Amph "The Sleeper Has Awakened" - DUNE DISCUSSION-

But is it just drowned or is there some kind of non-drowning reaction? Because if it is the former so do it not say anything about water being poisonous for them, just that they (like humans) are not made to breath water

 

It's still thrashing around at the end and then spits some liquid up, but they were basically drowning it outright, so it's a bit ambiguous. My guess is they originally cut the scene so that it doesn't make the ending even more confusing.

 

Late to the discussion and i hope i am not posting something that was already posted, but any talk about DUNE and my brain goes immediately to this:

 

In book 3, I think a point was made of how water repels sandworms - but it's not till book 4, that the idea that water burns sandworms like acid, is raised - with Leto (partially metamorphosed into a sandworm) being exposed to it.

To be fair though, even in book 1 (the appendix) a point is made of how water is "poisonous" to them - just not like deadly acid.

I think it's book 3 that makes it crystal clear that "sandtrout" (juvenile worms) actually work to keep water away from the adults by encapsulating it (creating pre-spice masses).

 

"Poisonous" was the term used - in the context of drowning a really primitive species of worm, the "stunted worm" in it.

 

What's funny is that the Alan Smithee cut I find is actually a more complete story, even if still not quite Dune... also, it's (of course) probably my fault.

I'm pretty sure it was WPIX in NYC who wanted Dune as a two-night extravaganza as they were pretty sci-fi forward for some reason (I also think Flash Gordon on PIX was the first broadcast-TV item to allow the usage of the word "bitch" without it being cut, at some point in the late-80s/early-90s).

 

I also prefer the Alan Smithee cut, although I've definitely seen the theatrical cut more often since my dad considers it a classic.

No, he isn't a David Lynch fan. No, he hasn't read Dune. No, I don't know how he became a fan either.

 

I'm going to have to get my Dune novels back out of storage I'm pretty certain Appendix 1 talks about sandworm biology, in addition to the explanations integrated into the novel, and includes indications as to water being lethal to sandworms. As far as I remember, Dune Messiah expands very little on the subject, but Children of Dune does, of course, explaining in full the role of sandtrout.

 

Would be interesting to hear what you find. Other explanations in the series evolve over each book too. Guild Navigators from the end of Dune are regular people with contact lenses to make their eyes look less blue, and Edric in Messiah is almost an entirely alien being.

 

Isn't the guild representative at the end of Dune explained to be a failed navigator? (I'll likely look that up too).

Also, it bears keeping in mind all the information given in Dune, its appendixes, and in later novels is presented from varying subjective perspectives. Appendix 1, in particular, takes the form of a vulgarized scientific report by the Imperial Planetologist on Dune to his superiors, and the report is supposed to contain a degree of inaccuracy, as Pardot Kynes, having "gone native", has been explained to have deliberately withheld information from the Empire.

 

Was not that just the Guild's representative, not a true Navigator?

 

It's raised in Book One - the essay about Pardot Kynes, the planetologist, and how he planned to transform Dune. For example he mentioned that that 'wormline' - the farthest north that sandworms would go - was based upon moisture, not coldness.
In Children of Dune, this is explicit - "[sandworms] could handle small amounts of water - the amounts held in cellular bondage by human flesh, for example. But confronted by large bodies of water, their chemical factories went wild, exploded in the death-transformation which produced the dangerous melange concentrate, the ultimate awareness drug employed in a diluted fraction for the sietch orgy."
I'm on that book now, and it frustratingly indicates when melange (or at least its properties) was discovered - during the reign of Shakkad the Wise, which we have no other context for. Leto II also indicates that the sandtrout (the immature form of sandworms) was introduced to Arrakis from somewhere else - it did not evolve on the world. That is one of the most tantalizing statements made (clearly, it would've had to be humans, or in the remotest possibility, alien life) that is, unfortunately, never followed up upon.

I had thought so too, but my recent reread indicates that they were Navigators.
Considering that Paul speculates that they were 'no longer human', I would assume that the Navigators that appear in Dune were the few that retained a human appearance so that they could appear in public.

 

I could have sworn they were referred to as Navigators at some point during the end proceedings.

And on the topic of the Appendices, I think blackmyron brought this up several pages back, but the Bene Gesserit report about another unknown power directing the events on Arrakis was interesting. At the time I read it, I took it as them not comprehending exactly what the Kwisatz Haderach was capable of, but maybe there are some other views on that.

 

I had noticed that too. My best guess, based upon comments in Dune Messiah, is the 'collective unconsciousness' of humanity that demanded "Jihad" as a way to mix genetic materials. Paul indicated that his Jihad had been inevitable and out of his control. It appeared to be the consequence of the stagnation of the Imperium, where the balance of power between House Corrino, the Landsraad, the Spacing Guild, the technological remnants, CHOAM and the Bene Gesserit had frozen humanity to the point that it was going to 'explode'.
One wonders then, about the true nature of the Butlerian Jihad in that view.

