The Battle of Corrin - Entry #1

Already at page 83 of The Battle of Corrin before the new year starts!!  The book starts off a little slow, continuing from The Machine Crusade but I know it will be picking up.  Since I have read all the books before, I know what will be coming.  However, I did not have this perspective when I first read The Battle of Corrin and it does make me look at things more closely.

For example, on page 34 I found this statement so much more critical than ever before: "Humankind could not fulfill its potential without her." (The Battle of Corrin, p. 34).  This quote was referring to Norma Cenva and you need to read the Dune books all the way to the end to know how profound this statement is.

The word "mentat" first appears in The Battle of Corrin and was created by Erasmus as "a term of endearment" (The Battle of Corrin, p. 54) for Gilbertus Albans.  An interesting point about that ... a robot created a new word that stuck in the human vocabulary.  Hmmmm.

And finally, for this blog entry, something that really has nothing to do with Dune.  I just loved this quote from Omnius: "We will have empirical evidence soon enough." (The Battle of Corrin, p. 57) I just don't recall ever having seen the word "empirical" used so perfectly in a work of fiction before.  Actually, I can't recall ever having seen the word in a work of fiction I have read before!  Every year there is an instance in the labs I teach for me to explain empirical evidence to my students.  I tell them that "empirical" is a $20 vocabulary word and that they will impress their instuctors if they use it correctly in lab reports.  In this case, Omnius was referring to the prediction that even though the infectious virus delivered by the thinking machines had only a 43% mortality rate, the human societies would collapse simply due to the unpredictability of humankind.

The Machine Crusade - Entry #6

Finally!  I am done with The Machine Crusade and have moved on to The Battle of Corrin!!  The last paragraph of The Machine Crusade is:

With a smile, Ishmael looked around, from face to face.  "We can live on this world as we choose, making our own lives and future.  We shall never be slaves again!"  He sighed with immense pride, and added, "From this day forward we shall call ourselves the Free Men of Arrakis." (The Machine Crusade, p. 695)

The Fremen ... tough bunch.

The Machine Crusade - Entry #5

Some miracles are only nightmares in disguise.

- SERENA BUTLER, Echoes of the Jihad

This was the chapter starter on p. 474 of The Machine Crusade.  The chapter was about a visit that Serena made to Tlulax wtih Rajid Suk and Xavier Harkonnen to inspect the "much-vaunted organ farms" (The Machine Crusade, p. 474).

Chills ... this quote gives me chills.  Knowing what humans can justify to do to each other is a nightmare.  We have plenty of evidence of this in the 20th century alone, along with evidence that many are willing to turn a blind eye.  The foreboding is clear here.

But moving on ... I am getting close to the end of the book and came across this quote:

"I have no fear, for fear is the little death that kills me over and over.  Without fear, I die but once." (The Machine Crusade, p. 621)

This is the first time that we hear this famous chant (or something close enough to it) in the DUNE story as told from the beginning.  Without looking it up, who spoke these lines in The Machine Crusade and what was the situation?  And remember, I am a teacher so there are no "prizes" for getting an answer right that is posed in a classroom discussion.  The satisfaction of getting the right answer is the only prize you need!

The Machine Crusade - Entry #4

Ugghh.  It has been a whole month since my last entry ... that is pathetic.  I just don't recall The Machine Crusade being as tedious as it is.  There are so many important things that happen but the story is just not told well.  It is almost like it is just delivering important information to understand future events but no weaving of a story ... no really good intricate politics or remarkable insight into the human psyche.

I just finished reading about Norma's remarkable transformation.  Norma is one of the most important characters in this multimillenial human saga.  I had forgotten that part of her transformation included visions of her maternal ancestors ... precursor to the Bene Gesserit.  At least now I have something a little more interesting to pay close attention to.  It was obvious in The Butlerian Jihad that the Sorceresses of Rossak were pre-cursors to the Bene Gesserit but Norma's part, throughout the whole story, just needs closer scrutiny.

