NOT P, nor BE but DUNE will never die.

Fri Nov 5 12:00:30 UTC 2021

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A very important Dune explainer
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Matthew Yglesias <matthewyglesias at substack.com> Unsubscribe
6:03 AM (1 hour ago)
to me
A very important Dune explainer
<https://email.mg1.substack.com/c/eJwlkttymzAQhp_G3JnRAUR8wUXjQ0tTk7h1PHZvGCEWkAGJIhGCn75yPDrs6F9J_8x-K7iFSg9z3GtjvfuW2bmHWMFkWrAWBm80MGSyiAkN3Igir4hRRESUe9Jk5QDQcdnGXj_mrRTcSq3ut3G4wk-hV8eUM0oKwVaM5CwPAOWMhzgQBQFMcckepnwsJCgBMXzAMGsFXhvX1vZmQb8tyM7NaZp80-op14NUlS9058TerWJUsITPvuVSwbCgO6sbUAu6gfknFuQ0n0nbJFc972-HW7rZ03SepPi-uhW7Vf93nTCnofSa4PR2MUnX1oXT9sfLLb1up_T6_pnKSfJzenN_SPHjJH8dt_j1uA3SP4lJVIovMmGJev4Q9GBFd6ov9Hefk0CWB_91_XZ6243Xl-W63GyeUbCm78ul-WeZTXv91C5fGKdvh21wPngyJohgjFGIEUKU-MTH7hyUHAJU0hUF5DeGFzWHfhGgrsK-GXNjuWju1fCGuOND4ze6Hq3LV3csXwlHJnOxG5W0cwaK5y0UsR1G8OyD-xfCrAJXP9cPRcZtjBllGLHQxSB6MHJUXQcwEkbMc86Fdq-UM7W2hmmuWjCSm_-Jd8bF>Why
is everyone fighting with swords?

<https://email.mg1.substack.com/c/eJxNkMtuxCAMRb9m2E0EhEe6YNFNfyMi4CQoDyJwOsrf1zPTShUWtmVbV-cGjzDlcrkjV2TPr8frALfDo66ACIWdFUqfopOtomcti45bGezAUu3HArD5tDp2nMOagseU9-e20B-i02x2nVaamyEIzRW3owEVBTd85MYG20n_FvVnTLAHcPAN5co7sNXNiEe9tZ83-UVRz6GiD0sT8kbtUfKYVqBKd5xzdd884gyP-zWtUJOvLDnJpRCCa0ELrWxkI6hXowfFx_ajBd4s1cfZw3FTfJtE81-DFbf5sjRLnk-k-fTEfA2ItKe8nXvCq4fdDytEh-UEhm8fX5b0E-xQyN_Ye3TCtIa4NWVl38zkEjlqpLaGkXLMdLW7X44_jB85-Yt1>
Matthew Yglesias
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Nov 5
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I love Dune the book and even its sequels,¹ and I really enjoyed the Dune
movie. But Dune-the-film stands in a somewhat unusual relationship to
Dune-the-book — so unusual that I’m not quite sure we have the vocabulary
to describe it.

It’s kind of like how kids read picture books where the pictures
*illustrate* the text rather than telling a completely independent story.
In other words, in order to make the move tractable and watchable,
Villeneuve took out tons and tons of exposition. Oftentimes he’ll have a
character briefly allude to something that’s spelled out in the book,
though at other times really big obvious questions are left totally
unanswered. If you take a strict *il n'y a rien en dehors du texte
<https://email.mg1.substack.com/c/eJxFUUuu4yAQPE3YYQH-EC9YvM1cw2pDx6DY4AftSXz7wcliBKJA1VBFtQXCJeXT7KkQu5aJzh1NxFdZkQgzOwrmKTij2q4OrZkzQiurZxbK9MiIG4TVsP2Y12CBQopXtexHee-ZN_MMMGhU9q5HCWDb4T52qhPCjv2g4PEVhcMFjBYN_sV8pohsNZ5oL7f256b-1Ln7sKaSdn82hcA-8W09xAUbm7ZK_x5YLu1S963uhKz48kDcJSw8rDyeHPgOhTvkPuXCCd-EfEOIPET-_3kO0fE11K9DPrnNgYINZWPBKKGklKKXQohWNaqR9dw9ADvxaMcWRfMs4DzgfuvEtsimHPPH6-WRZbNBfjbP5A-q_HLF9iFqclPF7YiBzgkjzCs6Q_lARt--fCKeFozVE6GbgIwc2kGKoa_Y6W-GNfXaoUH1emBV2aV6K1ZRIo-vc1mxBCj_AKyNqnI>
*view
of the movie, for example, there’s a really dumb, obvious plot hole: “If
spice is necessary for space travel and spice is only found on Arrakis,
then how did people get to Arrakis?”

