The Battle of Corrin - Entry #3

Done and already started on Dune: House Atreides!!!  I have a few notes to share on the last part of the book then off to read some more ...

The initial development of the Face Dancers has interesting implications to the story but one particular passage called to mind scenes from The Terminator (the movie).  Here is the passage:

Then her face began flickering and contorting -- and it changed, lost its integrity, and began to sag, showing flowmetal and a rigid structure beneath.  A robot, with some sort of fleshlike disguise.  (The Battle of Corrin, p. 649)

Who thought of this first?  Frank Herbert? Brian Herbert? The creators of Terminator?  Hmmmmm.

I wanted to include the following chapter starter just because it made me stop and think:

There is a certain malevolence concerning the formation of a social order.  Despotism lies at one end of the spectrum, and slavery on the other.

-TLALOC

A Time for Titans

(The Battle of Corrin, p. 656)

Then I found myself sad about the way the Atreides - Harkonnen feud came to be.  The grudge held by Vor and Abulurd fed a deep seated hatred.  The moment that began in earnest was at Abulurd's hearing for treason when Vor offered the charge of cowardice, a devastating blow.  When the sentence was passed by Abulurd's own brother, Vorian Atreides announced to the audience: "From this day forth, let all who bear the name Atreides spit on the name of Harkonnen." (The Battle of Corrin, p. 660)  And then in Abulurd's exile, the bitterness grew.

Abulurd's sons passed countless stories to their own children, exaggerating how important the Harkonnen family had been and how far they had fallen.  All because of Vorian Atreides. (The Battle of Corrin, p. 672)

I just couldn't stop myself from thinking ... how exaggerated could these stories have been?  If Abulurd told his sons about Xavier Harkonnen and all he had done ... not to mention the fact that he was the father of Manion the Innocent ... it would be tough to exaggerate the contributions of the Harkonnens during the Jihad that freed humanity from machine rule.  And the patriarch of the ruling family, Faykan Butler, was the grandson of Xavier Harkonnen.  The Butler and thus the Corrino family are also Harkonnens ... and not Atreides.  So what is there to exaggerate?

OK, well, enough for tonight, time to go read some more!!!!

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.