Another little tidbit was that the home planet of Xerxes, the Titan, was Ix.  Xerxes, before the time of the Titans, was son to the king of Rodale IX, said to be a resource rich planet.  Xerxes killed his father to take control of the planet during the overthrow orchestrated by the Titans.  Then some time later the planet just came to be known as Ix ... not sure when that happened but if it comes up, I'll let you know.

A final note about the Titans is that Tlaloc, the real mastermind of the Titan revolution, was from Tlulax and though he really believed in the greatness of humanity, he was less than enchanted with the Tlulaxu people.  At the time of Tlaloc, there must have already been some strange cultural trends on Tlulax.  Not sure how it became the weirdly religious and woman-hating society we see later on in the story but more details I know are coming.

So bear with me as I plow through the rest of The Machine Crusade.  I will get through it and I am looking forward to The Battle of Corrin!!

The Machine Crusade - Entry #3

Well, it has been a while.  I guess even though I don't actually give exams that I would categorize as midterms, I am still quite bogged down with work this time of the year!!  Reading more than a couple of Dune pages before falling asleep is all I have been able to accomplish these past couple of weeks.

But I do have a few things to say.  Curiously enough, when I wrote the title for today's blog, it really hit me how the background of this story is about using religion as a weapon.  "Jihad" and "Crusade" should have made this quite obvious and maybe it was to you, but it really is just hitting me ... like a brick.

However, the first quote I wanted to share was this chapter starter:

For all their computerized precisions, thinking machines can be confused in many different ways.

-- PRIMERO VORIAN ATREIDES, Evermind Nevermore

(The Machine Crusade, p. 168)

Since I deal in technology so much at work AND I also teach it, I try to communicate to my colleagues and students how true this statement is.  No matter how smart that computer seems to be, the human operator is much more capable.  The computer is exceedingly capable at precise computations and sequences of computations and can even go through an iterative process that appears like "learning".  But the process is more like trial and error than anything else.  As a college professor, I encourage students to only resort to trial and error when critical thinking has not produced results.  Additionally, although computers might readily identify an error, it cannot explain why the error exists, what caused the error.  So believe me ... Primero Akins ... YOU ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE MACHINE YOU USE!

Second quote I wanted to share today was a thought from Erasmus in a discussion with Omnius.  The end result of this discussion, many years later, will be the development of Mentats ... but that is another story.  So here is what Erasmus thought:

Lack of opportunities did not necessarily make an individual stupid, but only shifted his intelligence to a form suited to survival rather than creativity. (The Machine Crusade, p. 185)

Quite simply, this gets at the heart of being a community college professor.  I take this very personally.  I truly believe that given the opportunities, our students can do anything.  Sometimes it is really hard to overcome the years without opportunity, and Erasmus admits to this too.  The earlier the intervention, the better.  But every day when I go to work, I believe in the opportunities we offer and the tremendous impact it often has on the lives of our students.

The Machine Crusade - Entry #2

Recently in this blog, I brought up the question of what makes us human and connected with this, I touched on religion.  I never felt like I got a strong sense of how religion fit in to the 15,000 year landscape of human history addressed by these 16 Dune books but I am starting to form some ideas about it now.

First, I would like to define religion as I had once done in a "Religions of the Eastern World" course back in 1981 when I was a junior at Lafayette College.  The working definition we used in the course was that religion's purpose was to supply answers to the fundamental questions of why we are here, what is our purpose, and what happens after we die.  By this definition, just because a religion might tell you how to live, what to do and not to do, that does not make it a religion.  During this course I came to the conclusion that Judaism, my "religion", was primarily a way of life and not a religion as it really did little to answer these fundamental questions.  But I digress.

