Like it wasn't until the oil crises of the 70s, you know, and OPEC turning off the tap. Right. The power to destroy a thing is the power to control a thing. Right.

You know, until... But that's after his books, so... That's after his books. but he's you know he pointed to it right well like we've seen with um oh god what's her name um african-american sci-fi writer predicted this whole year oh yeah yeah yeah yeah like we've seen sci-fi folks tend to well margaret atwood and hand meansdale yeah you know well she was just looking at the news is what was happening to black and brown women so yeah like that you know That's Canary and the coal mine shit.

But, yes. Or the gal who wrote the Hunger Games, you know, she was also basing it on. Well, okay, so that kind of comes back to. Was he just looking at the news? Like, you know, like these guys who predict the future really well. It's like, no, they're just telling you what happened. It's paying attention. Yeah.

Yeah, I think he was looking at the news and then he was making like Atwood and like Butler. And like all of them, he was looking like good science fiction authors do. was looking at the news and then he was making the inferential leap, you know, one or two steps forward. Right. So, yeah. And what he wanted to try to recreate as part of his parable was, um, oh, damn it. The, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, campaigns in the Middle East in World War

War I, um, T.E. Lawrence. Okay. Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah. He was inspired by that particular set of, set of stories, that myth out of that conflict. Oh, yeah. And that film, for that matter. And, I mean, you can see it all across, all across the texture of his writing.

And so that's, that. That's what Frank Herbert was working from. George Lucas came to sit down at a desk and write Star Wars with Vietnam on his mind. Oh, yeah. And he was responding to the idea

of the Camballian monomyth. And he's like overtly said this. Like, you know, this is what I've been reading. Right, right. Right. And as we've mentioned before on this podcast, He also had a head full of half-baked, not really very well-studied Buddhist ideas. Yeah.

You know, Eastern religion that was all, you know, very, very much popular in the, in the counterculture back, you know, in the 60s into the 70s. And so Star Wars has things to say about spirit. It has things to say about right and wrong. It has things to say about very dualistic morality. Yes. And Dune is a lot more interested in a whole lot of smudgy shades of gray. Mm-hmm. And religion, not so much spirituality, because there's spirituality all over the place in, you know, just under the crust in Star Wars.

In Dune, Dune, Dune is not spiritual. It is, it is religion. Right. Right. It's interested in dogma It's interested in Religious fervor Well let me ask you this

With Paul becoming like the leader of the fremen And my name is a killing word and all that kind of shit That's not spiritual that's all that's fairly dogmatic and ritualistic still What what Herbert okay so a couple of things My name is a killing word Comes out of the Lynch film that that doesn't happen in Herbert's book and it doesn't happen in the Villeneuve movie

okay either and I'm going to get to the specific details of what's going on there when I start talking about that but what Herbert portrays and what what Lynch did a real I think a really good job of showing

is like there is no there is no depiction of religious ecstasy there is no depiction of the connection between an individual character and the godhead there is no there is none of that spiritual element of it there is an awful lot of feverish

intense belief and how everybody interacts around it, not so much. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And the, the, uh, experiences, the psychedelic experiences that Paul and his mother and his sister undergo

as part of the water of life ritual is very intensely inward. and not directed outward toward a greater continuum or a greater connection to a higher power. The Dune novels essentially essentially take place in a universe where a lot of people believe in a God, but the author doesn't seem to, if that makes sense. No, it does.

I mean, as a man who has no belief in this shit, sorry that was super reductive i'm sorry yeah i understand what you meant like i i i appreciate your your sensitivity and in um but anyway as a guy who has no belief in this yeah i run d and d campaigns where gods exist yeah i always wonder like how like i i don't think i'm disrespecting anybody by disrespecting made up gods that I've created. Right. But also the way that I have them interacting in the world or, you know, it's, it's very deistic at best.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, I mean, it's the same kind of thing. Like the campaigns that I've run for my kids, they are not on any plane other than the material plane. Right. Like you might gain powers from all this other shit. Yeah.

There is going to be a cleric with you, probably. probably because there's only two of you and you need some fucking healing. But he's not even going to be that religious. He's just like, you know, he's a battery, like you said. Yeah. I'll give him a personality and he'll be weird as shit and I'll find ways to exit him from the combat. But it's not because there's a God or anything like that. They're not going to be going up against anything like that.

Now, that being said, the overall arc that I have for my kids and I'll tell you because they're not going to listen to this episode ever. Right. But the overall arc I have for them is that there's a paladin upriver who thinks that she is actually saving people and what's the word, resurrecting them. But she's actually creating an army of the undead because she's so traumatized by the loss. She's a paladin. Oh, wow. So. That's, that is good stuff.

It is. But notice what's absent from any of that is any kind of like, yeah. Spiritualism. It's just her trauma and this is how she's responding. Yeah. No, I, I, man, you got to keep me, you got to keep me posted on that. I will. I will see how that goes. That's the revelation. The revelation of that. Oh, man. Yeah. But wait, hold on, up river. Yeah. She's up river. Yeah. Did I accidentally do something? No. Well, I don't know. You might have. And now I'm trying to remember, remember the name. Is, is her name curs? No, I don't think of...

Oh, that would be cool. No. Oh, my God. I don't think I did that on purpose. I was just picking a spot on the map that... Yeah, I know, I know. No, because the river they're going up is a frozen river. Like, it's all tundra and taiga.

So it's not... Yeah, yeah. It's not heart of darkness. But now I'm going to start pulling from that. Yeah. Well, I mean, you gotta. Might as well. Yeah.

Dude. Oh, they're going to run. went into some sort of lore bar. He's like, smokes, you got him? Okay, she told me if I drew her picture again,

that she'd kill me and she meant it. You know, what are they going to say, man, that she was a kind man, that she was a paladan, bullshit, man. His name will be Henness Dopper.

