“The dead should remain dead…” (164).
Book three of Frank Herbert’s magnificent original Dune series, Children of Dune was initially published as a four-part serial in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. Surprisingly, Herbert’s editor David Hartwell at G.P. Putnam’s Sons had to convince the publisher’s management to print additional copies of the book and after stellar sales, he was proven right. Copies of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine sold out and the hardcover edition of Children of Dune became the top-selling hardcover science fiction novel up to that point in time. Frank Herbert dubbed it a “runaway best seller.” He then embarked, at the age of fifty-five, on his first big book tour –twenty-one cities in thirty days which included an appearance on The Today Show alongside fellow science fiction writers Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey, according to Brian Herbert’s introduction to the book.
In Children of Dune, it has been nine years since Paul Atreides, the Muad’Dib, walked alone into the desert at the conclusion of Dune Messiah. His two children are twins, his red-haired son Leto and daughter Ghanima (or “Ghani”), are coming of age (they are both nine years old). They are described as “children in flesh” but “ancient in experience” as they behave like adults despite being young children, while sitting on the Council, eating the spice mélange, participating in the sietch orgy, probing the desert for sandtrout, and participating in Fremen children’s games. But presently the throne is ruled under the regency of Paul’s sister, Aliya, a young woman whose mind is plagued by a panoply of voices and memories she inherited from her mother. All three Atreides family members –Aliya, Leto, and Ghanima—have special powers and ancient memories resulting from their exposure to spice in the womb (and Leto has recently begun experiencing prescience, or the ability to see visions of the future, just like his father before him). However, only Aliya has recently succumbed to the horrid “abomination” as she has faced a cacophony of ancestral voices in her mind wherein she has become overtaken by the evil possession of one voice in particular –the late Baron Harkonnen, who was the fearsome head of House Harkonnen until he was killed in the first book. But his memory now lives on in Aliya’s head. Her regency thus poses a grave threat to House Atreides, and some people fear the twins might also succumb to “abomination” if they are not careful. Additionally, Aliya has also betrayed her husband, the metal-eyed ghola and mentat named Duncan Idaho (formerly known as the ghola named “Hayt”). She has engaged in an affair with Javid, the high priest of the Qizarate (one of the religious civil servants of Emperor Paul Muad’Dib’s state religion known as the “Golden Elixir of Life”). When Duncan Idaho witnesses his wife’s dark inner possession and her betrayal, he privately cries tears knowing he can never again be united with her.
In Children of Dune, there is a deep connection between politics and ecology. Ecologically speaking, the planet Arrakis or “Dune” has changed drastically over the past decade. It is no longer the dry, barren desert we have come to know. Now, after undergoing large-scale terraforming, there is rainfall on the surface and lush greenery has emerged as well as moisture in the air and blossoming flowers and gardens. New animals have started flourishing, as well, such as parrots, magpies, jays, banded gecko lizards, piume flies (notorious biters of human flesh), and gila woodpeckers. Dead sandworms have been found with no explanation as to why they died. Many of the Fremen have abandoned the old sietches in the desert and have moved into shielded cities with elaborate seals and moisture traps at every entrance, where they take pills which help them adjust to the new climate and where the stillsuit discipline is lax among the young. Many of the older traditional Fremen, like Stilgar (the Naib of Sietch Tabr), have come to question this new way of life: “How simple things were when our Messiah was only a dream, he thought. By finding our Mahdi we loosed upon the universe countless messianic dreams. Every people subjugated by the jihad now dreams of a leader to come” (4). The older Fremen fear that the new climate on Arrakis has given rise to a weaker generation, one which liberally disposes of water, even freely using water to build villages made of mud bricks. The loss of their way of life is palpable. But the terraforming of Arrakis is also risking the planet’s own value –the dying Arrakeen way of life is threatening the very survival of the sandworms which are vital for spice creation. Spice, or mélange (“the secret coinage”), powers the spacing guild’s heighliners since the spice precipitates the “navigation truce” by which a translight path can be “seen” before being traveled. Additionally, without mélange and its amplification of the human immunogenic system, life expectancy would degenerate by a factor of at least four. This could pose disastrous long-term problems for the whole universe.
