As the Marvel Universe has dominated the screen for nearly twenty years, the market and capital have long been looking forward to the emergence of another "big IP" that is fresh but also has evergreen potential.

As a monumental work in the history of science fiction literature, Frank Herbert's Dune series undoubtedly has this potential. From two phenomenal movies to the Dune: The Prophecy series that will be launched in November 2024, a huge Dune universe is taking shape.

Dune has always been praised as a science fiction epic. For audiences who have not read the original novel, any epic story has a certain entry barrier. Therefore, in this article, I will not talk about the plot of Dune: The Prophecy, but I want to use the changes in the power structure in the Dune universe to give a concise and concise popular science, which I believe will be helpful for you to watch the drama and the future movie Dune III.

Audiences who have seen the movie will definitely have a question, which is, "Why does everyone need spices in the Dune series?" Spices did dominate the major events of the Paul Atreides era, but the power structure of the Dune universe did not revolve around spices from the beginning.

spices

Butler's Jihad: The binary opposition between humans and thinking machines

The Butler Crusade was a decisive war in the history of the Dune universe, which took place approximately ten thousand years before the timeline of Paul Atreides, and was aimed at destroying artificial intelligences known as "Thinking Machines".

The cause of this war is humanity's over-reliance on artificial intelligence, which has enabled thinking machines to succeed and begin to enslave humans extensively. When Erasmus, a thinking machine with independent consciousness, brutally killed a human captive baby, the baby's mother, Serena Butler, raised her arms in great grief and called for a holy war against thinking machines. This war was therefore named the "Butler Holy War."

The Butler's Crusade lasted for about a hundred years, and ultimately humanity won at a huge cost, ending the thousand-year rule of thinking machines.

In fact, long before the holy war, chemists had accidentally discovered spices and their life-prolonging effects, but at that time, spices were only used as a commodity and traded on a small scale within the empire.

During the Holy War, although there were grudges and small calculations between various countries and organizations, the hatred of the cruel rule of thinking machines united all humans under the same goal. Therefore, the power structure of the Dune universe at this time was a simple binary opposition - that is, thinking machines and humans fought for life and death.

The New Empire after the Jihad: The Birth of Special Organizations and the Formation of Multipolar Power Structures

Just like in the real world’s human history, whenever a common enemy disappears, the human group will gradually split into different interest groups, and the same is true in the Dune universe.

The Butler Crusade destroyed the world created by the Thinking Machines and brought about two major changes:

First, the Butler family, the leader of the holy war, changed its name to "Corino" and began to rule the new empire as emperors (that is, the royal family in "Dune: Prophecy" and "Dune" movies);

Second, the fear and hatred of thinking machines have given rise to the human world’s rejection of intelligent machines and even science and technology.

Sisterhood uses thinking machine to store breeding records

The latter, a radical change in human thought, gave rise to two schools of thought that changed the order of human society.

First, after the jihad, some fanatical jihadists became more radical. They formed the "Butler Jihad Organization" and, under the leadership of Manford Tolondo, continued to defend the concept of anti-thinking machines.

Tolondo's core demand is to completely eradicate any form of artificial intelligence and complex technology to prevent the threat of thinking machines from reappearing. He led the jihadist organization to widely use religious language and terrorist means, destroyed many research facilities that attempted to restore high technology, and in the process, massacred scientists and anyone who was soft on science and technology.

On the other hand, human society cannot return to the primitive age. There are still many complex tasks to be completed within the empire. In order to fill the gap left by the disappearance of thinking machines, humans began to seek to replace the functions of thinking machines by strengthening their own abilities.

It was this demand that gave rise to several special organizations that lasted for thousands of years (until the time of Paul) and profoundly changed the power structure of the Dune universe. Because of them, spices gradually became the core resource that dominated the operation of the Dune universe.

Sisterhood (Bene Gesserit):

The Sisterhood is a highly secretive women's organization whose goal is to influence the development of human society through genetic engineering and political manipulation. The Sisterhood uses spices to enhance the physical and mental abilities of its members, ensuring that they always have the upper hand in complex power struggles. They are committed to cultivating a superhuman (Kwisatz Haderach) who can break the limitations of time and space and foresee the future.

The Sisterhood was founded by Aquila, the illegitimate daughter of Vol Atreides, the hero of the Holy War and the founder of the Atreides family. Aquila was originally a doctor. At the end of the Holy War, the Thinking Machine released a virus called "The Whip of the Almighty" into the human world. In the process of treating patients, Aquila first discovered that spices could have a therapeutic effect on "The Whip of the Almighty". But when she went to Rosak, a planet where a group of witches lived, to provide disaster relief, she was infected by a new virus that mutated on Rosak. She also clashed with the leader of the witches here, and was then poisoned by the witch leader.

At the critical moment of life and death, Aquila broke through her physical limits and used the inner detoxification ability acquired when she was previously infected with the virus to neutralize the deadly poison. She also opened a channel of consciousness to communicate with her ancestors (she could know the memories of all female ancestors in her mind), and became the first "Mother God" of the sisterhood.

Awakening Ceremony

The process of L'Aquila's transformation into the Virgin Mary is called Agony (awakening). The ultimate goal of the sisterhood's training members is to allow them to transform into the Virgin Mary through Agony. This is an extremely dangerous ritual, and participants need to take special poisons (containing spices) and go through life and death trials to achieve transformation.

Many sisterhood members failed and lost their lives during the trial, but once they succeeded, the Virgin Mary could see the past and the present, and even the future. In the movie version of Dune, Paul and his mother Jessica also experienced awakening after taking the "water of life" (the venom of the sandworm larvae), and had the Virgin Mary's vision.