I love it. I love it. Oh, my God, me too. God, I would be there at the table for that. Oh, well. Oh, shit.

There's seats. Yeah, I know. But you could just get, get them up river and then you could die. There you go. On their boat. I could really rip off. Oh,

100%. Hell yeah. But no, the whole thing was I was just like I wanted them to fight undead shit. And I'm like, what's a really good way? Because I do like that little twist of misunderstanding things. Oh, yeah. But they haven't even gotten into that plot yet. Right now I'm running them through.

And it's actually tomorrow's game. I'm running them into the plot of the thing. Not, oh, damn. All right. But anyway. Nice. Sorry. We're getting off the subject.

A little bit. Yeah. But for good reasons. A book was written about religion by a man who does not have religion. Who clearly, yeah, is approaching it from a non-theistic position. Right. And so meanwhile, you know, Star Wars, like I said, is very much written from a point of view where redemption is a really big deal

and there is moralism left, right, right, and center and everywhere. And it's, it's, you know, I said earlier, you know, he, he, that Herbert wrote a parable. Lucas wrote a fable. Like, it is a morality tale. Yeah. And for all, yeah.

Well, but no, we need to, to get into that because that's that's important for our mashup but for for all of those differences like in the in the philosophy and the and the what the stories are trying to accomplish are profoundly different but they have they have a lot in common

and and I'd be willing to bet a pound of spice and I mean Melange not Star Wars not the stuff that Han Solo smuggle yeah no not not not space cocaine right that Lucas had Dune on his mind when he started writing. Oh, I mean, he used the word spice. Yeah, well, yeah.

I mean, yeah. Yeah, he'll never admit it, but the evidence is really hard to deny. Right. Both of them are built around the idea of an interstellar civilization of an unnumbered, but seemingly vast collection of worlds. Now, in canon, I don't know if it's ever established exactly how many planets there are in the galaxy in Star Wars? There is a discussion

of that in the new rebellion. No. It's called the New Empire, I think. Hang on. Sorry, I'm staring at a book that I can't stand. Okay. It was bad. It was really bad. But there was one really good scene in it.

I think it's called... I can't find it. This is exciting. listening just the best shit I got to tell you. Yeah, it's It is called the new rebellion. Yeah, that's the new rebellion.

And like Leia's president at that time. Right, right. There's a terrorist attack on the Senate and it's the Senate building is just goddamn huge. It's like more than 3,000 systems

represented. Okay. Some systems are individual planets. Some planets have multiple representatives that that represent different factions which is interesting. Okay. So, but yeah. And then in the Yuzon Vong invasion, there's a talk about how many billions of lives, how many

trillions of lives get lost. Right. Right. Okay. But there is no nailed down. This is how many planets are in the galaxy. Okay. By the way, the word for spice in Star Warsland is R-Y-L-L-L.

That's the most potent shit. That's the stuff that you find on Kessel. No, that's the stuff on Ryloth. And I think Sonsana is the stuff that you find on Kessel. There might be other types as well. All right. I feel like there's another kind. But yeah.

So, and then in Dune, we actually find out somewhere along the way. And actually, now that I remember it, I think it's in one of the prequel novels. So, you know, it's not really cogent to the rest of the conversation. it's and I think this might have been taken from Frank Herbert's notes that the Imperium is not actually as large as the Imperium sells itself to its subjects as being. Oh, wow. Okay. That, you know, it is really big, but it's a couple of hundred worlds.

Gotcha. It's not, you know, inconceivably. Billions and billions of stars. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I, yeah. Because there are Star Wars fans listening and they will have read legends. books and stuff like that.

I'm going mostly on legends. So when I talk about the EU, that's what I'm talking about. And by the way, the most narcotic fun kind, which is found on Kessel, because that's in like one of the first lines of dialogue in episode. Yeah. Right. It's called glitter stem. So made by spiders. Cut your finger.

Okay. Yeah. But anyway. Okay. Cool. So in both of these series, this huge collection of worlds, which, you know, again, we don't really have a clear number in Star Wars, but it's in the thousands. And in Dune in the first series, it's never really kind of numerated, but it's still very large. Both of these galaxies are ruled over.

there is an overarching governmental authority overseeing an interstellar political entity. Yes. And in Star Wars, when we're introduced to Star Wars, that's the Empire. And in Dune, it is the Imperium ruled by Emperor Shaddam, the 4th, Potashah Emperor of House Carino. And Herbert treats the Imperium as a backer

ground given. Like, you have all these planets. It's, it's, it's, it's going to be this dictatorship. This is the state of the universe. It is, you know, noble houses and an emperor. And, you know, I mean, yeah, sure, as modern readers, we'd love it if it was a democracy, but that's just not how it is. And, and like, there's no, again, there's no moral, no intrinsic moral value attached to that. in Star Wars, the empire is overtly evil.

Right. But it's also background. Yeah. Like when we first get to it, like we, yeah, we, we establish that there's an emperor. We established that he just dissolved the Senate. Right. Like, like, but that's kind of it. We don't see him incorporate until episode six.

We see him in a hologram in episode five. Right. Otherwise, he's, he is background fluff to the story. Yes, he is. But the institutions that represent him are over. They're evil as fuck. They're very overt. They are Nazi coated out the Yangtze River just like all the way.