“Why did they make a god of Muad’Dib? Why deify a man known to be flesh? Muad’Dib’s Golden Elixir of Life had created a bureaucratic monster which sat astride human affairs. Government and religion united, and breaking a law became sin. A smell of blasphemy arose like smoke around any questioning of governmental edicts. The guilt of rebellion invoked hellfire and self-righteous judgments” (8).
By now, Stilgar has realized the dream of the Fremen is over and now he has been forced to learned new skills like diplomacy, and the art of politics. Though he believes these are “water-soft times.” As the novel opens, he briefly contemplates killing the twins, Leto and Ghani, in order to save numerous lives, but he stops himself from doing so. Their grandmother, Jessica (Paul’s mother) is ending her twenty years of self-imposed exile on Caladan for a sudden arrival on Arrakis. Why? She is rumored to have returned to the Bene Gesserit sisterhood –but is she coming in order to rule Arrakis? Or does she plan to claim the twins for herself? Whatever the case, Aliya feels deeply threatened by her mother’s presence, and so she plans to keep Jessica tied up in Fremen religious ceremonies (such as the “Lustration” ceremony) for as long as possible. Suffice it to say, Jessica’s return shakes up the political order on Arrakis. And she is joined by her guard, Gurney Halleck, who is also rumored to be her lover. Upon arrival, it quickly becomes apparent to Jessica that her daughter has fallen into the forbidden way of “abomination” and she carefully attempts to outmaneuver Aliya’s kidnapping or assassination attempts, while also being relieved to find that Ghani has not similarly pursued the forbidden way. However, Jessica is deeply concerned about Leto’s powers which seem to surpass her own Bene Gesserit training. For example, Leto uses the Voice to compel his grandmother to willingly accept being kidnapped by Aliya’s forced, and he explains that through the power of prescience he has seen three possible futures for himself: 1) Kill Jessica and protect the spice monopoly, 2) Marry his sister Ghanima and protect House Atreides (which Ghani expressly refuses), 3) undeify his father and rule for thousands of years as a super-human.
“I am on sand in bright yellow daylight, yet there is no sun. Then I realize that I am the sun. My light shines out as a Golden Path. When I realize this, I move out of myself. I turn, expecting to see myself as the sun. But I am not the sun; I am a stick figure, a child’s drawing with zigzag lightning for eyes, stick legs and stick arms. There is a scepter in my left hand, and it’s a real scepter –much more detailed in its reality than the stick figure which holds it. The scepter moves and this terrifies me. As it moves, I feel myself awaken, yet I know I’m still dreaming. I realize then that my skin is encased in something –an armor which moves as my skin moves. I cannot see this armor, but I feel it. My terror leaves me then, for this armor gives me the strength of ten thousand men” (114-115).
Meanwhile, far away on the planet Salusa Secundus, House Corrino under Princess Weinsicia and her nearly 18-year-old son Prince Farad’n (the grandson of the deposed Emperor Shaddam IV) hatch a plot to sow chaos on Arrakis. House Corrino has trained a pair of Laza tigers to hunt down and kill the Atreides twins –note: Laza tigers were brought to Salusa Secundus 8,000 years ago where they were genetically manipulated from Terran stock with long fangs, enlarged paws, sheathed claws (extending some ten centimeters), and tan coats making them invisible against sand. The threat of these Laza tigers dispatched from Selusa Secundus serves as a looming threat throughout the first half of the book.
Now, at the same time, a strange figure arises in the desert –a mystical blind figure known only as “The Preacher” who begins leading an apocalyptic ministry in condemnation of the Muad’Dib’s messianic jihad and a rejection of the new Fremen way of life: “I mean to disturb you!… It is my intention! I come here to combat fraud and illusion of your conventional, institutionalized religions, your institution moves toward cowardice, it moves toward mediocrity, inertia, and self-satisfaction” (335). The Preacher quickly amasses a large following of Fremen with many people believing him to be Paul Atreides in the flesh. A man named Assan Tariq serves as The Preacher’s surrogate and aide. Early in the novel, The Preacher is brought before Farad’n on Salusa Secundus (disguised as a masked Ixian to interpret the prince’s dream) where The Preacher offers some cryptic words of advice and also pledges Duncan Idaho as a loyal servant for House Corrino (I was a little confused as to how The Preacher and Duncan Idaho were connected in such a way that The Preacher could freely offer him as a gift). At any rate, Princess Wensica’s son has been made a deliberate convert to the Mahdi religion, a further effort to instate him on the throne and wrest the spice monopoly from Arrakis (House Corrino has been conducting its own sandtrout experiments on Salusa Secundus). Despite threats to kill The Preacher on the spot by Sardaukar officer Tyekanik (a Bashar), The Preacher departs from Salusa Secundus with the following words:
“Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women… which way the wind blows on a certain day… a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier’s eye. It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God” (131).
