Dune's Missing Computers

Denis Villeneuve adapted a story many thought was unadaptable with his spectacular "Dune" films... but even he couldn't bring every aspect of Frank Herbert's universe to the screen. In this episode of Approaching Lightspeed, we'll explore some of the deeper context, storylines, and even characters that never made the transition.

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The following is an exploration of the differences between Denis Vellouve's Dune films and Frank Herbert's original Dune novel, and will therefore contain spoilers for both. The Dune adaptations by Denis Villeneuve only released a few years ago, but are already being hailed by many as some of the greatest science fiction films ever made. If you asked somebody what Dune was back in 2010, assuming they knew it all, you'd probably be told it was some geeky 80s movie with Sting in it. One or two people might mention the book, which, to be fair, was widely respected within the sci-fi community, but it's not like it was making waves in broader pop culture. Fast forward to today, however, and Dune is enough of a cultural phenomenon that it can share a release date with an Avengers film and still be expected to make a ton of money. And the movies have the critical and popular claim to back it up. I've seen people compare them favorably to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The original Dune by Frank Herbert is one of my favorite books of all time, and even I flip-flop by the day on whether I like Dune Part 2 better than the second half of the book. That's how insanely well made these movies are. Now with all that being said, if you've only ever watched the movies, there might be a few things you're a little unclear on. Why is everyone fighting with swords despite it being thousands of years in the future? Why not just use those dope ass laser guns? Whatever happened to Stephen McKinley Henderson? Why did that doctor guy betray everyone? And what is the deal with the baby? Well, I'm here to help you out. Because as astounding as these two films are, there was always going to be a ton of context and content that never made it to the screen. Dune is nearly 800 pages long, at least the edition I have is, and a good chunk of those pages are dedicated to appendices and glossaries and maps and all kinds of stuff that make for amazing reading, but not so amazing viewing. And that's not even to mention the various storylines that had to be cut to prevent the films from being like a day and a half long. So today we're going to take a look at some of that supplemental information and those cut storylines, and maybe deliver a more complete picture of the universe that was oftentimes only ever hinted at in the films. And I guess the best place to start would be at the very beginning. This is a conflict which laid the entire cultural and societal foundation of the Imperium. Which makes it all the stranger that it's not even mentioned by name in the films. I'm referring, of course, to the Butlerian jihad. Now the Butlerian jihad, or the Great Revolt, occurred about 10,000 years into humanity's forays into outer space, and about 10,000 years before the story of Dune begins. It's smack dab in the middle between our modern daytime and the beginning of Paul Atreides' era. The book sets the scene for this era perfectly with the passage, quote, once men turn their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But it only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. This presumably was how the human race existed for millennia. But eventually there were enough people who craved freedom from machines and computers, and the men who wielded them, that they rose up in vast numbers and righteous fury to cast them down. Frank Herbert didn't give many details about the jihad itself, which will be a running theme with virtually any military action in these books going forward, by the way, but it's almost always referred to as this period of chaos and slaughter. It lasted for two whole generations, was probably characterized by galaxy-wide fighting, and was so great in its successes that it's apparently the reason we have zero hard data on Earth by the time of Paul Atreides. I think a lot of people, including, but not limited to, the teenage me who first read this book, the writers of the HBO show, which admittedly I haven't seen, but have watched clips of, and the writers of actual canonized Dune novels, all misconstrue the Butler and Jihad as this epic struggle against some impassive, Skynet-like machine army. Frank Herbert's original vision for the Jihad seems to have gotten lost as more and more people have gotten their hands on Dune, which is a shame because his version hits way closer to home in a lot of ways. The emphasis in Frank's Butlery and jihad wasn't on battles against killer robots, but rather a cultural struggle against the dulling effect that dependence on machines has on the human brain. And this definitely tracks with the rest of his writing. The idea of humanity reaching some kind of static equilibrium or failing to reach its greatest potential is treated time and time again as a major tragedy in these books. Humanity in this story wasn't enslaved in some flashy act of violence by evil robots and made into batteries for all eternity. We stumbled into our own bondage, tempted the whole way by the conveniences of technology. And of course, there were people out there who benefited greatly from that temptation and used it to increase their own influence. The big villain of the jihad was never computers