Dune Club 2 Session 5 Qs

Have you ever had a precognitive dream? A book which has had a lasting impression on me is "Man and Time" by J.B. Priestley, published in 1964 (one year before "Dune"). Priestley was a famous English playwright who was obsessed with the experience of time, and here expresses some interesting ideas about destiny, free will and dreams. He thought precognitive dreams are real, and polarize into the "tragic" and the "trivial", the two realms outside the influence of human will. Thank you for introducing me to Alan Watts.

Got my Session 6 Qs ready. Just waiting for the post.

I just got a copy of Wisdom of the Sand by Kevin Williams which discusses the philosophies of Dune, have you seen this? I haven't had a chance to sit down with it yet though.

Kathleen O'Sullivan-Cook

It seems like they glossed over the worm getting stolen. Will we get some insight on what happened there?

Andy Doucette

So what do you think of Stone Burner weapon and the kind of damage it does?

I'm having a hard time understanding why the atreides willing walk into traps they know are there because it never works in their favour. I can more so see Duke Leto going to Arrakis because of the suspicions and consequences of the emperor. But taking the ghola when there is even a saying "beware the gifts from the guild" (I like Duncan and have really been enjoying Hayt and reading about him, but that wasn't a good choice) and going into the desert when he knew it was a face dancers it just seems silly. They need to do more then keeping a "watchful eye" out and actually plan for things to protect themselves like sending more protection to accompany him secretly or spies or something. They seem to just willing walk into any trapped set on them and it never works cause they don't do anything to really stop it and if they do it seems like its the bare minimum when maybe all he needed to do is leave earlier. Perhaps I'm missing something idk. But it jut seems like stupid decision making especially for a House in such great power. They need to protect themselves better by just planning and being better prepared.

Neither Hayt nor the dwarf Beijaz can be trusted. Why would they be left alone to interact without supervision by Stilgar or some other Fedaykin? If the Tleilaxu planned to use the dwarf to trigger Hayt, why tell Edric to do it? Did the Tleilaxu plan this years ago when the diseased Fremen bought the dwarf? Did they plan to have the Stone Burner brought to Arrakis and stolen as well? Just how convoluted are their plans? Also, does Beijaz remind anyone else of Tyrion Lannister? Or I guess Tyrion reminds me of Beijaz...

So, is "swallowed in a dry throat" Herbert's "words are wind" or any other GRRM annoyingly repeated phrase? It occurs twice in the chapters of this session, it feels like it occured a lot more in the first book... In any case, the Tleilaxu bargain the dwarf describes to Hayt mentions planets "beyond the Imperium", I thought the Imperium covered the known universe. If the Imperium does not (possible retcon), what else is out there in the Dune universe?

PJ B

One of the quotes that caught my attention in this session, was when Paul was having the meeting and reminiscing about the fact that he didn't see this particular moment so clearly. "It ocurred to Paul then that all creatures must carry some kind of stamped out by purposes of varying strengths, by the fixation of training and disposition. From the moment the Jihad had chosen him, he'd felt himself hemmed in by the forces of a multitude. Their fixed purposes demanded and controlled his course. Any delusions of Free Will he harbored now must be merely the prisoner rattling his cage. His curse lay in the fact that he saw the cage. He saw it!" Although Paul speaks about prescience, this paragraph got me thinking about the power of knowledge (talking about science, philosophy and human behavior), and the more we know, the more trapped we feel, and in some ways, unhappy, because we understand that the concepts we grew up on, like freedom and Free Will, are not so real as we thought. The more knowledge you have, the more awareness of the cages that bind you to the life that was put to you, by your family, country, culture, religion and also the access to money. The way we behave is modeled by all of this instances. I've heard you speak about horoscope, among other beliefs and I'm curious to hear your beliefs in the matter of destiny, freedom and Free Will, which is such a present subject in this book.

TEACHER!?!?! Can we talk about the similarities between Paul and Neo? Though Niko and I were talking about perhaps the idea of a blind person with “sight beyond sight” being a religious archetype and that Herbert and the Wachowskis both pulled from the same influence as opposed to the latter pulling from the former. I very much pictured Paul’s “sight” the same as Neo “seeing” in Revolutions. What are your thoughts?

Kosta Ketsilis

Is prescience in Dune supposed to be an outgrowth of Mentat ability? Is it hyperfocused reasoning, enhanced to a mystical degree by the spice that allows one to see potential future timelines? Or is it something else entirely? I've just assumed all along that this is what was happening, Paul clearly had some degree of prescience before he became the Kwisatz Haderach, and it really started to unlock around the same time his Mentat abilities did. I'm confused then why Gaius Helen Mohiam is able to see the Jihad at the end of Dune. Also, if she has these abilities, why couldn't she hide the conspiracy the way Edric was able to?

Sopbucket

I'm a bit confused about the plans of the conspiracy against Paul, especially the Tleilaxu end of things. Bijaz' instructions to Hayt make it clear that they knew that Paul would evade the stoneburner. How is he so confident that Paul would fall for Hayt's distraction long enough to be killed? Initially the conspiracy plan seemed to be geared toward making Paul destroy himself, but suddenly they seem so much more direct. Did the Tleilaxu greed for a possible Paul ghola get the best of them?