Area journey, clearly, has been the engine of this civilization’s improvement and unfold. A.I., then again, has been invented, embraced after which explicitly rejected via the long-ago convulsion known as the “Butlerian Jihad,” which establishes as a commandment: “Thou shalt not make a machine within the likeness of a human thoughts.”
Transhumanism, in the meantime, has been rejected in some methods and embraced in others. Rather than computer systems, Herbert’s galactic imperium has cultivated what we’d think about superhuman psychological powers, typically by way of the usage of mind-altering medication — Google Gemini, completely not; psychedelics, possibly so. On the identical time, the imperium’s highly effective Bene Gesserit sisterhood has pursued an enormous eugenic challenge, however one which’s hedged about with numerous taboos. When a Bene Gesserit reverend mom in “Dune Messiah” is obtainable the prospect to proceed her eugenic work by way of synthetic insemination quite than organized pairings of women and men, she recoils from the concept, since “no phrase or deed may suggest that males could be bred on the extent of animals.” Selective mating, sure; cloning and I.V.F., possibly not.
Lastly, faith has flourished on this spacefaring future by way of a form of syncretistic creativity: The novel’s principal scripture, the Orange Catholic Bible, is the form of ecumenical holy guide that in all probability appeared a bit extra believable within the Nineteen Sixties, when “Dune” first appeared, than it does at this time, and the religions of the long run are largely remixes of Previous Earth faiths, full with names like “Zensunni,” “Navachristianity” and “Buddislam.”
So you possibly can see “Dune” as presenting a civilization that has achieved galactic takeoff whereas working via, in bizarre however recognizable methods, our personal cultural-technological debates. However then Herbert additional portrays his far-future world as having fallen into decadence itself, with a secure however merciless order based mostly on company feudalism, non secular manipulation and different interlocking exploitations.
And right here a number of the debates across the film adaptation, about whether or not the principle character, Paul Atreides, is a liberator or an oppressor, a hero or a villain, miss the harsher argument at work within the unique story: Particularly, that typically the one path out of a corrupt establishment includes convulsion and fanaticism and demise. So the guide’s Paul is each a hero and a villain, each a destroyer and a savior; he’s taking a horrible path that’s additionally the one believable path for humanity to take. (And to readers of the later books: Sure, I do know that finally this path requires an extended interval of even deeper decadence below a human-sandworm hybrid god-emperor with a purpose to put together humanity for a brand new explosion of interstellar migration, and likewise to breed a line of human beings immune from prophecy and prescience … look, I’m not a nerd, you’re a nerd.)
