Other Memory

[Freakzilla]

Fraking telemarketer is harassing me

I give those calls to my youngest children.

Ask them for their home phone number and tell them you'll call them back around dinner time.

[reverendmotherQ.]

Fraking telemarketer is harassing me

I give those calls to my youngest children.

Ask them for their home phone number and tell them you'll call them back around dinner time.

Damn it I should have thought of that.

[Omphalos]

I always tell them whoever they are calling for died the day before, then I hang up, crying.

[Ampoliros]

I always tell them whoever they are calling for died the day before, then I hang up, crying.

And people call me evil...

[Omphalos]

I always tell them whoever they are calling for died the day before, then I hang up, crying.

And people call me evil...

My wife thinks its evil too, but I notice she is suppressing giggles as she tells me that.

[reverendmotherQ.]

Explain to me how Serena Butler shows up in Sheanna's other memory?
Only when she is having a hallucination, NOT AN OTHER MEMORY. Jesus, were they drunk when they wrote this or so cold out recording on an ice berg they couldn't think properly? It just makes the whole genetic science aspect that makes the other memory concept seem real while reading the universe of Dune, as if its a possibility just locked away in one's blood, turn into nothing more than a parlor trick that randomly conjurs up whatever the hell KJA wants it to for the purposes of the story. A pretty lame story if you ask me, considering he had to corrupt the very concept of other memory to suit him rather than him adapting to give the greatest scifi ever written SOME sense of justice.
Another question, perhaps more of an idea. The Honored Matres as everyone here should know never have a definite origin in the original texts. They must have been a combination of Fishspeakers(is that hypothesis supported by FranK) that blended together with Bene Gesserit during the Scattering. I could see a Reverend Mother using the fishspeaker platform as plan in the execution of the Missionaria Protectivia to try to bring the panicked population out wandering the universe at random in a haphazard fashion, uniting them under religion to begin to reassemble some semblance of civilization, but the fact the Honored Matres seem to mirror the Bene Gesserit so much in their organization and yang version of the orange substance versus the yin of the spice, but to have completely lost all notion of other memory or even of it's possibility means that either the Bene Gesserit out in the scattering were over ran and out numbered by the Fishspeakers so that all that really happened was the early form of the Honored Matres just took what they wanted from the women in skill and ignored what they thought was unnecessary. Plus, the absence of spice essence probably is the main reason they never where able to achieve the advantage of other memory, thus they based every decision on whims in the fluctuations of power rather than any wizened judgement and the caution that other memory equips their alterego Sisterhood with. So I guess after the first generation of Bene Gesserit died during the Scattering, all they could do was teach and their Fishspeaker counterparts may have had a superstition about allowing themselves the sharing of memories from the "witches." So then the next generation of leaders find themselves alone in the field of advice and thus evolved into the opposite of the Sisterhood's deliberate methods of planning and just did what ever they felt was necessary to save themselves from the unknown and from one another.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Paragraphs damnit! That hurt my brain!

But yes, now you are feeling the pain that we all felt. If it makes you feel any better, I think that writing-wise Hunters was their best work...

[Seraphan]

Paragraphs damnit! That hurt my brain!

But yes, now you are feeling the pain that we all felt. If it makes you feel any better, I think that writing-wise Hunters was their best work...

Could you link to her your review of Sandworms? I think it would help her.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Paragraphs damnit! That hurt my brain!

But yes, now you are feeling the pain that we all felt. If it makes you feel any better, I think that writing-wise Hunters was their best work...

Could you link to her your review of Sandworms? I think it would help her.

I'm no good at linking, but it can be easily found in the Prequels section of the forum.

[Seraphan]

Here it is:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=550&start=0

[SandChigger]

"Linking?" Thang's voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield's filtering. "What has linking to do with it? You link when the necessity arises! Linking's a thing for piggy wienies and other sausages."

[A Thing of Eternity]

I should really edit that list down to just the highlights and just toss it in the mail to the Herberts and KJA.

[reverendmotherQ.]

Paragraphs damnit! That hurt my brain!

But yes, now you are feeling the pain that we all felt. If it makes you feel any better, I think that writing-wise Hunters was their best work...

