The Butlerian Jihad at the beging of Dune Movie.....

[Crysknife]

It says that the universe was ruled by thinking machines....we know that through Frank, humans basically gave their decision making to the machines rather than thinking for themselves....not really a terminator tupe scenario, so the word "ruled" was right in one aspect but wrong when known that we "allowed" them to rule. Next it says that humans became enslaved by other machines with men......whatever that means. So I think Frank's version isn't necessarily corrupted by the opening, but it wasn't perfect at the same time. O'reilly had conversations on the Butlerian Jihad with Frank and it closely follows the OH version.

[Sardaukar Capt]

You are right. The McDune books have confused the BJ scenario in my mind so much I mis-remembered the opening to the TV cut. I watched it again on YouTube and its actually a decent telling. If anything has The Terminator type vibe (along with a host of other man vs machine movie ripoffs) its the McDune BJ book.

[leagued]

The TV version of the Dune movie was my first introduction to Dune and so its colored some of my views even through today (More along the lines of the general mood of the thing than the specifics) but I've still resonate a bit with the depiction of the Jihad given there. I never got the feeling that the BJ was about humans fighting robot overlords. Actually, the first impression I got from "Butlerian" was that it was a reference to humanity letting machines do all their work for them (i.e. as "butlers") until they were even doing their thinking for them and humans became "slaves" to their "servants".
I think the problem is that KJA/BH don't have the ability to make a philosophical struggle entertaining. They can only be entertained by big action and dumb popcorn tricks. They couldn't even political intrigue work (which should have made the House series much easier than BJ).
Ok, I think I started rambling a bit there.

[lotek]

Actually, the first impression I got from "Butlerian" was that it was a reference to humanity letting machines do all their work for them (i.e. as "butlers") until they were even doing their thinking for them and humans became "slaves" to their "servants".

Yeah that's more like it.

I think the problem is that KJA/BH don't have the ability to make a philosophical struggle entertaining.

You could even say they don't have the ability to even understand the concept of philosophical struggle, everything they do show how much this is true. It reminds me of Bible die-hards that take everything they read at face value.

They can only be entertained by big action and dumb popcorn tricks. They couldn't even political intrigue work (which should have made the House series much easier than BJ).

And because they cannot be entertained by good writing and deep ideas, they make things go zing pew pew ultra arsum biggestestassever robot prostitute from the future, they don't construct anything because they are so primary (and they probably didn't read johnny mnemonic's description of the primary/technical paradigm). Right from the start they show how much they don't understand what they got in their hands. It's so ironic because one of the lessons I learned from Dune is that you can understand something without knowing all about it, and you can describe concepts that go way beyond your contemporary human experience...
Provided you can write in a way that your reader will assume there is something between the lines. Frank did and does that. They don't.

Ok, I think I started rambling a bit there.

Hey don't worry, we're all ramblers here (well not Eyes, she's too polite for that.)

[Apjak]

The TV version of the Dune movie was my first introduction to Dune and so its colored some of my views even through today (More along the lines of the general mood of the thing than the specifics) but I've still resonate a bit with the depiction of the Jihad given there. I never got the feeling that the BJ was about humans fighting robot overlords. Actually, the first impression I got from "Butlerian" was that it was a reference to humanity letting machines do all their work for them (i.e. as "butlers") until they were even doing their thinking for them and humans became "slaves" to their "servants".
I think the problem is that KJA/BH don't have the ability to make a philosophical struggle entertaining. They can only be entertained by big action and dumb popcorn tricks. They couldn't even political intrigue work (which should have made the House series much easier than BJ).
Ok, I think I started rambling a bit there.

Okay lemme straighten one thing out, Omph can come back me up later, "Butlerian" is almost certainly a literary reference to Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Which was one of the first books to put forward the idea that machines could evolve (in a very Darwinian sense) consciousness. A butler (one who buttles) is traditionally the servant in charge of the wine cellar. Thanks to fiction and 'Murica, we generally conflate Butlers with Valets.