themselves, even if that's what humanity ultimately took its rage out on. It was the lack of thought which computers encouraged and which more insidious and opportunistic actors counted on. This was written in the 60s, by the way. So the Butlerian jihad kicks off, and two generations and a lot of dead people later, virtually every thinking machine has been eradicated, with anything even passingly resembling them destined to remain the object of revulsion and fear for the rest of time. The jihad ushered in humanity's most vital commandment, quote, thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind, end quote. This decree alone has formed the backbone of the Imperium. It's the reason it's structured the way it is. That's why you don't see any computers or robots or AIs in the Dune films. It's why there's such a huge emphasis on genetics and breeding and the potential of the human body and mind. It's the following of this policy to its logical end that directly results in one man's ascension to what is, for all intents and purposes, godhood. Now I don't want to get too into the Imperium, because I would love to visit it in more detail one day, and I don't want to have to reiterate too much information if ever that happens. But I do want to touch on some of the ways that the jihad has lingered with this civilization even after so many millennia. For example, it opened the floodgates for stuff like mentats, which are humans who fill the niche once occupied by thinking machines. They're rigorously trained from infancy and they're capable of incredible feats of computation. And since they're brought up as generalists rather than specialists so as to avoid blind spots and hyperfixations, each mentat has numerous areas of expertise. A mentat in service to one of the great houses of the Landsrad will usually be a master in everything from economics and logistics to espionage and assassination, and it's claimed several times that the computers of old are quote-unquote toys compared to them. Now it's hard to gauge how true that last bit is, but I do find it at least somewhat plausible. You've probably heard the fact that the human brain in real life is more powerful than every computer ever built combined, so maybe it's not outside the realm of possibility that all of that biological processing power was refined and perfected in the 10,000 years since the jihad. By the way, in the films, a huge emphasis is placed on Paul's Bene Chesserit training and heritage, and obviously rightly so, but the books also make it a point to let us know that he's also been trained and conditioned as a mentat. In fact, in the next book, Dune Messiah, after he's seized the throne, he's often referred to as the Mentat Emperor. So in addition to all the other crazy stuff we see him do and sense in the movies, just add a computer-level intellect to the mix as well. So, the Mentats are one adaptation humanity made following the jihad. But they're more of a broad category of people than a group or faction in and of themselves. Their loyalties and values and occupations will vary wildly from one mentat to the next, but not every offshoot of humanity that came out of the jihad was as fractured as the mentats are, two in particular have very clear, unified goals and were super insular even compared to the great houses of the Lansrad. These two groups are the Bene Gesseret and the Spacing Guild. Now the films already go into pretty heavy detail on the Bene Gesserit, who, by the way, are almost certainly one of George Lucas' inspiration for the Jedi in Star Wars. The films tell us that their training grants them pretty much full control over their bodies and minds. A Bene Gesserit's sister is aware of every little micro expression and vocal subtlety, not only in herself, but in those around her. Like, down to a metabolic level. And she is almost certainly factoring all of it in so that she can have an edge in any given situation. There's also the religious meadowing they've done throughout the galaxy, not only to give their own sisters an edge in potentially hostile environments, but also to lay the groundwork for the Quiz Hatteract that they've been working for millennia to breed. But even given all that, the movies still only hint at how much of a power the Bene Gesserit truly are in the Imperium. Like, you can make a decent argument for them being its true rulers, even more so than the Emperor himself. Officially, they, quote, exist only to serve, end quote, and indeed that is exactly where you'll find many sisters of the Bene Gesserit, serving some of the most important figures in the empire. But the thing is, I also just mentioned how insanely perceptive and intelligent and driven Bene Gesserit are, and almost none of that is common knowledge. Yeah, most people have their suspicions about the quote-unquote witches, but very few know the true extent of their abilities and influence. They have the ear of a lot of key people in the Empire, and not all of them are as loving or respectful as Lady Jessica is to her lover Duke Leto. We see her reflect numerous times throughout the book on how easily she could manipulate him. She feels super insecure and hurt over the fact that he never married her, but despite that, she never used any of her many talents to compel him to do so. Now, imagine all the sisters throughout the Imperium that are adjacent to positions of power, right up to the Emperor himself, who have no such qualms. Yeah. Now, as far as the Spacing Guild is concerned, the movies do a pretty good job of explaining them for the most