Could you link to her your review of Sandworms? I think it would help her.

OH MY GOD! This is absolute abomination in the truest sense.
The only interesting original character that crawled out of the garbage of KJA's subhuman mind was norma in the whole machine, butlerian, whatever triology. And what does he do? Turn her from a rational thinking being who was mathematically genius to a boring god! I guessed already two thirds into Hunters that the Oracle was her(seriously, who does he think he's kidding). She was the reason I worked so hard to become better at math - I humoured myself that If I studied hard I could be guild navigator material(damn that there isn't any spice). She was like my math muse. Now she is just a cliche and a lame feminist version of "Oh loook at me! I control all of these once penis possessing mutants!"
FAIL.
Norma is dead, and now the whole interest in the series just died to.

[lotek]

Norma is dead, and now the whole interest in the series just died to.

She did not die by accident, she was murdered!!

A quote about murder:

"Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual-- and after all, what is an individual? ". . . ." We can make a new one with the greatest of ease-- as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself."
Aldous Leonard Huxley : English writer & critic
(1894 - 1963)

(that's gonna be my new sig')

I flamin' knew it!

[reverendmotherQ.]

Huxley is amazing. If anyone should have "updated" Dune, he would have the credentials to do it.

[lotek]

Huxley is amazing. If anyone should have "updated" Dune, he would have the credentials to do it.

well not until we can actually make/grow gholas

[inhuien]

That was my line, shame about the death thing and all....

[SandRider]

Huxley is amazing. If anyone should have "updated" Dune, he would have the credentials to do it.

well not until we can actually make/grow gholas

Huxley died 22 Nov 63, same day as JFK & Jack Lewis ....

conspiracy ?

[lotek]

Huxley is amazing. If anyone should have "updated" Dune, he would have the credentials to do it.

well not until we can actually make/grow gholas

Huxley died 22 Nov 63, same day as JFK & Jack Lewis ....

conspiracy ?

it has to be!

they probably talked to much of dissent and patriotism to be left alive

[reverendmotherQ.]

Huxley is amazing. If anyone should have "updated" Dune, he would have the credentials to do it.

well not until we can actually make/grow gholas

True true.

[gurensan]

...how it relates to previous chapters or books...

Change "previous" to "other" and that was my intention. I won't bring them up here again.

That said, I think it's possible this was something FH might not have been too comfortable with, but then if it wasn't, why was it in his final draft?

I have more to say about it but it looked like a spoiler so I'll refrain. I'll agree with Freak though but say that if time was like a door, it would have had to have been Paul's door only or Alia would have had zero trouble getting around him to do it again. Making Hayt the fulcrum makes it sound like it was him that she couldn't see past. In truth I simply dismissed her trick and left it at that. I hope that's what FH meant for me to do.

Alia's child was just one of the many possible futures she saw. She didn't mention all of the others she also saw with it - that was just the one worth bringing up. That's the trick with prescience, you tend to see many possibilities at once. Many can be discarded out of hand, some are important, and the real talent is to know which is which. Perhaps that's what the BG training really did to make Alia and Paul different.

I like how he recognized that she belonged in the desert. Made me want to know her better and made me distrust Hayt a little less.

[Freakzilla]

Paul had actual and Other Memory Bene Gesserit training, just not from before birth, like Alia. They were both trained by Jessica. Paul even possibly got more actual BG training, depending on when Jessica left Arrakis.

[gurensan]

I meant different from other people, not from each other, though they were quite different in that way as well. Paul was a Kwisatz Haderach but Alia was preborn (yeah, I know you know that.. heh... I'm just pointing out an elephant in the room).

I'm not convinced Paul had access to Other Memory, while Alia certainly had hers available to help train her. Teachers always put their own "spin" or "flavor" on their subject matter, so Paul's mother would have put her distinctive mark on his training. Teachers always do, even when they try not to. His training would have been more specific and purpose-driven and likely had quite a few holes that Jessica's didn't (as he was being trained to rule rather than the deeper training than, say, BGs on the reverend mother trail though I'll concede that Mohiam agreed and told Jessica to teach this - but a couple of months on the R.M. train is nothing compared to the lifelong training acolytes would get), while Alia's was mostly self-directed with the distillation of the hundreds - possibly thousands - of reverend mothers in her Other Memory. Any training Jessica would have given her would have been preaching to the choir, rather literally. I think Paul changed the Water purely on his own while Alia already knew how before birth. That's a big, big difference between brother and sister and goes quite a distance toward explaining their widely differing abilities.

