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Chapter 30

Posted: 12 Feb 2008 17:52
by Freakzilla
This Fremen religious adaptation, then, is the source of what we now recognize
as "The Pillars of the Universe," whose Qizara Tafwid are among us all with
signs and proofs and prophecy. They bring us the Arrakeen mystical fusion whose
profound beauty is typified by the stirring music built on the old forms, but
stamped with the new awakening. Who has not heard and been deeply moved by "The
Old Man's Hymn"?

I drove my feet through a desert
Whose mirage fluttered like a host.
Voracious for glory, greedy for danger,
I roamed the horizons of al-Kulab,
Watching time level mountains
In its search and its hunger for me.
And I saw the sparrows swiftly approach,
Bolder than the onrushing wolf.
They spread in the tree of my youth.
I heard the flock in my branches
And was caught on their beaks and claws!

-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan

Liet Kynes has been left in the desert to die without stillsuit or water. He's semi-delerious yet he still can't stop being an ecologist. He can smell a dangerous spice blow in the sands beneath him. He hears the voice of his father, lecturing him on ecology. He hopes his Fremen friends will see the vultures circling above him and come to investigate. The thought of the water in the pre-spice mass below him is madening. A worm is sure to come to the spice blow but he has no maker hooks to mount it. In a flash of realization, Kynes realizes what a hero to the people could do in this landscape. He has already sent word to the Fremen to look for and protect Paul and Jessica. The birds on the sand near him flee as a gas bubble lifts him then swallows him in the sand. His dying thoughts are that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

Posted: 03 Apr 2009 17:34
by Sev
Possibly my favourite chapter of the entire book. Was it one of Frank's as well? - after all he did choose it for the 'Dune' extract in the British 'Best of...' collection in 1975 edited by Angus Wells.
The introduction to the extract is as follows:

Go to any ten science fiction fans and ask them to name their favourite novels. You'll get some pretty disparate answers, but I'll bet that amongst the majority favourites you'll find Dune.
It's been a cult book for some time now - and it's certainly one of the all-time greats - so it would be difficult to compile a collection of Frank Herbert's best work without it.
This extract is Frank's own choice and (needless to say) it's a good one.
I won't even try to outline the story. If you haven't read it yet go out and buy it. Now.

Posted: 03 Apr 2009 19:27
by Seraphan
Sev wrote:Possibly my favourite chapter of the entire book. Was it one of Frank's as well? - after all he did choose it for the 'Dune' extract in the British 'Best of...' collection in 1975 edited by Angus Wells.
The introduction to the extract is as follows:

Go to any ten science fiction fans and ask them to name their favourite novels. You'll get some pretty disparate answers, but I'll bet that amongst the majority favourites you'll find Dune.
It's been a cult book for some time now - and it's certainly one of the all-time greats - so it would be difficult to compile a collection of Frank Herbert's best work without it.
This extract is Frank's own choice and (needless to say) it's a good one.
I won't even try to outline the story. If you haven't read it yet go out and buy it. Now.
I think it was one of Beverly Herbert's favourites, check the McNelly interview.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 13:26
by Freakzilla
Revised

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 17:44
by Freakzilla
Clean

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 06 Jan 2014 12:14
by Freakzilla
What was it that Kynes realized as he died?

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 10:40
by Apjak
I am a desert creature.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 10:56
by Freakzilla
Apjak wrote:I am a desert creature.
I think there had to be more to it than that...

He felt the bubble lift him, felt it break and the dust whirlpool engulf
him, dragging him down into cool darkness. For a moment, the sensation of
coolness and the moisture were blessed relief. Then, as his planet killed him,
it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong,
that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

Even the hawks could appreciate these facts.

~Dune

Maybe he was just delusional? I mean, he WAS hallucinating.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 07:18
by Serkanner
Freakzilla wrote:
Apjak wrote:I am a desert creature.
I think there had to be more to it than that...

He felt the bubble lift him, felt it break and the dust whirlpool engulf
him, dragging him down into cool darkness. For a moment, the sensation of
coolness and the moisture were blessed relief. Then, as his planet killed him,
it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong,
that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

Even the hawks could appreciate these facts.

~Dune

Maybe he was just delusional? I mean, he WAS hallucinating.
"... persistent principles of the universe were accident and error." The first things that come to mind is "chaos" and "evolution". What were the religeous convictions of these scientists and Kynes father? Were they perhaps followers of the creation theories?

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 13:03
by Omphalos
Causation? Herbet examines that one a good deal in the following pages.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 13:15
by Freakzilla
Serkanner wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:
Apjak wrote:I am a desert creature.
I think there had to be more to it than that...