part. They are the ones huffing spice so that they can be granted a limited form of future sight, which allows them to pilot their Highliners safely and accurately through space. That's like 90% of what you need to know about them. But the other 10% is juicy. Because like the Bene Jesseret, there's a decent argument to be made that the Spacey Guild are the ones that are truly running the show in the Imperium. Not only are they the backbone upon which the interstellar economy is built, but the books also make it clear that they also control the Imperium's entire banking system. This means that basically nothing happens without the guild's knowledge or say-so. The Great Houses and the Bene Gesserit are more politically involved and have clearer long-term plans and win conditions than the guild, and this might initially give the illusion that they are bigger players within the Imperium, and that the guild just meekly does its job in the background. But the only reason the Spacing Guild isn't actively conspiring and plotting, at least on any large scale, is because they've already achieved everything they've ever wanted. They're probably the ones that benefit most from the status quo as it stands at the beginning of Dune. And sure, just because the guild are the ones that are providing a service doesn't necessarily mean that they are the ones in charge, but one learns the pecking order real fast whenever the guild throws their weight around. After all, where are you going to get your money and food if you get on the guild's bad side? The guild has been given a ton of autonomy within the Imperium, given the vital services they can withhold at any time. They control virtually all orbital traffic around a given world, and not even the Emperor himself can place ships or satellites near them without the guild's permission. And furthermore, they'll strand anybody who makes unauthorized landings on a planet. The guild also sets the prices for interplanetary transport, and even though they're completely outrageous and everybody knows it, the great houses grudgingly pay it because, again, how is your economy going to work if you don't? This also means, by the way, that warfare between the great houses is massively deincentivized just because it is so absurdly expensive to ferry the soldiers and the equipment necessary for waging war to their destination. Like we're talking decades upon decades of spice profits just to pay for troop transport. It's by guild design, not Imperial Decree or Landsrad policy or even Ben A Gesserit machinations, that the Imperium isn't way more dysfunctional. And the Spacing Guild knows the power they possess, but they're careful not to abuse it too much so as to not invite challenge from the great houses. They've made a science of soaking up as much profit as they can while poking the bear just little enough to not be attacked. And some of this profit soaking comes in their less than public dealings with certain parties, like the Ixians, whom I will get into some other time, and the Fremen. The Fremen have been working in secret to terraform Arrakis and transform it into a paradise, and they bribe the guild with vast amounts of spice in order to keep Arrakis' orbit clear of any third-party satellites so that nobody ever finds out what they're doing. This arrangement between the Fremen and the Guild is why the southern reaches of the planet are thought to be uninhabitable, when in fact many, many Fremen call it home. It's why the Spacing Guild hasn't established any satellites to monitor the Coriolis storms which rampage across the planet. It's why when the Atreides asked how much it would cost to set some up, that the guild only ever replied, more than you can afford. As a side note, in case you missed it while watching Dune Part 2, the guys Gurney Halleck is hanging out with when he reunites with Paul are smugglers who serve as middlemen between the Fremen and the Guild. They don't have a huge part in the book, but they make for a fun bunch of rogues and are an interesting bit of world building to help flesh out Arrakis as a living and breathing world. Anyway, together, the Mentats and the Benedesseret and the Spacing Guild all serve to highlight just how far humanity is willing to go to reinvent itself following the Butlerian jihad. The jihad affected the setting in a fundamental way. Basically, everything important about Dune can be traced back to it. You have the structure of the Imperium and the various groups operating within it, you have the beliefs and psychology of its people, you have the emphasis on the human and metaphysical rather than the technological. Even if you want to look at it from a more meta standpoint, it's still an epicenter for the underlying themes Frank Herbert wanted to convey with these books. It's simply impossible to overstate just how huge a shadow the jihad casts over the setting even 10,000 years after it's ended. In addition to the groups that I just went over, you've also got the Bene Tlailaks, who are another group of genetic offshoots who have their own fun quirks and roles within the setting, but that's a topic for another day. So as we move on from the jihad, I just want to take a minute to go over how combat works in Dune. Because when you jump into a story that takes place 20,000 years from now, you don't typically expect hand-to-hand combat to have a very big role in it. I mean, hell, it doesn't even have that big a role in real-life wars of today, and hasn't for centuries. So what in the world are the people of the Imperium doing charging into enemy