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How does the Dune Audiobook work? Do they read you the appendices ahead of the story, or do they stop the text periodically to fill you in on background and glossary information, or do they just toss you in the deep end?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Using atomics on other houses is illegal, if I recall correctly. The Fremen were fighting under the flag of House Atreides.

Paul gets away with it because he argues that he didn't use them on anyone, but rather on the terrain.

As for why not kill the great worms of arrakis? Because you don't mess with the ecology of the only planet in the galaxy that produces the drug that allows for reliable interstellar navigation.

Why? The characters don’t strike me as particularly ethical. The Emperor and Harkonans already broke custom so why not nuke some barbarians and their worms?

The film doesn’t explain that so it creates a weird scene where it looks like he missed. Although it does mean all those Fremen died of radiation sickness not long after so is some positives.

They don’t need to kill all the sharks, just the big ones trying to sink the boat. The battle presents a problem where they can’t kill the worms and they’ve had plenty of time to develop weapons that should be able to do that. Also, why have the Fremen never tried using the worms in war prior to that scene in the film if they’re that effective and there isn’t a counter to them.




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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How does the Dune Audiobook work? Do they read you the appendices ahead of the story, or do they stop the text periodically to fill you in on background and glossary information, or do they just toss you in the deep end?

Well the one on audible seems to have unique voices for the various characters which is quite good. You can select chapters if you want so I am guessing you could go to the glossary if you wanted. There is a central narrator voice and then they either put on a particular voice or the person who is assigned to be the Baron does their lines. Not sure if it gets a little jumbled up later since the POv characters have been seperate so I am not sure if Jessica is the main POV she has to put on Paul’s voice or if they keep it consistent and change out the voices entirely. For example the Baron sounds like Darth Vader which is quite funny.

To be honest, there is a lot of background thrown at you early book. Choam, the Butlerian Jihad, the Houses, the Sardaukar. There is a lot of info dumping going on. Some of which like Choam isn’t covered by the film which does make it even clearer that House Atreides are scum. They’re literally just shareholders in a company trying to get their margin up and squeeze a dividend out. So it makes their appeals to nobility come across as even more insincere and delusional. Like I was surprised how unsubtle that red flag was being waved about.

For the same reason the USA didn't just nuke North Vietnam and the Soviet Union didn't just nuke Afghanistan, because breaking such a taboo would make open season on nuclear war between the houses and result in the total mutual destruction of the empire.

The Fremen haven't used the sandworms in war because they haven't been in open war and have been hiding their full capabilities and numbers until their messiah arrives to lead them.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I got the audiobook and I am a few hours in.

The audiobook has talked a little about the shields but no fighting has occurred so I can’t judge how consistent they’re going to be and if it’s an improvement over the film. But it comes across more as the author wanting a hard reason for people to be using knives. As opposed to people using flamethrowers or as the film has it where the shields do not work at all and rockets and shells pass straight through them along with quick jabs or slashes of blunt knives.

Also the anti technology vibe is massively more present in the books where they mention the Butlerian Jihad a lot and so the absence of computers is being noted. But, that’s only to push the idea that the human mind can achieve so much if we stop relying on machines and just light up a few instead. So I am not holding my breath that the book will be better in addressing this as there an obvious bias within the text. If the author believes that people taking drugs gives you superpowers I can’t exactly expect him to understand a 50 cal machine guns destructive potential. The Boxers and the actual Mahdists didn’t have a good time relying on willpower and faith to deflect bullets. But that’s just what happened versus him making stuff up about technology being a crutch.

It’s slow going because I am rolling my eyes a lot.

So they have what amounts to las rifle technology. You see it a bit in the movie when they use that laser to cut through the door. That type of weapon can be up and down scaled from pistols to ship weapons. The issue is the shield technology advanced a lot too. And the two do not mix well. An anti personal las rifle shot into a personal shield results in what amounts to a nuclear explosion. Complete and utter devestation that leaves nothing left to be fighting over. Projectile weaponry like bullets are also useless against those personal shields. So they have long since stopped being produced. The tech just isn't in the universe. Those penetrating darts that hit a shield and stop but continue to attempt to push through is some of the closest things to effective projectile weaponry on a personnel level. But those darts are extremely advanced and expensive. And, if you hit in a spot where someone can reach they can be disabled/removed before they penetrate the shield. More a precision weapon of assassination than a warfare type thing.

Which turned a lot of the trained combat to hand to hand combat and close quarters knife fighting. It's kind of a basis for a bunch of 40k stuff. We have the best guns. But we also have the best armor that makes most guns useless. So we put chainsaws on swords instead. etc etc...

They don't hunt the worms because the worms make the spice. Without the worms you got no spice.

They don't develope whole new technology to hunt the Fremen because they vastly underestimate their numbers and the potential threat they pose.