He felt the bubble lift him, felt it break and the dust whirlpool engulf
him, dragging him down into cool darkness. For a moment, the sensation of
coolness and the moisture were blessed relief. Then, as his planet killed him,
it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong,
that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

Even the hawks could appreciate these facts.

~Dune

Maybe he was just delusional? I mean, he WAS hallucinating.
"... persistent principles of the universe were accident and error." The first things that come to mind is "chaos" and "evolution". What were the religeous convictions of these scientists and Kynes father? Were they perhaps followers of the creation theories?

Maybe it was the opposite, maybe he had a religious revelation? :think:

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 16:25
by Serkanner
Freakzilla wrote:
Serkanner wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:
Apjak wrote:I am a desert creature.
I think there had to be more to it than that...

He felt the bubble lift him, felt it break and the dust whirlpool engulf
him, dragging him down into cool darkness. For a moment, the sensation of
coolness and the moisture were blessed relief. Then, as his planet killed him,
it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong,
that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.

Even the hawks could appreciate these facts.

~Dune

Maybe he was just delusional? I mean, he WAS hallucinating.
"... persistent principles of the universe were accident and error." The first things that come to mind is "chaos" and "evolution". What were the religeous convictions of these scientists and Kynes father? Were they perhaps followers of the creation theories?



Maybe it was the opposite, maybe he had a religious revelation? :think:

:think: ... yeah, you can read that sentence both ways. At least I do, but that might be a non native speaker problem.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 09 Mar 2023 08:58
by the rev
It's a burn on his father, who's been lecturing him the entire time he's dying. Scientists use reason, are trying to find the reason for how everything came to be and how it works. The law of this or that. Kynes had just realized that the Fremen would accept Paul as a 'hero', as a messiah, and end up enslaved to him. Destroying the work he and his father had started, but that is a different topic. Paul and his jihad represent 'chaos', the 'uncertainty factor'. Something his father never foresaw. Thus accident and error has, as usual, hijacked man's greatest efforts.

I enjoy these debates about meaning because there's so many angles you can analyze. I believe Frank meant them to be like Buddhist koans or other similar thought-puzzles. For instance if a tree falls in a forest... The more complicated the answer, the more you debate it, the further from the true answer you get. Often the answer is mind-numbingly simple and right in front of your nose. Or maybe it isn't?

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 13 Mar 2023 10:53
by georgiedenbro
I never noticed this thread before, so I'll have a go at it now. I think the big realization while he was dying was that Kynes' idea of planetology was all wrong. He had been making a similar error that mentats make, which is to evaluate a system as if it's some fixed quantity and you're playing with the numbers to analyse it and maybe change it. The oracle-reality is that you're part of the system you're analyzing, and that your analysis and your contributions change the system you're analyzing. And not only that, it will be changing you as you're changing it, so you have to calculate in not only a system changed by you, but changes in you as the system changes you, and how those changes will change the system further. In the case of Paul and the Fremen they may rule him as much, or even more, as he rules them. And for a planetologist the folly is to think you're controlling the changes to the planet, when in fact it's the planet mostly in charge. The line about accident and error, it seems to me, refers to the lack of control people can have over the environment, and how circumstances change change unpredictably, and so anticipates quite nicely some themes in the later books.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 17 Mar 2023 15:03
by the rev
The epiphany he has is similar to the vision Paul has been having. The cause is Paul and the effect is the Fremen erupting across space in a Jihad.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 20 Mar 2023 14:06
by georgiedenbro
the rev wrote: 17 Mar 2023 15:03 The cause is Paul and the effect is the Fremen erupting across space in a Jihad.
But that's just the point: the cause is not Paul, it was going to happen either way. Chapter 1 outright says as much. Paul jumped on board a tidal wave that was already underway, and served its purposes.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 21 Mar 2023 08:15
by the rev
Made a reply but I realized it muddled things more so I deleted it so I can write a better answer.

Let's forget about prescience and KHs and see things from the point of view of Kynes the Elder and the scientists. They know nothing of Bene Gesserit breeding programs and 'endless possiblities'. This takes place tens of thousands of years in the future, at a point where terraforming has become accepted science. It may seem difficult to us, hundreds of years of work, because we're seeing things from the Fremen point of view. In geological time a few hundred years is a nanosecond. For an Imperial planetologist transforming Arrakis into 'an earth' is easy. Like clockwork. They certainly have various models designed to predict faster and slower rates of change. Different amounts of input/output can drastically change the results.

