Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Frank specifically wanted to build a human universe. In the Dune universe there are non-terran species, but not any extra-terran sentience. He did incorporate it into other stories of his, but not with Dune. He did that on purpose. He was exploring humanity's actions and destinies, and their effects on one another. A major theme was how far humanity could push itself and still remain human.

Also, it may be an exaggeration to say that there are no other intelligent species in the entire UNIVERSE. It's just the case that none have yet been encountered in this galaxy or any of the other galaxies that humans have reached (and returned from to tell about it?).

That people in the Duniverse at least acknowledged the possibility of other intelligent (and possibly, hostile) life (the "risk factor" you mention) is shown by the excuse they gave for keeping their atomic weapons, even though they were forbidden using them on other humans by the Great Convention.

FH in CoD (19:75) wrote: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.

SandChigger wrote:Also, it may be an exaggeration to say that there are no other intelligent species in the entire UNIVERSE. It's just the case that none have yet been encountered in this galaxy or any of the other galaxies that humans have reached (and returned from to tell about it?).

That people in the Duniverse at least acknowledged the possibility of other intelligent (and possibly, hostile) life (the "risk factor" you mention) is shown by the excuse they gave for keeping their atomic weapons, even though they were forbidden using them on other humans by the Great Convention.

FH in CoD (19:75) wrote: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.

He's obvioiusly talking about the Moon Squid there.

The idea is this - even if they did encounter another species, the likelihood that that species could ever find and wipe out all of humanity is next to zero. The scattering is so huge that there's simply no hope that an agressor species could ever wipe out humanity. By the time they wiped out all the settlements that existed at the time the war began, humans would have settled quadruple that number of new places.

Also, speed isn't really an issue. FH never says there are any limits to how far a ship can foldspace, so instead of just jumping from system to system, or galaxy to galaxy, humans could very possibly jump back and forth across the sphere of the universe. I imagine that the further the jump the greater the risk of collision, but still, nothing could ever hope to catch up to a species with foldspace technology.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Also, speed isn't really an issue. FH never says there are any limits to how far a ship can foldspace, so instead of just jumping from system to system, or galaxy to galaxy, humans could very possibly jump back and forth across the sphere of the universe.

Yeah, that. It was dependence on melange (and hence Arrakis, pre-Scattering) for Navigation that bound humanity to the Old Empire. To state the obvious.

HBJ

I understand what you say. But I was referring to where humanity would find a non-human species is more advanced in all aspects including technology, travel in space, that might have something superior space folding technology.
In addition individuals of the species could have far greater powers than those of Leto (for example, a prescience that would see all people, including those genes of Siona)
It's only one possible example. How would the GP in this case?

There's no single set of limits for all men. Universal prescience is an empty myth. Only the most powerful local currents of Time may be foretold. But in an infinite universe, local can be so gigantic that your mind shrinks from it.
~Leto II

As long as there are still people somewhere the GP endures.

DragEgusku wrote:I understand what you say. But I was referring to where humanity would find a non-human species is more advanced in all aspects including technology, travel in space, that might have something superior space folding technology.
In addition individuals of the species could have far greater powers than those of Leto (for example, a prescience that would see all people, including those genes of Siona)
It's only one possible example. How would the GP in this case?

The likelihood of finding another species with that kind of tech (which according to how prescience works in the Dune universe is possibly impossible) is probably just so low as to be negligable. Nothing is ever truely 100%, we just say things are when the odds get up into insane numbers.

Obviously, there is going to be life elsewhere in our universe, even our own galaxy. Some of that life will evolve to sentience, some won't, some that does will become space-faring, and some of those will survive long enough to become good at it. But the one major variable is time - the likelihood of a super-advanced species existing at the same time as the Human one in the Dune universe is much lower - they could have died out long before, or not yet risen to that level. When you add in these kinds of overlaps the odds become much much lower. Still possible, but considering we're talking about near-godly levels of tech I think it's fair to say that it's simply unlikely that humanity would run into something capable of taking them all out.

