I'm not sure if this is your first reading, but Hwi Noree served one exquisite purpose-- to expose the God Emperor's one flaw: he yearned for companionship. Since companionship could never come from someone on his brilliant & devious level (he'd peal away their cover and outsmart them at every turn), the Ixians were brilliant enough to chose someone with NO agenda whatsoever. Better yet, all they had to do was engineer a woman who was the exact opposite of all those things: loyal, intelligent, honest and beautiful. By being totally subservient and dedicated to him, she exposed his one crack, and then widened it to the point where an enemy could attack him and destroy him. The Ixians planned on that being them, that it was Duncan and Siona in the end, didn't make a difference. He was destroyed and that is exactly what they wanted. ~String
Superstring: Yes, that was my first reading. I did get all the things about the "God trap" - ironic, isn't it? The God Emperor, and Paul Atredies, were the opposite of that - Gods and heroes that trapped people. I'll respond tomorrow, heading home now. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yes. Also, Paul didn't have the backbone to take the path that Leto II did. They both saw the same timeline, the same inevitable destruction, but Paul couldn't make the sacrifice whereas Leto II could. ~String
I really need to reread this book. The way I see it, is that the God Emperor is forcing the people of the empire to learn, innately, the price of peace. He enslaves them so that they will end knowing the value of freedom, to force self-awareness - almost like pushing the Bene Gesserit agenda on a massive scale. I'm not sure how the Duncans factor into it. He keeps ordering them reborn for emotional reasons, of course, but he's also trying to learn something from the way they..."mature." Also, I think you may be a bit unfair to Paul. Haven't read Children or Heretics of Dune in years, but IIRC Paul's main concern was stopping the jihad. He was caught by his fate and eventually consumed by it.
You've got it. He saw that "something" out there was going to eventually destroy mankind. He searched and searched and saw only ONE path. In that path, he was forced to enslave humanity for Milena in order to accomplish a few things. For starters-- humanity needed to be free of Dune. Forever trapped on that leash, humans would always be easy targets for destruction by way of Arrakis. By oppressing the Tleilaxu, he prompted them to create the spice substitute. By oppressing the Ixians, he prompted them to create no-fields (something that would eventually make them invisible to "the enemy") and automated foldspace ships (independent of spice and the Guild). Second off, the feudal system and the memory of that feudal system needed to be utterly destroyed. Third off, humanity needed to continue evolving. The only people evolving humanity were the Witches, and they were too self centered to actually do what they needed to do. He saw in the Sisterhood the potential to lead humanity, but they had become so ingrained in their "secret society" mentality (always content to manipulate, but never lead) and so drunk on the notion of obtaining power THROUGH the creation of a figurehead, that they never stopped to think that THEY should be the figurehead, and not some captive god. The Tyrant was good for them-- when they emerged from that oppression, they looked at humanity less as cattle and more as their trusted care. Fourth, Leto II needed to breed in humanity an innate invisibility to prescient searches. By turning himself into a god, Leto knew that he was opening a door for other people to become oppressive gods (He knew that he had to be the first and last-- his goals were virtuous, but others may not be). By giving the Siona gene to humanity, Leto freed humanity from being oppressed by another god, or by "the enemy" (which, theretofore, had been unnamed). The added, and last, effect of all this oppression, was for humanity to yearn for greener pastures (the famine times, which he created, prompted this) and to take all the previous given skills and technologies, and flee from known space and spread across the universe-- too far and wide for any enemy to every capture or destroy. I look at the simple answer as the correct one: Duncan was always loyal and innocent. Leto was lonely over the Milena. Even a god needs the company of good friends. Paul saw the path, but didn't have the strength to make the sacrifices (he even admits this in Children of Dune). ~String
I agree with you on all points. I think the "something" is nonspecific (bear with me, haven't read Chapterhouse or Heretics since I was a kid) because it's a simple - statistical inevitability. That is, humanity will simply grow more inward and twisted until the whole system crumbles unless some action is taken to force us away from those bad patterns. The God-Emperor thus has to breed in us an innate fear of stagnation. I especially like the way Herbert spins prescience - it's sensing pattens because of the accumulated memory-knowledge of your ancestors, rather akin to chaos or complexity theory, or like Hegel's idea of an evolving world-spirit.