lines by the hundreds and hacking them to bits and being hacked to bits in turn with swords and kris knives and whatnot? It's not like they don't have access to missiles and artillery and stuff like that. Lazguns in particular are presented as the super destructive ultimate infantry weapons in the books. They're basically handheld lasers that are powerful enough to slice through virtually any known material, so why the emphasis on hand-to-hand combat? Well, besides this implied, though admittedly never outright stated, cultural preference for honorable combat, as well as, of course, the rule of cool, it has a lot to do with shield technology. Shields have rendered projectile weapons basically irrelevant in this setting. The movies have these really cool bombs that basically drill through the shields and explode on the inside, but for the most part the books present slow blades, as taught by Gurney, as the only real way to defeat a shield. Lazguns can do the job, but well, they do it a little too well, as in, any interaction between a lasgun beam and a shield will cause both to detonate in a nuclear-level explosion that kills not only the target and the shooter, but also whatever city they happen to be in at the time. So you'll only ever see Lazguns deployed in situations where it's known for a fact there won't be any shields around. For a while after the attack on the Atreides, the Harkonans and the Sardacar actually did use Lazguns when mopping up Atreides' survivors and Fremen out in the desert. As explained by Kines in the movie, an active shield will lure sandworms in from miles off and send them into a killing frenzy, so the locals know not to use them unless they're somewhere the worms can't reach. And this of course means that the Harkonens and the Sardacar had free reign to use their best weapons. At least until Duncan Idaho hid an active shield and tricked the enemy into shooting it with a Lazgun, with predictably nuclear results. Lazguns became a much rarer sight on Arrakis after that. Another quick side note while we're still on the topic, I want to quickly point out that in the book, the Sardacar are actually disguised as Harkinan troops during the attack on the Atreides. If it was ever discovered that the Emperor's personal fanatics took part in the liquidation of a whole great house, the rest of the Lansrad would freak out and war wouldn't be far behind. So the Sardacar's presence on Arrakis is kept very much on the DL. Now obviously this wouldn't work super well in a visual format like a movie, and the badass Sardacar would be lost in a sea of Harkin and uniforms, so I, and basically everyone else aware of this change, lets it slide. Anyway, with Lazguns being too dangerous to use and shields rendering basically any other ranged weapon irrelevant, the only option left is to get up close and personal again with blades. On Arrakis, where shields aren't really a problem, one might get a little festive every now and then with dart guns and rocket launchers, but in general, knives still rule the day. And I find that such an interesting dynamic. Dune basically paints the picture of a version of humanity that's gone so far around the bend into the future that they're coming back around to the past again. And that's kind of sick. Now there are a number of plot points and context from the books that never made it to the films, stuff that wasn't exactly needed, per se, to tell the story, and one notable example that in my opinion absolutely was, but which fleshed out the world and characters that much better. For example, you have Dr. Wellington Yue, the Sook Doctor in service to House Atreides who betrays them to the Harkonens. The movies treat his turn as a pretty big plot twist, but in the books, you kinda know what he's going to do from pretty much the instant he's introduced. The real fun with Dr. Yue, and the reason I find him to be one of the most compelling characters in all of Dune, is watching him struggle with the treachery he's been forced into. Like in the movie, the Harkonens capture Yue's wife, a Ben Hesseret named Juana Marcus, and they use her as a lever to turn him against the Atreides. And Yue, believing the Atreides are screwed anyway, and that Juana probably won't make it either, goes along with it in the hopes that he can at least take revenge on the Baron on his way out. It's clear from his internal monologue that he loves the Atreides as if they were his own family, and you have characters like Lady Jessica noting that he despises the Harkinans even more than the Duke himself does. His scenes in the book are all about his struggles to push himself over the finish line and perform the awful act he performs, all while using the Bene Gesserit skills Juana taught him to keep his activities and thoughts secret from the likes of Lady Jessica and Thufir Hawat. There's actually a fair bit of tension in his scenes, and the drama that rages within him is just absolutely delicious. His close friendship with Jessica and the love he has for Paul only drives the knife that much deeper. Between the circumstances that were forced onto him, his own inner turmoil, and the way he arranges for Paul and Jessica to be rescued by Duncan Idaho, it's a good bit more difficult to judge Yue for his actions than it initially seems. There's good arguments either way for whether his intentions and attempts at redemption outweigh his wrongdoings. Personally, I think the film suffered most from excluding Yue's deeper struggles. Obviously, they get the job done with what is presented, but so much nuance and depth is