The new movie doesn’t explain the balance of the power very well. Nor the stakes, the scale, the particulars, the history nor the interconnectivity of the setting. It doesn’t show the Spacing Guild or CHOAM, both of which would level serious consequences on anyone who tried nuking the worms. Even the emperor doesn’t mess around with the Spacing Guild.

One thing I always found a bit odd was how the book makes it a hue revelation that the Worms create the Spice and how its some huge secret with many thinking the worms just protect/hunt around the spice fields.

It felt like one of those "wait surely everyone who harvests and works should really know that!"

Then again I think it reinforces how Arrakis is very under-studied by many. Most Great Houses don't care how the spice gets there or about the native peoples - they just want Spice and the Space Guild tells them do NOT hurt the worms so they don't (because you do not anger the only faction that can move your people and resources and trade around the galaxy and risk being isolated).

The point about reaching out and building relations with the Fremen makes a lot of sense though; a faction hiding its true potential, esp whilst under the rule of the Harkonnans who have no care for others. It's also not just numbers but intelligence and technology that the Fremen hide along with relations with the Navigators as well. A big aid is that you aren't allowed to study or put satellites around the deep desert regions, which greatly helps the Fremen hide. The Navigators happy to oblige because they get paid in even more spice for the service.

In the film they have guns which we see used in the second film. This includes side mounted swivel guns on the copters. It’s just in the final battle they stop killing Fremen because reasons. Literally, all they had to do was gun the unshielded Fremen off the worms and then proceed to mow down the brain dead human wave charge. It was just a silly scene when a handful of heavy machine guns would have swept them away like chaff.

I think the book has an agenda and bias so it’s not presenting a reasonable scenario. It wants to make the point that technology can get you a bind and completely dismiss 500 years of Western history where technology is a central part of that. No society will peg itself to one technology then have all else atrophy into ritualised warfare that allows it to be beat by barbarians. It’s a fanciful case study when you have example after example of peasant militia being annihilated by modern weapons. The actual Mahdists of Sudan charging Maxim guns went really well for them.




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 A Town Called Malus wrote:
For the same reason the USA didn't just nuke North Vietnam and the Soviet Union didn't just nuke Afghanistan, because breaking such a taboo would make open season on nuclear war between the houses and result in the total mutual destruction of the empire.

The Fremen haven't used the sandworms in war because they haven't been in open war and have been hiding their full capabilities and numbers until their messiah arrives to lead them.

Because the Harkonans are evil and how would the Emperor know if they used dirty bombs to sterilise the natives? Why would the Emperor care if a race outside the Empire which are attacking his forces are destroyed? Also, Paul just fired a nuke at them…

They never state they are hiding their true numbers in the film. The prologue sets the stage of them in open total war with the Harkonan. In fact they are shown fleeing the North on the Sandworms they never used but that prove unstoppable in the final battle.

On the Fremen using atomics?

As suggested above they were used on terrain, not forces. But also? With the Emperor overthrown, and Arrakis being the sole source of the spice melange, it’s pretty safe from retribution. There’s nothing left of House Atreides to strike back against, as it’s a fallen house. So to respond in kind means hitting Arrakis itself. Which is a really bad idea.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the Fremen using atomics?

As suggested above they were used on terrain, not forces. But also? With the Emperor overthrown, and Arrakis being the sole source of the spice melange, it’s pretty safe from retribution. There’s nothing left of House Atreides to strike back against, as it’s a fallen house. So to respond in kind means hitting Arrakis itself. Which is a really bad idea.

Why? The Sandworms are deep underground. A nuclear strike would kill the population and allow the planet to be mined.

Plus in the film Paul sees a vision of Chani with her skin gone from radiation poisoning so this IS explicitly shown as a possibility in the film.

@TotalWar1402. I recommend you watch the David Lynch version of Dune. The big battle is just as dumb, but it’s less of an issue once the electric guitar riffs kick in.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Because the Harkonans are evil and how would the Emperor know if they used dirty bombs to sterilise the natives? Why would the Emperor care if a race outside the Empire which are attacking his forces are destroyed? Also, Paul just fired a nuke at them…

Because the Emperor has an agent on the planet who reports back (or is supposed too). There's also loads of spies and covert operations going on. You just can't, as a Great House, get away with using nukes without being spotted. Just like in today's world you can't just fire off nukes without being spotted.

Plus don't forget the Harkonans know the Fremen are a threat, but they have no idea of their actual numbers nor their main powerbases or settlements. Within the book its detailed how much of the world is understudied and not monitored by order of the Navigators. So even if they had nukes to use they don't really have any target to use them upon in the main desert; with a higher risk that they harm the worms or damage spice production.


Basically they cannot use such vast devastating weapons - the only real target worth hitting is the main spaceport settlement; and the risk of harming spice production is too great; plus it would quickly be known that they'd used them and before they'd know it they'd have trade and transport sanctions; the Emperor's armies attacking them and their powerbase of Arrakis forcefully taken from them.


