Potential ending, what do you think?


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PadishahOfDune
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Potential ending, what do you think?

Post by PadishahOfDune »

I’ve just finished Chapterhouse: Dune. And a great void fills me now that I wasn’t expecting to feel. I thought that I would be happy with the ending, but I’m not. Here are the few things that come to mind:

Sheeana: clearly she’s supposed to have great role in Dune 7, is she meant to be the savior of humanity? I think Duncan is supposed to play a big role, but I think Sheeana is the ultimate protagonist not him. I say this because of this line: “it’s the next phase: Muad’Dib to Tyrant to Honored Matres to us to Sheeana…to what?” what is her role?? Will she play the role the Bene Gesserit want her to play, the reincarnation of Leto to lead humanity on a new religious path?

Daniel and Marty are clearly Face Dancers who have accumulated so many lives that are now godlike creatures that possess immense technology that borderline to the omnipresent and omnipotent. In GEofD, Leto talks about the vision that Siona experiences when she takes the spice essence: “She would carry with her forever afterward the clear sights and sounds and smells. The seeking machines would be there, the smell of blood and entrails, the cowering humans in their burrows, aware only that they could not escape . . . while all the time the mechanical movement approached, nearer and nearer and nearer ...louder...louder!”
Is it possible that these machines are the creation of Daniel and Marty? That there isn’t really an army of Face Dancers but it’s just Daniel and Marty who absorbed all other Face Dancers and just have robots to do their dirty work?

Choosing a planet for Duncan: "And I had such a nice planet picked out for them, one of the best. A real test of their abilities" could it be that Daniel and Marty wanted to truly be gods? They wanted to absorb all the human personalities out there and become all knowing. But why be gods if you have no one to rule over. Maybe they wanted to start over and create humanity all over again using their own specifications, using Duncan and Sheena as Adam and Eve and so on. The Honored Matres were always talking about the enemy’s weapon that turns people into vegetables, could it be that the weapon is simply another function of the net, which just scoops up peoples’ personalities leaving them devoid of life, like vegetables. Maybe that’s the way that Daniel and Marty collect the personalities?

Cosmic democracy: Frank told author Norman Spinrad that he "'planned to end the series with a novel that would transition to a fictional universe of democratic rule." My interpretation is that eventually, Dunacan and Sheena would somehow be able to stop Daniel and Marty but instead of destroying their technology, use it for the benefit of humanity. Thus the net can be used instead of scooping up peoples’ personality, it would connect the mind of all people in the universe, making humanity a giant single consciousness that is inherently democratic since we would all know what each other think and would have to work in a consensual manner, thus a cosmic human democracy.

What do y’all think?
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Freakzilla
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Re: Potential ending, what do you think?

Post by Freakzilla »

I think Siona's vision was of the destruction of humanity that Leto II prevented.
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georgiedenbro
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Re: Potential ending, what do you think?

Post by georgiedenbro »

I don't think that M&D were going to be antagonists in any straightforward way. It is entirely plausible that their abilities would end up being of use in general individual independence. I agree with you that Frank's comments about universal democratic rule seem to fit in with the themes of the books and their progress. And so in answer to the progression of Muad'Dib - Tyrant - HM - 'us' - Sheeana - ? I think the next step might be 'everyone or in the case of rulers, maybe 'no one''.

If anything the multitudes of lives that the BG and finally the FD's could access would be a way of humanity coming back in touch with its heritage. What better way to respect people in the present than to have a real communion with people from the past? It's when the living perceive that the past began at their birth and that the future is an abstraction, that problems arise. The BG showed how to speak with our ancestors; the BT learned how to become the ancestors as well ("it's personas we collect"). When humanity gains the ability to 'be' a multitude within each person I think Frank would say this brings us closer to what he saw as humanity being like one large connected organism.

But true democracy can never really exist when each person thinks of himself as being alone and unconnected to past or future.

Just my 2c.

Oh, and since Freak beat me to it: I agree with him that Siona's vision was of something that would have occurred during the time of Leto II's reign. I don't think it relates to M&D, especially since Frank hadn't planned to write HoD and CH:D when he wrote GEoD. The only thing I'd add is that it's possible Siona's vision was of something that Leto II both caused and also prevented.
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PadishahOfDune
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Re: Potential ending, what do you think?

Post by PadishahOfDune »

Freakzilla wrote:I think Siona's vision was of the destruction of humanity that Leto II prevented.
I guess I've always thought of Siona's vision of something from the future. your interpretation is very plausible too
PadishahOfDune
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Re: Potential ending, what do you think?

Post by PadishahOfDune »

georgiedenbro wrote: If anything the multitudes of lives that the BG and finally the FD's could access would be a way of humanity coming back in touch with its heritage. What better way to respect people in the present than to have a real communion with people from the past? It's when the living perceive that the past began at their birth and that the future is an abstraction, that problems arise. The BG showed how to speak with our ancestors; the BT learned how to become the ancestors as well ("it's personas we collect"). When humanity gains the ability to 'be' a multitude within each person I think Frank would say this brings us closer to what he saw as humanity being like one large connected organism.
That's very interesting, I think I agree with you. I'm just wondering how the story would go on to explain this concept of multitudes and democracy etc.
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Naïve mind
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Re: Potential ending, what do you think?

Post by Naïve mind »

I don't think it was ever the intention that the whole universe would transition to a single form of government—as it sort of contradicts the Golden Path. What we did get were two novels about how Frank thought a democracy could work well, and a lot of barely-veiled sneers at our current ones.
georgiedenbro
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Re: Potential ending, what do you think?

Post by georgiedenbro »

Naïve mind wrote:I don't think it was ever the intention that the whole universe would transition to a single form of government—as it sort of contradicts the Golden Path. What we did get were two novels about how Frank thought a democracy could work well, and a lot of barely-veiled sneers at our current ones.
I think the idea is to suggest how a real functioning democracy could exist at all, at any size. FH seems to be suggesting that not only must people be primed for it and need it (such as what Leto II did during his reign), but also for certain truths to become available to people that give them perspective without at the same time giving them power over others. Paul, for example, had perspective in spades but in the end all the KH at that time could do was rule other men. Paul's wisdom didn't come at the right time or place to make men free, but only to enslave them all the more effectively.

I don't think I meant to suggest a completely universal democracy; I suspect that the human instinct to dominate and enslave will always return in one way or another, but it's a question of how real democracy can exist at all. I quite agree with FH on this, if I am doing some sort of justice to what he thought.
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