Yeah. And, you know, and his, and his chosen emissary to all of these Nazi military officers is, you know, literally a, a, black-clad anti-paladin. Like, you know, there's no, there's no subtlety at all. There's no, no gray areas, no, no middle ground, no. Oh, hey, Vianz the bad guys, Fritz. I mean, and there, there's a wonderful discussion in, I don't, I don't know what book it is, but Luke talks to somebody about,

and it makes me think it's a black fleet crisis but I'm probably wrong but Luke talks to somebody about how the emperor he has a theory as to why the emperor names all of his ships really awful shit and he's like and it's because he wants you to know he's corrupting you

like you know have you ever noticed why our name your guys' ships are always named fucking terrible things you know and it's like well you know to project power he's like no he wants wanted y'all to know that he was corrupting you and you were going along with it that that was part of the corruption that was part of getting you invested um and it's like yeah because they could have called it the justice star yeah they could have called it you know the the the intergalactic

wonder star you know yeah yeah yeah no the death star it's yeah it's what it says on the 10 you know yeah yeah there was any number of things that it could have been named but no no it's the death star. And Vadership is the executor. Yeah. Not like, oh, it's in charge of your will. No. No.

No. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. It is, it is clearly these are the bad guys. Hi, audience. They're the bad guys.

Right. You know, and part of that is adapting tropes out of Buck Rogers and, you know, earlier whizbang, you know, space operations. Opera media like you look you know yeah you look at you look at all of all of the baddies in all those series and they're obvious mustache twirling villains because that's the language that those that those media utilized and so since he's borrowing from those for his grand adventure story it makes sense but also that becomes part of the philosophical DNA of the story right and

Now, both universes are also very, very, very old. The Imperium of Dune is uncountably far in the future. We don't even know how many thousands of years ahead of us it is. We can surmise that it is an outgrowth of our universe because of references that are made within it. We see the syncretism that's involved in those very dogmatic religions in this universe, an orange Catholic Bible obviously this is a reference to real world

you know religious stuff Zen Sunni mystics Zen Sunni Buddhists right yeah Benijeserite you know yeah and I'm trying to remember what the what the Shia

there's there's one of the faiths that's associated with with Shia and again it's a reference to a real world religion. So this is impossibly far in the future. And the galaxy of Star Wars is a long time ago

in a galaxy far, far away, and the setting has over time been established to be many, many millennia old. You know, the Republic is a couple of thousand years old. Right. By this time, by one B, B.B.Y, right? The Republic stood for a thousand generations

the Jedi were the Guardians of the Republic and so the Republic was 25,000 years old by the time we get to one BBI. BBIY, by the way, stands for before the Battle of Yavin. Yes. That seems to be which has always bothered me because

it's the death of the emperor that ends the fucking empire and that should be your year one or your year zero. Doing it like four years earlier stupid. It just Yeah. But okay, cool. You did BBI. Because it was the first blow struck.

So it's like the debutante ball of Eliot. Yeah. Yeah. I guess part of what interests me from a historiographical point of view is in the years between when the oceans, when the stars devoured Alderon and the rise. of the second death star. Sorry. I see what you're trying to do there. Yeah, it took too much thinking.

It's been too long a day, and I'm already way into a strong beer. But in the real world, in the time between the first film and the beginnings of the establishment of the lore in like the West End role-playing game, because if I remember right the West End

role playing game came out before did it come out before Return of the Jedi? Now I'm looking at a different shelf. Give me one second. Yeah. I've got the book right over here. All right.

This is... Or am I misremembered. The original right here in front of me. I have no idea how this is going to play audio-wise. Okay. Okay. So I have the original book right here in front of me signed by the actual creator of the system.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That was that 15-year-long game. Yeah. The guy who ran it, looked up the guy and sent him three copies of the first version of the book. Oh, wow. And, yeah, had him sign it to thank us all. Let's see.

Okay, I was right. 87. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. So, all right, my theory, my theory falls apart then. Because I was thinking that it was possible that, like, the codification of the lore started being written down between the first movie and between a new hope and Return of the Jedi.

Splinter of the Mind's Eye came out between a new hope and the Empire Strikes Back. That's true. And so did the, where is it? It's up there. God, people are going to love this episode. Let me tell you. Listen to Damien, look at his bookshelf for 20 minutes. It really is.

But it's the, the, oh, shit, they're all organized chronologically. Hang on Solo at Stars. Oh, yeah. The Han Solo trilogy. Okay. But here's the thing. That's fiction being established in the world, and that's not meta, that's not meta-fiction where they're talking about history in the world and using a day.

dating system. Right. The first mention of a dating system comes out in the Thron trilogy, although in the West End games, there's also mentions of the dating system, which means that they could have absolutely done it. They could have absolutely gone with the death of the emperor. Which would have made fucking sense. Which would have made way more sense.

Yeah. All right. All right. So, yeah, your criticism is a thousand percent valid. I was just trying to think of an explanation why they might have gone with that. And they're real, in our professional opinion, as nerds, there really isn't a good. one as historians as a matter of fact there really isn't a good one right so but we know that anyway what that whole point there was both of these settings are are vastly ancient right yeah um giant worms

are are a thing in both series yes and no well empire they they get nearly devoured by a giant Worm critter. Oh, the exigorts. You're absolutely right. Okay. I was thinking like, yeah, I was thinking like the Sarlac, but I'm like, no, the Sarlac didn't originally have the beak, the Audrey 2. It was just from the movie teeth.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about the unfortunate, uh, overtones there. Um, and, and, but we, we see giant worm like critters. Uh, yeah, more broadly on tattooing, you know, as we're, as we're, as we're, introduced to it as we watch, you know, R2 and 3PO wandering across the desert. We see the bleached carcass, the bleached bones of some massive critter. Yeah.