Have I mentioned I have read all six of them more times than I care to remember? Yes, that seems pretty much right. Note that the value of freedom also involves self knowledge of the price you may pay for it. These days, people wibble on about freedomw, without realising they live in a wider world, with give and take all around them. Herbert was into ecology before most people had heard of it, he was always bringing it out in his stories. Another reason is to calibrate the changes in the current crop of humans. Duncan is the basic blank slate which changes according to the environmental forces it encounters, yet also changes as it makes decisions (Herbert generally avoids getting into the hall of mirrors that is the question of free will). And superstring is also correct, for company etc. That is what makes Leto so complex- the fact that we can divine several different motivations for the same thing. Compare this to the one dimensional characters you see so much of these days.
Not exactly. I would say rather that he bred into them a more open outlook that was distrusting of ease and calm and relaxation, that was more AWARE of change and movement. Mere fear of stagnation would create a bunch of people like the Harkonnen, driven and desperate.
Now, the interesting thing to my mind is why Superstring99 seems to want to be a Tleilaxu. Me, if I ever go to a fancy dress party with an SF theme, will be going as either Miles Teg, or perhaps Jorj X Mckie (Although in the latter case I am probably too tall and thin to pull it off). This may well tell you something about me personally, but it doesn't matter.
Right, as I think I said, I love how he also takes the hero myth and turns it on its head - Paul is, at the end of the day, an asshole. True, but now the Bene Gesserit are buying Duncans. I'm trying to finish Heretics now. True, they don't get a really good reputation. At least he wants to be a master and not a face dancer. I've been thinking of a Fremen costume for Halloween. But you could pull off a (if memory serves) really ugly guy? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I don't recall posting any photos of myself anywhere you bunch of argumentative unpleasant people could have found. But I could be wrong. Why the BG were buying Duncans, is something I am not so sure about. And permitting the Tleilaxu to upgrade them was very risky. I may have to read them again. As for the Tleilaxu, they get a bad press because they are selfish, amoral, and suffer from hubris. Also they are not open minded the way that Leto and others liked, but close minded and hideously cynical and manipulative. You've just given me an idea though- we could start a modern day setup of masters and face dancers, recruiting subs and others of like mind to be the face dancers. Now that would be nasty.
Quite right. Rereading them again, as we speak. I'd say I've read Dune, God Emperor, Heretics and Chapterhouse about 20 times each. Actually, I just like the title Tleilaxu Master of Masters, if I could choose to be a character, I'd choose to be the Duncan of Heretics & Chapterhouse. Well, I've always assumed that they knew something was up with the Duncans. If he was "good enough" for the God Emperor to recreate time and time again, then there was something worth investigating. Remember two things about the BG that are pertinent to this discussion: ONE- their innate curiosity and passion for understanding would have never rested until they discovered EXACTLY what the GEoD saw in the Duncans. Was there something special about him? Was he part of their plan? The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, had to know. SECOND- as the milena passed since the GEoD's death, the Sisterhood became increasingly aware that the Tyrant's Golden Path had not ended with his death, and even more importantly, it was continuing with increasing strength. Everything they did kept them along that path. Knowing the power & accuracy of his plans(and even without prescience to see those with the Siona gene, the GEoD's powerful mental abilities & billions of lives of experience allowed him to accurately create & predict events just as well), the Sisterhood became increasingly aware of their role in that plan. Without consciously knowing it, they slowly began to become exactly what the GEoD intended them to be-- the guardians of humanity. Out of the shadows and into the limelight. Knowing this, and finally discerning his plan, they also knew that they had to extricate themselves from his grasp. By recreating Duncan, they knew that they would have a direct window into the GEoD's mind as WELL as a young man who could be trained to woo the little waif, Sheeana Brugh (Duncan had been a stud [literally and figuratively] in his previous life, they'd amplify that power with BG teachings [they never predicted the Tleilaxu subterfuge of including Honored Matre sexual techniques, though]). All along, Mother Superior, Alma Mavis Taraza, has been aware of the Golden Path, and was aware of the only way to end the Plan-- destruction of Dune. Knowing that such a thing would be opposed by her Sisterhood and also knowing that such a destruction should never tied to the Sisterhood, she concocted a plan to entice the Honored Matres into destroying it, while gleaning as much as possible from Duncan as to the thoughts of Let II, while simultaneously using him to ensnare Sheeana (who could control the Sandworms) and use her powers to lure them off of Dune and to their secret world of Chapterhouse which placed them safely (for a time) out of the reach of the encroaching Honored Matres. Yes... the Tleilaxu were despicable people. Which makes us secretly like them, because they reflect those nasty things about us that we grudgingly like, but claim to hate. ~String
Come to think of it, your first post should have said "Spoiler alert!" That may well be more than myself, but I have lost count. Can you remember the thrill of reading them for the first time? Or the stunning ending of GEoD? It took me a few days to work out why it ended that way. But then I was only about 17. Not to mention the weird dislocations between each book, as things change and time passes. Herbert was really good at giving a sense of deep time. Hmm, romantic and wild eh? At least you'd get lots of sex. I sort of agree. I think the point about Duncan is that he is the wild card, the freak occurence that has great abilities and some flaws, such that the original was almost the apotheosis of the wild knight. Gurney Halleck had a nice retirement, Duncan kept fighting. In my opinion Duncan was not necessary to the plan, if he had not existed someone else would have done, but given the unique combination of circumstances, he was ideally placed for the job. But which bit of the sechr nibw are you refering to? The tyrants plans were aimed at an uncontrolled outgrowth of humanity, with new forms and civilisations, so in that sense the path did not end with his death, even although this outgrowth was beyond his ken. Yet you can also argue that part of the old empire was still trapped in the original path, but I do not see where your claim of increasing strength was coming from. See my earlier comment regarding exactly which bit of the golden path. Otherwise, I agree, that seems to be the first order plan. It is clear that the Honoured Matres and other forces were moving behind the scene for a decade or two before the climax of Heretics of Dune. Indeed.
