I’ve only seen the (new) films, so this article will be focused around that. Unfortunately, the only Dune book I own is God Emperor of Dune…which isn’t really the first book.

I have no idea what to say about this one. It’s so weird that…

Is it bad? Probably. But it’s also more enjoyable than the new films at times.

Also, Lady Jessica was not great, which is a far greater sin.

I think this film takes itself too seriously and comes off as boring/pretentious at times. Though this might actually make it match Frank Herbert’s vision…as he also comes off as pretentious to me.

The visuals are pretty sweat though. My biggest issue is that there isn’t more Lady Jessica in the movie, because she’s kinda hot.

I watched half of it but since it was so long I stopped. I never really got to finishing it because I found it a bit boring. Though I do plan to finish it.

There are two aspects to Dune that I think are actually really cool…with the rest sort of being meh. These will not be surprising to people who like Dune or to those who know me thru the wiki.

I think the Bene Gesserit are pretty cool…though not just because they’re women. I actually didn’t think much of them before I learned that they have total control of their own bodies…and suddenly: I’m intrigued.

The Bene Gesserit are an order of sexy nuns, basically. They operate a millennia-old eugenics program to birth the Übermensch. This being the Dune universe, Bene Gesserit undergo training which leads to some pretty incredible abilities, mostly related to having a full control of the body.
This means that they can pick the gender of their next baby at conception and are technically immune to poisons, since they can identify the poison while it’s inside them and produce an antidote. They also possess mind control powers via The Voice and can tell if you’re lying or not.

And, proving that Frank Herbert totally isn’t a pervert who wrote fetish material into his books they are also very sexy and know a lot of sexual techniques. Though that’s kinda redundant information, since they have total control of their bodies…who knows what they could do in the bedroom?

They operate within a pretty strict hierarchy and are cynical missionaries. They secretly control the galaxy from the shadows (while claiming to be pro-Emperor) and go planet to planet planting false prophecies and beliefs among the locals, to make them easy to manipulate if a Bene Gesserit appears among them.

I would also make the argument that the Bene Gesserit are the only faction that line up with Dune’s theme of “improve the human, don’t become dependent on other things” because…well, while the Reverend Mothers are dependent on Spice…most Bene Gesserit are not. Most of their abilities seem to be ‘natural’ human abilities that theoretically any human can learn.
And most of these abilities really do make Bene Gesserit self-reliant in a way that the other major Dune worldbuilding things don’t.

I think the concept of the Mentat is stupid and practically stupid as well.

Mentats are often described as human computers or human calculators…but that description isn’t entirely accurate. They are more like a walking spreadsheet.
This is because they can ‘hold’ a vast amount of data, make massive calculations and even do analysis of that data…which they can then calculate and so on.

The problem is that they aren’t a computer and, in fact, lack many of the advantages of a computer that actually make them useful. To be fair, when Frank Herbert wrote Dune, many of the advantages of microcomputers weren’t visible because they didn’t exist…but, in hindsight, it’s pretty clear that the Mentat doesn’t work.

To explain why, let me direct you to the humble spreadsheet. The thing about a spreadsheet is that a human can totally make a spreadsheet in the real world. All you need is a whiteboard (or just a sufficiently large wall; or some paper), some chalk and then the data you’re putting into it. Then you just have to manually draw the table, the values in each cell and you can even draw a nice graph to visualize the data.
A Mentat could do all of this as well, but they have the advantage of being able to calculate all those values much faster than anyone else.
Now let’s change a single value in a single cell.
The problem you face now is that, if you did it right, that one value is tied to many many other cells, so you have to manually recalculate all of it. In real life, this could take hours…or days…or weeks.
But that was for normal humans. A Mentat can recalculate much faster. And, sure, they can…but they still have to manually re-write all the values and manually re-draw that graph, right? Even if we set aside the fact a Mentat has solved the biggest bottle-neck, the Mentat has not solved the other major bottle-neck.

This is why I’m skeptical as to how useful a Mentat would actually prove to be in practice. Because, sure, an individual Mentat can do a lot of data analysis and whatever…but they still have to share that data with other people. They are humans who work for other humans, right? As far as I know, there is no such thing as a monitor that a Mentat can project their thoughts into in the Dune universe…so how do they actually go about sharing all that data?
I think the assumption is that a Mentat is a bit like a simple calculator, in that you’re only ever expected to get one value out at a time. But then the practical limitations of a Mentat become clear.

This actually shows why some factions skirt around and ultimately ignore the Butlerian Jihad’s traditions…because Mentats would be practically useless in a lot of scenarios.

This also doesn’t get into the other major issue of the Mentats, which is that they’re effectively no different from a pocket calculator…except worse. How are humans supposed to become self-reliant if they become reliant upon a walking human to do their calculations for them?
This wouldn’t be an issue if the abilities of Mentats was something most humans could learn…but, as it is, it’s identical to the outsourcing of human things to machines.

Yeah, I find the Sandworm to be really interesting. Though I probably won’t elaborate for a while.

Buddislam could not exist.

What I mean by that is that Islam is a strict monotheistic religion. What that means is that it effectively rejects syncretism as a concept.
Most religions – though mainly polytheistic ones – are fine with syncretizing with other faiths. However, Islam is allergic to basically all forms of Syncretism.^B)
Keep in mind that while Christianity (for example) doesn’t really care what you call God as long as you acknowledge he’s supreme…Islam cares a lot about the fact he’s called Allah. I mean “There Is No God but Allah.” Though the other part of Islam that prevents syncretism is the Quran. Muslims believe that the Quran is without fault and has all (or most of) the truth needed to understand…everything. So the idea of incorporating other beliefs is alien to Islam.
In practice, this manifests as Islam rejecting any form of syncretism. They won’t accept relating Allah to other gods, they won’t accept merging traditions together (because only the Quran and Hadiths matter), they won’t accept incorporating/assimilating because that would implicitly suggest that those other gods exist and, as has been established, there is only Allah.
In fact, I didn’t realize this until I looked it up recently, but associating Allah with any other being is considered a serious sin – shirk – and, thus, I think that any kind of syncretism is automatically bad in Islam.

This means that, in practice, Buddislam cannot exist: Buddhism is fine with melding with Islam, but Islam is not.
It’s possible that Buddislam could exist if we assume that it merged with some completely distinct offshoot of Islam (but then it wouldn’t be called ‘Islam’). Or if Islam adopted some Buddhist beliefs, which is still unlikely due to the Quran being absolute.

• Dune Fandom Wiki
  • My experience with it is…generally positive. It manages to avoid two big pitfalls of most fandom wikis:
    1. It only sticks to what is definitively ‘canon’: Frank Herbert’s books.
    2. It doesn’t got into too much details, so articles are relatively short and concise.
  • Honestly, I love it.
• Once I think of what to put here, I’ll put it here.
• I don’t really like the desert aesthetic. I would have called it Arab, but that would be inaccurate, since it isn’t Arabic.