Since there was no mention of Paul's Other Memory in either book, I'm not sure he had it. I think he dealt with things purely by his own talents. He most definitely did not have the benefit of it while his mother was training him as he grew up. I'd be happy for page numbers to say that he did after changing the Water of Life, but to my recollection it just wasn't mentioned. FH left out a lot when it comes to what the Water did to him.

/me grammar checks that giant sentence in the middle.

[Freakzilla]

I meant different from other people, not from each other though they were quite different from each other as well. Paul was a Kwisatz Haderach but Alia was preborn (yeah, I know you know that.. heh... I'm just pointing out an elephant in the room).

The difference is she did not have time to form her own persona before accessing OM.

I'm not convinced Paul had access to Other Memory...

"How would you like to live billions upon billions of lives?" Paul asked.
"There's a fabric of legends for you! Think of all those experiences, the wisdom
they'd bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn't it? And it puts a new shape on
hate. How can you tell what's ruthless unless you've plumbed the depths of both
cruelty and kindness? You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach."
~Dune

How about now?

...while Alia certainly had hers available to help train her. Teachers always put their own "spin" or "flavor" on their subject matter, so Paul's mother would have put her distinctive mark on his training.

Alia has Jessica's memories, so does Paul.

Teachers always do, even when they try not to. His training would have been more specific and purpose-driven and likely had quite a few holes that Jessica's didn't (as he was being trained to rule rather than the deeper training than, say, BGs on the reverend mother trail though I'll concede that Mohiam agreed and told Jessica to teach this - but a couple of months on the R.M. train is nothing compared to the lifelong training acolytes would get)

She was giving him the deep training the whole time:

"The sounds I make could be imitated."
"I'd know the difference."
He might at that, Hawat thought. That witch-mother of his is giving him the
deep training, certainly. I wonder what her precious school thinks of that?
Maybe that's why they sent the old Proctor here -- to whip our dear Lady Jessica
into line.

while Alia's was mostly self-directed with the distillation of the hundreds - possibly thousands - of reverend mothers in her Other Memory. Any training Jessica would have given her would have been preaching to the choir, rather literally. I think Paul changed the Water purely on his own while Alia already knew how before birth. That's a big, big difference between brother and sister and goes quite a distance toward explaining their widely differing abilities.

Since there was no mention of Paul's Other Memory in either book, I'm not sure he had it.

You can deny it all you want, but he did.

I think he dealt with things purely by his own talents.

Talents as a prescient male Bene Gesserit and Mentat?

He most definitely did not have the benefit of it while his mother was training him as he grew up. I'd be happy for page numbers to say that he did after changing the Water of Life, but to my recollection it just wasn't mentioned. FH left out a lot when it comes to what the Water did to him.

Paul asks Jessica to show him where to find male OM:

Aloud, he said: "You speak of a place where you cannot enter? This place
which the Reverend Mother cannot face, show it to me."
She shook her head, terrified by the very thought.
"Show it to me!" he commanded.
"No!"
But she could not escape him. Bludgeoned by the terrible force of him, she
closed her eyes and focused inward -- the-direction-that-is-dark.
Paul's consciousness flowed through and around her and into the darkness.
She glimpsed the place dimly before her mind blanked itself away from the
terror. Without knowing why, her whole being trembled at what she had seen -- a
region where a wind blew and sparks glared, where rings of light expanded and
contracted, where rows of tumescent white shapes flowed over and under and
around the lights, driven by darkness and a wind out of nowhere.