On p. 103 of The Machine Crusade, we find Omnius and Erasmus discussing religion.  Erasmus explains to Omnius the following:

From what I have observed, I would conclude that humans are either agnostics or outright atheists, unless they are exposed to extreme pain or stress.  Such attitudes go in cycles through their history, ebbing and flowing like a great tide of human affairs.  Religious belief is on the upswing now, with the Jihad as a catalyst.  (The Machine Crusade, p. 103)

And then a couple of pages later, there is this chapter starter quote:

Unfortunately, some wars are won by the side that is the most fanatical in a religious sense. The victorious leaders harness the holy energy of collective insanity.

--COGITOR KYWNA, The Art of Aggression

(The Machine Crusade, p. 106)

That is when it dawned on me.  Religion is key to the story.  It is a key weapon.  The Herberts don't talk about how religion may answer those central human questions.  They talk about fanatical religious paths and leaders using religion as a tool of war.  That is exactly why Omnius wanted to understand it better as it was being successfully used against the Synchronized Worlds.  And Iblis Gingo spent considerable energy to figure out how to fan the flames of religious fanaticism to feed the Jihad.

Since I really enjoy learning about and discussing all religions, it always had disappointed me that the Dune story had so little for me to contemplate in this area.  But I now have a different perspective to consider.  I have not studied fanatical religions but I see more and more of it in our own society and it worries me.  I don't think further insight from Dune is going to give me less to worry about.

The Machine Crusade - Entry #1

I am more than 70 pages in to The Machine Crusade and nothing to comment on yet.  So why am I posting?  It has been awhile since I read this book but two of you (my blog readers) read it recently and had commented that it wasn't as good as the other prequel books.  I didn't remember that being the case.  I remember that it was important to read to follow the story that climaxes in The Battle of Corrin.  But I didn't recall it being slow or weak.

But now that I am blogging this experience of reading all these books, I couldn't help but notice that I had gotten more than 70 pages in and did not have a single thing to talk about.  Hmmm.

Well ... back to reading ... maybe I will find the need to post on something on the very next page ...

The Butlerian Jihad - Entry #7

Human beings rely upon their brethren, and are frequently disappointed by them.  These are advantages to machines: reliability and a complete lack of guile.  They can also be disadvantages.
- Erasmus
Reflections on Sentient Biologicals
(The Butlerian Jihad, p. 610)

Erasmus is learning.  This is an interesting observation as it points out that reliability and lack of guile are both advantages and disadvantages.  Finding myself to be very reliable and, for the most part, a complete lack of guile, I can vouch for the fact that these are both advantageous, and even admirable, characteristics while there are times that these characteristics are certainly a disadvantage to me.

The Butlerian Jihad is now done ... on to The Machine Crusade!

The Butlerian Jihad - Entry #6

The spice melange.

The fact that melange is found only on Arrakis and was exported to the League Worlds to the point of widespread addiction is known by all who have read Dune ... the first book published in this vast story.  But the story of its discovery by "offworlders" and how it came to be exported is found in The Butlerian Jihad.

I won't give away who discovered it and who first envisioned exportation and exploitation but these passages are revealing.  This first passage is by the first person to actually export a cargo hold of melange, but considering how far off the beaten path Arrakis was, he had trouble envisioning a profitable future in melange exportation.

Realistically, he doubted if melange would ever be more than a mere curiousity. (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 372)

Hah!

But this person shared the idea with another who had more vision and more resources leading to this later passage.  In this passage, the venture capitalist had just tried his first taste of melange ...

The melange seemed to seep into every cell of his body, transmitting energy and vitality directly to his brain, but without the usual sensory distortions.  The was pleasure ... but much more than that.  [Name] sat back and felt the substance seduce and relax him, controlling him without controlling him.  It was a paradox.  He felt mentally sharper than at any time in his life.  Even the future itself seemed clear.  (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 517)

How could you NOT become addicted!