unfortunately lost in the move from page to screen in this particular case. Anyway, just like in the movie, Yue sets his trap for the Baron via Leto and the Tooth, and it's during this encounter that he's killed. Only in the book, it's Pider, that mentat played by David Dasmaltian, who does the deed. And actually, while we're on him, Pider DeVrise has a much bigger and more sinister role in the book. His story beats and role as Lackey to the Baron are largely the same, but he's also a delightful little window into not only how depraved and in general rotten to the core the Harkinans truly are, but also the contradictions inherent to Mentats as a whole. Because while Pider was designed to be a human number crunching machine, he's also a depraved Monster who's more interested in developing novel poisons and torture methods, or lusting after Lady Jessica than in actually doing his job. He's constantly distracted by his human, or, as the Bene Gesserit would put it, animal impulses. He's such an unpredictable freak that Baron Harkinen, who's a sick f in his own right in the book, is constantly musing on how he needs to get around to doing away with Pider and wondering whether today is finally the day he pulls the trigger. Now the Baron's plan for Arrakis after he wipes out the Atreides is actually kind of genius, and Pyter originally is at the very center of it. The gist of it was to essentially install Pider as this brutal and malevolent ruler who would squeeze Arrakis and its people for all they're worth, and to keep on squeezing and terrorizing and brutalizing them until eventually he was recalled and replaced with a gentler ruler. The people would hail this new ruler as a savior and, in so doing, solidify the Harkinans' hold over Arrakis once and for all. This appointment to governor over a grateful populace was meant to be the Baron's ultimate gift to his beloved nephew Faye Routha, but Pider dies before this plan can be enacted, and the role of Fall Guy ultimately passes to the beast Raban. And don't get me wrong, Raban sucks. But you get the sense that Arrakis dodged a 50 caliber bullet in his taking over rather than Pider. One can only imagine the industrialized worse-than-death torment that might have beset Arrakis on an absurd scale if Duke Leto hadn't killed him. This internal Mentat tug-of-war between calculating logic and human irrationality is by no means exclusive to Pider either. We also see it in another mentat, Thhufir Hawat, the Atreides Master of Assassins. Thufir's mind is awash not only with calculations and strategies, but also insecurity about his age and whether his abilities and decision-making are waning because of it. And to be fair, he does make a lot of really bad calls throughout the first act of the book. Now he does pull his weight in a lot of ways before the attack, and I don't think he's totally at fault for missing Yue either. I mean, after all, Yue did have some Bene Jezeret skills up his sleeve. But I do fault Thoufir for letting his personal prejudices interfere with his judgment. He views the Bene Jezeret as witches, which, you know, fair, but this also means he dedicates considerable resources, including Duncan Idaho, to spying on Lady Jessica because he believes her to be an enemy of the Duke. And granted, some of that was under orders from the Duke as part of a greater and more convoluted set of mind games against the Harkonnens, but Thhufir still developed some major tunnel vision during this. Tunnel vision which lasted well after the Harkonnans retook Arrakis, by the way. Maybe in an alternate universe where he didn't misallocate so many resources and so much effort in pursuing Jessica, he might have uncovered Yue before it was too late. The negative light that Frank Herbert portrays Pider and, to a lesser extent, Thhufir in, reinforces this deeper skepticism the books have towards trying to assign rules or logic to human nature. These are two characters who are, again, capable of astounding feats of computation, but are never able to fully tap into their abilities because they just have so much human noise to sift through first. They stand as the ultimate lesson that computers, or in the case of the Mentats, making yourself like a computer, can never compensate for human shortcomings. We only ever see Thufir in the first movie, and he goes MIA after the Harkin attack on Arakeen, never to be seen again. But not only does he have a way more detailed story in the book, the actor Steven McKinley Henderson, who plays Thufir, actually shot footage for his character for Dune Part 2, which was eventually scrapped, presumably in favor of simplifying the movie. It turns out in the book that Thufir Hawap wasn't even present in Arakin during the attack, but instead was tending to other matters in a garrison village some distance away. He lays low with his men and some Fremen, but is ultimately captured by Sartakar and delivered to the Baron, who desires a new Mentat after the death of Pider. So, with a healthy respect for the cunning Thufir demonstrated as his enemy, the Baron actually recruits him to join the Harkinen side. Now, ordinarily the fact that a prospective new hire would happily kill you at the earliest opportunity would be a bit of a deal breaker for most bosses, but this describes like 75% of the Baron's underlings, so he doesn't even give it a second thought. Plus, he wisely offers Thufir a target even more enticing than the Baron himself, Lady Jessica, the Bene Gesserit witch who supposedly betrayed Duke Leto to his death and brought about the fall of House Atreides. And