Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

So we know it takes place in Hawai'i, on an Earth that would have never been carpet-nuked because it was no longer important enough to warrant such action. But WHEN did the C.E.T. take place?

AFTER the Butlerian Jihad (201-108 B.G.), for certain:

FH in the Religion Appendix of Dune wrote: Hesitantly, the leaders of religions whose followers had spilled the blood of billions began meeting to exchange views. It was a move encouraged by the Spacing Guild, which was beginning to build its monopoly over all interstellar travel, and by the Bene Gesserit who were banding the sorceresses.

The Guild is described as "embryo" and just "beginning to build" its monopoly, which firmly places the C.E.T. on the Before Guild side of the B.G./A.G. divide. But when? Was it before or after the Battle of Corrin (88 B.G.), arguably the most important political event of the immediate post-Jihad/pre-Guild period? And if after, how many years later?

The C.E.T. meets for seven years, a period which could easily fit within the twenty years before Corrin and quite luxuriously in the 88 years after. But the ways the Guild is described make me think it more likely that it took place closer to the earlier rather than the later end of things.

Opinions?

I get the idea it was almost immediately after the BJ. That was sort of how they "picked up the pieces".

You are both wise and knowledgeable.

A quick scan of the appendix revealed that.

Hesitantly, the leaders of religions whose followers had spilled the blood
of billions began meeting to exchange views. It was a move encouraged by the
Spacing Guild, which was beginning to build its monopoly over all interstellar
travel, and by the Bene Gesserit who were banding the sorceresses.

Frank's saying that the separate leaders hesitantly stated then process, that doesn't sound immediately immediate.

Not directly related at all to this subject, but in the following quote we get an approximate figure of the number of member planets in the Landsraad directly post jihad.

"We are producing an instrument of Love to be played in all ways," they said.
Many consider it odd that this statement provoked the worst outbreaks of
violence against ecumenism. Twenty delegates were recalled by their
congregations. One committed suicide by stealing a space frigate and diving it
into the sun.
Historians estimate the riots took eighty million lives. That works out to
about six thousand for each world then in the Landsraad League.

13,333.333 repeated

What kind of time range would you put on "doesn't sound immediately immediate"?

5 years? 10 years? 20? 50?

Had foldspace technology been put into use then? That's a relevant question. No fold space likely means that everything took just that much longer to accomplish.

Well, I personally assume a two-thousand-year-old Landsraad implies space-folding for an even longer period, but vroom-vroom fans can substitute their favorite mode of travel. To have the Jihad be fought across humanspace in just "two generations", though, you have to assume some form of FTL transport & communications.

The real issue, I think, is that it's post-Jihad, which means no one is going anywhere anymore OPENLY using navigational computers or AI. Travel is either done the Guild way or NO way. (And that's probably more a matter of mob than governmental enforcement. Pop into orbit over some world and they figure out you're using computers to get around and BOOM?) But since the Guild is still "embryonic" and just getting going, it probably doesn't have a lot of ships (and there certainly aren't any heighliners or massive things of that sort) and there are 13,000-plus planets (those are just the ones represented in the Landsraad, remember) to carry news, goods & travelers between. (Remember that line after the description of the riots about "Communication between worlds [being] at one of its lowest ebbs.")

One reason why I wonder if FH didn't envision the C.E.T. as pre-Corrin (if he even had a definite date in mind) is there's no mention of the new Corrino imperial government as being one of "[t]he major dams against anarchy in [the] times" following the anti-ecumenical riots, a list which includes "the embryo Guild, the Bene Gesserit and the Landsraad".

I think it's probably impossible to set a definite date, but I'm pretty damned certain it weren't held in no 8 B.G.

I imagine the aftermath of the BJ was HOW the Guild got it's monopoly. There were other FTL companies but they used computers so were out of businees after the Jihad. The Guild, was fairly new and using Navigators thus didn't violate the proscription... voila, instant monopoly.

I'm with Freak and Chig on this, I always imagined it happening shortly after the Jihad and before the Battle of Corrin. Otherwise, like Chig said, the Corrinos probably would have had something to do with it.

Also, I'm wondering if there's something to the mention of the Guild giving "free transport for all Landsraad and CET business." Sounds to me like one of the ways they would have consolidated their monopoly--comping all the bigwigs is a great way to get all those government contracts, right? This, of course, in addition to everything else that's been said so far.

And yeah, all this WAY BEFORE 8 B.G.

That last is of course the main point in terms of our jihad.

I think the pre-Corrin possibility represents an interesting wrinkle, even if it is a little tight fitting it into those twenty years between Jihad-end and Corrin. In such a chronology, the riots halfway through the C.E.T. period and loss of life (and, no doubt, of property?) they resulted in might even have played a role in the political developments that led to the struggle for power that culminated in the Battle of Corrin.


If there were any other "FTL companies" or other parties still around competing with the Guild, it's probably a safe bet assuming that they weren't on the side of the Corrinos in the Battle.

SandChigger wrote:What kind of time range would you put on "doesn't sound immediately immediate"?

5 years? 10 years? 20? 50?

Multiple choice, my favourite. I'll go for B, no C, no B. Final answer, B. I think, by which I mean I assume.

OK, that's cool.

So the C.E.T. getting underway a whole century after the Jihad ended doesn't make too much sense, huh?