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With the release of the Butlerian Jihad books, I’ve had a lot of weird theories about machines surviving the jihad and remaining dormant to eventually destroy man. It was after all, Leto’s Golden Path that prevent that holocaust. So what happened, where’d the machines come from?
After rereading Dune Messiah, I found these few sentences describing the Quizarate priests/government officials:
His gods were Routine and Records. He was served by mentats and prodigious filing systems. Expediency was the first word in his catechism, although he gave proper lip-service to the precepts of the Butlerians. Machines could not be fashioned in the image of a man’s mind, he said, but he betrayed by every action that he preferred machine to men…
So it appears that the Quizarate would have eventually re-created the machines! That’s why Paul had to denounce his own religious order in CoD.
But it would have happened anyway. Had the Bene Gesserit’s original breeding program come to fruitarian, they too would have created a similar religious order to control humanity. And we learned that they never stopped using computers in Chapterhouse.
So I guess the thinking machines will ALL be exterminated in the latest prequel after all. But the machine war did set up the events that would happen 11,000 years later that would have led to their re-birth and ultimate victory over the humans. Wow!
That line you quoted I interpet totally differently. I think he’s just pointing out that while yes Humanity did destroy and wipe out the Thinking Machines, we have simply replaced them with humans that mimic their results. So in essence we lost. To use another Sci-Fi example it’s similar to Delenns reaction when Sheridan said “We have to think like the Shadows.” What’s the point of winning so you can simply become what you hate? Humans can’t think like machines, we’re not supposed to. But this particular human in the quote does not prefer “emotion and passion” to “logic and efficiency”. Love is not efficient, no human emotion ever is in the long term. Therefore he has become a Clockwork Orange, an Organic Machine. In fact that is Duncans very reaction when he see’s the Cyborg pilot in Chapterhouse Dune.
My take on it anyway. But I totally agree with what you’re saying about their motives. I think just about every faction believed that if they could re-create machines it would not only ease their labors and duties but possibly free them from the bonds of the Empire and the Landsraad. It was their fear of the OC Bible and the fanatics that would follow if they were discovered that prevented this.
Quick answer:
I don’t think they’re “dormant” personally. Humanity is confined utterly and totally, almost as if they had lost the war. Now, the only way to travel in space requires Melange and only one company has the pilots, so one company decides where the borders of the Human Universe lay. For all we know the machines have an Empire as large as the entire Galaxy and this little tiny corner of it is just a zoo until they can defeat Humanity.
But, they cannot defeat humanity as-is, they need to weaken them and control them ala The Matrix/Melange. If Humans think they have free-will they wont care who rules them, even if that free-will is a lie and totally controlled by the supply/demand of Melange, and where the company that controls the Melange will take you.
Omnius could have easily survived =/ I don’t want him to ’cause he’s not that interesting but there’s a million ways he could survive (including the Update Ships) and I do think he’s one of the “Ancient enemies” mentioned in both the Dune series and the prequels.
I want a big dirty nasty Erasmus as the ‘Ancient Enemy’ personally, manipulating all the lesser factions against the major ones until the day Humanity fully becomes slaves to the melange and a quiet, totally unoticed takeover would happen and humanity would never even know it, because they don’t know the face of who rules them.
Long Answer:
However…
In the greater Dune Universe, it’s always been argued by many that both Richese and IX were building new “Thinking machines” different from the normal thinking machines.
But the Emperor always knew there were still ‘thinking machines’, and the IX claim that House Corrino is “one of our greatest customers”. So why were these other “thinking machines” so noteworthy in Dune? And why is the Emperor so troubled if he himself relies on machines? I’ll get back to that.
When that movie was produced (83) Herbert had not yet written the final books, I think he was only up to God-Emperor at that point and God-Emperor was to be the final book. Then out of the blue in 83’ish he announced that the series would conclude and oh btw come see my movie! Heretics came out in 84 and Chapterhouse in 86.
So he began to build upon ideas that came to him from the Encylopaedia as well as the movie.(I’m assuming, but it seems odd that he had a new thirst for the “Dune” series after it’s release)
The other MAJOR MAJOR hint that we got in Herberts narration of Lynchs Dune was that, and I quote:
“Some of mankind turned their machines against the rest of mankind and enslaved them.”
Why would Herbert contradict himself when the books clearly state that it was machines not humans that enslaved mankind?
Then we had the prequels….
In the prequels we learn that it was in fact Humans that enslaved manking. They realized mankind had become so lazy and reliant upon machines (non-thinking ones) that this small group of Humans later known as the Titans used that technology to enslave their own race and take over.
It was later when the Humans faced a mortal death that they themselves became machines, forever immortal.
Now back to my original point.
Could Herbert have been hinting that new Cymeks were being created???
In the original Dune Universe it is very clear at least from my PoV that the Humans have almost totally forgotten…..what…..really…..happened…during the Jihad.
Instead they’ve used the Orange Catholic Bible and other texts as a history of what happened. A totally corrupt history which leaves no room for cooperation with any type of thinking machines, and associates it with “Evil”.
This is generic mind-control to keep people in line. But why? And was it created with this intention? Or like many religions did it simply get carried away with itself over time?
