Frank Herbert's Sources of Inspiration:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Studying sand dunes for work</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Experimentation with psychedelic drugs in the 60s</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Basing Paul on historical figures like Alexander the Great or Lawrence of Arabia</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Comparing the fremen to Arab bedouins and the Harkonens to Soviets</li></ul>In Dune, Herbert weaves historical lessons through an allegorical tale that is both complex and intriguing.

The Inspiration Behind Dune

Feudalism is the system of government in "Dune," similar to the Middle Ages or "Game of Thrones." This is because Frank Herbert believed feudalism was the natural political order. He believed most people want to be led and that freedom was a burden for most. So, in "Dune," society is divided into houses:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">The Atreides represent the civilized West.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">The Harkonnen are the Soviets, which Herbert despised (he was related to Joseph McCarthy, a U.S. anti-communist).</li><li class="ql-align-justify">The Corrinos, the house of the Emperor, are the Ottomans who created the modern standing army (like the Sardaukar in "Dune").</li></ul>

The Houses

The Fremen are the Arabs, conquered by the Ottomans and ruled by the British and the French. Arabs became the model for the Fremen, the native population of Arrakis.Like the Arabs sitting on piles of oil, the Fremen's planet is the only planet producing spice. And like the Arabs, their religion is heavily dependent on prophecies. Frank Herbert believed that the Arabs could form a new superpower if they managed to unite under one banner. A unification that has to be religious in nature, just like in his book.

The Fremen

There are no computers in Dune. The interstellar ships are operated by humans and the fighting is done with blades, not lasers. Before the events in the books, Herbert imagined a war between humans and AI, after which technology became banned. Personal shields, immune to projectile weapons, elevated the use of swords.Herbert was distrustful of technology. After experimenting with psychedelic drugs, he became convinced that our progress relied more on the expansion of our consciousness. That's why the spice plays such a key role in his books.

The Ban on Technology

Paul's history is Greek. Atreides, Leto, and all are Greek names. Leto's banner was a bull, an ancient Greek symbol. Like Alexander the Great, Paul had a great dad, a powerful mom who belonged to a religious sect & had to blend with the desert people to rule over them.But Paul's story is also that of T. E. Lawrence, a famous Englishman who led the Arabs against the Ottoman occupation during WW1. Like Paul, Lawrence adopted the culture of the Arab population and was a big advocate for Arab nationalism.However, Paul is not a good guy. His accession serves as a warning against prophets.

The Messiah

Arrakis is the only planet in the Dune Universe where the spice is produced. The spice is essential for interstellar travel, as the operators of spaceships need it to plot courses & for the religion in the empire as a conscience-enhancing drug. <ul><li class="ql-align-justify"> Frank Herbert consumed both magic mushrooms & LSD during the hippie revolution and came to believe that expanding our consciousness is a better path forward for humanity than technology. </li><li class="ql-align-justify"> During his time, the importance of oil became obvious, which at that time came from the Middle East. </li></ul> Herbert thus combined these two magical ingredients into one.

Where Does the Spice Come From?

Dune is the best-selling SF novel of all time. Created by Frank Herbert in the 1960s, it changed SF forever with its deeply philosophical flavor of science fiction. The story takes place in a distant future where humanity is divided into a feudal system, ruled by an emperor and armies that fight using blades. There is no technology except for a magical drug called "spice" that can only be found on the planet Arrakis, home of the giant sand worms.Paul is a prince from House Atreides who leads the Fremen, the natives of Arrakis, against the enemies of his house and then the empire at large.

Frank Herbert's Dune

What are some of the themes and historical references for Dune? 

Frank Herbert's original Dune was published in 1965, and became the best selling sci-fi novel of all time. With the release of Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two, the novel has been successfully adapted for the big screen, after decades of misfiring attempts. But what are the origins of the Dune universe? Who are the Fremen? Is it an allegory for the world we live in? 

In this video, Matt Lewis talks through the history behind this epic story, from Arab nationalism to magic mushrooms and the origins of the Atreides. The script and editing was by James Carson. 

Frank Herbert portrait credit: MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.087.11.01, photo by Gilbert W. Arias.

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00:00 Intro and Plot
03:08 The Origins of Dune
06:00 Cold War in the Middle East 
10:00 Arabic Influences
11:28 Religious Belief Systems
14:15 Laurence of Arabia and the Arab World
17:37 Greek Influences
21:08 Imperialism and Feudalism
22:40 Technology

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Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free exclusive podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more. Watch, listen and read history wherever you are, whenever you want it. Available on all devices: Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, Roku, Xbox, Chromecast, and iOs & Android.