The Great Houses have a lot of power, but they are like lords in a medieval court. They each have power, but they also rely on each other and no one can challenge all the others. Over them you've got the Emperor with his legions and the Nagivators with their ships

 Overread wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Because the Harkonans are evil and how would the Emperor know if they used dirty bombs to sterilise the natives? Why would the Emperor care if a race outside the Empire which are attacking his forces are destroyed? Also, Paul just fired a nuke at them…

Because the Emperor has an agent on the planet who reports back (or is supposed too). There's also loads of spies and covert operations going on. You just can't, as a Great House, get away with using nukes without being spotted. Just like in today's world you can't just fire off nukes without being spotted.

Plus don't forget the Harkonans know the Fremen are a threat, but they have no idea of their actual numbers nor their main powerbases or settlements. Within the book its detailed how much of the world is understudied and not monitored by order of the Navigators. So even if they had nukes to use they don't really have any target to use them upon in the main desert; with a higher risk that they harm the worms or damage spice production.


Basically they cannot use such vast devastating weapons - the only real target worth hitting is the main spaceport settlement; and the risk of harming spice production is too great.

In the film Paul sees a vision of Chani dying of radiation poisoning. Clearly if he saw that as potential future then it was on the cards that Arrakis would be nuked to kill the Fremen? Which makes sense since the film never mentions a mandate against using nukes and all the factions seem pretty evil so we could expect them to not care.

Again, I am not at that point in the book. But if Arrakis is that high stakes then this is the moment to be breaking rules and using nukes. This is Chinese tanks on the Whitehouse lawn level of threat. Why would this hyper conservative rules obsessed society not view Paul as a rebel and outlaw for trying to launch a blatant coup?

Use of atomics is grounds for planetary Annihilation by the Imperium using Stone Burners (not-atomics that would rip the planet apart). That's the punishment. For reasons mentioned before, they won't do that to Arrakis, and Paul bypasses the Convention by not using it to target people so no other punishment gets meted out.

Atomics in the Dune era are relatively non-radioactive/clean. Specifically they are pure fusion devices, and as such don't produce radioactive isotopes, whereas in the modern day we use fission devices to induce fusion, which is the source of radioactivity in thermonuclear warheads. Sorry but your radiation poisoning hypothesis just won't occur - though Stone Burners do release radiation (despite not being atomic weapons, they are atomic-powered), which may be the vision of Chani Paul sees in the film. It's not the atomics that irradiate her, but the Stone burner used in retribution to destroy Arrakis in a hypothetical future.

Nobody in the deserts of Arrakis are using shields. Well, slight overstatement, but the majority are not. Shields (specifically the Holtzmann field generated by them) drive the worms crazy, they will travel for many miles and cross into neighboring worms territories to destroy the source. It's basically a worm magnet. As such, nobody in the deserts of Arrakis uses shields because it's akin to committing suicide. It's normally safe to use shields within the area of the shield wall (which despite its name has nothing to do with shields) because until Paul blows a hole in the wall with the family atomics, the worms can't get there due to it being a rock basin. However, Paul times his attack to coincide with a coriolis storm over Arrakeen. The storm overloads and disables the shields of the defenders, thus robbing them of any protection whatsoever.

Projectile weapons are not common in the Imperium. The Harkonnens basically revive long dead primitive technologies and put them into use on Arrakis to fight the shieldless Fremen after they retake the world from the Atreides. They thought they were fighting a total of 50k Fremen on the entire planet, needless to say that the adoption of these weapons wasnt widespread and that they certainly had nowhere near enough to stop or even challenge the hundreds of thousands/millions of Fremen who launched the attack, especially when you consider the advance infiltration that was conducted to disrupt the sardaukars ability to take up defensive positions. That's before you even get into the fact that the Harkonnens are basically disarmed by the Emperor at this point in the film. He's there to call Baron H to task, under the belief that he knows that Maud'dib is Paul and has been lying to him about events on the planet, you don't land in the face of another army, threaten their leader, and let them keep their guns and other weapons pointed at you while you do it.

The Sardaukar don't have projectile weapons available to them as a result, they just aren't ready for that kind of a fight. The imperium at large relies on shields and slow blades. Projectile weapons are useless against shields, and the unshielded are typically targeted by lasers instead. All combatants within the Imperium are trained to fight in a manner that allows them to bypass shields with their blades, iirc anything slower than about 9 m/s can get through. For this reason most of the time/every time someone using a shield is killed it's with a slicing or stabbing action, as you can stab or slice through someone at very slow speed with a blade, whereas a thrust, cut, or a chop requires you to move faster than the shield will allow (turns out Denis V and co actually put a lot of thought into how shields would change combat and make it difficult for the Fremen, actually). Without the shields, the Sardaukar (and Harkonnens) are at the mercy of the Fremen who are experienced and trained to fight without shields and thus are at an advantage. It's not well addressed in the film, but in the book those who are experienced fighting with shields often slow their strikes when fighting against unshielded foes because that's how they are trained. Stellar assumes Paul is trying with Jamis because of this (kinda changed in the film), as he keeps getting the advantage over Jsmis but not executing a killing blow and giving Jamis time to counter. That basically sums up what happens to the Sardaukar when the Fremen attack. And that's befire you add in the fact that Paul and Jessica trained them in super-secret magic space-time bending martial arts that allowed them to dodge and parry the Sardaukars own attacks with relative impunity (not really shown in the film).