The one thing all their equations aren't going to solve is a messiah. The fulfillment of a prophecy thousands of years old. Prescience, KH's, it's the last thing they'd expect in a rational universe. This is Kynes the Younger's epiphany and joke while he's dying.

The line 'creature of the desert'. I find it interesting that Paul refers to Chani in similar terms, later in the series.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 21 Mar 2023 10:29
by georgiedenbro
the rev wrote: 21 Mar 2023 08:15 It may seem difficult to us, hundreds of years of work, because we're seeing things from the Fremen point of view. In geological time a few hundred years is a nanosecond. For an Imperial planetologist transforming Arrakis into 'an earth' is easy. Like clockwork. They certainly have various models designed to predict faster and slower rates of change.
This kind of thing could be true in some other sci-fi book, but not this one. This isn't a Mule situation like Foundation, where all the calculations were correct except for some wildcard person coming along. Herbert through the series repeatedly drills into us that we actually cannot control the environment, that it is not like clockwork, and that it will test us and change us far more than we can tame it.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 21 Mar 2023 16:02
by the rev
I disagree. Of course the environment can be controlled. They have planetologists, air conditioning. It's a world of science not magic. The terraforming of Dune is
successful.
But that's besides the main point here, Kynes BELIEVES it will work the way they planned it. Unless a messy hero gets in the way. So he gets to have a joke at his dad's expense.

I believe you're applying Frank's thinking about politics to his thinking about planet science. Dune is as much about ecology as political science. Nothing has happened here to make Kynes think the plan to transform Dune is wrong.
Kynes is correct, the transformation of Dune will continue according to the plans of the scientists and it will quickly change into a planet unthinkable to the Fremen
Mentats certainly take their own blind spots into their calculations, this is mentioned several times in the course of the book. The water inside Kynes body, the change over time the terraforming will create, are factored into the equations.

Science isn't about control. You don't try to control a system. You try to understand it. Once you understand something it is yours. When Frank talks about control he's talking about peoples' minds and ideas. The 'world inside' not 'outside'. I recommend reading Appendix 1 again; it goes into quite a bit of detail about the ecological aspects of Dune. A list of the plants and animals present on the planet would have been interesting. I notice he focuses on North American creatures. I'd like to see termites and anteaters of some kind, preferably aadrwolves.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 22 Mar 2023 01:31
by Cpt. Aramsham
Herbert discusses this directly in the 1969 McNelly interview:
McNelly: Well, man is then, as you view him, a creature who ecologically is a destructive force, a divisive force.

Herbert: Well, we tend to think in Western culture—I'm talking about Western man, you realize that. […] We tend to think that we can overcome nature by a mathematical means; we accumulate enough data and we subdue it. […] We subdue nature. […]

McNelly: This is the point you made earlier, Bev, in talking about the death of the planetary ecologist in Dune being a very touching spot, I think you said—a very moving…

Beverly: Well, I felt also it was a very significant point. A lot of the story swung around this: how the ecologist died. I thought it was very important that the planet killed the ecologist.

McNelly: Even though the planet—I mean, even though the ecologist was technically able to subdue anything within that…

Beverly: Well, there he lay dying […] and understanding everything that was happening to him.

[…]

Herbert: This of course was done deliberately for that purpose—to turn… it's a turning point of the whole book, but a pivot, you might say, and the very fact that Kynes, who is the Western man, in my original construction of the book, sees all of these things happening to him as mechanical things doesn't subtract from the fact that he is still a part of this system because it is observing him. He's lived out of rhythm with it and he got in the trough of the wave and it tumbled on him.

[…]

Herbert: Yes. You see, Western man has assumed that if you have—that all you need for any problem is enough force, power, and that there is no problem which won't submit to this approach, even the problem of our own ignorance.
What Frank doesn't explicitly say, but I think is pretty self-evident, is that in the final version, Pardot represents the side of Kynes that is "Western man."

So I agree with george that Frank Herbert sees the terraforming project as essentially flawed, an approach based on a mechanistic view that with sufficient science and force we can subdue nature. (And it's worth noting that the Florence, OR anti-desertification project that inspired Dune has been given up as a flawed approach, with some of the plants used to fix the sand now seen as invasive species.)

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 23 Mar 2023 12:36
by georgiedenbro
Thanks for the quote, Cpt. Aramsham, that is a really helpful direct statement on the subject. Outside the plot of the book I think FH is trying repeatedly to show that forces are in play that have a life of their own, and that you can't control them.