I always found it interesting and frustrating that the Duniverse contains no nonhuman sentience (ignoring how intelligent the worms may be).

Though, I was always a bit unclear whether the Muadru were human or alien. I'm sure you guys know the answer to that....hell, I'm not sure if I remember the Muadru being mentioned in Canon at all.

Shaitan wrote:...I'm not sure if I remember the Muadru being mentioned in Canon at all.

That's because they weren't.

Personally I loved Dune being human-only. First off, outside interferance would have ruined the whole point of the first 4 books (the stagnation of humanity). Second off, aliens are almost ALWAYS cheesy. Dune is so ridiculously serious that sentient aliens, especially humaniods (which were popular at that time) would have taken away from the un-ending seriousness that was part of what made Dune unique.

Also, I have a soft spot for human only SF. It forces the author to write more about the "enemy within ourselves" rather than us vs them and so forth. Whatever problems we have, we created, whatever the solutions are, they're up to us to find and impliment. Just like reality.

Not that SF with aliens is automatically less serious/deep literature, far from it, lots of great stuff out there - but I think there is more likelihood of crapolo in a non-human only universe.

The point of the GP was, no matter what the threat, humanity would keep expanding faster than the threat. Mankind was already multi-galactic before The Scattering and had yet to encounter aliens and even if they did they could never even destroy all of humanity because of No-tech and the INM.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Personally I loved Dune being human-only. First off, outside interferance would have ruined the whole point of the first 4 books (the stagnation of humanity). Second off, aliens are almost ALWAYS cheesy. Dune is so ridiculously serious that sentient aliens, especially humaniods (which were popular at that time) would have taken away from the un-ending seriousness that was part of what made Dune unique.

I agree, I think it was an unusual and extremely intelligent choice to leave out aliens. One of those great Frank Herbert decisions.

Freakzilla wrote:

Shaitan wrote:...I'm not sure if I remember the Muadru being mentioned in Canon at all.

That's because they weren't.

Figures. I had a sneaking suspicion they were a McDune creation.

merkin muffley wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Personally I loved Dune being human-only. First off, outside interferance would have ruined the whole point of the first 4 books (the stagnation of humanity). Second off, aliens are almost ALWAYS cheesy. Dune is so ridiculously serious that sentient aliens, especially humaniods (which were popular at that time) would have taken away from the un-ending seriousness that was part of what made Dune unique.

I agree, I think it was an unusual and extremely intelligent choice to leave out aliens. One of those great Frank Herbert decisions.

Combined with the idea to keep the Familiy Atomics "just in case" ... brilliant!

Serkanner wrote:

merkin muffley wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:Personally I loved Dune being human-only. First off, outside interferance would have ruined the whole point of the first 4 books (the stagnation of humanity). Second off, aliens are almost ALWAYS cheesy. Dune is so ridiculously serious that sentient aliens, especially humaniods (which were popular at that time) would have taken away from the un-ending seriousness that was part of what made Dune unique.

I agree, I think it was an unusual and extremely intelligent choice to leave out aliens. One of those great Frank Herbert decisions.

Combined with the idea to keep the Familiy Atomics "just in case" ... brilliant!

No aliens, no robots, no tech... what kind of science fiction book is this?

I do not know whether the introduction of non-humans would have altered the essence of Dune.
Perhaps the problem is that not able to achieve in-depth experience of contact with other beings, perhaps because we can not really imagine a completely different psychology to our (and any interaction with something completely foreign).
Maybe that has exceeded even the power of imagination of Frank Herbert and therefore focused exclusively on men.
There are only possibilities.
Speaking of possibilities, it is possible that Honored Matres to flee from an enemy non-human? I am not talking robots of the novels of Brian Herbert, but to a non-human biological species.
In volume HoD (Heretics of Dune), is a sentence that mentions the possible existence of beings in the Cosmos that life brings them enormous power. Perhaps the phrase refers to people from spilling, but I thought I may refer to other beings (non-human).

(People from The Scattering. )

The Enemy were most likely super-advanced Face Dancers.