Now to be clear, *I* know the answer — it’s just not in the movie.
<https://email.mg1.substack.com/c/eJxVUkmunDAQPU17B_LIsPDiK1KugTwU4DRgYpvfIadPAavIlmty1avJmQJTTKfeYy7keoZy7qA3-OQFSoFEjgxpCF5zIfG0LfGatty1loQ8jAlgNWHRZD_sEpwpIW7Xb6Z61ikya2Y614xe9CDkKEfHm8Y54enoG2ip5A-oOXyAzYGGb0hn3IAsei5lzy_x9eI_8Tq_1fmwuRj3rl1cURVWMwHSEYqbL4phSnzxH78fRnxNMXqUx2XYU5wS5By-AfW5AOzo8UBwdYGoCwYfe7g3oD1VQJW1rpOVNUZUWDtUvWJdZbwV3ELb9p2ss6jNav7GzXzykxfGeJpxs3eS-WZl11mlXF_1DRsryayvut6pSnBpOopQSqpBMcr-CElZ_WuHiQTNKWeMUdRTKnjNa4ayHA1IOopeAK3f2fjZYEGSrhP7r0sk6dWkd_2O81HQPl3Dug2Y4oB0PbZQzgE2YxfwuqQDSHm24R7sMMEGCbfED6Zo1oiG0UYhle0zOZw17kXDVdsQRPYRvTYELWWGzzktkIPJ_wBtUcf6>
(Gabe
Ginsberg/Getty Images)

I think that’s fine. Both the book and TV show versions of Game of Thrones
are borderline incomprehensible without access to A Wiki of Ice and Fire
<https://email.mg1.substack.com/c/eJwlkM1uhSAQhZ_msiT8qNwuWHTTXZO-ARllVKKCAaz17TveGwgDzMCZ8w1QcUr5snsqld2Lq9eONuJZVqwVMzsKZhe8VbqhYQzzVhg1mJ6F4saMuEFYLduPfg0D1JDiXS3bD_ls2WyNlqoTXjZi1AJaLaQWptfjUzSjoQ_fonD4gHFAi7-YrxSRrXaudS8P_flQXzThTAFGfmKhplLhKU90G6LHP77PO-2_IUT3AxOyYJVQUkrRSiGEVlxxSedmBLzb-NAo-FLAz4D7oxHbJHk5-lJhWPiQNpbtBnnhS5qPSvnpdvhKkElHcTtiqJfDCP2K3tZ8IKtvhC8absKImdB6B9XKTndSdC3FxrztEiCC2anWdIyUfaJXkURrnfG8phVLgPIPhCGJ5A>
 to help keep everything straight. We live in the 21st century, and the
internet makes different kinds of art possible. But to help that process
along, I’m going to do the most important journalism of my life and explain
everything you need to know about Dune in order to enjoy a visually
spectacular movie without worrying about the plot holes.
What’s up with all the sword fighting?