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The History Behind Dune | Arab Nationalism, Magic Mushrooms and The Cold War

The History Behind Dune: Arab Nationalism, Magic Mushrooms & The Cold War

Father Dure was a disciple of Teilhard de Chardin, a controversial Jesuit priest from the XX century. Teilhard’s God is not a mystical concept, but a cosmic one. He proposed that the cosmic body of Christ "extends throughout the universe and comprises all things that attain their fulfillment in Christ .. the Body of Christ is the one single thing that is being made in creation."This process of God expansion and evolution will continue, it is proposed, until its full realization at Omega, a point which coincides with the fully realized Christ. It is at this point that God will be "all in all”.

Teilhard’s God

The novel picks up where it left off, with the pilgrims entering the Shrike Valley. They find themselves caught up in a war between the Hegemony and the Ousters, a group of humans who have rejected the Hegemony's rule.The AI plays a major role in this novel as it’s goals and relationship with humanity are explored in depth. They had something to do with the Shrike and the upcoming war. Hint hint!

The Story of the Fall of Hyperion

Mobs have passions, not brains.

Sol understood at the end, why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so. It was not obedience. It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son. Abraham was testing God. By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right—in Abraham’s eyes and the hearts of his offspring—to become the God of Abraham.

The Abraham Problem Resolved

As the AI was working on becoming God, the humans are struggling with accepting one:<ul><li>Sol, a Jew scholar who's daughter is aging backwards, rejected him for cruelty and demand for obedience: “Abraham’s path of obedience can no longer be followed, even if there is a God demanding such obedience.”</li><li>Father Dure, a Jesuit priest who was revived by a mysterious crucifix, was struggling with God as a clever algorithm. Not accepting that some things are beyond intellect.</li></ul>

Accepting God vs Creating God

The Technocore is the sentient AI civilisation in Hyperion. Less is known about its purpose but we know there are 3 factions: <ul><li>The Stables - wishing to keep the human-machine symbiosis</li><li>The Volatiles - wishing to end humankind</li><li>The Ultimates - wishing to transcend towards an Ultimate Intelligence</li></ul>The Ultimates are the most forward looking. Their goal is to evolve into Ultimate God-like being, existing outside space-time.

The Goals of the AI

“Are we so sure that Christ always knew what to do next? He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do.”

“Declaring war against the AI Technocore would be like … like a fish declaring war against water”

As the Technocore AI civilisation was evolving into an ultimate form it met the Human Ultimate. It met God. What they realized is that God’s trinity is made of:<ol><li>the Void Which Binds</li><li>Intellect</li><li>Empathy</li></ol>The machines did not poses Empathy so:<ul><li>they tried to bait the Human God using empathy as its weakness. This is the role of the Shrike.</li><li>they worked on developing empathy by trying to understand poetry. It's why they focused on reviving John Keats. To understand the human spirit through poetry.</li></ul>

The Ultimate Fight between the AI God and Human God

Took me a month of thinking about the themes of this book to write some ideas down. Very complex plot with lots of religious themes. Loved it. 

“State of the art science fiction . . . a landmark novel.”—Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Now, in the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing—nothing anywhere in the universe—will ever be the same. Praise for The Fall of Hyperion “One of the finest SF novels published in the past few years.”—Science Fiction Eye  “A magnificently original blend of themes and styles.”—The Denver Post

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Philosophy

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Religion & Spirituality

Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion

You have to live to really know things, my love

Like the famous medieval book, Dan Simmons’s book deals with 7 characters (a Jesuit priest, a military genius, a scholar, a private detective, a poet, a starship master & a diplomat) who meet on a pilgrimage. To pass the time each of them tells their story as a way to answer the question ”Why are you here?”.The book is thus a collection of distinct genre-beneding stories:<ul><li>psychological horror story</li><li>part war story, part erotic novel</li><li>supernatural thriller</li><li>detective story</li><li>family drama</li><li>political thriller</li></ul>You get to understand the universe and the themes to these individual stories.