The Butlerian Jihad - Entry #5

Oh, how I love Norma Cenva.  And even though Tio Holtzman is not the most admirable of characters, his brilliance cannot be denied.  During a "peer review" between Norma and Tio where Norma was cautioning Tio about the conclusions he had come to, Norma cautions:

"Correct calculations are not always correct - if based on faulty principles or invalid assumptions". (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 290)

As a professor of technical content, this speaks to me.  I caution students not to be so blindly dedicated to a theory without knowing the assumptions made for the theory to hold true.

This conversation infuriated Tio.  He could not take the criticism even though it was given to assist in further development, not to stifle his work.  But adversity often makes us humans try harder and in this case, it led to Tio Holtzman developing the Holtzman Equations ... the base theory used to develop personal shields and foldspace.  Holtzman's drive to develop something really innovative as he had not done for years, even if it was just to prove he still had "it", should not detract from his remarkable accomplishment.

There is a similar story in recent actual history.  The brilliant mind of Shockley, the inventor of the modern transistor, came up with the remarkable theory for the transistor in what has been called "the miracle month".  Two physicists working under his direction had actually invented the first transistor in the lab without Shockley and this really pissed him off.  Reacting to what he saw as a betrayal, drove Shockley to new heights inevitabley affecting every single one of us with his invention.  You see, his invention was the basis for the modern transistor which was much more feasible, commercially, then the "first" transistor.

Well, I think I have gotten deep enough in to this geeky topic, at least for now.  I think the next entry will be about drugs ... melange ...

The Butlerian Jihad - Entry #4

I should have kept the text message conversation that went on when I came across the quote below and texted it to a friend.  The quote comes from a "chapter-starter".  You Dune readers should be familiar with and fond of these.  In all the Dune books, the Herberts (father and son) employ a literary technique of starting the chapter with an appropriate quote accredited to some individual, journal, log, or report.

So the quote I texted to a (geek) friend of mine was:

Overly organized research is confining, and guaranteed to produce nothing new.

-- TIO HOLTZMAN,

letter to Lord Niko Bludd

(The Butlerian Jihad, p. 154)

My friend, who also happens to be a graduate student and therefore one who is engaging in research, responded back with something like "That's BS from an inexcusable, unmitigated hack!!"  Now I don't have the direct quote, but you get the idea.  I countered by pointing out that Norma Cenva, who came to work with Tio Holtzman, may never have made the extraordinary discoveries she did without the influence of Savant Holtzman.  But my friend would not back down an inch, spewing pure venom.

Well, over 100 pages later, we find Norma developing new ideas:

Mostly, though, she pondered wild, ideas, the more unusual the better.  On Rossak, her mother had never encouraged her to consider impractical possibilities, but here Tio Holtzman welcomed them. (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 287)

As a researcher myself, I was fascinated by the quote from Tio Holtzman.  I am a hyper-organized person but I have learned to observe and learn from what might initially seem to be chaos.  It is unorthodox, but Savant Holtzman's advice frees the mind to consider the impossible.  So I'll wrap up this entry with a "chapter-starter" from Serena Butler:

Only those with narrow minds fail to see that the definition of Impossible is 'Lack of imagination and incentive.'

-- SERENA BUTLER

(The Butlerian Jihad, p. 159)

The Butlerian Jihad ... Entry #3

I thought the best word to describe the first meeting of Atreides and Harkonnen before the Butlerian Jihad would be "ironic".  But upon looking up the definition, just to make sure the word served my purposes, I found that "coincidental" and "unexpected" did not hit the mark for me.  I can say that it made me feel uncomfortable, as if my world had been turned upside down.

I mean, really, just consider this exchange between Xavier Harkonnen and Vor Atreides:

     As the Armada Commander [Xavier Harkonnen] took evasive maneuvers and rallied his kindjal pilots, he hurled insults back at Vor on the comline. "You are a disgrace to humanity, a traitor!"
     Vor laughed, proud of his place here. He quoted what he had been taught all of his life. "I am the pinnacle of humanity -- a trustee of Omnius, the son of General Agamemnon."  (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 248)

Harkonnen on the side of humanity?  Atreides on the side of Omnius who is in the process of enslaving or destroying all of humanity?  Crazy talk I tell you!!