Dan Kois asked a fairly obvious question — why do people fight with swords
given all this advanced technology? — that has a somewhat convoluted
answer. I’ll note that Josh Brolin’s character Gurney Halleck alludes to
the solution when he says you need a slow blade. But there are a few ins
and outs that are actually quite important, because understanding the
knife-fighting question changes the meaning of the fight with Jamis that
ends the movie.
[image: Twitter avatar for @dankois]Dan Kois @dankois
OK, I never read Dune. How come they have rock-cutting lasers and cluster
bombs but everyone fights with swords?
<https://email.mg1.substack.com/c/eJwlkN2OhCAMhZ9muDT8iIwXXGyymdcwKFWJCgbKTnz7rTOB0JIDPe03OYQl5cueqSC7jwGvE2yEd9kBETKrBfIQvJWqpWUM85YbOZmRhTLMGeBwYbfsrOMeJochxfu10L14arZawefp6XsNApQa1WQ6GJ-gzKzlrPjov6au-gBxAgt_kK8Uge12RTzLQ_085Is2vsPdTjOlg27exS2FQllBh_VORKt1J7tOdX1rZGuEFA_1ogK_UrBgJZdCCK4F51zJRjaki3Z20PJZ9Qp4sxXnVwfno-XHIppSR6o9bbcjy_ZweWu2tFYkfbln_gg09kDxqDHgNUB04w7eYq7A8Av1w2dYIEIm2H5waAU1KXinKbbmC4CQEd5OatMxcvaJfkUyRVzhfS07lODKPyAcjZY>

November 2nd 2021
29 Likes
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So here is the weapons situation in Dune:

   -

   Lasers (which they call lasguns) exist, and you can use them against
   doors and whatever. But shooting a lasgun at a shield will cause a nuclear
   explosion.
   -

   Nuclear bombs also exist (each Great House has a stash of “family
   atomics”), but the use of such weapons is barred by an agreement called The
   Great Convention. If the Harkonnens had nuked Arrakeen, everyone would in
   theory team up against them.
   -

   Shields block all fast-moving objects, so you can’t shoot a shielded
   person with a gun. It’s also why when they whack each other with swords,
   the sword usually bounces harmlessly off the body shield.
   -

   The key to Duneverse-fighting is you need to move your blade
*slooowly *through
   your opponent’s shield. But of course if you just swing your blade slowly,
   they’ll block you. So successful fighting involves a mix of fast-paced and
   slow-paced moves and plenty of deception.
   -

   However, on Arrakis itself, things are different. If you use a shield in
   the desert, it will attract sandworms, so the Fremen don’t use shields and
   neither do spice harvesters or anyone else out there. That’s why near the
   end we see Paul take a “maula pistol” off one of the Fremen. Guns actually
    *are* useful on Arrakis; the Empire just doesn’t have a big firearms
   industry, and it’s not mainstream equipment for most armies.

That’s all a lot of blah blah blah on some level, but it’s important for
fully understanding the significance of the duel with Jamis.

Lady Jessica remarks that Paul has never killed a man before, so winning
the duel is a kind of loss of innocence for him. Paul has also experienced
the prescient dreams of himself as the leader of a bloody galaxy-spanning
jihad. He fears and loathes that destiny and doesn’t want to live it. But
he wants to live even more than he wants to avoid that fate, so by beating
Jamis, he makes a fateful choice.

That much is clear on screen. What all this tedious exposition makes
clearer is that there’s no way in hell Paul should be able to win this
fight.

He’s been training all his life to beat a shielded opponent while wearing a
shield himself. He’s been training, in other words, to trust that he’ll be
invincible to fast blows and only need to be ready to parry slow ones. And
also to know that it’s useless to hit his opponent at high speed and that
he needs to artfully make slow cuts. That’s obviously a crazy way to fight
if neither you nor your opponent is wearing a shield. And adjusting on the
fly to a totally unfamiliar fighting style while up against an experienced
opponent is extremely difficult.

So how’d he do it? Well, he’s the Kwisatz Haderach, so he can do stuff.
Like the prescient visions, this victory is a sign of his extraordinary
abilities.
How did people get to Arrakis?

The exposition about this is totally cut from the movies, but you may have
noticed that at one point Duke Leto asks Thufir Hawat (played by Stephen
McKinley Henderson) to calculate something and his eyes get weird and white
and then he knows the answer.

Hawat is a Mentat, someone who, with years of training, can perform the
functions of an advanced computer. The reason Great Houses need Mentats is
that there are no computers anywhere because the Empire was founded in the
aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad against “thinking machines.” The Mentats
replace some of the functions of the old thinking machines, and they use
spice to enhance their mental abilities. Spice is also required for space
travel because the Navigators of the Spacing Guild use it to enhance their
own special mental abilities in order to safely pilot ships at
faster-than-light speeds. But before the Jihad, you could use thinking
machines for this, too.