Really? I don't think of them as any worse than the Bene Gesserit. I do have a soft spot for mad scientists, but aren't a lot of those rumors also fostered by the Tleilax anyway? I think whoever mentioned the wild genes was right: Mua'dib was a sort of wild mistake, Sheeana seems to be so far, and perhaps the Bene Gesserit and the God Emperor have got their schemes laid so deep in the human genome that the only "control" group has to be someone born before the real tinkering began. Trying to tell us something here, guthrie? I like it. We could recruit all the people who drag their boyfriends around on leashes at goth clubs.
The thing about the Tleilaxu is that they change throughout the 5,000 or so years of the Dune sextet. In the first trilogy, they are to many people not much worse than the BG, however by the second trilogy, they are definitely bad, since although they ahve changed, they have changed towards stasis and control and religion, whereas the BG have become more self aware and changeable. Yes, I like the idea of Duncan as a control group amongst other things. As for the masters and face dancers, I don't really go in for controlling people. My ideal is more along the lines of that in "World of Null-A". But if you want to give it a go, I want some progress reports, to add information to my understanding of people. And if you find a nice goth girl who resists, let me know.
Ultimately, the BG used people, but used them as people, it was about conditioning, but without demeaning them in the way that the Tleilaxu focused upon demeaning people, and bending them to their will.
The trilogy that begins with God Emperor? I think I like the Ixians best. The Tleilax are just too damned twisted. I was being somewhat facetious. If I were to pull a L. Ron Hubbard and make some weird sci-fi shit into a real practice, I'd go for something along the lines of Stranger in a Strange Land. Free love and empathy! True, and it's a very Renaissance "learn the limits and possibilities of your body" sort of conditioning. I was more thinking of how manipulative the two groups are. Do you see the Tleilaxu as a sort of male counterpart to the Bene Gesserits? Like, they are trying for more or less the same aim, but the Tleilax do so in a more male fashion (stereotypically! I don't mean to sound misandrist Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) - control, force, gadgetry - while the Bene Gesserit do so in a more female fashion: manipulation, subtlety, sex/breeding.
Wow, you have changed. I coudl have sworn that twistedness was right down your alleyway. The Ixians- well, there we have people who are trapped in a technological mindset, and also exhibit signs of decay and stasis. Thats an interesting question- why did something that was allegedly written to shock people and break taboos end up like a hippy daydream? I did think you were being facetious, its just I seem to get things mixed up about what to take seriously and what to not take seriously. Not thought of it that way. You may have a point there. Certainly having a female force behind the throne, so to speak, was very different even in the enlightened times that Dune was written in.
Heh. Perhaps that's why I have a soft spot for them. I so love how Herbert avoids any moralizing. None of the competing forces are really all that heroic. As does much of the empire. That's the problem with feudalism - it tends to produce rigid class structures. Oh, the hippies shocked people in their day. And I think that advocating free love, empathy and "grokking," female equality and something that borders on drug use was probably a bit shocking in '61 than it is today. Of course, if you answer that, you might learn why the hippies failed. To quote Hunter Thompson: "We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the '60s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling 'consciousness expansion' without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel." True, the "innate racial patterns" that the God Emperor talks about.