The Butlerian Jihad ... Entry #2

See .. already I have hit a passage that reaffirms the importance of taking in the whole story from beginning to end!  Being optimistic that I will have readers ... for those of you reading my blog that have not read all the Dune books, I will try not to give away story details that would take away from your book reading pleasure.  However, in some cases, like the one I am about to discuss, I will be hinting at some future events and I sincerely hope that this piques your curiosity rather than turns you off.

The following passage from p. 224 of The Butlerian Jihad is some truly ominous insight in to Omnius:

     Thinking machines were capable of making long-term plans - and living to see them carried out.  By the time humans expanded into those distant star systems, Omnius would already be there.
     Waiting.

This passage refers to the fact that as the thinking machines reworked the factories of the newly conquered Giedi Prime, Omnius discovered the human designs for a new model of long-distance space probe which Omnius realized "could be adapted as emissaries for the thinking machines, new substations for the computer evermind" (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 223).

This whole passage went under my radar in my first reading of the book ... before reading Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune.  But now ... oh my.  Completely different perspective on the importance of the concepts here.  First, although the thinking machines clearly have their weaknesses, humans did not take in to account the long range planning ability and patience of the thinking machines.  Second, the consequences of the Giedi Prime occupation by the thinking machines, and the realization and action taken by the Giedi Prime-Omnius are NOT a sidebar to history!

Throughout the reading of Dune, I am constantly drawn to the insight of what it means to be "human".  This passage provided some insight into what "thinking machine" might mean.

The Butlerian Jihad ... Entry #1

The Butlerian Jihad begins with a sort of preface by Princess Irulan:

Any true student must realize that History has no beginning. Regardless of where a story starts, there are always earlier heroes and earlier tragedies. (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 1)

And that is why this journey has no beginning or end, all must be in context. As I meet anew the incredibly important historical characters of Xavier Harkonnen, Serena Butler, and Vor Atriedes, I am reminded of how we all start out so naïve, so willing to believe what we have learned from our mentors. It is so wonderful to meet young Norma Cenva, who becomes one of the most important historical characters of the entire saga. She so wanted her mother, the powerful Sorceress of Rossack Zufa Cenva, to notice her. As a mother, Zufa is a disaster. But she is so inspired to help the human race beat the thinking machines. I love the description of Zufa’s first demonstration of her power to the League Representatives:

“ Then Zufa relaxed, throttling back the chain reaction of mental energy. Letting out a long, cold breath, the Sorceress smiled grimly at the started onlookers. ‘We have a weapon.’ ” (The Butlerian Jihad, p. 89)

Introduction ...

I am starting a journey I have taken before but this time in historical order … from several thousand years BG (Before Guild or approximately 10,000AD) through to around 15,300AG (After Guild). Having read all sixteen Dune books, those by Frank Herbert and those by his son Brian Herbert and co-author Kevin J. Anderson, and some read two, three, and even four times, I have become obsessed to read them all again from “beginning” to “end”.

As I rediscovered the Dune books and discovered Brian Herbert’s contributions (I had given my husband Dune:House Atreides as a gift nearly 10 years ago already), I inadvertently drew others around me in to the Dune universe. We would find ourselves talking about it around the campfire, emailing quotes to each other at work, texting provocative ideas about it on our phones. I even started documenting my favorite quotes on my Facebook page. That is when the idea of blogging came up. I think my daughter was mulling it over for a while, but she brought it up to me the first time on a family vacation this past July after exploring the Oregon Dunes, which served as Frank Herbert’s inspiration for Dune. My daughter, Shoshana, being the one to suggest the blog, will also be a welcome contributor.

So last week I started (re)reading Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. At first I was not sure what I would write but as soon as I started getting in to the book I knew I wanted to keep a log of my thoughts and feelings about the characters and the events as well as the compelling quotes. I am ready to get started!!