You know, and so, you know, it's a desert planet. Tatawine keeps coming up. Like, it's this nothing planet out in, you know, the periphery, out in the middle of nowhere. the point if there's a bright spot at the center of the galaxy tatuine is the farthest from it right and yet we keep going back there but every okay so not only do we go back there for the original trilogy which always bothered me i'm like you have a whole galaxy to play in but and then the the sequel trilogy they start on jackoo and then in in episode eight luke look Luke it's kind of tongue and cheek

he's like nobody's from nowhere and she's like Jacoo he's like okay that's pretty much nowhere which is like that shows you okay this is tattooing like on depressants it's if the farm boy from a

moisture farm on a desert planet is like oh yeah your place is fucking nowhere that's like yeah yeah that's like my my mother and her sisters when I mentioned at a family get together, this is years ago, when I mentioned at a family get together

that I had done an installation job in Turlock. My mother and her sisters went, oh yeah, Turdlock. Wow. They're from Kerman, motherfucker.

Like, like, when people, when people from the town, the village where like, oh, you're going into Fresno, you're going to the city. Right. With those folks. Oh, you're going where the flies are.

Okay. That's not like when they call your town literally a shit pile. Yeah. Wow. Fair and valid. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.

Same energy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Dune tries very hard to be more scientific. Sure. Right? But both of them deal with medieval cultural tropes.

Both of them have a very strong mystic slash psychic elements involved. In Dune, it's much more played as, you know, mental powers and psychic stuff, whereas the force is an intrinsically mystical energy field. Right. Right. Star Wars, like I've already said, leans more heavily into that. Dune tries to portray the fantastical elements within the universe as being rooted in pseudoscience. We get precognition through really, really, really, really being really good at math. Mm-hmm.

Basically is how Mentats. Mentats work. Right. Is they're hyper-trained in calculation. And so by doing that, they can enter a mental, like a meditative mental state, where they're capable of imagining all of the different scenarios that can spin off out of a given set of events. And so they have this,

they have this metacognitive kind of thing. Sure. And then the Benegeserate have hidden or inner memory, or I'm trying to remember what the, I didn't write it down properly in my notes, but essentially essential memory. They are able to go into their own DNA, and talk to the gestalt.

Yeah, no. They're able to access ancestors, basically. Oh, wow. Okay. Talk to the mothers that came before them. Oh, it's like what Optimus Prime has, where he's got the leadership matrix. Yeah, it's kind of.

Only a lot less noble bright. But they've got the. touch. Kind of. We'll get to it. Not in the same way, but yes. You mean the Bené Jesuit don't turn into a Winnebago? Huh.

Man, it'd be cool if they did, though. I do love that Rodomus Prime started as a hot rod. And then when he like levels up, it's I'm a Winnebago. Yeah. It's just like, you're a motorhome, dude. Like, yeah, what? Leaders can only be guys with like trailers or. Well, you know, that's the burden of leaders.

ship, right? Apparently, yeah. Literally. Like, literally. Like, literally, long haul trucker. Yeah. So.

Now, Dune in many ways is a lot more thought out. Yeah. I mean, okay. Bashing Lucas aside. Yeah. A screenplay that was based on plenty of notes that a guy did while he, like, was just like, fever dream remembering Flash Gordon. and want to do something like that,

that leads to a screenplay that's like basically 130 pages long. Right. That's going to be a lot less than a novel that is like the size of an erect penis. Yeah, this is true. Yeah. This is true. So Herbert did a lot of second and third order thinking in developing his universe. Yeah, that makes sense.

Not so much as tech, but the universe has a lot of second and third order thinking. in a number of areas. So if you have shields, then you have slow pellet guns. If you have noble houses, then you're going to have all the cultural mores associated with honor culture. And that's where we get into

Canley and the wards of assassins. We get organizations like the Suk school, the Ginnaz sword masters, all of that stuff. Star Wars is a thousand percent powered by the rule of cool. Yes. like from from the get go yeah what's going to be the what's going to make for the coolest

scene what's what what how how can I make how can I make this into a visual feast right yeah I want to have I want to have uh sword fights out of samurai movies and in the same film I want to have a fighter battle out of a world war two movie in space yeah I want damn busters in space and I want a Kurosawa film. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, yeah. I want Chambara and I want the Battle of Midway.

Like, how do I? How do I? You know, there is one thing in common with both of those, and it's kind of uncomfortable now that I think about it. A little bit, yeah.

Especially a guy from the Central Valley. Valley of California. You hear her. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. A little bit. So now to kind of break down who the two sides are here, right? So if we're,

if we're going to throw these two. universes, this one really heavy, you know, philosophical, you know, deep thought kind of, kind of universe against this, you know, popcorn feature, you know, action movie Whizbang film. Right, right. You know,

who are our combatants? Okay, and I'm going to start with Dune because I think, well, what I was about to say was, I think, you know, listeners are probably going to be naturally more familiar with Star Wars, but based

on how our audience skews, I might be wrong there. Right, yeah. But I'm going to start with Dune anyway, because that's how I have my notes written. Most of the audience is more literate than I am. So only in terms of fiction, only in terms of fiction, you are incredibly well read in lots of other areas. It doesn't make me literate. It just makes me well read.

There's a difference. Fair. Fair. You know what? If you want to be that kind of self-deprecating, I will allow it. All right. Okay. So, Dune first.

Here we go. Yeah, Dune first. So the Imperium. For the purposes of this exercise and to simplify things, we're going to assume that the Imperium that we are dealing with is the one ruled by an ascendant Paul Atreides. Okay. Paul is the scion of House Atrides, which gives him a private army first of highly trained and fiercely loyal soldiers.

