Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Freakzilla wrote:They didn't transplant worms, they transplanted sandtrout.

Do we know that for sure?

Freakzilla wrote:What if, the sandtrout were fish on another planet's ocean and the sand plankton were native in the Arrakeen oceans and they formed a symbiosis...

That's an interesting idea - I used to think that Leto's ability to form an assimilation between himself and the Sandtrout were due to the thousands of lifetimes worth of experience of Reverend Mothers inside of him and their Mastery of Prana Bindu, and that this allowed for the radical skill with which to merge with the trout.

I never considered that maybe the Sandtrout made completely merging with a foreign entity's biochemistry possible - how would their merging with the Plankton in the Arrakeen oceans coincide with the desertification of the planet, though?

Nameless Swordsman wrote:

Freakzilla wrote:They didn't transplant worms, they transplanted sandtrout.

Do we know that for sure?

I do...

His voice barely above a whisper, he said: "I know what happened, Ghanima."
She bent close to him. "Yes?"
"The sandtrout . . ."
He fell silent and she wondered why he kept referring to the haploid phase
of the planet's giant sandworm, but she dared not prod him.
"The sandtrout," he repeated, "was introduced here from some other place.
This was a wet planet then. They proliferated beyond the capability of existing
ecosystems to deal with them. Sandtrout encysted the available free water, made
this a desert planet . . . and they did it to survive. In a planet sufficiently
dry, they could move to their sandworm phase."
~Children of Dune

Freakzilla wrote:

Nameless Swordsman wrote:

Freakzilla wrote:They didn't transplant worms, they transplanted sandtrout.

Do we know that for sure?

I do...

His voice barely above a whisper, he said: "I know what happened, Ghanima."
She bent close to him. "Yes?"
"The sandtrout . . ."
He fell silent and she wondered why he kept referring to the haploid phase
of the planet's giant sandworm, but she dared not prod him.
"The sandtrout," he repeated, "was introduced here from some other place.
This was a wet planet then. They proliferated beyond the capability of existing
ecosystems to deal with them. Sandtrout encysted the available free water, made
this a desert planet . . . and they did it to survive. In a planet sufficiently
dry, they could move to their sandworm phase."
~Children of Dune

That's what happens when you haven't read the book in a decade.

I read them every year, mostly.

Besides, I've had this discussion before.

Nameless Swordsman wrote:That's an interesting idea - I used to think that Leto's ability to form an assimilation between himself and the Sandtrout were due to the thousands of lifetimes worth of experience of Reverend Mothers inside of him and their Mastery of Prana Bindu, and that this allowed for the radical skill with which to merge with the trout.

I think there's a passage in Chapterhouse where Sheeana considers following in Leto's footsteps, so . . . possibly.

There is.

Naïve mind wrote:

Nameless Swordsman wrote:That's an interesting idea - I used to think that Leto's ability to form an assimilation between himself and the Sandtrout were due to the thousands of lifetimes worth of experience of Reverend Mothers inside of him and their Mastery of Prana Bindu, and that this allowed for the radical skill with which to merge with the trout.

I think there's a passage in Chapterhouse where Sheeana considers following in Leto's footsteps, so . . . possibly.

Oh.

Disregard, I was very busy with work that night.

I overlooked the simplicity of the conclusion about the 'Trout and plankton having a symbiotic relationship with one another, and thought he was implying something about the 'Trout merging with the plankton.


Again, I'm a Work-Horse in RL. So I'm bound to overlook some things here.

Freakzilla wrote:What if, the sandtrout were fish on another planet's ocean and the sand plankton were native in the Arrakeen oceans and they formed a symbiosis...

While the idea of life improvising and finding new ways to adapt would be fitting in Dune, remember that the sandtrout and worms aren't animals but are some kind of fungoid plant-animal thing. It seems unlikely - although really who knows - that a weird fungoid thing from one planet (the trout) could come to Arrakis and then end up growing up from a native creature from Arrakis (sand plankton). Two random fungoid plant/animals evolving separately and then one ends up being the older version of the other? I like the idea in principle, but...