When The Preacher returns to Arrakis, Aliya attempts to assassinate Jessica, which leads to a Fremen revolt as some Naibate families defect to House Corrino (particularly the “Marquis of the Inner Desert” who curse House Atreides and even Muad’Dib), and this forces Aliya to agree to undergo the “Trial of Possession” which would prove once and for all if she is, in fact, actually possessed by Baron Harkonnen (though she never actually undergoes the trial). At the same time, Jessica is forced to flee Arrakis with Duncan Idaho (per his agreement with The Preacher) for Salusa Secundus where she has been instructed by the Sisterhood to instruct Prince Farad’n in the Bene Gesserit ways. However, Duncan Idaho’s mentat abilities suddenly sense a trap –Jessica has been lied to by the Bene Gesserit. She has been sent to Salusa Secundus in order to be murdered alongside Duncan Idaho by Farad’n, thus provoking a war between House Atreides and House Corrino which the Bene Gesserit have orchestrated such that Prince Farad’n and Ghanima can be married in order to produce the long-desired true Kwisatz Haderach. Meanwhile, the twins also escape into the desert following Leto’s prescient dream of meeting The Preacher at a fabled deep desert Fremen sietch known as Jacurutu (also known as “Fondak”) where a band of “Cast Out” Fremen (known as the “Iduali,” a water hunting tribe from “olden times” whose name means “water insects”) were rumored to reside after having committed the grave offense of stealing water long ago. However, they are tracked by the Laza tigers sent from Selusa Secundus. They go running through the desert and barely manage to kill the tigers leaving Leto wounded. From here, the twins agree they must part ways. Leto hails a sandworm as he vows to head deep into the desert in search of Jacurutu (in “Tanzerouft,” or the deep desert), while Ghani returns home after having fabricated a memory in her own mind of her brother dying at the hands of the tigers before being swallowed by a worm (with a fabricated memory, Ghani can avoid accusations of lying from a Truthsayer and thereby protect the secret of her brother’s survival).
“To turn his back on his father was like betraying a god. But the Atreides Empire needed shaking up. It had fallen into the worst of Paul’s vision. How casually it obliterated men. It was done without a second thought. The mainspring of a religious insanity had been wound tight and left ticking” (319).
It takes two sandworms to transport Leto to the presumed location of Jacurutu. But upon arrival, he is quickly captured by Namri, the father of Javid (Aliya’s servant and lover), and a woman named Sabiha who nurses Leto. Soon thereafter, he also meets Gurney Halleck who has been dispatched to capture Leto by Jessica. Her orders are to place Leto in a spice trance (like his father before him) so that Namri and Gurney Halleck might disentangle his vision. And after drifting in and out of consciousness, Leto eventually escapes into the desert alone amidst storm. Shortly thereafter, Gurney Halleck learns he has actually been unknowingly acting under the orders of Aliya and not Jessica, so he kills Namri as vengeance. Soon, out in the desert, Leto realizes that his water is running dry, so he goads a sandworm into taking him still deeper into the desert where he happens upon a rogue band of Fremen from the mythic location known as “Shuloch,” which is actually the true residing place of the original “Cast Out” Fremen. Here in the qanat on Shuloch, Leto sees the worms and the sandtrout which are being sold offworld by smugglers (once offworld, the worms die shortly thereafter). He allows a sandtrout to engulf his hand and absorb the water in his capillaries, and since the sandtrout can join together to form a whole new organism, he then lies naked in the sand and allows the sandtrout to overtake his body and cover almost all of his form such that they create a new living stillsuit membrane around Leto which quickly gives him super-human strength and the ability to swim through the sands with incredible speed. He can even stop sandworms dead in their tracks. He is now no longer human as cilia creeps into his flesh, beginning the transformation of Leto into a giant sandworm and “forming a new creature which would seek its own metamorphosis in the eons ahead.” In this way, Leto pursues his “Golden Path” (or “secher nbiw”) like he once envisioned. “Here was the great leap onto the Golden Path. He had put on the living, self-repairing stillsuit of a sandtrout membrane, a thing of unmeasurable value on Arrakis…” (493). He becomes the“Desert Demon,” a rumored creature that is able to destroy entire qanats. Is he a rogue worm? Or a new revolutionary force working against Aliya? Many Fremen believe the Desert Demon is actually a revolutionary band bent on overthrowing Alia’s Mahdinate and restoring Arrakis to its old ways. Some view him as Shai-Hulus embodied. From here, Leto ventures forth, tracking down The Preacher’s sandworm and stopping him to debate competing visions for the future. And The Preacher is at last convincingly revealed to be Paul Atreides, himself, the blind messianic hero of the first two books who eventually grew disillusioned and abandoned his frenzied religious zealotry, wandering into the desert with every intention of dying only to be rescued by the “Cast Out” Fremen of Jacurutu. Though The Preacher/Paul now admits to merely being but a “poor copy, a relic” of the real Muad’Dib.