SOFT SPOILER

Within the plot itself this can be seen in the relationships between Kynes and Dune, between Paul and the Fremen, between the BG and the KH, and of course there are many signs in the future books that the attempt to control the ecology causes trouble no one anticipated. Kynes most certainly does not understand all the forces in play, nor can he. I think his death scene is amazing depiction of an epiphany that it took his destruction to make him realize; that all these things are so much bigger than he is, that it's a joke to think he could own all of it.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 28 Mar 2023 15:49
by the rev
What Frank doesn't explicitly say, but I think is pretty self-evident, is that in the final version, Pardot represents the side of Kynes that is "Western man."
Pardot was the father, he was the outsider, a 'western man'. The Fremen thought he was mad. Liet, the son, is the man we're discussing. He's a fremen, native born and raised. I can imagine his father had a minimal role in his upbringing, besides training him for his duties as a planetologist.
Within the plot itself this can be seen in the relationships between Kynes and Dune, between Paul and the Fremen, between the BG and the KH, and of course there are many signs in the future books that the attempt to control the ecology causes trouble no one anticipated.
The 'trouble' is caused by Paul's government speeding up the rate of change. The parallel is the rapid industrialization of the modern world. Under the original plan it would have taken generations, moved in very small increments. Compare the changes in Dune, when the terraforming was moving at a 'human' pace to the changes by Dune Messiah. They have weather satellites to control the weather! Paul is so powerful he can 'make it rain'. Obviously the conservative traditional fremen aren't going to like this.

All this 'trouble' is caused by one thing.
No more terrible disaster could befall your people then for them to fall into the hands of a hero
Then, as the planet killed him, it occured to Kynes, that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles in the universe were accident and error
Accident, as in Kynes stumbling over a spice bubble. What's another word for accident? Disaster. 'No more terrible accident could befall your people...' Paul is the disaster, the accident. The greater disaster, the epiphany Kynes has, is most likely to be the Jihad. Especially considering that while this is happening Paul is having his vision of the Jihad.
I think his death scene is amazing depiction of an epiphany that it took his destruction to make him realize; that all these things are so much bigger than he is, that it's a joke to think he could own all of it.
It seems like you're mixing the elder Kynes and the younger into one character, easy to do. The younger Kynes is a fremen. When does he ever claim to 'own' Arrakis? When does he think he's 'bigger' then the ecology of the planet? It would go against everything Kynes is. Kynes is a worm rider. He doesn't need to have that epiphany. He knows it subconsciously. We know this because of the earlier scene when he lectures the duke, when the harvester is destroyed, and when he's contemplating his own death in this chapter. One milisecond of hubris and he's wormfood. It's central to his character, his dislike of the 'western man' and his scientist father. The only 'new' epiphany he can have is about Paul.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 29 Mar 2023 11:36
by georgiedenbro
the rev wrote: 28 Mar 2023 15:49 He's a fremen, native born and raised. I can imagine his father had a minimal role in his upbringing, besides training him for his duties as a planetologist.
Liet passes for an Imperial planetologist, and clearly spends part of his time living away from Arrakis. He may be Fremen, but he's also able to act as if he wasn't one when he needs to. Other Fremen can't do that, because their culture is very strict. He straddles both sides. I don't know why you'd suppose anything about his upbringing.
Accident, as in Kynes stumbling over a spice bubble. What's another word for accident? Disaster. 'No more terrible accident could befall your people...' Paul is the disaster, the accident. The greater disaster, the epiphany Kynes has, is most likely to be the Jihad. Especially considering that while this is happening Paul is having his vision of the Jihad.
Accident doesn't mean disaster, it means things you can't anticipate. The series as a whole is really not concerned with disasters, as in, bad events. It is very concerned with things that cannot be predicted or controlled. As an example, Yueh isn't a special character because he did a bad thing or caused ruin for the Atreides; he's special because in betraying them he also did something unexpected and saved them. No one accounted for what he might do in their grand planning.

I can't offer more detail in this reading chapter, but I don't think Paul particularly changed the course of anything. It was going to happen anyhow, with or without him. He chose for it to be with him, because otherwise it would mean House Atreides would fall.
When does he ever claim to 'own' Arrakis? When does he think he's 'bigger' then the ecology of the planet?
It was you who claimed that science would allow us to plug in the numbers and own the ecology. Kynes is a planetologist who believes in his science. It is your contention, more or less, that a planetologist in the future is bigger than the ecology. And I think Kynes shared the same idea you do, which is dispelled in this chapter.
his dislike of the 'western man' and his scientist father.
Do you have any quotes to back this up?