[gurensan]

Paul asks Jessica to show him where to find male OM:

Aloud, he said: "You speak of a place where you cannot enter? This place
which the Reverend Mother cannot face, show it to me."
She shook her head, terrified by the very thought.
"Show it to me!" he commanded.
"No!"
But she could not escape him. Bludgeoned by the terrible force of him, she
closed her eyes and focused inward -- the-direction-that-is-dark.
Paul's consciousness flowed through and around her and into the darkness.
She glimpsed the place dimly before her mind blanked itself away from the
terror. Without knowing why, her whole being trembled at what she had seen -- a
region where a wind blew and sparks glared, where rings of light expanded and
contracted, where rows of tumescent white shapes flowed over and under and
around the lights, driven by darkness and a wind out of nowhere.

...nowhere in the context of that passage did Paul ask about OM.

Paul said: "There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed."
Jessica looked up, found Chani was staring at her while listening to Paul.
"Do you understand me, Mother?" Paul asked.
She could only nod.
"These things are so ancient within us," Paul said, "that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies. We're shaped by such forces. You can say to yourself, 'Yes, I see how such a thing may be.' But when you look inward and confront the raw force of your own life unshielded, you see your peril. You see that this could overwhelm you. The greatest peril to the Giver is the force that takes. The greatest peril to the Taker is the force that gives. It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking."
"And you, my son," Jessica asked, "are you one who gives or one who takes?"
"I'm at the fulcrum," he said, "I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without...." He broke off, look to the wall at his right.

That's a little more context to what you posted above. The part before it is just Paul snarfing a handful of the Water and then grabbing Jessica's head. I don't see OM in it. Sounds more like FH making a comment on basic human nature to me.

"How would you like to live billions upon billions of lives?" Paul asked.
"There's a fabric of legends for you! Think of all those experiences, the wisdom
they'd bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn't it? And it puts a new shape on
hate. How can you tell what's ruthless unless you've plumbed the depths of both
cruelty and kindness? You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach."
~Dune

How about now?

I remember reading that, but I can't remember where it is to look up the context, but IIRC that was Paul referring to his level of prescience and time-awareness, and his awareness of the billions of lives he knew he was going to be responsible for the death of. He barely said anything about being the KH before Jessica changed the Water and became a RM herself, after which she should've been well aware of what a billion lives looks like. If he were talking about OM... then it's a very whiny, immature thing to say to his mother.

The difference is she did not have time to form her own persona before accessing OM.

True. It's not the only difference though. She was born with the deep training and had only to train her body to match. Paul's training could not have been as complete.

She was giving him the deep training the whole time:

"The sounds I make could be imitated."
"I'd know the difference."
He might at that, Hawat thought. That witch-mother of his is giving him the
deep training, certainly. I wonder what her precious school thinks of that?
Maybe that's why they sent the old Proctor here -- to whip our dear Lady Jessica
into line.

Thufir's speculating there, as well as speculating on the reason for Mohiam's visit. There is a possibility that anything that smacks of the BG in their social context might be thought of as "deep training." I don't think we can make this assumption based solely on Thufir's guess. In this arena, we have to perform as mentats as Thufir's not doing it for us.

"The Reverend Mother looked at Jessica. "You've been training him in the Way - I see the signs of it. I'd have done the same in your shoes and devil take the Rules."
Jessica nodded.
"Now, I caution you," said the old woman, "to ignore the regular order of training. His own safety requires the Voice. He already has a good start in it, but we both know how much more he needs... and that desperately." She stepped close to Paul, stared down at him. "Goodbye, you human. I hope you make it. But if you don't - well, we shall yet succeed."

The question is - what type of training? Standard BG training, or the training any BG mother gives to her otherwise normal son? Just a thought experiment, it's undoubtedly much deeper than the usual mom->boy, but we can't rely on Thufir's opinion of the BG when judging the depth of the training of one person, even given these two.

BUT! Here's something!

"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory - in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues in the past . . . but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said that a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts."

and then later:

The old woman stared at Paul, then: "Young man, as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees the possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."

I can give you that he had it (grudgingly), after he took the Water, even though Frank played it down, but not using your quotes. Alia had it from the get-go and FH spent more than a few sentences on what was wrong with Alia. Yeah she was too young, but the differences in their training are pretty huge.

I think these should probably be moved to the appropriate area... I think we're discussing Dune more than Chap 21 of DM. You game to move it?

*Don't mind any typos, I don't have a PDF of anything and have to look stuff up and type book quotes by hand.