A macro-view of the GP


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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by SandRider »

Marty & Daniel are facedancers ...

however, and I've been thinking about this in relation to the "OH Dune Conclusion" project,
that one train of thought that should be explored is the "The Enemy", or another, OH-introduced plot element
could be an alien race, coming to destroy, conquer and/or absorb all human life - Sisterhood-approved "humans",
animal-human, facedancers & masters, etc ...

I'm not saying I'm in favor of such a turn, I'm just saying I think it merits discussion in the Dune7 forum ...

before anyone goes down the Alien Road, tho, I'd suggest a full re-reading of one of the best threads on this board,
a true Classic, and a candidate for inclusion in Orthodox Herbertarian History & Lore ...
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1023" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


and I just spent a half-hour bouncing around the board and the files looking for the specific quote about atomics
being reserved for an "alien" threat, and cannot find it - I suppose I'm mis-remembering the wording and so using
the wrong key words - could someone please provide ?

I hit this :
GREAT CONVENTION: the universal truce enforced under the power balance
maintained by the Guild, the Great Houses, and the Imperium. Its chief rule
prohibits the use of atomic weapons against human targets. Each rule of the
Great Convention begins: "The forms must be obeyed . . . "


which implies the notion with "human targets", but this is, of course, actually the "loophole"
Paul used for the deployment of the Atreides Family Atomics against the Shield Wall @the Battle of Arrakeen ...

the point I was going to make with it is that Frank, being an intelligent man and skilled author, often used such a brevity of words
to describe an element of back-story, trusting that his audience were also intelligent people and could make rational deductions
and conclusions - Gaius Helen's single comment of "men with machines" that explains the Butlerian Jihad is my favorite, and in
my opinion the Best Example of Frank's talent in this regard ...

the quote I am thinking of has something to do with the Great Convention and the agreement to keep family atomics in reserve
only for use against an "alien" threat - I believe it may the only time Frank even mentions the possibility of alien (non-human)
intelligent life, and so is another example of a complex, basic framework for the Known Universe laid out in a single sentence ....

and I believe the need to mention the comparison with the "style" of other "authors" is prolly un-necessary ...
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Tleszer »

Is this what you mean, SandRider?
Frank Herbert in 'Children of Dune' wrote:...House Corrino would not risk an illegal atomic attack [...] At least half the Great Houses would react without thinking if House Corrino broke the Convention [...] They were undoubtedly sincere in subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose: defense of humankind should a threatening "other intelligence" ever be encountered.
Duncan is thinking this as he and Alia discuss the kidnapping of Jessica.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by SandRider »

yes, it must be - I started to search thru Children as well, but I was sorta convinced it was in the Appendix -
but that was the Great Convention entry ...

also, I did think that the phrase was "other intelligence" but wasn't sure - "other intelligence" got zero hits in Dune,
"intelligence" alone got more than I really wanted to wade thru, but did anyway, to no avail...

so, yes, and Thank You ...

I also thought that "reserve" was in the quote, and ran that for a minute, but only in Dune -
again, I thought it might have been in Children, but I was just so convinced that Frank
had laid that little tidbit out right from the beginning, that I was reluctant to let it go ...

which reminded me of another little project I started but haven't finished,that of combining all
six books in one complied file, so a keyword search can be done across them all, without loading
up each file ...

okay then, so what does subscribing to the argument that nuclear weapons were a reserve held for one purpose:
defense of humankind should a threatening "other intelligence"
mean ?

"subscribing" to an "argument" is not the same as putting your House Seal on a solid "Agreement" between the Families and the Emperor ...
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

I think it's a bullshit excuse not to give up your nukes.
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Off-topic: search & editing files

Post by SandChigger »

SandRider wrote:which reminded me of another little project I started but haven't finished,that of combining all
six books in one complied file, so a keyword search can be done across them all, without loading
up each file ...
You don't need to do that; you just need a text editor that will search files and folders on a disk. I use a Mac editor called Text Wrangler and just tell it what folders I want it to search: Canon-only, Mcdune-only, or both. It returns the number of total hits, which files contain the target and number of occurrences. It previews the in-file passages by hit entry, and I can choose to open the actual file or just copy the text from the preview area.

There's no Windows or Linus version that I know of, but maybe someone knows of something with equivalent functionality?
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by SandRider »

Freakzilla wrote:I think it's a bullshit excuse not to give up your nukes.
that's an excellent point that had not occurred to me ....

which is odd, considering my opinions on government & military duplicity ...