The Canterbury Tales … but in Space

The story happens 1000 yrs after the accidental destruction of Earth. <ul><li>The human race expanded on 200 worlds, forming a federation called the Hegemony. </li><li>The humans are aided by a sentient independent AI civilisation called the TechnoCore. They provide the technology powering the Hegemony’s instantaneous travel (farcaster) and communication (fatline). No-one knows how the tech works or what the AI intentions are.</li><li>The Ousters are a human-like society spread over much of our arm of our galaxy, preferring to explore the outer edges space. Initially they act as the boogie-man for the Hegemony.</li></ul>

The Universe of Hyperion

There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain. Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

Hyperion is a planet on the outskirt of the Hegemony, home to mysterious Time Tombs, a structure that somehow makes the time to flow backwards. Speculation regarding the purpose of the tombs and the reason they were sent traveling backward in time is one of the mysteries.The Shrike, a legendary indestructible shape-shifting being made of blades protects the Tombs. A new religion develops around the reverence of the Shrike. It is said that the Shriek will grant one wish to a person from a 7-people pilgrimage and kill the rest. Our heroes are on such a pilgrimage.

The Planet of Hyperion, Time Tombs and the Shriek

After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. ... And so it goes.

The pilgrims manifest a connection through pain that forms the binding agent for the pilgrimage. The theme is explored in all stories, both physically but also culturally:<ul><li>The evolution of religions. Christianity and Judaism are niche religions while the Shriek church is on the rise with a doctrine of ultimate destruction. </li><li>The “The Abraham Problem.” Why, exactly, did God want Abraham to offer his son as a blood sacrifice? What was His purpose?</li><li>The pain of existence & the search of meaning. </li><li>The nature of sacrifice and the promise of a Messiah</li></ul>

Pain as the ultimate human connection

One of the books who makes all the lists of best SF of all times. An original take on a philosophical space saga. Beautifully written. 

A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man. On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. Praise for Dan Simmons and Hyperion “Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World “An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”—The New York Times Book Review “Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post “An essential part of any science fiction collection.”—Booklist

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

Hyperion

Future humans terraform a planet and, through an unfortunate accident, infect it with a nano-virus that significantly accelerate the evolution of spiders. With their new found biological advantages, the spiders evolve from a species of lonely predators into a space traveling civilisation.While the spiders were on the fast track of evolution, we follow the wondering of the last humans, traveling in an ark-ship called Ghilghames, in search of a new home.The book ends with an epic conflict between the last humans and the new sentient spiders.

The Premise of Children of Time

Adrian Tarkovsky's book reads like a traditional space opera from the golden age of SF. What sets it apart is the focus on biology, as the author carefully documents how a spider civilisation could look like:<ul><li>the spiders didn't use speech but communicated through vibrations and scents</li><li>knowledge was passed through genetics, rather written word</li><li>wars were won by reprogramming the enemies rather than exterminating them.</li><li>since the spiders lived on a new planet, there were no fossil fuels so the scientific revolution of the spiders was different than others</li><li>the early spider civilisation was matriarchal </li></ul>

The power of Biology

Since the book spans thousands of years, documenting the evolution of the spiders could have turned boring pretty fast. But the spider history arc is told using the same archetypal characters. We follow Portia, the adventurous spider, Bianca, the heretic or Fabian, the only male character. Using the same names for the spider heroes is more than a trick. It makes sense in the lore of the book because the spiders evolved by passing their innovation (called the Understanding) to their offsprings. So there is a genetical timeline continuation to the main characters ... over thousands of years.

Archetypal Permanence

“Life is not perfect, individuals will always be flawed, but empathy – the sheer inability to see those around them as anything other than people too – conquers all, in the end.”

An original space opera, where instead of aliens we have a human created specie of sentient spiders. Light, fast paced reading. 

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home. Following their ancestors' star maps, they discovered the greatest treasure of a past age--a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilizations are on a collision course and must fight to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

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Science & Nature

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age--a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Time

In this story, a literomancer can tell people's fortunes based on the characters in their names and the characters they pick."The Chinese invented writing as an aid to divination, so Chinese characters always had a deep magic to them. From characters, I can tell what's bothering people and what lies in their past and future."

Literomancer

The book is a collection of short stories that combione combine SF and magic, celebrating the wonders of our everyday life with sprinkles of magic.The influence of Chinese culture that was common in every story, such as the introduction of literomancy that details the history and beauty of the Chinese language. Liu also draws on the popular chinese character “Sun Wukong” as an imaginary companion of a litigator who makes a brave choice. Liu also retells Chinese folklore such as the story of Guan Yu, the popular Chinese military general, in All the Flavours.

Ken Liu's Short Stories

A very cool collections of short stories that combine science fiction with Chinese mysticism 

Presents the author's selection of his best short stories, as well as a new piece, in a collection that includes "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," "Mono No Aware" and "The Waves."

Featured in the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume. With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards). Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.

The History Behind Dune: Arab Nationalism, Magic Mushrooms & The Cold War

The Fall of Hyperion

Hyperion

It's time to Read like a Pro.

Children of Time

It's time to
Read like a Pro.