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Dune Sequels Explained

Mar 11, 2024
Dune is one of the most famous science fiction books of all time. The story of Paul Atreides' rise to power is widely read and has been made into films and television shows. But this book is not the entire story of Dune: Frank Herbert wrote six Dune books, and only in these

sequels

is the true meaning of Dune revealed. The Dune sequel books get weird. Paul's son transforms into a worm god and rules for thousands of years. Duncan Idaho is resurrected hundreds of times. There's an invasion of space dominatrixes, genetically modified cat people, and chairs made from live dogs.
dune sequels explained
And each book is full of secret plots and abstract philosophical ideas. It would take many videos to fully explore these books. First, what is the basic story? What happens in Frank Herbert's six Dune books? In Book 1, House Atreides takes over the desert planet Arrakis, the land of sandworms and spices. But they are attacked by the Harkonnens and the Emperor. Paul Atreides unlocks a powerful mind that can see the future. He becomes a religious leader of the native Fremen and falls in love with Chani. He defeats the Harkonnens and Emperor Shaddam, and Paul becomes Emperor of the Universe.
dune sequels explained

More Interesting Facts About,

dune sequels explained...

So Book 1 seems to be a classic story of a hero fulfilling his destiny and defeating evil. But in Book 2, Dune Messiah, Paul being Emperor is a disaster. The Fremen kill billions of people in a holy war. And Paul can't stop the violence: his religion is out of his control. A conspiracy of powerful people plans to destroy Paul, led by Gaius Mohiam and Paul's wife, Princess Irulan, with a space guild navigator, a Tleilaxu face dancer, and Paul's own Fremen high priest. These guys have an elaborate plan to destroy Paul using a cryptic dwarf named Bijaz who manipulates a resurrected version of Duncan Idaho, who is now a Mentat philosopher with robot eyes.
dune sequels explained
Paul knows there is a plot against him. But he allows part of his plan to go through anyway because he fears even worse futures will happen instead. Seeing the future is a curse, it is a trap that takes away Pablo's free will. Paul is blinded by a nuclear weapon and relies on his visions to see, like Neo in The Matrix 3. Chani dies giving birth to twins, Leto Segundo and Ghanima. Paul wants to escape his pain, politics and destiny, so he walks into the desert to die. So in Dune Messiah, Paul's rise as a heroic leader turns out to have been a terrible mistake.
dune sequels explained
He loses everything he loves and kills billions of people. The message is that religious and political leaders are dangerous. Blindly following a messiah, vision or plan can lead to disaster. Book 3 is Children of Dune. Alia, Paul's sister, rules the universe on behalf of young Leto and Ghanima. But Alia's mind becomes possessed, invaded by the memory of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. It turns out that the Baron was Alia and Paul's grandfather, and his personality corrupts Alia's mind and leads her government into decline. It turns out that changing the environment of Arrakis to have water and plants is a disaster, because without desert, there are no sandworms or spices, and the Fremen desert culture begins to die.
It turns out that Paul is still alive as a mysterious desert preacher. He criticizes the religion and government of the Atreides, but ends up being stabbed to death by his own priests. Wensicia Corrino, the daughter of the former Emperor Shaddam, plots against the Atreides. She tries to kill Leto and Ghanima with the Laza tigers. So Leto fakes his own death and takes drugs in the desert to unlock his mind. And Leto sees a possible future that could save humanity from extinction, a plan called the Golden Path. Leto transforms his own body to become part of a sandworm and rule the universe for thousands of years.
Jessica deals with the Corrinos by turning her heir into Bene Gesserit and marrying him to Ghanima. Alia commits suicide to kill the baron within her. And the worm boy Leto becomes Emperor. So Leto's plan will apparently save the human species. But to be the savior he has to give up his humanity and become a monstrous tyrant. Dune rejects the heroic messiah Paul and instead turns to a darker, more complicated leader. Book 4 is the God Emperor of Dune, set thousands of years after the previous books. Leto rules the universe with an iron fist. His plan, the Golden Path, is to oppress humanity for thousands of years, teach the species to want freedom, become stronger and think for ourselves.
Leto also sires the Atreides bloodline to create Siona Atreides. Siona has a special gene that makes her invisible to people who can see the future. Then, Ziona's genes will free humanity from the control of the prophetic people. Leto falls in love with a woman named Hwi. Trapped in his monstrous worm body, Leto is tormented by the loss of his humanity, his tragic sacrifice to save the species. Over the centuries, Leto resurrects Duncan Idaho again and again and allows Duncan and Siona to rebel against him. He teaches Duncan and Siona so that they become strong enough to eventually destroy him.