Okay. He himself has the, has latent capacity to have become a mentat. Isn't he like the perfect born child of like all the things lined up? That becomes a thing later in the first book. Well, the first, the chain of events there is,

he finds out from his father as they are heading to Iraqis that, you know, we're thinking about having you trained as a mentat because Thufir thinks you have the capacity to do it. And as a mentat leader of a noble house, you'd be unstoppable. But also his mom was a Benajezerite or something, too. Yes. His mother is a member of the Ben-Jezerat. Yeah. And one of the abilities the Ben-E-Jeserate have developed is they have such profound control over their own bodies.

through psychic conditioning and physical and mental training, that a Ben-Jezerite sister is able to control whether she conceives a daughter or a son. Right. And because of the Ben-Jezerat's breeding program to try to create the quiz about Hotterak, which is what you were talking about, the perfect-born Messiah figure,

she was supposed to have a daughter. But she loved Leto, Paul's father, and he desperately, desperately needed a son. Right. And so she had a son. And one of the first scenes in the novel is her getting a severe talking down to from Reverend Mother Guy's Helen Mojiam, you know, who says, you know, the whole project is going to be thrown back by, you know, a generation because there is no way the Atreides are going to survive, you know, this whole thing is going on. And like, you know. You bet on the wrong horse.

basically. Well, not so much you bet on the wrong horse, like you made a decision based on emotion that you shouldn't have done. Right. It is, you know, the way she got chastised. So, but Paul has this potential to be a mentat. Mm-hmm.

And being on Aracas and being surrounded by like ambient spice in the air because of the pseudo-psychic kind of effect of it, starts to unlock his precognitive, his mentat kind of abilities on the same night

that the Harconan attack and his father is killed. Right. And he, even before he becomes, you know, the Lisan al-Ghaib and all of that, he has this very profound psychic, psychedelic experience

of, you know, seeing the future. So he is gifted in this way. And then later on in the book, it becomes politically and religiously necessary for his leadership of the Fremen, who are the army that he's going to use to avenge himself on the emperor.

And House Harkinan, he has to take the test of the water of life. which every other man who's done it before has failed. But when he succeeds at that, he unlocks other memory. And his particular gift as the Quizat-Roc is he is able to access male and female figures in his other memory.

The Benjazzarit are only able to see the female side. And this predates our understanding of DNA. in terms of its shape, the double helix, right? I'm trying to remember Wayne Watson and Crick did that. Yeah, yeah, yes, that's true. I want to say it's like 65, right? Yeah, it may be. Oh, these are like lining right up, but, okay, so my point I think still might stand.

The idea that you could determine someone's lineage through the mother's RNA, that doesn't come around until much later that's that's that's a decade or more at least so so he's again kind of yeah yeah he's he's making some surmises and for narrative purposes

making some assumptions that turn out to kind of line up with some of what we now understand about but also he's he's looking I mean I would imagine given his obsession with two of the Abrahamic religions in his syncretism.

He could also be looking at how you measure your Judaic lineage through the matristic side. Yes, that's also... There's a lot of different places this could be coming from. There could also be a certain level of 1960 sexism that like, well, you know, chicks can...

Hey, this will be edgy. And this, you know, as a dude, you can, you know... Yeah. So, like, you know, it depends on how charitable you want to be to him. Sure, sure. Okay, so Paul can access male and female relatives. Yeah. So, and he winds up getting trained in, as the sion of a major noble house,

he has been trained to fight from a young age from younger than he is because he starts out the book is, I want to say 14. Right. He's a kid. And I think at the end of the first book, when he, when he becomes emperor, he's like 16. It's, it's kind of ridiculous. And then he starts the second book, and he might be a year older. And you continually have to remind yourself, this is a fucking teen.

This is a high school kid. Right. You know, he doesn't talk like one. So anyway. So, but, yeah, Lord. But his, his personal. abilities are formidable. He's been trained by

Gina's sword master and also by just one of the toughest sons of bitches in the galaxy in the case of Gurney Halick, who is a dirty knife fighter extraordinaire. He's been educated by Thufir Hawat

one of the most famous, most skilled men tats in history. And Dr. Huey has also been his tutor who's the family doctor from the Sukk School. So he's incredibly well educated. You know, he has all of the benefits of his privilege within this society to make him a formidable individual because it's a brutal society in which he needs to be formidable or he's going to get eaten alive.

Right. So as the head of House of Trades, on top of his own personal badassery, he has. the loyalty of the House of Trades troops. And they are shown in the books to be very highly competent fighters. They are very skilled. They are very loyal. They're very professional man for man. They are not the match for the Sardicar of the prior emperor.

But they stand up to other house troops. Sure. And in the first novel and in the most recent movies from Dennis Villeneuve, we see a captured Etradi's soldier who's captured in the Harkinen attack on Iraqis. We see him fighting Fade Routha in the arena on the Harkinen home world. And he gives Fade Routha a run for his money. And it's worth noting Fade Routha was the Beneh Jeser's other. candidate, the other engineered candidate to be the parent of the Quizot-A-Rotter-Roch.

They wanted the Ben-Jezerate wanted Fade Routha to marry an Atreides daughter, and they intended for their child to be the son who would become the Quizadez Hatter-Roc. Okay. So a chosen one who's not a chosen one, because there's another chosen one who should have been chosen. Yes.

All right, we've got some. Luke and Leah thing going on here. We also have some, depending on how far you want to extend things, you have some Luke and Ezra shit going on here. There's discussion there, but also there's some Luke and Star Keller going on there if you want to. Yes.

I'd go heavy on the Luke and Star Killer because Fade Routha is bad news. Well, because StarKiller is, what if Vader did raise his son? Yeah. It's like, oh, no, that's bad. That's a bad act. That's abusive. We don't want that. No.