I have a strong belief that someone survives the Jihad and has been manipulating Humanity towards the goal of making them slaves to the Melange.
When Leto2 thwarted that effort they invaded enmasse.
However Leto2 upon his death forced the “Scattering” which prevented Humanity from being ‘found’ and wiped out. Remember he created Siona so that Humans could be immune from being sought out through Prescience.
Who is this enemy Leto2 saw?
Now for what I think….
Someone survived the Jihad, and perhaps through Agamenmons memory Leto2 had identified them.
The other strange thing about Leto2 is his reaction towards the Bene Tlielaxu. He treats them differently from every other race and his mannerisms scream:
I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE UP TO!!!!
He even leaves the Bene Gesserit a message from the distant past about this new enemy but to contradict myself he does not associate this enemy with the BT but instead claims the BT are a lost cause, forever caught in their own dogma.
The only concrete proof that machines are returning from the past is that Leto2 calls them “The Ancient Enemy” and in Sionas dream in the desert she sees machines seeking out the last of humanity.
<Continued>
So it kinda hints to me that the enemy is Omnius, because Omnius is the only one (so far) capable of having such a far reach, and Omnius unlike Erasmus and the Titans has EXTRAORDINARY patience. He even suggests to Erasmus that the solution to the “human problem” is time. As machines they have unlimited time, but humanity evolves, it devolves, it changes and mutates.
Omnius never wanted war with the Humans, it was the Titans who drove the war through their contempt and hatred of it. Which suggests to me that personality either will be imprinted upon Omnius or perhaps Erasmus will be imprinted upon Omnius.
😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛
It’s so hard to say, so I’m pretty much throwing my thoughts out there, cause I don’t have a freaking clue where this series is heading.😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛
”LexxLurker” wrote:When that movie was produced (83) Herbert had not yet written the final books, I think he was only up to God-Emperor at that point and God-Emperor was to be the final book. Then out of the blue in 83’ish he announced that the series would conclude and oh btw come see my movie! Heretics came out in 84 and Chapterhouse in 86.
So he began to build upon ideas that came to him from the Encylopaedia as well as the movie.(I’m assuming, but it seems odd that he had a new thirst for the “Dune” series after it’s release)
The seriees was to conclude with GEoD.The publisher showed up to his house with a dumptruck full of money and told him to write more Dune novels. BTW he had to seperate himself from much of the Encyclopedia’s ideas for legal reasons. (independent authors’ intellectual copyrights). Much in the same way that the encyclopedia differs ever so slightly from the novels.
The other MAJOR MAJOR hint that we got in Herberts narration of Lynchs Dune
Cool I didn’t know that was his voice!
“Some of mankind turned their machines against the rest of mankind and enslaved them.”
Why would Herbert contradict himself when the books clearly state that it was machines not humans that enslaved mankind?
In the prequels we learn that it was in fact Humans that enslaved manking. They realized mankind had become so lazy and reliant upon machines (non-thinking ones) that this small group of Humans later known as the Titans used that technology to enslave their own race and take over.
It was later when the Humans faced a mortal death that they themselves became machines, forever immortal.
The titans ruled for a thousand years. But they were lazy too and created a program to manage the machines for them, this program evolved into Omnius. Omnius took control of the Titans and humanity, so the machines were in fact slave masters of humanity.
Leto’s goal was to make sure that humanity always kept growing an expanding. Except for a boom in growth and exploration immediately after the Jihad, humanity remained mostly dormant for 14,500 years. Leto forced a need for humans to expand subconsciously into humanity. He also destroyed any system that would have held all of humanity together, ex: Spacing Guild, Fish Speakers, Ixians, Tleilaxu, Bene Gesserit, Lansraad. This way is a catastrophe occurs to one part of humanity, it wouldn’t destroy the rest of us.
As for Siona, hiding humans from prescience was a way to keep a mysterious force from tracking down all of humanity one at a time.
The first thing that Omnius does on Geidi Prime is send out innumerable copies of himself to establish beachheads for when humanity discovers these other planets. I wonder if these are fully accounted for.
It certainly seems that Leto’s scattering is not unlike what Omnius did at that very moment through realization that change required a catalyst (also parallel to Erasmus’ spawning of the rebellion cell blocks).
I always wondered about how the lack of thinking machines morality was ever squared with the solutions they came up with. Even in the original core books some of the solutions seem a bit on the questionable side.
gnocchi wrote:The first thing that Omnius does on Geidi Prime is send out innumerable copies of himself to establish beachheads for when humanity discovers these other planets. I wonder if these are fully accounted for.
What book does it mention that? It’s been a while since I read the two books, but I don’t remember the machines having a foothold on Geidi Prime.
I would assume that the guild navigators could’ve tracked down the remaining machines with their prescient abilities. Although prescience was never fully explained in the novels…
This is mentioned in the Butlerian Jihad (Book 1 of the Pre-prequel trilogy). After Xavier reviews the homeworld, the cymeks use projectile ships to trash the generators and then an Omnius copy is setup right away. The Giedi-Omnius uses the Giedi Prime production facilities to make copies of itself and launches it to uncharted territory.
Giedi Prime is the planet that Serena decides to take a commando team – Star Wars style – in and starts up the 2nd generator. It’s also the conflict where she gets captured and taken to Earth.
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