I'll agree with that analysis; I always took that little phrase to be Frank setting up
the idea that there were no known "alien races", but that it was a possibility,
as we believe now, given the size of the universe ...
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

SandRider wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:I think it's a bullshit excuse not to give up your nukes.
that's an excellent point that had not occurred to me ....

which is odd, considering my opinions on government & military duplicity ...
Very!
I'll agree with that analysis; I always took that little phrase to be Frank setting up
the idea that there were no known "alien races", but that it was a possibility,
as we believe now, given the size of the universe ...
I can see it happening now. We could be one signature away from nuclear disarmament and someone would say, "Hey, what if an asteroid comes at us?"
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by SandChigger »

(Shlock movie Armageddon notwithstanding, isn't it generally agreed now that nuking an asteroid would be a bad idea?)
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

SandChigger wrote:(Shlock movie Armageddon notwithstanding, isn't it generally agreed now that nuking an asteroid would be a bad idea?)
Depends on the make-up of the asteroid, but yeah.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Shaitan »

SandChigger wrote:(Shlock movie Armageddon notwithstanding, isn't it generally agreed now that nuking an asteroid would be a bad idea?)
Only because such a nuke would presumably be set off on the surface, and because people generally over-estimate the destructive potential of nuclear explosions. You have to imagine that if a particular nuke wouldn't shatter a mountain if detonated in its center, then it won't be big enough to break up an asteroid or comet. That sort of thing takes a BIG nuke; even a Tsar Bomba (~50MT) would be hard pressed to effectively destroy a "planet killer" sized object; at best it would probably break it into pieces that were still large enough that it would simply produce a "shotgun effect" against the Earth rather than saving it.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Shaitan »

It is now generally believed that the best solution to an incoming object would be to intercept and divert its course with a large rocket or by striking it with impactors of such force that they would alter its trajectory to prevent the impact on Earth from happening at all.
Last edited by Shaitan on 23 Nov 2010 20:35, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Tleszer »

... so you're saying that to divert the trajectory of the McDune books we have to... :think:

Of course! It all makes sense! Everything is right in the world now. :lol:
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Shaitan »

Tleszer wrote:... so you're saying that to divert the trajectory of the McDune books we have to... :think:

Of course! It all makes sense! Everything is right in the world now. :lol:
Ssshhhh....you're going to give away my master plan! :shhh:
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Re:

Post by houseofwilliams »

SandChigger wrote:Freak, I thought your view was that Kralizec was the chaos after Leto's death, the Famine Times.

That seem consistent with the books. The word never appears outside of CoD.
This is true, in GED, the term became Arafel didn't it? But I too interpreted both to mean the final event at the end of the GP, the threat that Leto II was trying to prepare humanity for. In that, I might have erred, since there was plenty of evidence to suggest that he was referring to how he was committing humanity to a life of struggle contrary to the kind of stagnation he saw taking root in the old empire.

One other thing, there's lots of mention of how the Scattering was intended to multiply humanity's domains and prevent extinction. However, the return of the HM and the conflict/combining with the GP was surely something he intended as well. By coming up against each other, the GP were made aware of an external threat (what Brian Herbert and KJA inanely referred to as the OUTSIDE ENEMY over and over again, morons!), and their combination provided for a marriage of powers and new technologies. Maybe just me, but I see this as intrinsic to the GP, how the Scattering and the old empire would one day come together to share the fruits of their time apart and be better prepared for Kralisec as a result.
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Re: Re:

Post by Freakzilla »

houseofwilliams wrote:
SandChigger wrote:Freak, I thought your view was that Kralizec was the chaos after Leto's death, the Famine Times.

That seem consistent with the books. The word never appears outside of CoD.
This is true, in GED, the term became Arafel didn't it?
No.

Kralizec - The battle at the end of the universe.
Arafel - The cloud darkness of holy judgement

That's from memory but I'm sure it's close.

But yes, Kralizec was The Famine Times, Arafel was averted by the GP.
But I too interpreted both to mean the final event at the end of the GP, the threat that Leto II was trying to prepare humanity for. In that, I might have erred, since there was plenty of evidence to suggest that he was referring to how he was committing humanity to a life of struggle contrary to the kind of stagnation he saw taking root in the old empire.

One other thing, there's lots of mention of how the Scattering was intended to multiply humanity's domains and prevent extinction. However, the return of the HM and the conflict/combining with the GP was surely something he intended as well. By coming up against each other, the GP were made aware of an external threat (what Brian Herbert and KJA inanely referred to as the OUTSIDE ENEMY over and over again, morons!), and their combination provided for a marriage of powers and new technologies. Maybe just me, but I see this as intrinsic to the GP, how the Scattering and the old empire would one day come together to share the fruits of their time apart and be better prepared for Kralisec as a result.
You lost me there.