In the end they kill Leto using the blind obedience of Nayla, a fanatic of Leto's religion. Leto's dying body rejuvenates the sandworms and spices on Arrakis, and humanity is finally free of his control. After millennia of oppression, humanity bursts across the universe in The Scattering, a mass migration into space. Humanity expands and evolves to save it from stagnation and extinction, just as Leto planned. His Golden Path provides humanity with a universe of infinite possibilities. Book 5, Dune Heretics, is set another thousand years in the future. The Bene   Gesserit control much of the Old Empire, but a new threat emerges from the Scatter.
The Honored Matres are a savage branch of the Bene Gesserit who use sex to enslave people. The Bene Gesserit train a girl named Sheeana who can control sandworms, and hope to breed her with a new resurrected Duncan Idaho and use her as a religious force to control people. But there's also a plot by the Tleilaxu, a group of religious genetic scientists who look like creepy gray elves. The Tleilaxu secretly modified this new Duncan, giving him special sexual powers, which terrifies the Honored Matres. Taraza, leader of the Bene Gesserit, uses Duncan to lure the Honored Matres to destroy the planet Arrakis.
Because by killing the sandworms on the planet, they destroy the remains of Emperor Leto's consciousness and end his influence on the universe. The Bene   Gesserit take the last sandworm to make spices on their own planet called Chapterhouse. Taraza receives help from Miles Teg, a legendary Atreides soldier who sacrifices himself and dies on Arrakis. In Book 6, Chapter House: Dune, the Honored Matres lay waste to the Empire, seeking to exterminate the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Gesserit are hiding on the planet Chapterhouse, under the leadership of Darwi Odrade, an unusually rebellious and emotional Reverend Mother who wants her Brotherhood to change and evolve to survive this crisis.
Odrade creates a young clone of Miles Teg, who is her father. And she trains a captured Honored Matre, Murbella, so that she can be a Bene Gesserit. Murbella and Duncan fall in love. Teg leads an attack against the Honored Matres. But the Matres defeat Teg with a secret weapon and kill Odrade. Then Murbella infiltrates and takes over the Honored Matres from within. She then fuses the Honored Matres with the Bene Gesserit, assimilating to create a new, stronger Brotherhood. Murbella has changed so much that Duncan decides to leave her. He and Sheeana steal a spaceship and escape, along with the last living Tleilaxu master, a secret group of Jews, some sandworms, and a Van Gogh painting.
Together they begin a new journey, free in the infinite universe. In the final chapter, we see a mysterious old couple named Daniel and Marty. These two are apparently advanced Scatter Face Dancers who escaped Tleilaxu control. But Daniel and Marty also seem to represent author Frank Herbert and his wife Beverly. While working in their garden, they break the fourth wall and chat about Dune characters and unfinished plots like the Tleilaxu. They admit that the characters escaped them, out of the author's control. The book ends with a loving tribute to Bev, who died the previous year. A year after publication, Frank died.
So Frank never wrote a clear final conclusion to the Dune series. But this latest open chapter fits with Dune's central themes: the characters gain freedom and self-determination, and are no longer controlled by even the author. And Daniel and Marty in their garden show the simple human warmth that is the emotional heart of Dune. Dune was never as much about plot as it was about ideas. A philosophy of mind, of thought, of politics, of technology, of how to live in a chaotic universe. That's why we're making a video called The Philosophy of Dune, exploring the themes and big ideas of the series.
We'll also cover the new Game of Thrones TV show, House of the Dragon, which is based on a book called Fire & Blood. Fire & Blood and the entire Dune series are available as audiobooks. You can get any of these for free right now at audible.com/asx. Sign up for a Premium Plus trial membership and you'll be able to choose an audiobook to keep, even if you cancel the trial. You could get the Dune audio collection with readings and commentary from Frank Herbert himself. Membership also includes unlimited access to thousands of audiobooks and shows from the Audible Plus catalog.
Sign up at audible.com/asx or text asx to 500-500. Thanks for watching and thanks to the sponsors, including jlee60, Micah Prude, Ruven Dewender, Hill1030, Dylan Elliott, and Rilhon. Health.

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