Technically speaking, the atomic-like reaction of a shield + laser isn't 100%, it's just a high probability occurrence, so lasers are still used though only very cautiously and against targets that aren't shielded, usually. Of particular concern is that the atomic-like explosion is indistinguishable of that of a typical family atomic, so the risk is less about the interaction killing a bunch of people, and more that you will be Annihilated for violating the Great Convention. Anyway, there are certain projectile weapons that do still get used commonly - maula weapons are short range spring-loaded projectiles commonly used by Fremen and assassin's, not really the type of weapon you use to gun down a human wave due to the range limitations and low rate of fire, and not in wodespread use as they are useless against shields. There are also slow-weapons which fire projectiles at a low speed to penetrate shields, like the Dart gun used against Leto in part 1, amd the Bombardment cannons used against the Atreides fleet. These are not really useful against a prepared opponent - again, they are slow. They are assassin weapons, or weapons used against static targets that can't get out of the way.

The worms are basically unkillable - their scales are made of metal and too thick to pentrate with conventional weapons. The imperium tried, failed, and gave up well before the events of the film. The only known way to kill them is to apply a high voltage electrical shock to each ring segment (each ring segment of their body is a separate organism, so killing one won't kill the whole), or poison them with water - you can also blast them with atomics but you'd need to catch the entire worm in the blast to rip the entire thing apart as they will otherwise survive if you don't kill all the ring segments. Of course doing so would risk running a foul of the Convention - and for that reason the Emperor didn't bring his atomics to Arrakeen, nor did he expect the Fremen to have ant in turn - d'oh! On top of that, atomic arsenals in dune aren't exactly large - the entire atreides arsenal is only 100 warheads, hardly enough to sterilize a planet or kill all the worms.

And yes, the Emperor would care - the Fremen are the Emperors subjects, even if they don't feel that way. He is still bound by the Convention, and even if he is fine nuking them, the Great Houses won't be. The Emperor is not all-powerful, he walks a delicate tightrope balancing his interests against those of the Great Houses. The threat of his ouster is always there if he takes actions that cause the Great Houses to take up arms against him, which they would if he took actions that demonstrated his willingness to ignore the will of the Landsraad and the Convention or in general threatened the status quo (by, say, nuking the only known source of Spice). That risk is checked by him having the single most powerful army in the Known Universe at his disposal which keeps the Great Houses in line, but even still he's no match for a united front against him. That is why the events of the film happen - he offed the Atreides because their army, while small, is even better trained than his Sardaukar, and Leto is beloved by the Landsraad and the other Houses and charismatic enough to win the support needed to lead a rebellion against him (not that Leto would until pushed to).

And yes, the Fremen are hiding their numbers, even as of the prologue. What you describe as "total war" is actually Paul and like a few hundred Fedaykin waging a Lawrence of Arabia guerilla campaign against the Harkonnens. The majority of the Fremen population are in the south, not fighting.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I didn’t like the combat.

The shields are just set dressing and get completely ignored. Missiles go straight through them and none of this slow blade as people just lightly tap one another or make swipes. No thought went into how this would change the combat and make life difficult for the Fremen.

The Fremen do a human wave attack that should have been cut to pieces by artillery and machine gun fire. One shell into that mass would have killed and wounded hundreds.

All the Harkonan planes and artillery either disappears in the final battle or are even shown shooting toward the Fremen but not having the result of them being mown down like canon fodder which is what should be happening as the Fremen are entirely unshielded and just mindlessly throwing themselves at the enemy strongholds.

If nukes are a thing why doesn’t the Emperor nuke the worms and the Fremen army? Or why given the centuries they’ve been on Arrakis have they not invented a weapon that can kill one? They are not that big and why would they land on Arrakis if they know giant unkillable worms are there?

Again, hundreds of thousands of Fremen should have died if Paul decided to do a human wave attack and use them as his canon fodder. But the film very much framed this as Uber man Fremen killing hundreds of enemies apiece and not losing a single man. You do not get the impression at all that he is throwing their lives away to achieve his own power and I don’t see any reason not to have done so apart from not wanting to undermine the Fremen.

They also decided to make the Sardaukar Stormtroopers which is a real shame given how strongly they were introduced in the first film. Going through audiobook, maybe that is true to the story; but I am not a fan of building something up just to tear it down to make the other guy look cooler.