so, out of a desire to hunt down the woman he believes destroyed everything and everyone he loved, as well as the hope that he might one day take out the Baron and maybe even the Emperor too, Thufir joins up. The Baron, for his part, secretly poisons Thufir and gives him the antidote with his dealing meals, just in case he should ever get any funny ideas. Unlike in the movies, there's a pretty big time jump in the book between Paul going to live with the Fremen and his reunion with Gurney. During this, the Baron is hard at work trying to supplant the Emperor and seat Fade Raltha on the imperial throne. Thufir naturally finds himself in the middle of all this on the Harkidon homeworld of Gieti Prime, and he subtly plays the vicious infighting Harkidans against one another and against the Emperor. He advises the Baron on how to manage Raban on Arrakis, he conspires with Faye Raltha, helping him build up his own little network of informants and loyalists within the Baron's staff, and he keeps in private contact with Gurney and the smugglers on Arrakis. He even catches wind of an assassination plot on the Baron by Fade and, still seeing a use for the Baron against the Emperor, rats on Fade. And critically, he's the one who convinces the Baron to cut Raban off from further Harkinon support, which leads directly to Paul and his Fremen beginning their final campaign against him. It's important to note, by the way, that Thhufir had no idea Moadi was Paul. I'd imagine there would have been a lot more dead Harkonins on Gieti Prime towards the middle of the book if that were the case. Ironically, Thhufir has a far better relationship with the Baron than Pider ever did. Before Pider performs the one good deed in his life by, you know, dying, you'll hardly ever see the Baron go even one paragraph without getting baited into some stupid argument with him. And while the Baron will casually threaten Thufir whenever he displeases him, the two of them are clearly way more cordial with one another. And I guess in a way there's more threat in the quiet, isn't there? Now during our time with Thhufir on Jeti Prime, we actually meet a character who is exclusive to the book, and while he doesn't contribute all too much to the plot, he's a fun character to follow for the brief time that we do follow him, and his existence alone has a ton of really interesting implications for the wider Dune universe. Now this character, Count Hasimir Fenring, wears quite a few hats in the story. He is husband to the Bene Gesserit Margot Fenring, who was played by Leah Seedu in Dune Part 2. He is the closest friend and confidant of the Emperor, and he's one of the Bene Gesserit breeding program's near success stories. Now Margot Fenring's role in the story is largely unchanged from book to screen. The main omission comes in a message she left on Arrakis for Lady Jessica, warning of Harkin and treachery, which just goes to reinforce how Bene Gesserit loyalty and plans transcend petty house squabbles. She and her husband, the Count, are always scheming their own little world. In fact, the two of them have developed a language exclusive to them and them alone. Whenever I pictured Count Fenring, I always imagined the G-Man from Half-Life. He speaks in this really pronounced stutter and is pretty uncanny in general, but at the same time he's brimming with obvious intelligence and cunning. And we never see him in action, but we're also told that he's the deadliest of all the Emperor's agents, which, if I had to venture a guess, is probably due in no small part to Bene Gesseret training by Margot. But the big thing about Count Fenring was that he was just one or two genetic defects away from being the Quizot's Hatterak. It was very nearly him who realized the Bene Gesserit's millennia-long plan and not Paul. He and Paul actually meet during the final confrontation with the Emperor at the end of the book, and it's revealed that Count Fenring is invisible to Paul's future sight or prescience. Later books tell us that prescient individuals have a way of interfering with the prescience of others, and while it's never confirmed one way or the other, it's not much of a leap to assume that Count Fenring might have some latent, primitive prescience of his own given his breeding. He lived on Arrakis during House Harkinon's fief, so he absolutely would have been exposed to enough spice to trigger it. Anyway, Count Fenring is the main liaison between Baron Harkinon and the Emperor. He's there to convey the Emperor's demands to the Harkinens and to give the audience a deeper look into Imperial politics in general. In fact, this is a lot of what he does in the Imperium. He's basically the Emperor's errand boy. He's always traveling far and wide to bribe a great house here or intimidate another one there. We meet him in the Baron's viewing box during that awesome scene of Faye in the arena. Officially, he's there to judge Faye's worthiness as the Harkaden heir, as well as to reprimand the Baron for ordering the Sardacar off of Arrakis, both of these on behalf of the Emperor. Unofficially, he's there to get his wife Margot into a room with Fade so that she can secure his genetic material. Which is super interesting. I mean, the Count is one of the highest ranked people in the entire Imperial court. He wields a not small amount of power in this universe, and yet here he is playing accomplice to a Bene Gesserit plot. He's the perfect example of just how much of a hold the Bene Gesserit have over the Imperium's upper echelons. So yeah, that's the general gist of what's