So now, an important caveat is that the weaponry that these men wield is very culture-specific. Okay. They're all trained to fight using shields against opponents. Well, I'll get into it in a second. Okay. Against opponents who are also using shields. Okay. And this means that their main ranged weapons are pellet stunners,

and their hand-to-hand techniques rely on edged weapons at grappling range. Like getting right up on somebody. So Herbert came up with the idea of a holdsman field or a holdsman shield. Oh, I remember these. Yes. And I'm going to kind of skip ahead here. Sure. Because I think it's worth doing here because it's toward the end of my written notes, but I think now's a good place to talk about it.

Yeah. So a holdsman shield is a personal device usually like worn on a belt or somewhere on your body that you turn it on and it emits an energy field. And so the holdsman field is this energy field that. will react to anything any any any physical object right moving above a certain speed so it's it makes you non-neutonian fluid kind of in a way it's it's it kind of is it's like energy ooblek yeah yeah I I'm looking at pictures of it from the David Lynch thing and it's okay we we we use tron graphics got it but I assume that's not what really look like.

Yeah. In the, I really like the, um, visualization of it in the Dennis Villeneuve movie. Okay. I'll look at that now. Um, because you don't usually see it in action until it, it gets it,

until it stops something and then it turns into a blurring. Okay. Of the air like around it. And so this, this field hovers. however many, you know, centimeters, millimeters away from your body. Right.

And when anything hits it going over a certain speed, it, it, you know, as you say, like Ubleck, it hardens, it reacts to that

and acts as a force field. Okay, yeah, yeah. So now Herbert did some second order thinking here, and he realized that, okay,

if I surround myself with an actually impermeable force field, I'm going to suffocate. So the way he explained it, the way he explained it was it stops matter moving above a certain speed. So as you are breathing, gas is able to pass through the field. Right, because it's not moving that fast. Because it's not moving that fast.

now here's where he got uh he i don't think he thought hard enough or he didn't define clearly enough all of the conditions involved because he set a speed in the in the lore of the universe a holtman field stops anything moving faster than somewhere between six centimeters a second and 10 centimeters a second. Okay. I'm hoping you're going to extrapolate this out into terms that we understand. So six centimeters a second means if you imagine moving your finger in space, six centimeters a second means it would take you one second to move your finger from one end of like, thinking

of the long end of the oval of a chicken's egg. Okay. It would take you one second, a thousand one. to move your finger across an egg. That's remarkably slow. It's incredibly slow. It's like one-tenth of a mile an hour. So if you sneeze,

you've just like fogged up your vision. If you fart, you have Dutch ovened yourself. You have Dutch oven to yourself. Yeah. If you are walking, and if you like, if we say,

okay, well, no, your shield is kind of, projected in front of you, but the problem is you're going to wind up creating a pressure wave and you're going to suffocate yourself. He didn't think about, or

he didn't describe, now, there's a couple of different theories going on that I and friend of the show, Sean, helps me do a lot of thinking about what I'm about to say about this. Okay. Because the way they are

described, there's got to be other stuff going on because if you engage in any kind of if you turn on your holdsman field and you take a jog you're going to keel over in a matter of seconds because you're you're moving fast enough that your shield is going to be activated against right all the air molecules in front of you right you're it's just not it's not going to happen and then we get into the question of like what does this do in terms of wind resistance yeah like if you're trying to run, which Sean and I didn't even think of, but like if you're trying to run and you have this energy field that is now like rebounding against all of the air molecules in the air, like is it actually going to get harder to run or not, which I mean, I don't know enough about the physics of friction to know that.

But so. I have a friend whose husband could help us on that. Yeah, I'm sure we do. So even at the highest speed You can supposedly set a shield too Which is 10 centimeters a second We're still talking that's lower than human walking speed Right

Right So there has to be something else going on Now additionally if a shield covers your whole body You wouldn't be able to walk Because the shield If the shield is under your feet You're not making contact with the ground Right

And shields are essentially frictionless. And so you'd never be able, you'd never be able to go anywhere. So perhaps the thought from friend of the show, Sean, is that, okay, the shield is like a cylinder. It, it, you know, doesn't go down past, past the bottom of your feet. Okay. So, you know. And one of the things that we see in. universe that he points out is in the films and at various places in the books we see

grenades being used we see missiles and rockets and explosives being used and so now the shield that protects you against the shrapnel but at close enough range you're still going to get your shit rocked by blast wave uh propagation that was one of the first things I was going to ask was um if if the shield you know, stops these projectiles and stuff. What about a sonic gun? So, yeah, you're talking about the last wave. Same idea.

Sonic gun is the same thing. Yeah. And he didn't, Herbert never described any kind of a sonic weapon. It could be a thing. But any kind of blast wave is a sonic weapon. Like just, you know, I remember years ago watching Mythbusters and they were like, Ken turning up the radio, like blow out all the speakers. And then they're like, we don't actually have to play music.

we could just compress the air. Yeah, yeah. Create one gigantic speaker disk. Yeah, I remember that episode, yeah. So, but same idea. And they just about vibrated the whole car part. Yeah, like they... Just for the physical mechanism, work it up and down, yeah.

Yeah. So now the other thing is, okay, so you think, right? All right. So, all right, I can't shoot my enemy with a gun. because the bullet will bounce off. Right. So why don't I just get a laser gun? Because that's energy, right?

That's a focused energy weapon, right? Well, okay, so Herbert thought of that. Okay. And in order to make shields work and not have lasers just be a cheat code against them, he created this hand-wavium that if a laser hits a holstman field, it initiates or catalyzes might be a better way to describe it

a fusion reaction in the air of an unknown scale and at any point along the laser beam so it could happen at the shield it could happen at the emitting point of the laser

it could happen anywhere along the length of the laser beam okay but if I'm a noble house I have people whose families I'll take very good care of

if they all arm themselves with lasers and they'll be in the front yeah well see and and this is how we know you're a redhead um in universe and let me yeah I know I know

in universe house Harkin are all redheads. That's one of the house. Oh, really? Oh, okay. I thought it was just that I don't have a soul. No. No.