Fortunately there isn’t that much combat in the film and the scenes they do have a fairly brief with good music behind them. But what’s happening in them is about as silly as anything in Flash Gordon.

Most of these are explained in-universe. Some are valid criticisms.

1) Shields don't work on Arrakis. They attract the worms and are disrupted by the spice laden dust on the planet. Which is why the Fremen do make use of ranged weaponry more than the rest of the galaxy.

Yeah, if the Emperor/Harkonen's had brought real guns it wouldn't have worked. But weapons like that are pretty much useless archeotech in the wider galaxy. It does kinda boil down to "Frank Herbert wanted everybody to only use knives" if you think about it too much though.

2) Yes, nukes are a thing. A thing you do not want to use on the Galaxy's only source of Spice. Literally the only substance which allows for FTL travel. Control the spice, control the universe! This is why Paul's threat to use the Nukes on the spicefields causes the nobles to back off. Its the equivalent of if the real world's oil all came from a single spot on Earth and somebody threatened to nuke it. Yes, the person doing that would lose the fight, but the world would lose all oil and civilization would collapse.

3) You can't kill the worms. They are the source of spice. Humanity actually tried to move some worms to other desert planets so they could diversify spice production, but these attempts failed and so Arrakis is the only source of spice.


Ultimately, the setting of Dune is somewhat thin and poorly constructed from a world building perspective. Which is fine. If you want something which has a message AND solid world building go read Tolkien. Dune is geo-political commentary in a sci-fi wrapper with "good enuff" world building.

I'm not sure that the world building (in the films, at least) is 'good enough' though.

You can't use shields in the desert, but nobody but the Fremen seem to make any effort to adapt to the specifics of desert warfare.

Arrakis is super important, but nobody has ever bothered to actually deal with the Fremen problem.

There's a Fremen problem, but nobody has investigated the whole half of the planet where they're coming from.

You can't be nuking Arrakis, but there's no oversight to make sure that a families nuclear arsenal isn't just in a random cave on the planet

The Fremen are all about zero rushing their enemies with knives and hoping that the camera cuts away before they're all mown down, but somehow they're going to win a fleet battle in orbit.

Lasers can be used to destroy harvesters from range, but the Fremen tactic is still to hide under the sand and then melee infantry around the harvester first.

The houses maintain holdings across multiple worlds, but nobody from soggy Attredies home world seems to have noticed that everyone has died on Arrakis.

The Fremen, until Paul comes, are a bothersome rebellious population, but ultimately don't cause enough damage to actually threaten Spice Production for the Harkonans. They basically cause enough damage to be a problem but not enough to trigger a massive response to make it worth investing huge amounts into hunting them down over a vast desert that's basically extremely hostile on its own without the Fremen.

The Harkonans just build thicker walls and armour up their spice harvesting to resist and that's the level of investment they want to make. They don't want an all out war as that costs them and they are already saving up a huge amount for their war with another Great House.

The Fremen also don't threaten anything off-world. The social position of the Harkonans in the Great Houses, their home world, the space ships in orbit etc... They are a super local problem and whilst the world they are on is important, because their attacks are just small enough, they are not targeted in a big way.

They are a thorn whilst the Harkonans have bigger issues to tackle that they consider far more important.








I touched on the fact that the Fremen also pay the Navigators a huge sum in spice to basically help them hide in the greater desert; and because no one argues with the Navigators, this works.

The Navigators really don't care who mines the spice as long as it is mined. The squabbles of the Great Houses just mean moving more ships around for them. Though they also won't move against Great Houses on their own in case all the Houses challenge them (ergo they can't just wipe out Paul on their own).

I think one thing to grasp is that a lot of what makes Dune work are the internal politics and the "dance" of politics that characters make. These might seem like they just ignore very obvious and simple solutions, but its all part of how the social structure of the setting works. They can't just take the direct route and do X because of the ripples outside of the Dune region of space.

This is the problem.

Arrakis is supposed to be the only planet in the galaxy that matters and its control vital for the Imperium. Not quite sure how they got to Arrakis before this but…okay.

So why is the Emperor making a joint stock company, leaving the planet unexplored and not garrisoning a trillion Saudaukar to keep it locked down?. Like that planet, if it was that important, would be absolutely under the microscope and you would never have such a flippant attitude towards the planet. If he can’t kill then he could just offer them a world with water and induce them to leave. So it’s silly that they would not bother scanning or exploring the planet and it’s very odd the Emperor would have allowed an insitituion to exist like the Navigators.

Also, there’s very many reasons you would still want guns. They have these things called bayonets where you put the knife on the end of a gun and have not only longer reach but also kill any idiot who has forgot to turn his shield on, is unaware because a gun can hit you miles away and not everyone can afford to buy this exploit.Plus, a shield doesn’t matter if your artillery collapses a building (or cave) on top of them or sends you flying a hundred feet into the air only to break your bones due to the fall and even that assumes the blast wave doesn’t pulverise you inside the shield.