going on with Thufir and the Harkinans and Fenring while Paul was on Arrakis, where he's busy stoking the most insane religious fire the galaxy's seen since the Butlerian Jihad. And speaking of Paul and his camp, perhaps the most notable change from book to film is that Alia Atreides is actually not born in the movies, whereas she very much is born in the book. Because Lady Jessica consumed the water of life while Alia was still in her womb, Alia inherited not only Lady Jessica's memories and Bene Jezera expertise, but those of her ancestors. And in the same vein, she also inherited the ancestral memories of all the Fremen Reverend Mothers who consumed the water of life before Jessica, which means Alia essentially comes out of the womb a fully fledged Reverend Mother. So when we first meet Alia after the time jump, she's walking around having snarky philosophical dialogue with adults even though she herself is a toddler. Alia doesn't do a huge amount in the first book, with one huge exception, rather, her time to shine is later on in the series. But she is a good archetype for Fremen children, who are repeatedly mentioned to be extremely deadly in combat, just like the adults. In general, the books lean hard into how messed up it is for a child of her age to have such deep ancestral memory. Countless lives are contained within this girl, and for this reason, no matter how badly she might want it, she can never be normal or live an ordinary, happy life. Not only is she viewed as an abomination by the Bene Gesserit, but not even other Fremen accept her. And who can blame them? It's a toddler who speaks in more complete sentences than you and I do, and has thousands of generations worth of knowledge within her to boot. So in short, I expect we'll see a lot of Alia the Strange One's isolation in the upcoming Dune Part 3. Now there is another book-only baby, and this is Leto the Second. Now I hear you ask, Leto II who? Is that the God Emperor the internet is always making memes about? No. This is Paul and Chani's firstborn, Leto II, who is in general forgotten by everybody, including Frank Herbert himself. I took very detailed notes on these books over the course of the past year. I'm talking like 40 to 50 pages of 12-point font notes per book, probably more like 60 for Dune. And I can say with like 90% certainty that Leto II, the first, never appears in person on page. Not once. He's only ever mentioned in passing by other characters. And that's in the book that he's actually alive in. He might be mentioned like one time in Dune Messiah, if at all. He is born, lives, and dies entirely off page. At least that's what I think. I wasn't specifically on the lookout for little Leto sightings during my research because I too, just like every character in these books, forgot he existed. Now Leto II's death comes during a Sardacar attack on Siege Tabur. In the movie, this attack occurs before Paul drinks the water of life, but in the book, it happens while he's away preparing his assault on Arakeen. He's informed via radio that not only has his sister Alia been captured by the enemy, though not before she leads a contingent of other Fremen children to kill a bunch of Sartakar, but that his son has also been killed in the fighting. It's a lot to take in moments before you start the most important battle of your life. Meanwhile, it turns out that Alia had actually meant to be captured. She's brought before the Emperor and his entourage, which at this point includes Baron Harkinen. Now all of their guards are mostly lowered because what in the world is some stupid toddler going to do against them? Well, Alia proceeds to verbally annihilate all of them. And then she physically annihilates the Baron, using the chaos of the battle kicking off outside to stick him with a Gamja Bar, the poison needle that the Reverend Mother threatened Paul with at the very beginning of the story. Maybe not as climactic a death for the Baron as what we see in the film, but it certainly makes sense as a strategy to get within striking distance of someone like him. I'll leave it to you to decide which you prefer. The Baron dies whether you're reading the book or watching the film, and that's a good day for everyone. Anyway, just like in the movie, Paul emerges victorious in the Battle of Arakin, and he gathers his captives, which include the Emperor, Fayed Routha, Count Fenring, and Thufir Hawad, in the residency. Paul is particularly alarmed by Fenring, who, as I mentioned earlier, is invisible from his prescience. Initially Paul fears this might be because Fenring is the one who ends up killing him, but he soon realizes what Fenring is and how he was the Quizat's Hatterak that never was. The two of them form this brief, albeit unspoken, kinship as that mutual understanding dawns between them. And good thing too, because the story makes it clear that Fenring would destroy Paul in a fight, and that's on a good day when Paul didn't just get done fighting his way through legions of Harkadins and Sardacar. Even Paul knows he'd be screwed if things ever came to blows between them. And more importantly, the Emperor knows it too. So just before that final confrontation at the end of the book, the Emperor secretly provides Thufir with a poison needle and orders him to use it on Paul. Once the gathering's in full swing, Paul recognizes his old friend among the prisoners and calls him forward, just as the Emperor had hoped. During their talk, Thhufir finally apologizes to Lady Jessica for all the years he suspected her. Paul senses treachery, but even still, as