So the galaxy (including Arrakis) was populated, and the spice was
discovered *before* the Butlerian Jihad made the spice necessary for
interstellar travel. Or perhaps another way of putting it is that the
existence of the spice and its mind-enhancing powers makes it possible to
do away with the thinking machines.

I think screenwriters Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts probably correctly
calculated that this is a lot of (frankly odd) exposition for very limited
narrative payoff. But in terms of world building, it’s absolutely
necessary, or else the basic premise doesn’t really make sense. I also
think it’s kind of a clever idea. Realistically, if human civilization
persists into the future without some collapse or huge technological
setback, we’re likely to see continued incredible advances in computing
power. So any “realistic” effort to do distant future sci-fi should really
just end up being a story about artificial intelligence. If you want to
generate a space opera scenario, you really need some mechanism to explain
away the advanced computers, and the Butlerian Jihad does it well.
What does the spice do, exactly?

The movie mentions that spice is necessary for space travel and shows Paul
getting visions when surrounded by spice dust, but doesn’t really get deep
into the nature of spice.

In the book, the product is first introduced as “the geriatric spice,
melange,” which is to say that one of the spice’s properties is that it has
anti-aging effects. And in mainstream society, this is actually its major
use. Spice functions as a seasoning (it tastes like cinnamon) and rich
people use it to promote health and longevity. But in larger quantities, it
also impacts mental functioning. The Bene Gesserit use it to help with
their extraordinary control over their bodies. The Mentats use it in their
calculations. And the Guild Navigators use it to obtain “prescience” — a
kind of future-seeing ability that helps guide starships safely.

So the commodity is in high demand throughout the galaxy, and Paul — as a
rich kid — has probably been exposed to some all along, which is why even
way back on Caladan, Paul (who has special powers and is maybe the Kwisatz
Haderach) has prescient dreams about Chani (Zendaya) and, according to his
conversation with the Reverend Mother, about other things as well.

On Arrakis, Paul finds himself in situations that are saturated with spice
dust in a way that a normal room on Caladan never would be. This steady
exposure to the spice gives him prescient visions while awake, as seen in
the film, and the longer he spends there, the more he’ll be able to see
into the future.
Where does the spice come from? What’s up with the worms?

Here I don’t want to say because it gets into spoilers for the second movie.

But what’s changed between the book and the movie is that in the book, it’s
clear that this is a mystery within the fictional universe. In other words,
Dune contains lots and lots of exposition about all kinds of things. But
one of the things the exposition explains is that the characters themselves
do not really know where the spice comes from or why it’s only on Arrakis
or what the deal is with the worms. Suffice it to say that this is all
connected, but it’s something Paul has to find out about.

There’s a lot of missing exposition, so I think part of the lack of clarity
for movie audiences is that it’s not obvious that the off-worlders
themselves don’t really know how this works. They’re just there to exploit
the natural resources and not ask too many questions.
Okay, but what about the implications of Virginia for the midterms?

See, this is the difference between a Mentat’s calculations and a Kwisatz
Haderach’s prescient visions.

The Mentat uses data and produces calculations, which gives you facts like
this:

   -

   The swing against Democrats in Virginia was fairly uniform across
   geography — rural precincts, suburban precincts, urban precincts, Black
   precincts, white precincts, diverse precincts — and it was also visible in
   New Jersey. So the main causes are probably macro in nature rather than
   specific to Virginia.
   -

   It’s not really surprising that you’d see a broad swing against
   Democrats given that Joe Biden is dramatically less popular today than he
   was one year ago or even three months ago.
   -

   Virginia results have essentially zero *predictive* power. Democrats won
   the governor’s race there in 2001, and then in 2002, the GOP had by far the
   best incumbent party midterm on record.

Boringly, the answer is that if the incumbent Democratic President is still
very unpopular in 12 months, then Democrats will do very poorly. But I
think people knew that. Will he still be this unpopular?

I don’t think there’s any way to know, analytically. What you would need is
an actual spice-fueled mystical vision of the future that lets you know
things that are basically unknowable.