A lot has to happen to make this not turn out like the Mahdists in Sudan or Boxer rebellion.A demagogue cannot simply whip up a peasant militia and overthrow a modern state; certainly not one that rejects modern technology entirely and are addicted to drugs. Even the most successful case like the Taiping eventually failed. It’s just outright a silly premise.

Plus I don’t care if there are a billion Fremen. A Galactic Empire should have far more resources and people than one pre industrial planet.

It definitely does not help that in the film I don’t think we ever see the shields work to prevent bullets and in many instances they’re shown as not working against shells.

Because it is much more valuable a tool of control to use it as a chip for the other houses to squabble over rather than focusing all their attention on the imperial throne.

You are thinking only in terms of brute force, and brute force does not hold a throne for long.

One thing to consider is that the Emperor isn't vastly more powerful than the other Great Houses. He has his shock-troop army that are elite and feared greatly and do give him the edge that let him become and stay as Emperor over the other Great Houses, but he's basically just another Great House faction; just the one leading the group.

The planet isn't under the Microscope because the Fremen pay the Navigators a fortune to stop that happening. The Naviagtors are happy with that because they get more spice and because it also helps to protect the status of the planet. You can't industrialise the world or develop it for fear that it will destroy spice's natural growth. You also kind of don't want other factions to learn how Spice is made incase they get the idea of exporting worms and producing their own.

The smothering of knowledge aims to ensure that the Navigators remain the only powerbase that can afford spice in vast quantities and use it to navigate space.


Also the Fremen don't want a world covered in water; they live on Arrakis. That is their home and that's all they want.



Also the Emperor doesn't allow the Navigators to exist; the Navigators allow the Emperor to exist. Without them he cannot command the Empire - the Navigators hold a LOT of cards in play and are happy for the Great houses to squabble over the power that remains and fight within themselves - within certain rules of combat.



Basically consider that many of the factions are in a delicate power-play with each other. It's like a super long cold war interspaced with periods of constrained hot-war as they battle for power. The backdrop is that the Nagivators allow this to happen and facilitate it, so long as these conflicts and powerplays never interrupt the flow of Spice.


Also the Fremen are not peasants nor pre-industrial. That's the impression many have of them and who dismiss them as that. That's the lie the Fremen have created about themsleves. They have larger settlements; they have industries and production capabilities that they've built up very slowly over time.

They are basically playing a very long game and all they required was a spark to set them into action and that spark was Paul.

Because somebody would talk and then the Emperor would have legal grounds to break up the Navigators monopoly on treason charges for illicitly trading with the Fremen and being party to a conspiracy. Teddy broke the Trusts, I think you’re overstating the power of big business here. If the state really wants you gone it can get that big stick out.

He can't just break them up. They've locked down the knowledge on how to create Navigators in the first place. Yes it requires spice in vast quantities and evolution/mutation of the human body but no one but them knows just how its done.

The Emperor is not all-powerful. His Empire relies upon the Navigators. Without them they have to go back to old-methods of space travel that take vastly longer and come with more risk. If the Navigators shut down the Empire collapses the same instant.

Heck the fact that the Emperors armies are trained on a specific world means the Emperor needs the Navigators just to move his armies around to do anything anyway.



The Navigators need the Empire to exist to justify their own existence and power; the Empire needs the Navigators to allow it to exist and function. The two are vast power bodies in the setting that rely upon the relationship between them. Neither one can destroy the other, though ultimately the Navigators have the edge.

Remember how 40k is a setting of technological and ideological stagnation. Dune is where that comes from.

Human society in Dune has stagnated for countless tens of thousands of years. Humanity has split into a few subspecies. Navigators, Mentats, the Bene Gesserit, and normal humans have intertwined but insulated cultures... The Navigators are the only people who can drive the FTL ships. Mentats are the only way to do any computer things because AI rebelled and got banned. The Bene Gesserit are religious leaders/have magic powers. And all of this is dependent on a resource that can only be harvested in a relatively primitive fashion from 1 world in very limited quantities.

When thinking of the Emperor power level in society, think less Roman empire and more Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor is a powerful man yes, but the ruling family got where it is because they bribed/bought their way to the top. People who get to the top that way tend to find they have little power left once they actually get there.

This does change with Paul and his son Leto II, but prior to this the Emperor was just the face of an oligarchical power struggle between a bunch of great houses. The reason this works is because Paul has religion backing him up as the Messiah so it throws the balance out of whack. And his son becomes the immortal God Emperor worm who rules it for 3500 years.

Yeah, there are a lot of plot holes if you dig down into the setting. But that was never the point of the setting.

 Lance845 wrote:
They don't hunt the worms because the worms make the spice. Without the worms you got no spice.

That wasn't a known fact by the first book, though, outside of the Fremen. The whole sand trout/sandworm life cycle was an unknown quantity.