a reward for Thufir's decades of faithful service to House Atreides, he offers him, quote, anything you wish of me. Anything at all. Do you need my life now, Thufir? It is yours. End quote. Thufir replies that he only wished to see the young Duke one more time before he died, and then sticks himself with the Emperor's needle. After Paul beats Faye in their duel, the Emperor orders Count Fenring to kill him in one last Hail Mary attempt to hang on to his throne. Except Fenring refuses. The Emperor slaps him across the face for that, and in response, the Count tells the Emperor that the only reason he doesn't kill him on the spot for said slap is out of respect for their friendship. Probably made for a pretty awkward exile for the two of them afterward. From there, Count Fenring fades from the story, as does Margot and the baby girl she had with Faye. Turns out the kid wasn't some Chekov's gun for the sequels, she never turns up again as far as I've read, but she does a good job of illustrating just how many moving parts the Bene Gesserit's plan had and how many contingencies they'd set up. Margot showed how far the Bene Gesserit were willing to go to carry those contingencies out, up to and including hooking up with a psycho like Fay, and for his part the count showed how close their breeding program came to success. Plans within plans, indeed. So that's more or less what the Denis Vellanouv movies missed, at least that's the general outline. It's by no means an exhaustive list. But where do we go from here? What do we have to look forward to in Dune Part 3? Well, to be honest, I don't actually know. There's a lot going on in the trailers that we've seen so far that is nowhere to be found in the novel Dune Messiah, so even people who have read it are kind of at a loss at what some of what we're seeing means. What I can say is that, as far as my reading experience goes, Dune Messiah did not go in the direction I thought it was going to after seeing how Dune ended. And I don't think I was alone in that either. It's definitely a challenging book, I know I bounced off of it pretty hard my first time through. I was expecting some awesome jihad action and a continuation of Paul's challenging of the Imperium, and what I got was a contemplative and melancholy reflection on the nature of power and godhood, and whether those things set a person free or just bind them in more chains. For one thing, it straight up omits the jihad. We only ever hear about it from accounts by veterans or reports during war meetings. We never experience the madness it brings firsthand, only the spiritual desolation it leaves in its wake. At no point in the story is Paul the Underdog fighting an uphill battle against external forces the way he was against Harkinens or the Emperor. Instead, his uphill battle this time is against his own friends and followers, if such a distinction even exists anymore. It's against the divine mantle that's been placed upon him. I feel like in a way, if people leave the theater totally satisfied, then Dune Part 3 will have arguably lost something the original Dune Messiah worked so hard to convey. I'm very interested to see what kind of dialogue, hopefully of the thoughtful and informed variety, that the movie inspires once it comes out. If it's anything like the book, then expect not only some of the most stunning imagery in the entire series, but also some of the heaviest and most crucial philosophical questions Frank Herbert ever poses, as well as even more of the best world building in all of science fiction. And all of it coalesces to prop up the question of whether unlimited power is enough to stitch one's own soul back together. As far as anyone's aware, Dune Part 3 will be the final Dune film, at least the final Dune film directed by Denis Velleneuve. As you probably know, there are a lot more Dune novels than just Dune and Dune Messiah, but I feel like Messiah is a very appropriate place to, if you'll forgive the pun, close the book on this story. It definitively addresses and ties up the themes laid out by the first book, and it probably leaves the least hanging out of any of the subsequent books I've read so far. But even after the end of Dune Messiah, one finds that the story of Dune is just hitting its stride. Just like the Bene Gesserit, Frank Herbert's plans were measured in millennia. His setting is constantly evolving and it doesn't wait around for its characters. Not even its themes stay the same. In fact, you can argue that some of the later books directly contradict some of the messages of the earlier ones, just because so many paradigms shift that the old ways of doing things might no longer apply. It's not until you have several Dune novels under your belt that this underlying theme of change and the folly of trying to guide or reverse it begins to emerge, and this theme is arguably more crucial to Dune's DNA than the anti-charismatic hero or the environmentalist narratives of the first two books. By the time Frank Herbert passed away, the story's timeline had advanced several thousand years after the time of Paul Atreides, and by this point, Arrakis, and indeed the whole universe, have become totally unrecognizable. This series is such a wonderful symphony in many ways, and Dune and Dune Messiah are only its first movements. And if this trilogy of Dune films is destined to be the last we see of it on screen for the time being, then what a movement it was. And with all that being said, whether on page or on screen, the spice will flow for a long time to come. You need only see for yourself.