[leagued]

Yeah, I might not have been entirely clear on that, but I was just saying that my first impression- as a kid of like 12 or something- conflated Butlerian and "butler". I don't believe that was FH's intent and the Erewhon connection is pretty clear.
Still and all, that initial impression, though based on an erroneous connection still tends to reflect my opinion of the BJ- that it was a revolt against the descent of mankind into lazy living and thinking enabled by machines. At least partly. When mankind gave up its drives to the machines, they became less than man, "enslaved" to the machines- and the more driven men who could control the machines. It was about a diminution of mankind's sapience.
The other childhood connection that could be horribly off-the-mark in a literal sense but resonates is the old HG Wells Time Machine movie (the one from the 60s or 70s) and its depiction of the Eloi as a race that lives a seemingly carefree life but lack curiosity, motivation, the human spark. That, to me, is what FH's BJ was opposed to- mankind becoming a degenerate and purposeless race.

As I said, these are the thematic impressions that I picked up on when I was pretty young and I wouldn't use the above as an argument to state my case one way or the other in any kind of logical debate about the BJ or FH's intentions (especially since both sources I cited were written/directed by people that were distinctly not him). Those early experiences have colored my mental image of the BJ; your mileage may vary.

[Freakzilla]

Erewhon by Samuel Butler

[inhuien]

You know, the Dune books are really good.

[Freakzilla]

fixed

[inhuien]

It never happened:)

[Naïve mind]

On the other hand, machine supremacy is a theme in Destination: Void, and while there are authors who are extremely conservative about carrying over concepts from one novel to another, Frank Herbert was not amongst their ranks.

The concept of subservient machines causing the loss of ambition in human beings is a subtle one (although not a very original one, not even in the 1960s), but would it spawn a religious taboo to last millennia?

I find that hard to believe without assuming there was some kind of near-extinction event.

[Freakzilla]

The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!

[lotek]

Nothing new under the sun then ^^

[Naïve mind]

The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!

Most of the ten commandments have been consistently violated on a daily basis since that time, even in countries where Christianity was enforced with absolute authority.

On the other hand, in Dune, only the Ixians may have thinking machines, but if they do, they're kept a close secret, because there's no doubt that an angry mob would be ready to tear them to bits. Artificial insemination is taboo--thou shalt not use a machine to do a man's job. Even bureaucracies, machines made of human parts, are considered to skirt the rules. And there's nothing more natural to human society than bureaucracy.

[inhuien]

The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!

Most of the ten commandments have been consistently violated on a daily basis since that time, even in countries where Christianity was enforced with absolute authority.

On the other hand, in Dune, only the Ixians may have thinking machines, but if they do, they're kept a close secret, because there's no doubt that an angry mob would be ready to tear them to bits. Artificial insemination is taboo--thou shalt not use a machine to do a man's job. Even bureaucracies, machines made of human parts, are considered to skirt the rules. And there's nothing more natural to human society than bureaucracy.

What has Christianity got to do with the ten commandments, laws are broken continually

[Freakzilla]

The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!

Most of the ten commandments have been consistently violated on a daily basis since that time, even in countries where Christianity was enforced with absolute authority.

On the other hand, in Dune, only the Ixians may have thinking machines, but if they do, they're kept a close secret, because there's no doubt that an angry mob would be ready to tear them to bits.

What kind of thinking machines did the Ixians have? Besides, they were tolerated because they were on the fringe and pretty much escaped the BJ, along with the Tleilaxu. They were also the military industrial complex for the Imperium.

Artificial insemination is taboo--thou shalt not use a machine to do a man's job. Even bureaucracies, machines made of human parts, are considered to skirt the rules. And there's nothing more natural to human society than bureaucracy.

The Bene Gesserit had computers.

The God Emperor ignored the proscriptions of the BJ.

[Robspierre]

The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!

"I bring to you these fifte...."CRASH! " These ten commandments!"


Rob

[Eyes High]

The 10 Commandments have lasted millenia and that was a result of one guy talking to a flaming bush!

"I bring to you these fifte...."CRASH! " These ten commandments!"


Rob

I know where that's from.

[optimusjamie]

Going by my view that anything which doesn't contradict FH can be called canon, I'd go by what Dune says and say that the BJ was against dependency on machines. Some humans may have been literal slaves, but whether this is actual truth or propaganda is uncertain.

[Serkanner]

Going by my view that anything which doesn't contradict FH can be called canon,

Say again?