You're a hearkening. What I'm saying is you have the thought process of a harkening. I will take very good care of your family. Yeah. But I need you to die. Right. Yeah. Or you might die.

That's the thing. And I will take very good care of your family. And whoever dies, they get 10 times that. Yeah. Okay. All right. Like, I'm incentivizing the fuck out of the courage of using a laser on that asshole over there.

Jackass. Someone's going to blow him up. Now, we're going to have a crater around him and we'll be able to figure out where the second biggest crater was. But we're going to win this one today. Yeah. So that's the in-universe

explanation for why don't we just use energy weapons. Okay. Um, so and then the question comes up. So okay, all right, what about, what about if I use a non-laser, like, charged particle weapon, right? And Sean's theory about it was shields aren't unidirectional. So if you have a plasma gun and you turn on a shield and you pull the trigger on your

plasma gun. Congratulations. You get to learn, as he put it, what it's like to be a microwaveable dinner. Yeah. And I like that answer. I like that answer, but I don't, I don't think that's,

I don't, I don't, I don't think that's the issue. Number one, I think, because we see people wearing shields and running at high speed, there has to be something going on other than just the, well, you know, matter moving faster than this rate of speed, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think there's an aspect that just never gets described to us

because it gets, it's simplified in the explanation in the books. There is a certain level of mass or a certain level of density that has to be involved before the field will react to it. So individual air molecules are scattered and not attached to each other, right? So they're able to permeate the shield.

But if you have a bullet, that's a whole lot of atoms stuck very close together in that solid object. Right. And so they're going to bounce off the shield because that density. Does that make sense? It does. And now I'm wondering if you can find something that is like tungsten or more dense. Like is there a way of, is there like a speed to density ratio that you can do?

Where you know what I mean? We're like, okay, so if it's lead, if it's a bullet, it's too fast for how dense it is. but if you could find something that is more dense, would that then allow more or less speed? Well, I would, based on, in my own head, based on the logic I have here, the higher the density of the object, the lower the speed would need to be.

Yeah, okay. So, okay, so if that's the case, then if I want to stab you with tungsten, I have to go really slow. Whereas if I want to stab you with aluminum foil, I can get right in there. There might be some variability. Now, after a certain point in universe,

after a certain point, unless you're really capable of fine-tuning, your muscle memory, you know, after a certain point, the density for like in hand-to-hand combat, the density doesn't become an issue. just because if you're moving above this many, you know, above a certain density level,

you have to be moving below the speed. Right. The rest is pointless. Everything comes into Tai Chi fighting. Well, and in universe, it kind of does. What you wind up having is individual soldiers, you know, running up on each other and grappling, both of them having their shields activated,

and then it's, can I maneuver into position, and then slowly push through. Wow, okay. The slow blade is the one that... The slow blade penetrates the shield. Right. You know, can I get to your throat? Can I get to under your armpit?

Can I get to the vulnerable spots? You know, and so you have this specialized kind of knife fighting being the in-universe thing. What would stop you from just like jujitsuing them and then not letting go? Like just get a rear naked choke and then just hold it till the thrash and stops? Well, I mean, nothing other than the fact that Herbert didn't consider that kind of fighting. Which is fine because it's 1965. But throttling people has always been popular. That's always been a meaningful thing.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. Or just go out with a pillow. Yeah. Like just, I'm going to sit on him and I'm just going to. I'm just going to just, yeah. Yeah.

and it could totally work. So my own theory about, okay, so that's, you know, why don't you have plasma weapons? And that's Sean's explanation is good and funny. And I like that. But with my own physics explanation and the idea that, no, no, it's about density. It's like, well, okay, how much density you need for a plasma weapon to cook you through a shield, right? Right, right. There's really not a whole lot of density going on.

There's a whole lot of energy, not a lot of density. and it's not a laser. So my own explanation about why they don't have plasma weapons in Dune is because in universe we don't see examples of the necessary energy density to make them work. They've never developed the batteries necessary to say create an energy weapon that uses charged gas that we see shooting more than, you know, 100 shots out of a magazine. or battery without needing to be recharged.

I'm not being specific about anything here at all. No, not at all. Not something that used to be linked to your belt through a tube that was the battery and then later on just ended up in a cylinder. No, no, not at all. Not something that compresses to ban a gas into charge, no.

No. No. So shields in Dune basically mean that projectile weapons are not the main line weapons of soldiers. House soldiers use knives and short swords, and they back those up with slow pellet pistols and stunning darts and this kind of stuff, that anything that's projectile is a slow-moving projectile that'll be able to hit and fall through a shield

and then rely on poison or some other effect in order to affect whoever it hits. I like how thought out that part is from him. Yes. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it really is. Okay, real quick. What about like in Johnny Nomonic, dude, had a monowire.

I mean, that's one molecule thin. Yeah, I know. That's a good question. And if I ever do this matchup for cyberpunk, we'll have to talk about that. Oh, my God. Why aren't we doing this tournament style? Oh, Lord. You know what?

Well, we can. We can. We totally can. We just got to keep record of who wins in which one. Although, that's going to wait really heavily in favor of battle tech. It really is. No, it is, but it isn't because, like, Luke took down a fucking ad ad. That's a good point. And ad ads, you know, I could tell you from West End Games, what the scale is.