Also my guess is that Leto figures out the origin of the Arrakis desert using prescience. It seems likely he saw a vision of the future wherein the sandtrout turn some other planet into a desert, and seeing this would inform him about what likely happened on Arrakis. I don't think it would be 'prescience of the past' as then Paul would have seen it, and I don't think Paul would have missed something like that. I'd say there's no chance Leto has any knowledge of it from OM, as then not only would Ghani know it too, but therefore so would the Fremen RM's, and I think the book suggests that Leto is the only one around who has figured this out. If anyone else has even an inkling of it there would be enough knowledge to create a spice planet elsewhere, and clearly no one for quite a while figures out how to do it.

I'll just back up what was said earlier about the secret language being French: it's French (source: I speak French fluently).

I take the chapter's epigraph to be related to Leto's plan:

Children of Dune wrote:"I stand between fish and worm," he murmured.
"What?"
He repeated it louder.
She put a hand to her mouth, beginning to suspect the thing which moved him.
Her father had acted thus; she had but to peer inward and compare.

Leto's identity is some conglomerate between the local ecology (being a Fremen and an Atreides heir) and between his own personality as it relates to that ecology. He'll adapt as he needs to thrive in that system; here he says that he 'stands between fish and worm', perhaps indicating that he intends to become a more direct part of the local ecology and, like a chameleon, to blend right in to the environment. His personality (that of a combined OM chorus mixed with being a Fremen and an Atreides, plus the grandson of Liet) is ideally suited to change and adapt itself to the desert environment.

Could it be that Ghanima didn't search for the answer in her OM?

Freakzilla wrote:Could it be that Ghanima didn't search for the answer in her OM?

I guess anything's possible, but usually I don't assume 'they could have but happened to not do so' as an explanation. If it was in OM, though, it would imply a direct ancestor witnessed it. If that was a Fremen/Zensunni then the Fremen would know about it. As it happens I think Arrakis was already a desert when the Zensunni arrived. The odds of whoever did witness the desertification (if anyone did) being a direct ancestor seems remote, but more to the point Leto also would have known about it earlier if it was in his OM. Notice that he only realizes what happened right as he begins having his visions? The first time he begins to know things Ghani doesn't and to diverge from her is when he has the visions. I think it was a vision of the future.

"I stand between fish and worm," he murmured.

... fish as in a Christian symbol representing God? Worm ... God ... God-Emperor?

Serkanner wrote:"I stand between fish and worm," he murmured.

... fish as in a Christian symbol representing God? Worm ... God ... God-Emperor?

Insofar as the oracle is said to "cast his net into the sea of time" there may be a fisherman image in Dune, but in the case of that quote it seems pretty clear to me that Leto means he's going to prevent the fish (sandtrout) from becoming worms during his lifetime, that worms will cease to exist and he will stand in the way of sandtrout going through the chrysalis phase. The minor double meaning is that Leto will literally stand between the fish, i.e. they will physically surround him, and the result of them being linked together on him will create the effect of a small worm.

georgiedenbro wrote:

Serkanner wrote:"I stand between fish and worm," he murmured.

... fish as in a Christian symbol representing God? Worm ... God ... God-Emperor?

Insofar as the oracle is said to "cast his net into the sea of time" there may be a fisherman image in Dune, but in the case of that quote it seems pretty clear to me that Leto means he's going to prevent the fish (sandtrout) from becoming worms during his lifetime, that worms will cease to exist and he will stand in the way of sandtrout going through the chrysalis phase. The minor double meaning is that Leto will literally stand between the fish, i.e. they will physically surround him, and the result of them being linked together on him will create the effect of a small worm.

That is indeed the most likely explanation ... I forgot that Leto is probably one of the few people who actually knows a trout is a fish