At this point back in Arrakeen, Aliya is growing ever more evil and unhinged by the day while her skin starts to grow deformed as a result of the prolonged “abomination.” And Duncan Idaho returns to Arrakis where he kills Javid in a fit of rage, and then insults and provokes Stilgar who then kills Duncan Idaho. But when Stilgar attacks, Idaho merely smiles and dies (again) –this was his plan all along. Recognizing how fraught the situation has become, Stilgar flees with a group of sixty, including Ghani and Irulan, into the desert believing himself to be their only saving grace from Aliya. They all escape to the old abandoned Sietch Tabr (now a “djedida,” the last of the new towns built on a foundation of exposed basalt with crumbling walls that are beginning to melt back into the desert) but Stilgar and Ghanima are captured using a tracker by Aliya’s temple guard and lover, Buer Argaves (an aide to Zia, director of Aliya’s temple guard). Meanwhile, Farad’n becomes irate with his mother when he learns of the assassination attempt on Leto and Ghani, and so he decides to side with Jessica and the Bene Gesserit and offers to marry Ghani (an offer which Ghani initially rejects but later agrees to, since it will give her the opportunity to kill him). Jessica and Farad’n return to Arrakeen and all parties watch as Leto brings The Preacher/Paul to the city where he delivers a fiery sermon denouncing Aliya and calling her “blasphemous!” Immediately, her guards descend upon The Preacher and kill him. This leads to a dramatic grand battle between Leto and Aliya in the palace, but she is proven to be utterly outmatched against Leto extraordinary strength and her abomination is forced out into the open as Baron Harkonnen’s voice emerges for the last time. Aliya fights within herself, grabbing her own head and hurling herself out a window tumbling down to a thud on the steps below, killing herself and Baron Harkonnen for the second time.
Aliya’s demise ushers in a new era of rule under Leto who sits on the Lion Throne. His skin is impenetrable to knives, he can summon a worm without being hurt (since the worm will avoid harming the sandtrout), and Leto is seated with a giant canopic jar containing the water of Muad’Dib placed at his right elbow. He also hearkens back for inspiration to a figure named Harum, as he is “community dominated by one who was ancient and surpassingly powerful. He fathered a dynasty which endured for three thousand of our years. His name was Harum and, until his line trailed out in the congenital weaknesses and superstitions of a descendant, his subjects lived in rhythmic sublimity. They moved unconsciously with the changes of the seasons. They bred individuals who tended to be short-lived, superstitious, and easily led by a god-king” (600). This is the same vision Leto carries for his own reign. He orchestrates a political marriage between himself and his sister Ghani, but since Leto is no longer human and cannot reproduce, he employs Farad’n as his scribe. And over his multi-thousand-year reign, Leto pledges to sculpt and mold their progeny in alignment with his vision for the “Golden Path” as an alternative to the selective breeding program of the Bene Gesserit, and in anticipation of the “Kralizec,” an ancient mythical battle for the known universe. He foresees forthcoming lean years when the worms will die out, and the Guild will have to survive on its stockpiles of spice. But the worms will return again for a new age under Leto’s leadership. The Sardaukar are then handed over to Leto, and Farad’n will be called “Breaking of Habit,” or “Harq al-Ada” and Leto hails a forthcoming age of abundance, peace, and prosperity. The following quotations come from Leto at the close of the novel:
“There’s always a prevailing mystique in any civilization… It builds itself as a barrier against change, and that always leaves future generations unprepared for the universe’s treachery. All mystiques are the same in building these barriers –the religious mystique, the hero-leader mystique, the messiah mystique, the mystique of science/technology, and the mystique of nature itself. We live in an Imperium which such mystique has shaped, and now that Imperium is falling apart because most people don’t distinguish between mystique and their universe. You see, the mystique is like demon possession; it tends to take over the consciousness, becoming all things to the observer…” (599).
