Dune

Rich people, you know, Marry rich people so they can keep the power and authority in the family and the bloodlines.

And they're interested in eugenics and almost like the movie, like the book Dune, like from Frank Herbert.

Yeah, the Bene Gesserit.

The Bene Gesserit is just obsessed with blood and power.

Rich people, you know, marry rich people so they can keep the power and authority in the family and the bloodlines.

And they're interested in eugenics and, um, almost like the movie, like the book Dune, like, uh, from Frank Herbert, where they mix their bloodline.

Yeah, the Bene Gesserit.

The Bene Gesserit-

That's why in the Bible it talks about the idea of perfect love casts out all fear, right? And it talks about the fruit of the spirit being peace, joy, love, you know, harmony, right? And so when we're living in fear and we're trying to get-- if we use the mind to get out of fear, it's its own trap.

It can't happen, right? Even in the book Dune, when I think about it, you know, uh, Frank, Frank Herbert, I believe, in the series that just came out, they actually recite the litany against fear, right, that is famous in that book.

Uh, you know, he says, you know, "Fear is the mind killer." And so when fear hijacks you, it's like a spell that you're under, you know, and you try to use the very mind that's hijacked by fear to solve fear.

It's like you can't do it.

Um, I've always also said that in, in conventions, et cetera, that as long as it could pot-potentially be a plot point, then I won't go into how we have explained it internally, but we see them both as an offshoot of the same effect.

Now, interestingly enough, I just worked on a, um, an anthology of s- of, uh, of essays called The Science of Dune, and, uh, it'll be coming out in January.

And in that...

I, I, I never really realized until, until recently that in Dune, if you look at the, um, the suspensors, the essentially anti-grav units and the FTL, they're both offshoots of the Holtzmann effect.

So even way back when, even Frank Herbert-

What is the Holtzmann effect?

Um, Frank Herbert did a very good job of, of attributing the technology to one, one non-defined effect and then having everything be an offshoot of that so it, it never grows old.

It's a classic forever because he doesn't, he doesn't go into technical detail, and I think that's brilliant.

It makes no sense, but it's also kind of perfect.

Today, we are taking a deep dive into the life, the mind, and the massive legacy of Frank Herbert, the creator of Dune.

And we've got some incredible source material today, drawing from highly comprehensive biographical transcripts about his life.

Absolutely.

And this is the intersection where the science fiction gold is minted because he is also experimenting with cannabis and very notably psilocybin mushrooms.

Let's actually examine the mechanics of this, because what happens when you combine Jungian psychology with Psychoactive experimentation.

It's the literal recipe for the Dune universe.

Exactly.

So I grew up reading the two authors in the series that made the biggest impression on me that are relevant here.

would be, and this is going to sound very strange, Tom Clancy and Frank Herbert, specifically the Dune Chronicles.

So from Tom Clancy, I learned, at least vaguely realistic, where in order to be truly effective at combat, you just need to perfect muscle memory, and when you are fighting, it needs to be just a purely mechanical exercise, no thought involved.

And from...

Frank Herbert with the Dune Chronicles came the Bene Gesserit idea of you approach combat from a position of complete and absolute calm.

Especially in what you present to other people.

Where, you know, the best Bene Gesserit are some of the best fighters in the galaxy and Dune or the universe.

And when they fight, it's freaky how calm they seem when they're fighting.

We don't.

The classic, and I've followed Frank Herbert's lead in this, the classic way of doing that is the original Dune book, where Herbert, once again, doesn't explain anything through the book.

It's a pretty tough read.

The movie's a lot easier to follow.

And I've read Dune, I don't know, four, five, six times since I was 13.

Yeah.

You're just thrown into this world.

I, I ripped off something from him too.

The Imperium

of Man Pop Culture Cousins Dune Foundation Roman Empire in Space Religious Dystopias Boulder Roots Edward Gibson Imperial Decline Literature Medieval Christendom The Imperium is the dream of the human destiny after it has gone septic.

It is not a shining space empire.

It is not Rome, Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, and a corpse bureaucracy all stacked inside one galaxy-wide church state.

A million worlds cannot be ruled in any sane way, so the Imperium does not rule them sanely.

The Imperium rules them through ritual, fear, hereditary office, sacred paperwork, local cruelty, military emergencies, religious obedience, and the constant claim that whatever horror is happening now is necessary because something worse is always waiting outside the wall.

This is where Dune matters, not because Warhammer is simply a dune with more skulls, but because It understands the emperor, the noble houses, the monopoly, the priesthood, the forbidden machine, the special bloodlines, the holy desert, the managed prophecy, the futile future, where humanity has crossed space and dragged medieval politics behind it like a corpse in a wedding.

Technology does not make society modern.

And I, I really appreciate, yeah, some of the, the corners that you went to, particularly these kind of like post-World War I and kind of like dissident writers, um, who, who are dealing with the real horrors, what felt like an apocalypse at the time, you know, ah, brought on by the machine age.

Um, one last, a f- few last comments, uh, from listeners, um, just about, ah, science fiction, in particular a couple of Dune folks.

One listener writes, "A lot of people don't know that Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, was responding to the Foundation series," right, Asimov, "and essentially criticizing the idea of an all-knowing AI saving humanity.

His whole point was that animal instincts, ecology, and other unpredictable dynamic forces will always eclipse any kind of machine planning and control." And Steve on Discord writes, "I'm contemplating getting a custom Dune T-shirt.

The time for the Butlerian [laughs] Butlerian jihad is now."

[laughs]