Children of Dune Club Session 10 Qs

When Farad'n became Bene Gesserit... I guess we'll see, but does he lose all his standing as a Corrino? Is it a family ? A guild?

Clear Menser

Next Dune Club, session is to Chapter 58 in the ebook and chapterless chapters, iirc

Clear Menser

When Leto says he's no longer human I caught how that'd be a huge deal to a pan galactic culture that eliminated mind-machines. But that seems a high level of control to the culture and maybe not so internalized in every citizen. Without spoilers... could this novel beahviour put a wedge in that taboo? Maybe lead back to some of the things that were discarded.

Clear Menser

Hi teacher, Is the Golden Path what the Bene Gesserit want to achieve with the Kwisatz Haderach? Or does the Golden Path diverts form the BG’s objectives? So, the BG’s objective is to “help to direct humanity along a path of insight and stability”, to me, this sounds very similar to the Golden Path. If the Golden Path is what the BGs are looking for, isn’t the “real” Kwisatz Haderach not Leto II?

observation #2 p.471 "Not in ten thousand years" spoiler alert: in the last books they do get worms off-planet but what Leto says here is still accurate, the 'old' version of the sandworms cannot be transplanted no matter how hard they try.

First off, I wanted to thank you for all the hard work and time you put into making Dune Club such a special experience for all of us. I know it’s a lot of research, grunt work, and minutiae so I just hope you know the attention to detail is greatly appreciated! It truly is one of the highlights of my summers and I have such a better understanding and deeper appreciation for Dune now because of this club! As someone who has great interest in philosophy but doesn’t always have the attention span for it, I am very grateful to live in this internet universe where all us weirdos can come together and love some shit. Okay I’M DONE lol Now for question: This glimpse into the Bene Gesserit training has me wondering if Frank Herbert based this on real world mind-body connection practices? Do you know if this training has ever been successfully applied in real life before or what it’s closest relation is? Also, if we were able to master some aspects of this Bene Gesserit training, how do you think it would apply to life in our world?

Daryn Wood

Hi! I am wondering about the extent of genetic memories. Sometimes it seems that the superior set of memories Leto and Ghanima possess compared to Bene Gesserits, such as Jessica and Irulan, it's not only due to the additional masculine side, but as if their inner lives trace back way farther... to which point? To the first conscious human? To animals? To first primordial cells? For instance, Irulan doesn't know Agamemnon and this could imply her genetic memories fall quite short. Instead the fact that *spoiler* future sandworms will contain sparks of Leto's consciousness hints that also animal past memories could be awakened. What do you think?

Will a film franchise (like Star Wars) be viable for DUNE considering what happens to Paul in DUNE Messiah? Or will it depend on the star power of whomever they cast as Alia or Leto? Chalamet is already huge and poised to be the biggest star in the world especially after landing this role but is the franchises fate jeopardized by Paul's fate in Messiah?

Free2chill

observation #1 p.457 "There's your damned universe for you!" Someday, in a future Dune Club someone with faar too much time on their hands will use a commercial astronomy program and actually -tell- us if Fomalhaut would really be the south polar star as viewed from Canopus. None of the programs I could find out there had the ability to account for stellar drift, let alone 24,397 years of it (by the Encyclopedia's chronology, give or take - AD 2020 is 14,180 Before Guild using the timeline).

Minor point considering how monumentally this section ends, but Leto mentions while manipulating Sabiha that Fremen tend to be energetic at sunrise, but tired out at sundown. I thought the Fremen had long developed a nocturnal biorythm to avoid the Sun?

I promised not to be a troll this week. So I will try to be nice, yet critical. Alia is a tragic character, but it seems we get so little of her point of view. It feels like she "died off page" to a certain extent (though I'm ahead and almost 500 pages in we do get a little bit of her POV, and she's not quite as gone as we have been led to believe). I feel I would have empathized more with her and the twins if we had had more of her perspective in her descent to madness. It would have made Abomination more "real" and less abstract as it is seen mostly through others. Everyone seems to take this abomination as a "fait accompli", yet along the way Alia could have asked for help, and others, such as Duncan, could have tried harder to help. Without the personal POV, as a reader, I feel detached, unlike say, in Azula's descent in A:tLA, where her defeat, while predictable and right, feels heartbreaking at the same time as we had a few critical POV scenes showing her falling apart. What are your thoughts? Also, the body horror involved with Leto, why isn't that an "abomination"? I guess, we'll talk more about that next time.

PJ B