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 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I think the book has an agenda and bias so it’s not presenting a reasonable scenario. It wants to make the point that technology can get you a bind and completely dismiss 500 years of Western history where technology is a central part of that. No society will peg itself to one technology then have all else atrophy into ritualised warfare that allows it to be beat by barbarians. It’s a fanciful case study when you have example after example of peasant militia being annihilated by modern weapons. The actual Mahdists of Sudan charging Maxim guns went really well for them.

Well... yeah. Herbert wanted to tell a cautionary tale about following messianic figures, and decided on the setting and its trappings to be able to tell it. that, plus a big hard on on the idea that harsh environments breed harsh peoples.

In Frank Herbert’s books, the Butlerian Jihad was not about AI rebelling against man. That was something Brian Herbert came up with. In the original Dune books it’s stated plainly that thinking machines allowed some men the power to dominate all other men, the power of almost absolute control. Thinking machines are outlawed because they are too strong a tool for tyranny (and stagnation, as FH had a real fixation on that) ever to be trusted again.

I think the movie pretty much covers everything you guys are chatting about within the dialogue, design, setting and context of the two movies.

The movies clearly explain and shows just about everything you need to understand what is happening. You don't even have to read the books or watch the 1984 version.

You may have to watch the films more than once though, because some of it can be a bit subtle, blink and you miss it, or hidden in the dialogue where if you miss a line or word you miss some key pieces of information.




Subtlety and nuance in film-making is a dying art, and the audience is killing it.

Agreed with Easy E. My gf never read Dune, even she gets all this stuff just from a single viewing of the films, no detailed encyclopedic companion required to explain everything, there's enough subtlety and nuance and context clues present in the film to help green audiences understand the background setting in pastiche with enough detail to get the basics and suspend their disbelief or make assumptions to fill in the blanks.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
This is the problem.

Arrakis is supposed to be the only planet in the galaxy that matters and its control vital for the Imperium. Not quite sure how they got to Arrakis before this but…okay.

So why is the Emperor making a joint stock company, leaving the planet unexplored and not garrisoning a trillion Saudaukar to keep it locked down?. Like that planet, if it was that important, would be absolutely under the microscope and you would never have such a flippant attitude towards the planet. If he can’t kill then he could just offer them a world with water and induce them to leave. So it’s silly that they would not bother scanning or exploring the planet and it’s very odd the Emperor would have allowed an insitituion to exist like the Navigators.

Also, there’s very many reasons you would still want guns. They have these things called bayonets where you put the knife on the end of a gun and have not only longer reach but also kill any idiot who has forgot to turn his shield on, is unaware because a gun can hit you miles away and not everyone can afford to buy this exploit.Plus, a shield doesn’t matter if your artillery collapses a building (or cave) on top of them or sends you flying a hundred feet into the air only to break your bones due to the fall and even that assumes the blast wave doesn’t pulverise you inside the shield.

A lot has to happen to make this not turn out like the Mahdists in Sudan or Boxer rebellion.A demagogue cannot simply whip up a peasant militia and overthrow a modern state; certainly not one that rejects modern technology entirely and are addicted to drugs. Even the most successful case like the Taiping eventually failed. It’s just outright a silly premise.

Plus I don’t care if there are a billion Fremen. A Galactic Empire should have far more resources and people than one pre industrial planet.

It definitely does not help that in the film I don’t think we ever see the shields work to prevent bullets and in many instances they’re shown as not working against shells.

The Imperium is a true feudal society (nowhere near a modern state as you seem to believe it to be - this isnt Star Wars and the Imperium is not Palpatines Empire), the Emperors power is far from absolute, if he becomes too powerful his feudal lords will rebel against him, if he isn't powerful enough then likewise. One of the ways the Emperor walks this tightrope is that every 100 years a loyal and trusted Great House is granted Arrakis as a quasi-fief to govern for a 100 year period in the Emperors name (the Harkonnens rule ended 20 years early and the planet was given to the Atreides as a fief-complete in place of Caladan as part of the Emperors plot). They have responsibility for resource extraction, local defense, etc of the world in addition to their traditional fief. This enables the house so blessed to become fantastically wealthy and powerful in the process, and the possibility of being selected is a carrot used to keep the Great Houses loyal and on their best behavior. As such, filling the planet with Sardaukar and operating under tight Imperial control is not really an option for the Emperor, and doing so would likely lead to a rebellion by the Great Houses.

As far as why the planet is relatively unexplored and untamed, etc, well aside from it being an incredibly hostile and dangerous environment, the Guild and CHOAMs powers exceed that of the Emperor himself, and their influence enabled that sort of thing to happen. The Emperor isn't going to arrest all the Navigators and disband the Guild on trumped up treason charges, he doesn't have a big enough army to do that, he doesn't have enough power to do that, doing that would destroy his own power as he'd be unable to maintain even the most remote semblance of control over the Known Universe without the Navigators, and the Great Houses would just straight up overthrow him at that point.