DragEgusku wrote:Maybe that has exceeded even the power of imagination of Frank Herbert and therefore focused exclusively on men.

Have you read any of FH's "other" books? He explored alien possibilities in some of his non-Dune books. From this we might conclude that FH left non-humans out of Dune because he wanted to focus on the human condition.

SandChigger wrote:(People from The Scattering. )

The Enemy were most likely super-advanced Face Dancers.

Sorry, the mistake is human.

Yes, it can be very advanced Face-Dancers. But I had the impression that it referred to other beings, that's all.

Freakzilla wrote:

DragEgusku wrote:Maybe that has exceeded even the power of imagination of Frank Herbert and therefore focused exclusively on men.

Have you read any of FH's "other" books? He explored alien possibilities in some of his non-Dune books. From this we might conclude that FH left non-humans out of Dune because he wanted to focus on the human condition.

Yes, I read one of those books (Dosadi experiment), but as I say, do not approach the level of the Dune books.

From this I conclude that Frank Herbert was unable to imagine non-humans and contact with them as he did with people.

DragEgusku wrote:I do not know whether the introduction of non-humans would have altered the essence of Dune.

It would have been distracting from the main issues is all. Why add aliens when they aren't necessary to the story? The humans being all alone by themselves added a sense of seriousness to any threat of extinction I feel.

DragEgusku wrote:

Freakzilla wrote:

DragEgusku wrote:Maybe that has exceeded even the power of imagination of Frank Herbert and therefore focused exclusively on men.

Have you read any of FH's "other" books? He explored alien possibilities in some of his non-Dune books. From this we might conclude that FH left non-humans out of Dune because he wanted to focus on the human condition.

Yes, I read one of those books (Dosadi experiment), but as I say, do not approach the level of the Dune books.

From this I conclude that Frank Herbert was unable to imagine non-humans and contact with them as he did with people.

That's a hell of a conclusion to reach based on ONE non-Dune FH book! Seriously, he wrote the ConSentiency series (Dosadi being the second book), which was populated by many many alien races (tens and tens of them at least) and had humans living in a complex inter-species society. Not sure how that means he couldn't imagine it. Especially the first book in that universe (Whipping Star) focussed almost entirely on first-contact with a difficult to understand (to say the least...) alien race.

Also, the Pandora series deals in extreme and near-perfect detail a very moving encounter between humans and alien sentience. The Pandora series is pretty close to on-par with the Dune series in my opinion.


FH was perfectly capable of writing fantastic alien and human stories, but that doesn't mean every single story has to have aliens. What would aliens have added to the themes/philosophy of Dune? As Freak said, Dune is about humans, all about humans, adding aliens would just dilute the purpose of those books (the first 4 anyways).

I think that Marty and Daniel weren't human....even in the distant manner of Face Dancers. A human-like species from Earth in another Universe maybe? I always thought that the fundamental tension of humanity being "alone" in the Duniverse needed some kind of resolution in the 7th book but that might just be me.

DragEgusku wrote:Yes, I read one of those books (Dosadi experiment), but as I say, do not approach the level of the Dune books.

From this I conclude that Frank Herbert was unable to imagine non-humans and contact with them as he did with people.

Read Whipping Star. It deals with this topic extensively. It will also blow your mind.


Edited to add: Ah, AToE, you beat me to it. Should have read your post first.

HBJ

Shaitan wrote:I think that Marty and Daniel weren't human....even in the distant manner of Face Dancers. A human-like species from Earth in another Universe maybe? I always thought that the fundamental tension of humanity being "alone" in the Duniverse needed some kind of resolution in the 7th book but that might just be me.

I've read the series over a dozen times and the thought never crossed my mind. What made you think that?

Shaitan wrote:I think that Marty and Daniel weren't human....even in the distant manner of Face Dancers. A human-like species from Earth in another Universe maybe? I always thought that the fundamental tension of humanity being "alone" in the Duniverse needed some kind of resolution in the 7th book but that might just be me.

They do almost 100% say that they are face dancers though...