House Harkonnen prequal


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Omphalos
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Post by Omphalos »

Freak, do you think that no-field technology evolved over the course of the last four books so that actual invisibility was something that only came later? Not aware of any textual evidence that supports this myself, but it is what I have though for a long time.
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Freakzilla
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Post by Freakzilla »

Omphalos wrote:Freak, do you think that no-field technology evolved over the course of the last four books so that actual invisibility was something that only came later? Not aware of any textual evidence that supports this myself, but it is what I have though for a long time.
The only thing we would have to base that on is Dar-es-balat and the Harkonnen no-chanber versus the latter-day no-ships.

IIRC, Leto's no-field was intended to conceal his stash from both mechanical and physical sensors as well.

Third and we believe that this is equal in portent to the actual discovery,
there is the storehouse itself. The repository for these journals is an
undoubted Ixian artifact of such primitive and yet marvelous construction that
it is sure to throw new light on the historical epoch known as "The Scattering."
As was to be expected, the storehouse was invisible. It was buried far deeper
than myth and the Oral History had led us to expect and it emitted radiation and
absorbed radiation to simulate the natural character of its surroundings, a
mechanical mimesis which is not surprising of itself. What has surprised our
engineers, however, is the way this was done with the most rudimentary and truly
primitive mechanical skills.

~God Emperor of Dune

From that I get the impression that a no-field imitates whatever environment it is in, more like VERY good camoflage as opposed to actual invisibility.

This is taken from the archeologist's lecture at the begining of the book, which is as you know well after Leto's division. Note that he mentions how primitive the technology was, I'm sure they continually improved on the "invisibility" [to] human senses over time.
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