Shields work a bit differently from how you imagine them, they are non-inertial - having a boulder dropped on you won't transfer the force to the wearer. An artillery shell detonation next to you wont pulverize you with a blast wave. They are also cheap as chips and widespread, everyone has one, basically, with the exception of the Fremen due to environmental reasons. Guns are useless in this setting, even with a bayonet on it, which can only really be used to chop or thrust, and thus would be difficult to pentrate a shield with.

Your issues with the film/book seem to principally boil down to one-dimensional thinking and a total failure to comprehend politics beyond a binary equation determined by arbitrary and subjective interpretations of "power".

The shields are definitely a source of plotholes regarding ranged weapons and combat in general. If lasgun+shields really equals a nuclear detonation, then those small micro-drones should be outfitted with small lasers and used as suicide bombs. The user of the drone would be well outside the blast radius of a personal shield's detonation so they could simply use the drone to destroy anybody foolish enough to use shields with at least moderately limited collateral damage.

Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you. So you'd be left wrestling on the ground trying to slowly drive ice-picks through each other. And that is only if you kept the armor medieval, let alone actually went for some power armor with sci-fi alloys which realistically should be impenetrable to some low speed jabs. And it really doesn't seem like their melee weapons are anything particularly special, they don't have power weapons or anything like that.

It really really is best to not get into the crunchy details of combat in the Dune-iverse. It's a moderately veiled in-universe justification written by someone who didn't really put any further thought than "shields cancel guns, fight with knives lol"

This doesn't make it bad from a story perspective. You just need to remember that Dune wasn't written as some grand escapist sci-fi setting. It is a rather overt message draped in just enough cool sci-fi drip to put it in the fiction instead of philosophy section of the book store. All the books are kinda at that level. At least till they start resurrecting Duncan Idaho and giving him weird sex powers, then I think its more of a kink fantasy...

Another point already covered is that the whole final battle is fought under the cover of the largest sandstorm seen in decades, so no shields, and no air cover for the bad guys.

But then probably DV thought that one sepia colored movie in his career was more than enough.

M.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you. So you'd be left wrestling on the ground trying to slowly drive ice-picks through each other. And that is only if you kept the armor medieval, let alone actually went for some power armor with sci-fi alloys which realistically should be impenetrable to some low speed jabs. And it really doesn't seem like their melee weapons are anything particularly special, they don't have power weapons or anything like that.

Yeah, it's kinda like that ^^

Fading Suns took the personal shield idea and removed the "lasers make them go boom", plus added a lower and upper force to them, so you could either try and do juuust enough damage to go "under" the shield or you could overpower it and shut it by applying enough force. Additionally, each category of shields allowed a specific amount of clothing/armor to be used at the same time.

Heavy shields with power armors were a tad difficult to deal with, but most people you found shielded were nobles with duelling shields and no armor or, at best, leather jerkins.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The shields are definitely a source of plotholes regarding ranged weapons and combat in general. If lasgun+shields really equals a nuclear detonation, then those small micro-drones should be outfitted with small lasers and used as suicide bombs. The user of the drone would be well outside the blast radius of a personal shield's detonation so they could simply use the drone to destroy anybody foolish enough to use shields with at least moderately limited collateral damage.

That is not the case. When the little needle seeker drone went after Paul and he avoided it the first thing they say is the controller must be close by. They found the guy hidden in the wall down the hallway. The range is not great on those things. And those explosions can be HUGE. They describe it as being anything from a detonation that kills 5-10 people to a detonation that wipes out both opposing forces on a battlefield. Then throw in that it looks like the atomics. If Harokonans leave and then a little drone outfitted with a laser nukes Paul and the entire building every great house, the navigators, CHOAM, and the Emperor would be forced to wipe the Harkonans from existence.

Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you. So you'd be left wrestling on the ground trying to slowly drive ice-picks through each other. And that is only if you kept the armor medieval, let alone actually went for some power armor with sci-fi alloys which realistically should be impenetrable to some low speed jabs. And it really doesn't seem like their melee weapons are anything particularly special, they don't have power weapons or anything like that.

The "slow knife" isn't THAT slow. It's a particular speed that is drilled into everyone.

It really really is best to not get into the crunchy details of combat in the Dune-iverse. It's a moderately veiled in-universe justification written by someone who didn't really put any further thought than "shields cancel guns, fight with knives lol"

This doesn't make it bad from a story perspective. You just need to remember that Dune wasn't written as some grand escapist sci-fi setting. It is a rather overt message draped in just enough cool sci-fi drip to put it in the fiction instead of philosophy section of the book store. All the books are kinda at that level. At least till they start resurrecting Duncan Idaho and giving him weird sex powers, then I think its more of a kink fantasy...

I WISH the Duncan clones were the weirdest thing in Dune.