When did Holtzmann live?
Posted: 13 May 2008 18:08
Besides the Dune Encylopedia and the 'Abominations' is there any reference on when Holtzmann was alive? Pre-BJ or during the Jihad?
Thank you?
Thank you?
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He's barely mentioned at all in FH's books and I don't think they say when he lived.Davaro wrote:Besides the Dune Encylopedia and the 'Abominations' is there any reference on when Holtzmann was alive? Pre-BJ or during the Jihad?
Thank you?
You being me?Omphalos wrote:You base that on when you think spacefolding engines would have gone in to effect to populate all the planets of hte Imperium?
This doesn't include a probable fringe of sparsely populated planets not yet admitted or included in the Landsraad for various reasons.Historians estimate the riots took eighty million lives. That works out to about six thousand for each world then in the Landsraad League. Considering the unrest of the time, this may not be an excessive estimate, although any pretense to real accuracy in the figure must be just that—pretense. Communication between worlds was at one of its lowest ebbs.
This seems to indicate that "early" space travel was slow, and here "space travel" in this context means "deep space travel." NASA has implicitly defined "deep space" as anything beyond the distance of early Moon missions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;Dune: Appendix II wrote:Mankind's movement through deep space placed a unique stamp on religion
during the one hundred and ten centuries that preceded the Butlerian Jihad. To
begin with, early space travel, although widespread, was largely unregulated,
slow, and uncertain, and, before the Guild monopoly, was accomplished by a
hodgepodge of methods. The first space experiences, poorly communicated and
subject to extreme distortion, were a wild inducement to mystical speculation.
This implies that this period was influenced by the discovery of extra-terrestrial flora and fauna. We might be safe in assuming that the discovery of life other than on Earth might be what would cause a large religious shift to occur, resulting in this rewriting of a passage from the Bible. In this sense, I think we might be safe assuming that Frank meant "deep space" to mean extra-solar travel. Especially so, since I doubt anyone was colonizing planets in our solar system other than Mars or Venus, which don't have life on them as far as we know. Some of Jupiter's moons might, but I doubt they'd ever be colonized.Dune: Appendix II wrote:During this period, it was said that Genesis was reinterpreted, permitting
God to say:
"Increase and multiply, and fill the universe, and subdue it, and rule over
all manner of strange beasts and living creatures in the infinite airs, on the
infinite earths and beneath them."
The fact seems to be that the Landsraad was conceived at around 2,000 BG. I doubt it could have existed before space folding since if its purpose was to maintain lines of communication and stability this would require the ability to actually meet to discuss current issues. Without folding space these meetings couldn't occur, and so we assume there was no Landsraad before space folding. And yet this doesn't imply that space folding couldn't have existed before the Landsraad. We have every reason to assume that there existed a possibly long period of total chaos after space folding was devised, including both rampant expansion and colonization, as well as constant wars between systems and of warships jumping all over the place conquering territory and using atomics against planetary populations. The advent of the Landsraad, the Guild, and the Great Convention would have brought this period of chaos to an end, but there's no telling how long this period would have lasted before it could finally be brought to a close by joint agreements from the major large and small colonies. I think that 2,000-3,000 years of this doesn't seem far-fetched at all, and it could have even been more. To SandChigger's suggestion that space folding had to be recent compared to the advent of the Landsraad, due to there only being ~13,000 colonies by 0 B.G., I would suggest that starting a colony is very hard and that blowing up a colony is very easy, and that atomics and war could have easily checked the rate of successful expansion. Finding out where expansion was taking place could have been done using various methods including torture, spies, or even checking out random nearby systems one by one; it wouldn't take much time to do this and to catalogue it all using computers. Automated scout ships could even have been sent out purely for the purpose of jumping from system to system for centuries to find out which systems had colonies on them, and how large they were.Dune: Appendix II wrote:The major dams against anarchy in these times were the embryo Guild, the
Bene Gesserit and the Landsraad, which continued its 2,000-year record of
meeting in spite of the severest obstacles.
The fact that no one understood the equations would tend to mean that no one could do more with them than had been done previously. Engineers couldn't have done things with equations they didn't understand, as engineering procedures can only be derivative of a comprehension of the mechanics of how the equations work. It's one thing to work off an equation that is understood but unproven (like Fermat's last theorem), but I don't know that engineers could do anything with equations they don't even understand. Since "another way to use Holtmann's theories" here seems to be a revelation to Duncan, we can also assume that there hasn't been any progress in this area for a long time; if there had been, it would presumably mean that someone had, in fact, understood his theories. I believe that Holtzmann created certain technologies, died, and then that was it for 20,000 years or however long until M&D came along.CH:D wrote:Not even Guild Navigators professed knowledge of how they guided foldspace
ships. Ixian scientists made machines to duplicate Navigator abilities but
still could not define what they did.
"Holzmann's formulae can be trusted."
No one claimed to understand Holzmann. They merely used his formulae because
they worked. It was the "ether" of space travel. You folded space. One
instant you were here and the next instant you were countless parsecs distant.
Someone "out there" has found another way to use Holzmann's theories! It was a
full Mentat Projection. He knew its accuracy from the new questions it
produced.