The Battle of Corrin - Entry #2

Cruising along, more than half way through the book!  One of the great pleasures of reading through these again ... and blogging about it ... is taking note of little things that I overlooked with the first read.

For example, an explanation is given for why the old military titles of Primero, Segundo, etc., that were used during the Jihad were abandoned for military rank designations from "an ancient military in the golden age of mankind" (The Battle of Corrin, p. 289).  The new ranks are Bashar, Burseg, Bator, etc..  I looked these up in dictionary.com and found nothing.  I searched in Wikipedia and the words only come up in the List of Dune Terms.  I suppose these terms came from Frank Herbert's imagination.

When I came across the following passage, it made me think of Star Wars.  What do you think?

Without direct orders, one foolhardy mercenary swept over the vicinity in a small armored flyer, and the machine mites targeted him.  Thousands of the flying devices clumped along his flyer's hull, where they began stripping away the metal, the seals, the electronic systems. (The Battle of Corrin, p. 326)

Sounds like buzz droids to me.  Did Frank Herbert conceive of these?  Or did Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson get the idea from Star Wars?

But now that I have read through all the books, to the end of the story, there are certain pieces of the puzzle that fit together now that I didn't even see before.  Erasmus' hand in the development of shape shifters or Face Dancers seems obvious from the following passage describing an exchange between Erasmus and the captive Tlulaxa, Rekur Van:

Finally, Erasmus explained. "I find these faces, in fact my entire appearance, unsatisfactory.  Do you think you can create a more lifelike flowmetal process? Develop a 'biological machine' that can mold itself to different appearances at will? I want to be able to pass as human, fool humans, look like any one of them whenever I choose. Then i can observe them without being noticed." (The Battle of Corrin, p. 373)

So creepy. And understanding how the Face Dancers play into the latter part of this long history makes it even creepier.