Dune - Frank Herbert
...at first. i wasnt gonna respond about this at all.. until i realized that I have read both books you mentioned immediatly after a flood and then after a booster... i am curious sometimes to what books people gravitate to after a session.... now i am curious about frank herberts books showing up in peoples post iboga appearances.. I have noted on a number of occasions that I will see Ceremony by leslie marmon silko and also the never ending story..
MAN! I am waay too tired to get into this now, but a Dune discussion thou shalt havest...I'm a super fan of the whole series, even the first two books written by Herbert's son and Kevin J. Anderson are passable - but they are NOT 'true' Dune. Yea, I look forward to this very much...it took me a few tries to read the last two books, especially Chapterhouse it was so damned far out, at first I thought Herbert was losing it like David Lynch lol...but after a revisit I found them to be the richest and most remarkably creative volumes in the series - I'd love to see a GOOD rendering of God Emporer made into a decent 3 hour film...though we all know movies seldom if ever do the books justice. And those dumb Sci-Fi channel movies are an abomination...forget that they mispronounce 'Harkonnen' - I found I could not endure the stoopid costumes, I was hypnotized by all the damned hats - unnecessary and just - dumb. Anyways a little spatchka is in order for ole Cal but I look forward very much to this discussion...GREAT THREAD!
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ... and my ancestors.... ha
Allright, let's have it then The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel. The first novel starts in an empire consisting of a lot of planets and it has been around for about 10.000 years. It came to be after computers were banned. How could this empire be there for 10.000 years? Compare it to our present view of time and development. Our society presents itself as a such blessing compared to the feudal middle ages of europe. So in the light of this, how come Herbert invents a empire that is basically a kind of feudal system but with space travel? Most scifi stories are not so far out like his... There could be a reason behind the setting. Did he see his universe as a far more natural kind of evolution then our present age? His story is it came to be after they banned the technology that is typical of the rapid acceleration of our present age... The old chinese empire is maybe a bit of comparison. It has been around for millenia and they had a steady evolution in all kind of fields. Stable and progressive. Stark contrast with europe's.
Ah welll. I thought let's do setting first. Anyway they got the spice and that's what makes it all tick. The DMT'ers claim it theirs, since the spice gives acces to hyperspace. But I don't know. If you read the novels it's much about expanding consciousness in ways that includes the ordinary state. Like accessing ancestral memories and reading people subconsciousness. In a way ofcourse iboga has a potential of being 'the spice', since it does all that. It expands consciousness from the ordinary state of waking and gives a lot of psychic abilities. Much like the bene gesserit of the novels, witches who are able to perceive and manipulate subtle cues on basis of their expanded consciousness. One thing the spice does as well is extend lifespan... I thought it hinted to the notion of soma, the ancient indian drug remedy which until now hasn't been proven to be this or that substance. It was considered to be the ideal drug for everything and could have served as a inspiration for the spice. The spice by the way is generated by sandtrout and these give birth to giant sandworms. Lately I saw a documentary about african deserts and there is a species (of lizard I think), that can swim underneath sidoney. Very intruiging to watch. Like all of this has inspiration in the real world somehow.
ill throw in something too about the sand worms... ever notice how often we share similar visions during the intitial dream state?... spirit of the forest... severed toes... toothbrushes (three accounts thus far on THAT odd and "random" thing to be the center piece of vision) I have heard a few times about people seeing a giant worm like you would imagine from dune floating thru the field of vision in big S's... (i have heard a couple references too that in Gabon they see the same form and thats part of the Basse' Basse'... I have only heard this reference being called basse once from a second hand but reliable source ( i just thought basse basse was part of the large linguistics of language for that area in general, but what do i know) i didnt even think about it till you mentioned it.. curiouser and curiouser
Hey brightwillow, nice summary you wrote. There is a third school as well. They are called 'Mentats'. In short they are people trained to act as a human computer. But not as a simple calculator of logic, but as individuals trained in digesting large amounts of data and arrive at patterns that go beyond logic. To do this they have a 'naive mind', which is cultivated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentat In the first novel duke Leto Atreides has Thufir Hawat as mentat. He basically advises the duke on enterprises in a way to assess it in all possible aspects and vantage points. In later novels there are many others of this school. In Heretics & Chapterhouse Herbert goes into details on the way in which a mentat's minds work. It works with generating projections on the basis of vasts amounts of data. These projections are not simple answers to questions, but the revealing of patterns that underlie and proceed from the initial questions. One question gives many others, and in this way one can arrive at a projection. Basically this seems to me as a construct on the basis of data that serves to be the most accurate possible. So very interesting, because this is holistic reasoning. No linear cause and effect, but complex networks of things, events and possiblites linked together. If I were a woman, then I would start the Bene Gesserit... I have asked myself many times, when do people arrive with those abilities Herbert describes? Sometimes I think they are already here.