The GP is the survival of mankind. That's it. Post-Scattering, whatever happened to the Old Empire was of no consequence.

If you wanted to call a people "the GP", it would be the people in The Scattering.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by SadisticCynic »

(I'm inclined to think he meant BG, not GP, but we'll wait to see what he says.)
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

Ah, that would make more sense. :doh:
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Yeah, nothing that happened after the Scattering was known to LetoII - he states in GEoD that he purposefully only took small peeks at the future to make sure the GP kept going, that's all.

Part of the point/function of the GP is actually that someone like him could never take over all of humanity again. Because almost everyone has the Siona gene (thusly invisible to prescients) and are so spread out, there's simply no way to know what is going to happen, where or when. Very limited things, like "will this rock hit my spaceship" and "are people extinct in 10,000 years" are still visible, but the kind of stuff Paul and Leto pulled off would never be possible again.

That's the beauty of it, once Leto managed to cause the famine times and the scattering, everything else in the GP is on auto-pilot. No one can ever stop it, and no one ever need do anything to help it.

Feel free to discuss though, it's a complex topic in some ways.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by houseofwilliams »

SadisticCynic wrote:(I'm inclined to think he meant BG, not GP, but we'll wait to see what he says.)
That's right, meant BG. Doesn't make sense otherwise!
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by houseofwilliams »

So if I understand the general consensus here, people think that Leto II's GP consisted of breaking humanity of its spice addiction, freeing it of the dominance of any single authority or socio-economic system. So there remains one element that I am working on, in fact that I have suggested that we all work on this one...

What could that threat have been? What was it the HM were running from and humanity needed to be prepaped for? Keeping in mind that Brian Herbert and KJA's version sucked and should never have been written, what is it that the real Herbert would have written?
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by D Pope »

houseofwilliams wrote:...what is it that the real Herbert would have written?
That's a good question, what have you come up with?
Leto II is gone for good, except for OM. The "pearl" was just that; a miniscule portion of what Leto was, and not a compressed version of the whole. The pearl that the worms have do not make them Leto, or in any way similar to him.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

houseofwilliams wrote:So if I understand the general consensus here, people think that Leto II's GP consisted of breaking humanity of its spice addiction, freeing it of the dominance of any single authority or socio-economic system. So there remains one element that I am working on, in fact that I have suggested that we all work on this one...

What could that threat have been? What was it the HM were running from and humanity needed to be prepaped for? Keeping in mind that Brian Herbert and KJA's version sucked and should never have been written, what is it that the real Herbert would have written?
It wasn't anything in particular actually, Leto saw many many ways humanity could (and would) end if it remained as a single combined empire and wasn't set free from both the spice and prescience. Whatever was chasing the HM (SuperFaceDancers is what Daniel and Marty were, but whether or not they were what the HM were running from is unknown) Leto wouldn't have known about.

By the time the HM are running back to the Old Empire, the GP has been already set in place for a long time. And, as far as that particular threat goes (whatever was chasing the HM), I would say the Scattering actually CAUSED it (leto wouldn't have worried about random isolated threats like this one arising amonst the scattering, and probably didn't bother even thinking about the), rather than was in any way intended to combat the HM chasers.

The GP wasn't about trying to prevent a specific threat at all, it was just setting up humanity in such a way as that no single threat could ever be a problem - regardless of what it was.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Oh, and as far as what Dune 7 should have been, we have many discussion here, and even a sub-forum dedicated to attempting to figure out as much as possible based on the few clues FH provided. Feel free to read up and chime in!
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by SadisticCynic »

You've said mostly what I was considering saying: this 'threat' was a danger to the HM, not to all of humanity.

The threat likely was or involved some form of evolved Face Dancer. It would be just like Herbert to use the creativity of the Scattering to produce something dangerous. Creative activity is always dangerous; you don't know what you are going to find. I just thought of this: there is a quote where he says something to the effect of "woe to the opressor when the opressed gain power". That would tie in nicely with the last chapter of Chapterhouse, I think.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

houseofwilliams wrote:So if I understand the general consensus here, people think that Leto II's GP consisted of breaking humanity of its spice addiction, freeing it of the dominance of any single authority or socio-economic system. So there remains one element that I am working on, in fact that I have suggested that we all work on this one...

What could that threat have been? What was it the HM were running from and humanity needed to be prepaped for? Keeping in mind that Brian Herbert and KJA's version sucked and should never have been written, what is it that the real Herbert would have written?
FH never said the threat the HMs were running from endangered the GP. It might be a danger to the Old Empire but humanity would still go on.
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