I could tell you. Oh, yeah, no, we have, we have all that data. Yeah, no, no. Yeah. Force users are just in trend. Well, I'll get to force users. I'll get to that. we're going to get to Marvel and they're just going to eat Star Wars's lunch yeah it's good

and because we talked about this before I want to know where the threshold is again the trolleyism of these kinds of things yeah yeah yeah daredevil's gonna have a really fucking hard time with jettai but he's gonna kill like mandolrians spider man is just gonna table every sith like so yeah it'll be that that'll be a fun one but so so I want to get through talking about the Shields physics and then we can and then we can break this because we're getting to getting to a point to pause it I think so shields get used at various scales

so house ships are described as having been in some sources house ships are described as having shields and others they are not most of the armament that's described for house starships is a missile and concussive kind of stuff. Okay. So if it hits a shield, again, you've got blast wave propagation. You've got heat.

You've got that stuff going on. So that is what we need to understand about shields in the Dune universe before we move on. Or the universe. The universe, yeah. And so before we wrap this up to move on to the other factions within the Dune universe and then Star Wars and then like workshop how this would work out. What are your thoughts? Jesus Christ, I thought we were done with Dune in terms of like analyzing the weapons.

And you just said, oh yeah, now we got to look at the other houses. I'm like, how many fucking people are showing up to this fight? But okay. I'm game. It's a lot. Yeah, apparently. So there is a Dune in Star Wars. And I'm not talking about the planet.

that's obvious but in Star Wars there's the Tapani sector okay and it's noble houses and it's all about like poisoning shit and and killing each other and there's these things called Zinge needles Z-I-N-J

needles oh yeah and they okay so like a wookie's rook knife does strength plus 2D damage yeah which is goddamn insane because it's a wookie wielding a curry

or a bowie knife yeah right holy shit um like think tonfa but with blades like there's no end of variability here but it's also at the end of a wookie yeah so I was gonna say I have I have handed a wookie

a spatha you are right yes like yes you know bigger bigger than excyphos you know yeah so uh but these zinge needles do three damage plus strength that's how fucking

lethal they are and they go in women's hair like there is a whole there's a whole sector called the Tapani sector and it's noble houses and all this and I'm not even talk about the haepish the people that

like Prince is I'm mixing them up with the Lord of the Rings Tenel Joe's dad Prince Isolder. That's his name. Yeah.

But the guy who kidnapped Leia to marry her in the courtship of Princess Leia. Yeah, yeah. Those people are all beautiful and they can't see very well in the dark. And, you know, all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of noble house shit going on there, too. Mm-hmm. With Mother Joe or Mother Gem, I forgot her name. But anyway, so we have Dune.

type stuff in Star Wars as well. Yeah. It's EU, but EU is built on Star Wars, but also these EU writers, they absolutely would have read Dune. Oh, a thousand percent. Yeah. So that's there. I just, I found that like, oh, yeah, they have poisoners too.

Like, you know, and they've got assassin, like, I'm not going to say cults, but they've got assassin organizations. Yeah. Brea and Tana, the Tonica sisters, right? from the tales from Most Nicely can'tina

they're part of a group of assassin women whose names the name of which I forget but yeah so there's

there's all that stuff that exists that's all the thing so yeah all right what are you gonna recommend to folks oh wow

foot's on the other hand now isn't it I'm gonna recommend the Star Wars YT-1300 Millennium Falcon Owners Workshop Manual Speaking of children Yes

They're called the Haynes Manual series You can get one for your X-wing For your Thai fighter For your Death Star But How many Pages Can you imagine

How much space on the shelf The Death Star Manual Would have to take up Right Like how many How many And how many entries then it would just be reference our other volume on, you know, your model 1500xJ trash compactor? Right.

But this company, Haynes, they put out tech manuals for not just Star Wars, but for also the USS Enterprise, the DeLorean. So all kinds of shit. So like go go check that out and find the one that you want. but I of course I think the X-Wing one is probably the best but most people would want the Millennium Falcon so I'm recommending that

so okay and what about you what are you recommending I am going to recommend everybody go out and wherever you can stream it and it's available multiple places to stream go and watch at least part one

of Dennis Villeneuve's Dune because it is visually stunning. There is not a bad performance anywhere in the film. And their visual interpretation of that universe manages to be Eldrich and like heavy and absolutely strikingly beautiful. Okay. The scenes on Gehity Prime, which is Harkin and Tome World, are, I don't even, I don't even have a vocabulary to describe it.

Just, just absolutely amazing. Nice. So very, very strongly recommend that. I have not managed yet to find the time to watch all of Part 2 because I do want to do something about that specific interpretation of Dune. Oh, yeah, please. For what we do here. but yeah highly recommend it check it out

very cool yeah let's see where can we be found we collectively can be found on our website at wauwbwabwbwabwab geekhistorytime.com where you can find our prior discussions of Dune and the several other times

that we've talked about Star Wars usually it's involved a certain amount of Lucas bashing at least on my part some of it deserved at least And we can also be found on the Apple podcast app, on the Amazon podcast app, and on Spotify. And wherever you have found us, please take a moment to subscribe and give us the five-star review that you know we deserve. And where can you be found, sir?

Let's see. You will be able to find me March 6th and April 3rd at the Capital Punishments Comedy Spot Home at 9 p.m. in downtown Sacramento. Get your tickets online at saccomedy spot.com. That way you're guaranteed a seat. And also, if you happen to be in the Sacramento area, on April 9th of 2006, which by the time this drops, it's only like a month away. But April 9th at 6 to 9 p.m.,

I will be doing capital punishment there as well at the art mix at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. though. So come on down to the art mix and watch us do capital punishment there as well. Wonderful. Yeah. So anyway, well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Laylock. And until next time, remember, the slow knife pierces the shield. But only if you roll a 20.