“I’ll create a new consciousness in all men. I tell you that below the desert of Dune there’s a secret place with the greatest treasure of all time. I do not lie. When the last worm dies and the last mélange is harvested on our sands, these deep treasures will spring up throughout our universe. As the power of the spice monopoly fades and the hidden stockpiles make their mark, new powers will appear throughout our realm. It is time humans learned once more to live in their instincts” (603).
Children of Dune is another extraordinary, sweeping epic much like the first Dune novel, but the adventure truly escalates the second half of the novel, and yet it also contains the same slow-burn palace intrigue and political maneuvering as found in the previous book Dune Messiah. My one quibble with the novel is that it takes nearly three hundred pages to establish the political atmosphere before the action actually begins. However, the scope of Children of Dune is simply staggering as we follow Paul Atreides’s children into their future on Arrakis. And as in the previous two books, in Children of Dune I found myself particularly struck by Frank Herbert’s epic world-building: for example, we learn more about qanats (desert water channels for transporting water), haploid sandtrout (larval sandworms who can conjoin their bodies to form entirely new creatures), eyeless masks worn by Ixians, garments made of Palian silk, Fremen windtraps, glowglobes made of Ixian crystal, the Orange Catholic Bible, as well as particular days of the week and seasons as measured by traditional Fremen rites (such as the “Month of Laab” or the time of day known as “The Hour of Assassins”), and I made note that yellow is the color of mourning to match the burning sun. In this book, the crysknife and the maula pistol are the weapons of choice. And characters experience things like enzyme balancing (practiced by Aliya and the twins), Rihani magic (forbidden Fremen sorcery), and we are treated to various Fremen myths, such as a tale about a Priestess of Jowf on Assyria by Sennacherib, or the Zensunni wanderer, or the famous Fremen Story of a waif from Shuloch. Herbert’s world is incredibly rich with a bounty of ancient mythology and lore which permeates all aspects of life on Dune. A uniquely memorable moment for me was a brief but notable passage in which Leto recalls the trip to Canterbury as featured in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales which apparently took place on a planet long since forgotten –allusions to classic literature are quietly woven throughout the fabric of the novel. And I was also drawn to a scene in which we are given a glimpse of a person boarding and controlling a sandworm as Herbert describes Leto hailing a large “growler,” a worm which digs in its foreplates while its tail drives its body producing loud rumbling sounds through the sand:
“The worm was a long time coming. He heard it before he saw it, turned eastward where the earthshaking susurration made the air tremble, waited for the first glimpse of orange from the mouth rising out of the sand. The worm lifted itself from the depth in a gigantic hissing dust which obscured its flanks. The curving grey wall swept past Leto and he planted his hooks, went up the side in easy steps. He turned the worms southward in a great curving track as he climbed” (458).
In conclusion, I will end this review with a quotation from the famous passage from the “Litany Against Fear” from the Bene Gesserit rite which appears from time to time throughout Children of Dune: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Herbert, Frank. Children of Dune. ACE, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, NY, NY (2008, originally published in 1976).
Children of Dune is dedicated to Bev (Herbert’s second wife who later died in 1984): “Out of the wonderful commitment of our love and to share her beauty and her wisdom for she truly inspired this book.”
Very powerfully cautionary quote: “The dead should remain dead.”
Thank you for your review.
Very powerfully cautionary quote: “The dead should remain dead.” Thank you for your review.