Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Greetings my fellow Dune fans

So I am reading Paul of Dune as of right now, and on page 101 of the TOR hardcover book, it states:

"The fact that Paul had not seen this [a battle his jihad-army lost quite unexpectedly) with this prescient vision astonished his followers. But to Paul, the shocking military turnabout suggested that the rebellious Earl's detailed plotting with the eleven lords must have taken place in the blurring proximity of a powerful navigator."

I am aware that entities who have prescience cannot "see" each other. But are Guild Navigators capable of "blurring" conversations from others who have prescience?

In other words: if I was to do something nasty I didn't want a prescient person to know, all I have to do is to have a conversation with my buddy with "a powerful navigator" around?

Fasimir Henring wrote: ↑04 Jan 2025 16:58
I am aware that entities who have prescience cannot "see" each other. But are Guild Navigators capable of "blurring" conversations from others who have prescience?

Have you read Dune Messiah?

The error here may be reading Paul of Dune and trying to link it to Frank Herbert’s Dune books. As many others have (more astutely than I) discussed among the Cast Out over the years, BH/KJA do not have an understanding of much of Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles.

Reading the prequel slop you will find constant plot holes, inconsistencies, retcons, character/personality/motivation alterations, poor prose (only Stephanie Meyer compares in terms of their writing ability…), deus ex machina, and overall just a downer of an experience that will lead to questions like the one you are asking here. It turns Dune into Star Wars and in the process of that transition the soul of the original author’s intent is lost..

I highly recommend you read the original six Dune books in order and wipe any prequel nonsense from your memory. In your introduction post you mentioned seeing the movies - I can assure you that it is worth reading the books covered by these adaptations even if you generally believe you know the plot details. Many things about the books are different, and every time you reread them you will discover new things and have new questions…

Frank Herbert, from ‘When I Was Writing Dune’ wrote:Looking back on it, I realize I did the right thing instinctively. You don’t write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you’re really doing it, that’s all you’re doing: writing.
There’s an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money(energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.
That was really my intention all along.

Fasimir Henring wrote: ↑04 Jan 2025 16:58 I am aware that entities who have prescience cannot "see" each other. But are Guild Navigators capable of "blurring" conversations from others who have prescience?

In other words: if I was to do something nasty I didn't want a prescient person to know, all I have to do is to have a conversation with my buddy with "a powerful navigator" around?

The short answer is yes, as per Dune Messiah. To keep spoilers to a minimum, there's a meeting among various conspirators, to which a Guild Navigator is invited mainly in order to shield the meeting from prescience.

Note that Frank Herbert is not particularly consistent on this point. In Dune, Paul can specifically see Guild Navigators in his visions, though they cannot directly see him:

People.

People.

He saw them in such swarms they could not be listed, yet his mind catalogued them.

Even the Guildsmen.

And he thought: The Guild—there' d be a way for us, my strangeness accepted as a familiar thing of high value, always with an assured supply of the now necessary spice.

But the idea of living out his life in the mind-groping-ahead-through-possible-futures that guided hurtling spaceships appalled him. It was a way, though. And in meeting the possible future that contained Guildsmen he recognized his own strangeness.

He held himself poised in the awareness, seeing time stretch out in its weird dimension, delicately balanced yet whirling, narrow yet spread like a net gathering countless worlds and forces, a tightwire that he must walk, yet a teeter-totter on which he balanced.

On one side he could see the Imperium, a Harkonnen called Feyd-Rautha who flashed toward him like a deadly blade, the Sardaukar raging off their planet to spread pogrom on Arrakis, the Guild conniving and plotting, the Bene Gesserit with their scheme of selective breeding.

"You have seen the future, Paul," Jessica said. "Will you say what you've seen?"

"Not the future," he said. "I've seen the Now." He forced himself to a sitting position, waved Chani aside as she moved to help him. "The Space above Arrakis is filled with the ships of the Guild."

"What stays the Guild's hand?" Jessica whispered.

"They're searching for me," Paul said. "Think of that! The finest Guild navigators, men who can quest ahead through time to find the safest course for the fastest Heighliners, all of them seeking me … and unable to find me. How they tremble! They know I have their secret here!" Paul held out his cupped hand. "Without the spice they're blind!"

However, he cannot see Hasimir Fenring, who is not prescient, but whose almost-Kwisatz Haderach status has somehow allowed him to turn the power to a form of camouflage:

Something in his own secretive depths stayed the Count then, and he glimpsed briefly, inadequately, the advantage he held over Paul—a way of hiding from the youth, a furtiveness of person and motives that no eye could penetrate.

Paul, aware of some of this from the way the time nexus boiled, understood at last why he had never seen Fenring along the webs of prescience. Fenring was one of the might-have-beens, an almost Kwisatz Haderach, crippled by a flaw in the genetic pattern—a eunuch, his talent concentrated into furtiveness and inner seclusion.

I don't think it's necessarily an inconsistency that Paul can see some navigators. Perhaps it requires some amount of active concentration for a navigator to do this.

"There are people and things in our universe which I know only by their
effects," Edric said, his fish mouth held in a thin line. "I know they have been
here . . . there . . . somewhere. As water creatures stir up the currents in
their passage, so the prescient stir up Time. I have seen where your husband has
been; never have I seen him nor the people who truly share his aims and
loyalties. This is the concealment which an adept gives to those who are his."
~Dune Messiah