Mentat

Mentats:

Mentat are known as human computers, and they push their thinking abilities to the limit through special training, in order to perform complex logical reasoning and data analysis instead of machines. Spices are essential to Mentat training because they can enhance their cognitive abilities.

Gilbertus Albans, the founder of Mentat, was originally a human orphan adopted by Erasmus, a thinking machine. In order to prove that any human being can have the same wisdom as a thinking machine after training, Erasmus trained Gilbertus to become the first Mentat after decades of training.

After the Holy War, Gilbertus secretly hid Erasmus' memory core, and at Erasmus's suggestion, he changed his identity and established the Mentat School, which was dedicated to training people who could push their minds to the limit like him for the Empire. Many members of the Sisterhood had been trained in Mentat to learn logical thinking skills, which further deepened the connection between the two organizations.

Suk School:

Suk Medical College is a hospital that trains top doctors in the Dune universe. Its founder is Mohandas Suk, the lover of the sisterhood founder Aquila, and they have a daughter.

Because of this relationship, Sooke Hospital and the Sisterhood have a long-standing relationship. The Sisterhood often sends members to Sooke for medical training, and Sooke physicians also play a key role in important Sisterhood programs.

Dr. Yue is the Suk doctor with the Suk logo

The most important collaboration was with the third president of the Sooke College, Ori Joma, who, at the behest of L'Aquila, put sterilization drugs in the vitamin nutrient solution of Emperor Salvatore. As a result, the truth was revealed and Dr. Joma was executed. This incident prompted the emperor to disband the Rosak Sisterhood and also prompted the Sooke Medical College to develop a set of pre-treatment procedures to ensure that Sooke doctors were absolutely loyal to their service recipients. This pre-treatment procedure was the "Suke Mark". Physicians with the "Suke Mark" were considered absolutely loyal.

Spices are also integral to the research and practice at Sooke Medical School, as their unique properties aid in the development of therapeutic approaches.

Spacing Guild:

The predecessor of the Astronauts Guild was the former commercial giant of the Empire, CHOAM. As the earliest commercial company to sell spices, CHOAM was rich enough to rival a country and almost controlled the economic lifeline of the Empire.

But the success of the Venport Group can be attributed to Norma Senva, a talented mathematician who married Aurelius Venport.

Norma Senwa comes from a witch family on the planet Rosak. When she was a child, she did not show superhuman telepathic abilities like other witches, but Norma had an amazing talent for mathematics. After studying with scientist Holtzman for several years, Norma completed the theoretical calculation of space folding technology based on Holtzman's shield research.

During the holy war, Norma was captured. Under the torture of the human brain machine, she awakened the powerful telekinetic ability in her body, and the memory of her ancestors was also opened at the same time. After being rescued, Norma devoted herself to the research of space folding technology, and took a lot of spices to stay focused. The spices not only gave Norma the ability to predict the future, but also helped her break the bottleneck of space folding technology. In the end, Norma voluntarily immersed herself in the spice tank and mutated into the first navigator who could navigate the space folding spacecraft.

Astronauts Union Navigator

With the help of Norma's research and mutation, the Venport Group transformed more navigators who could lead spacecraft through the folded space. This was not only the core technology that enabled the Venport Group to become a business giant, but also contributed to the creation of the "navigators", a special group mutated by spices (the navigator transformation process is similar to the awakening of the sisterhood, the pass rate is not high, and many candidates died as a result). After the disintegration of the Venport Group, the entire space fleet and navigators formed the Astronaut Union, which lasted until the Paul era.

Sisterhood awakening ritual victims

It is not difficult to see that the above four special organizations have two things in common:

First, they all strive to improve their own abilities to replace the thinking machine, and the process of "improvement" more or less relies on spices;

Second, they all hold a pragmatic attitude towards science and technology - the Sisterhood needs thinking machines to preserve and analyze breeding records, the Mentat need to learn thinking methods from thinking machines, Doctor Suk needs scientific research to improve medical skills and develop new drugs, and the Astronaut Guild cannot manufacture spacecraft without the full participation of science and technology.

It is these two commonalities that determine the power relations in the Dune universe in the post-jihad era.

After the Butler Jihad, due to the general distrust of science and technology in society, the Jihad Organization led by Manford Torondo had many supporters. They adopted a radical attitude of killing without mercy against science and technology and thinking machines, and even forced the Imperial rulers, the Corino family, to take sides. This anti-technology fanaticism was obviously in opposition to the attitude of the four special organizations towards science and technology, and the royal family, who were caught up in it, was also very wary of the growing influence of the Jihad Organization.

The relationship with the Jihad Organization is an external contradiction that the four major organizations and the royal family can agree on, but they each have their own plans:

The Sisterhood attempts to secretly manipulate the Empire through politics and genetic engineering; the Astronauts' Union (Venport Group) monopolizes interstellar travel and firmly controls the supply of spices through its strong financial resources; the Mentat uses his special abilities to support powerful families, and thus can always break into the core decision-making circle of the Imperial Noble Alliance; the doctors of the Sooke Medical College are also necessary for all large families, including the Corino family.

The Corino family

As a royal family, the Corino family is not only the object of obedience and support of these organizations, but also the bargaining chip for them to control and exert influence on the empire. In addition, the four major organizations often send members to learn from each other all year round, thus forming an extremely complex multipolar power structure.

Compared with the relatively simple power conflict in the movie version of Dune, Dune: The Prophecy chose the post-Butler Jihad era as the background. This special historical period, due to the complex and ever-changing power structure, is more like the "Game of Thrones" of the Dune universe. I have a hunch that after the story of the Sisterhood is brought to the screen, Mentat, the Astronauts' Union, Dr. Suk, and even the later Face Dancer are very likely to develop their own derivative stories.

Let's sit back and wait and see, and I hope my brief analysis can inspire your enthusiasm for the Dune universe.