Day: April 9, 2004

Long Live God Emperor Leto

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Once there were a bunch of starving nomads living in the desert- fighting amongst themselves. Then a bunch of richer people found out they could power their vehicles with a mysterious substance found only in the desert. The rich people invaded, and prospered at the expense of the nomads, building a giant commercial empire.

The nomads finally decided they had had enough, and overthrew the colonial powers, taking control of the substance the invaders needed to power their economy.

Then their leader turned himself into a giant immortal worm who could see into the future.

Oh did you think I was talking about OPEC? No, this is the scenario in Frank Herbert’s Dune series. And even though its plot is mainly seen as a fantasy, it does have some veerry interesting ramifications if seen in our current historical context. Hint- now would be a good time to look into solar power.

Frank Herbert’s setting is crazy complicated- it’s over ten thousand years into the future, human civilization spans thousands of worlds, and all of space is ruled by a kind of massive corporate feudalism, complete with hereditary monarchies and the blood feuds that come with them.

Noticeably absent are two major elements common to almost every other sci-fi setting:

  1. there are no robots, and
  2. there are no space battles

Once upon a time, the Empire had faster than light travel, which made interstellar commerce and therefore empire-building possible. But several thousand years before any of the stories are set, there was a massive anti-robot uprising called the Butlerian Jihad, and now all artificial intelligence and “thinking machines” (computers) are forbidden, being replaced by a caste of specially-trained people called mentats. Without computers, faster than light travel became once again impossible. The galaxy entered a new dark age, with no planet communicating with any other.

But then came the spice melange. Its place of origin and means of manufacture a closely-gaurded secret, melange let its human users see a little bit into the future- giving them the reflexes to manually pilot spaceships again. The miners of the spice became a shipping monopoly- the Spacing Guild. The Guild allied with the new emperor and helped rebuild the empire.

Okay so what? This is just wanky space opera! No- this convoluted premise is actually necessary to set up the allegorical situation that makes Dune brilliant.

The empire needs space travel to operate. Thus, they are dependent on the Guild. The Guild needs melange to operate. So they form CHOAM, a consortium of melange manufacturers. A spice monopoly which controls the prices. The Guild indirectly controls entire governments this way- if you anger the Guild and CHOAM, they boost spice prices. Like in the 1973 oil crisis when OPEC boosted oil prices.

As it turns out, melange comes from a single planet, Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune. Arrakis was not uninhabited when the Guild got there- it was populated with a nomadic people called the Fremen. As you might imagine, they weren’t too keen on having their only natural resource sucked out of their planet to make other people rich while they didn’t even have enough money to take a bath. Ever. So, just as the Saudis did in the 1920s and everyone else has been doing through the 1960s and even today, they revolted and seized all the oil, I mean spice. They install one of their own as Emperor.

So what does this mean? Is Herbert making a prophesy, or is he writing an allegory for what he believes has already happened?

The Fremen’s new emperor is Paul Muad’ib, who is actually born to off-world royalty (a white guy). This could be representative of a new colonial power, more subtly controlling the Arab world than their previous colonial oppressors, assuring a steady stream of spice while seeming to maintain Arab sovereignty. For example, American corporations using Saddam Hussein as a military boogeyman to keep the various Iraqi tribes in line.

The (Fremen/Arabs) now control (the Empire / the modern global economy). They dictate cultural changes, they make things more socially conservative in general. They start to make Arrakis a nicer place to live.

Paul’s son Leto becomes the next Emperor for over three thousand years. How? Leto has somehow become a giant alien worm hybrid that can see the future – actually I know exactly how this happens but the exact mechanism is unimportant to this discussion.

I believe Herbert did this to have a single character shaping the destiny of Arrakis/the Middle East, over thousands of years. What Leto does next is the interesting part: he decides to destroy the source of the spice. Having stockpiled it for thousands of years, he has enough to last him a while. But Leto has decided that melange is not good for Fremen culture and seems to think they should move onto other things.

So… is Herbert saying:


  • this would be a good course of future action to the Arabs? Destroy the oil?

  • what the Arabs HAVE been doing is moving out of oil, anticipating there won’t be any some day?
  • someone should destroy all the oil and make the Arabs’ lives better, as well as benefit the global economy long-term?