 

It seemed more "third person omniscient" than "science report to the Emperor". Lots of things in it that there's no way he'd be telling his superiors if he really has gone native.

The Book 1 sandworm info:

Kynes set his newly trained Fremen limnologists to work: their chief clue, leathery scraps of matter sometimes found with the spice-mass after a blow. This had been ascribed to a fictional “sandtrout” in Fremen folk stories. As facts grew into evidence, a creature emerged to explain these leathery scraps—a sandswimmer that blocked off water into fertile pockets within the porous lower strata below the 280° (absolute) line.
This “water-stealer” died by the millions in each spice-blow. A five-degree change in temperature could kill it. The few survivors entered a semidormant cyst-hibernation to emerge in six years as small (about three meters long) sandworms. Of these, only a few avoided their larger brothers and pre-spice water pockets to emerge into maturity as the giant shai-hulud. (Water is poisonous to shai-hulud as the Fremen had long known from drowning the rare “stunted worm” of the Minor Erg to produce the awareness-spectrum narcotic they call Water of Life. The “stunted worm” is a primitive form of shai-hulud that reaches a length of only about nine meters.)
Now they had the circular relationship: little maker to pre-spice mass; little maker to shai-hulud; shai-hulud to scatter the spice upon which fed microscopic creatures called sand plankton; the sand plankton, food for shai-hulud, growing, burrowing, becoming little makers.

That's in the Cartographic Notes, right after the map - last page of the book, after all the appendices.

They're typically called "Guild agents" but they implied to do a Navigatorish thing - try to use their prescience regarding Paul's actions. And they're called Navigators as well, at least once:

In the shock of comparative silence within the ship, the Emperor stared at the wide-eyed faces of his suite, seeing his oldest daughter with the flush of exertion on her cheeks, the old Truthsayer standing like a black shadow with her hood pulled about her face, finding at last the faces he sought—the two Guildsmen. They wore the Guild gray, unadorned, and it seemed to fit the calm they maintained despite the high emotions around them.
The taller of the two, though, held a hand to his left eye. As the Emperor watched, someone jostled the Guildsman’s arm, the hand moved, and the eye was revealed. The man had lost one of his masking contact lenses, and the eye stared out a total blue so dark as to be almost black.
The smaller of the pair elbowed his way a step nearer the Emperor, said: “We cannot know how it will go.” And the taller companion, hand restored to eye, added in a cold voice: “But this Muad‘Dib cannot know, either.”
The words shocked the Emperor out of his daze. He checked the scorn on his tongue by a visible effort because it did not take a Guild navigator’s single-minded focus on the main chance to see the immediate future out on that plain. Were these two so dependent upon their family that they had lost the use of their eyes and their reason? he wondered.



“Are those the Guild agents, Gurney, the two fat ones dressed in gray over there?”
“Yes, m’Lord.”
“You two,” Paul said, pointing. “Get out of there immediately and dispatch messages that will get that fleet on its way home. After this, you’ll ask my permission before—”
“The Guild doesn’t take your orders!” the taller of the two barked. He and his companion pushed through to the barrier lances, which were raised at a nod from Paul. The two men stepped out and the taller leveled an arm at Paul, said: “You may very well be under embargo for your—”
“If I hear any more nonsense from either of you,” Paul said, “I’ll give the order that’ll destroy all spice production on Arrakis … forever.”
“Are you mad?” the tall Guildsman demanded. He fell back half a step.
“You grant that I have the power to do this thing, then?” Paul asked.
The Guildsman seemed to stare into space for a moment, then: “Yes, you could do it, but you must not.”
“Ah-h-h,” Paul said and nodded to himself. “Guild navigators, both of you, eh?”
“Yes!”
The shorter of the pair said: “You would blind yourself, too, and condemn us all to slow death. Have you any idea what it means to be deprived of the spice liquor once you’re addicted?”
“The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever,” Paul said. “The Guild is crippled. Humans become little isolated clusters on their isolated planets. You know, I might do this thing out of pure spite… or out of ennui.”
“Let us talk this over privately,” the taller Guildsman said. “I’m sure we can come to some compromise that is—”
“Send the message to your people over Arrakis,” Paul said. “I grow tired of this argument. If that fleet over us doesn’t leave soon there’ll be no need for us to talk.” He nodded toward his communications men at the side of the hall. “You may use our equipment.”
“First we must discuss this,” the tall Guildsman said. “We cannot just—”
“Do it!” Paul barked. “The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. You’ve agreed I have that power. We are not here to discuss or to negotiate or to compromise. You will obey my orders or suffer the immediate consequences!”
“He means it,” the shorter Guildsman said. And Paul saw the fear grip them.
Slowly the two crossed to the Fremen communications equipment.
“Will they obey?” Gurney asked.
“They have a narrow vision of time,” Paul said. “They can see ahead to a blank wall marking the consequences of disobedience. Every Guild navigator on every ship over us can look ahead to that same wall. They’ll obey.”