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 30 Mar 2023 03:19
by Cpt. Aramsham
georgiedenbro wrote: 29 Mar 2023 11:36
the rev wrote: 28 Mar 2023 15:49 his dislike of the 'western man' and his scientist father.
Do you have any quotes to back this up?
That Liet carried resentment of his father? Isn't that pretty clear from this chapter? For example:
He never could stop lecturing, Kynes thought. Lecturing, lecturing, lecturing—always lecturing.

In a minute I'll get up and tell him what I think of him, Kynes thought. Standing there lecturing me when he should be helping me.

Why aren't you helping me? Kynes wondered. Always the same: when I need you most, you fail me.
georgiedenbro wrote: 29 Mar 2023 11:36 Liet passes for an Imperial planetologist, and clearly spends part of his time living away from Arrakis.
Almost certainly not. As the Baron points out, as someone aware of the effects of spice withdrawal he would not leave the planet.

But otherwise I agree. The key point about Kynes—in fact, the essential element of his character—is that he is a "man of two worlds," torn between his Fremen side and his "Western," scientific-materialist side. This is established from the very first of his introduction:
His first encounter with the people he had been ordered to betray left Dr. Kynes shaken. He prided himself on being a scientist to whom legends were merely interesting clues, pointing toward cultural roots. Yet the boy fitted the ancient prophecy so precisely.
Practically any time we are let into his thoughts, we see how he struggles to balance these two sides of himself, and this conflict is of course a major theme of this chapter, expressed through his hallucinatory dialog with his father. At the very end he resolves the conflict by consciously embracing his Fremen side ("You see me, Father? I am a desert creature.") and concluding that "his father and all the other scientists were wrong" in their scientific arrogance (including himself).

I'm reminded of Soul Catcher, where Charles Hobuhet finds himself similarly torn between Native American tradition and the Western way of thinking that he has been acculturated into, leading to a mental break and the creation of the "Katsuk" persona. (Katsuk=Liet)

To understand Herbert's point about the limits of science, I would point to his essay "Men on Other Planets" (1976), where he critiques the assumptions underlying Asimov's Foundation (while praising the individual stories themselves):
1. The nine stories are firmly rooted in behaviorist psychology to an extent that would gratify B.F. Skinner. Foundation history, which is to say the human function, is manipulated for larger ends and for the greater good as determined by a scientific aristocracy. It is assumed, then, that the scientist-shamans know best which course humankind should take. This is a dominant attitude in today's science establishment all around the world. ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice," a symphonic poem by Paul Dukas, isn't a very popular work with this establishment. The plot from the Goethe poem deals with an apprentice sorcerer who tries one of his master's spells and can't countermand it.)

2. While surprises may appear in these stories (e.g., the Mule mutant), it is assumed that no surprise will be too great or too unexpected to overcome the firm grasp of science upon human destiny. This is essentially the assumption that science can produce a surprise-free future for humankind. There's another Skinnerian tenet. It says that you produce this kind of future by management. And that, with all its paradoxes and inconsistencies, is another recurrent them in science fiction.

3. It is assumed that politics in this managed future can be reduced to the terms, the conflicts and the structures as they are understood on earth today. This is an odd assumption by a scientist because it says that nothing new will be discovered about politics in all of those intervening centuries. We can close the Patent Office, so to speak; we already know it all.
So yes, the "accident and error" Kynes recognizes is partly Paul and the Jihad, but as an illustration of a greater point: things don't go according to plan, and grand schemes concocted by an expert elite will fail because of unexpected events.

Re: Chapter 30

Posted: 30 Mar 2023 06:55
by the rev
I'm reminded of Soul Catcher, where Charles Hobuhet finds himself similarly torn between Native American tradition and the Western way of thinking that he has been acculturated into, leading to a mental break and the creation of the "Katsuk" persona. (Katsuk=Liet)
Nice catch, Soul Catcher is a good one. Charles' conflict is very similar to the one Liet experienced, choosing between his allegiance and his allegiance to the empire. In both instances the native roots were stronger. Liet's decision was made when he rescued the Atreides.

The issue I've been dancing around, was Liet's vision prescience? Or was it simply logical, a moment of clarity? Fremen suppress their prescience, restrict it to their subconscious. However Liet was basically drowned in spice, besides being blown to pieces. He's Chani's father, the God Emperor's grandfather. I reckon his vision of the Jihad was likely a prescient vision. Of course this is all open ended, nothing is spelled out for you so you have to make the meaning yourself. That way whatever epiphany you imagine Liet to have becomes your own. This is why Frank was a genius; expressing complex ideas with few words, as simply as possible.