 

Memory did not serve

 

That's good, really good. I found a little related snippet from I believe Heretics thanks to Google:

"Dangers," Taraza repeated. "The great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism."

And I love the way those Appendices from Dune are written. Looks like I'm going to have to read those again.

Also the Terminology of the Imperium glossary is fantastic in that it even lays out an entire military hierarchy in combat operations in the Empire that is only lightly touched upon in the text of the novel itself. Frank gives us a whole breakdown of ship types and their uses. A very imaginative one being a "Crusher" - designed to fall from orbit and physically smash a defensive position.

 

I've just come across a pretty definitive statement about sandworms and water in Children of Dune - referring to a canal blocking the gap Paul blasted with atomics, preventing sandworms from entering the Arrakeen Basin - "Sandworms would not cross open water; it poisoned them."

 

The fact that the report includes Pardot's death may be of interest

So it was true as this umma had said in the beginning: the thing would not come in the lifetime of any man now living, nor in the lifetime of their grandchildren eight times removed, but it would come.
The work continued: building, planting, digging, training the children.
Then Kynes-the-Umma was killed in the cave-in at Plaster Basin.
By this time his son, Liet-Kynes, was nineteen, a full Fremen and sandrider who had killed more than a hundred Harkonnens. The Imperial appointment for which the elder Kynes already had applied in the name of his son was delivered as a matter of course. The rigid class structure of the faufreluches had its well-ordered purpose here. The son had been trained to follow the father.
The course had been set by this time, the Ecological-Fremen were aimed along their way. Liet-Kynes had only to watch and nudge and spy upon the Harkonnens ... until the day his planet was afflicted by a Hero.

Yup. Using Dune alone, one could hypothesise that they need to drink it to be poisoned by it - but Children of Dune shows that just being in water will make their chemical factories explode.

 

Could also (if taken alone) be read as the freemen not really understanding the concept of drowning and seeing the reaction as poisoning.

 

I think Jessica came to the same conclusion though, during her promotion to Reverend Mother:


“Let them have their orgy, ” the other-memory said within her. “They’ve little enough pleasure out of living. Yes, and you and I need this little time to become acquainted before I recede and pour out through your memories. Already, I feel myself being tied to bits of you. Ah-h-h, you’ve a mind filled with interesting things. So many things I’d never imagined.”
And the memory-mind encapsulated within her opened itself to Jessica, permitting a view down a wide corridor to other Reverend Mothers until there seemed no end to them.
Jessica recoiled, fearing she would become lost in an ocean of oneness. Still, the corridor remained, revealing to Jessica that the Fremen culture was far older than she had suspected.
There had been Fremen on Poritrin, she saw, a people grown soft with an easy planet, fair game for Imperial raiders to harvest and plant human colonies on Bela Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus.
Oh, the wailing Jessica sensed in that parting.
Far down the corridor, an image-voice screamed: “They denied us the Hajj!”
Jessica saw the slave cribs on Bela Tegeuse down that inner corridor, saw the weeding out and the selecting that spread men to Rossak and Harmonthep. Scenes of brutal ferocity opened to her like the petals of a terrible flower. And she saw the thread of the past carried by Sayyadina after Sayyadina—first by word of mouth, hidden in the sand chanteys, then refined through their own Reverend Mothers with the discovery of the poison drug on Rossak … and now developed to subtle strength on Arrakis in the discovery of the Water of Life.
Far down the inner corridor, another voice screamed: “Never to forgive! Never to forget!”
But Jessica’s attention was focused on the revelation of the Water of Life, seeing its source: the liquid exhalation of a dying sandworm, a maker. And as she saw the killing of it in her new memory, she suppressed a gasp.
The creature was drowned!
“Mother, are you all right?”
Paul’s voice intruded on her, and Jessica struggled out of the inner awareness to stare up at him, conscious of duty to him, but resenting his presence.

 

IIRC, Leto indicates in God Emperor that the sandworms can't stand even trace amounts of moisture in the air - it has to be really arid for them to exist. The sandtrout create the environment for their final form by walling away the water with their bodies.
Still, I have to wonder - where did they come from?

 

Interesting she talks about a poison drug that is similar in effect to the Water of Life, coming from that other place.

Can we just get a book club going already?

 

Butlerian Jihad book 3 (The Battle of Corrin) gave the "Brian Herbert version" of how the proto-Bene Gesserit on Rossak first discovered that poison drug, and how the first Reverend Mother gained Other Memory.


I think of the Frank Herbert books as like the original 6 Lucas movies, the Dune Encyclopaedia as like Legends (though a bit less "authorised" than Legends was - I think Frank Herbert only found out about it after it was published) and the Brian Herbert books as like "The Star Wars Disneyverse" (everything published after the Disney buyout - authorised - but often giving a somewhat different take on events).