Dune

Highlights

Page 299

“Why do you test for humans?” he asked. “To set you free.” “Free?” “Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Page 530

“Bad enough, but not all bad. The Missionaria Protectiva has been in there and softened it up somewhat.” The Reverend Mother heaved herself to her feet, straightened a fold in her gown. “Call the boy in here. I must be leaving soon.” “Must you?”

Note: Just so annoying when they use random terms like this. Who the fuck is Missionaria? And it’s not like he doesn’t have copious exposition anyway. Cha.

Page 593

But Jessica had caught one glimpse of the Reverend Mother’s face as she turned away. There had been tears on the seamed cheeks. The tears were more unnerving than any other word or sign that had passed between them this day.

Note: Nice

Page 618

Hawat looked at the boy. “I was thinking we’ll all be out of here soon and likely never see the place again.” “Does that make you sad?” “Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.” He glanced at the charts on the table. “And Arrakis is just another place.”

Page 644

Paul had sensed his mother come up beside him away from her post guarding the door. She had looked at the Reverend Mother and asked: “Do you see no hope, Your Reverence?” “Not for the father.” And the old woman had waved Jessica to silence, looked down at Paul. “Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things….” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”

Page 719

“What a dolt my father sends me for weaponry,” Paul intoned. “This doltish Gurney Halleck has forgotten the first lesson for a fighting man armed and shielded.” Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. “In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack,” Paul said. “Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!” Paul snapped up the rapier, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed to enter a shield’s mindless defenses.

Note: I don’t like all this exposition. Telling, not showing. Coming up with arbitrary reasons for characters to explain the basics.

Page 843

“You may find the book interesting,” Yueh said. “It has much historical truth in it as well as good ethical philosophy.”

Note: Author likes the Bible huh

Page 914

“Undoubtedly. But if you were going to raise tough, strong, ferocious men, what environmental conditions would you impose on them?” “How could you win the loyalty of such men?” “There are proven ways: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering. It can be done. It has been done on many worlds in many times.”

Note: True

Page 167

“To use your name like that…I….” “We’ve known each other six years,” she said. “It’s long past time formalities should’ve been dropped between us—in private.” Yueh ventured a thin smile, thinking: I believe it has worked. Now, she’ll think anything unusual in my manner is due to embarrassment. She’ll not look for deeper reasons when she believes she already knows the answer.

Page 298

He nodded. “Of course.” And he thought: If only there were some way not to do this thing that I must do. Jessica dropped her arms, crossed to the hall door and stood there a moment, hesitating, then let herself out. All the time we talked he was hiding something, holding something back, she thought. To save my feelings, no doubt. He’s a good man. Again, she hesitated, almost turned back to confront Yueh and drag the hidden thing from him. But that would only shame him, frighten him to learn he’s so easily read. I should place more trust in my friends.

Page 420

But this room embodied a statement far more significant than the lack of waterseals on outer doors. She estimated that this pleasure room used water enough to support a thousand persons on Arrakis—possibly more.

Note: Atrocity. It’s not like the water vapour is disappearing. It’s a closed ecosystem.

Page 533

The Duke felt in this moment that his own dearest dream was to end all class distinctions and never again think of deadly order.

Note: Evalo nallavan. Transparent attempt by the author to get us to like him. Thu.

Page 666

The Duke looked at Halleck. “Gurney, I want you to head a delegation, an embassy if you will, to contact these romantic businessmen. Tell them I’ll ignore their operations as long as they give me a ducal tithe. Hawat here estimates that graft and extra fighting men heretofore required in their operations have been costing them four times that amount.”

Note: Then why have the monopoly at all.

Page 689

Halleck said: “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to reopen negotiations with the Guild for permission to orbit a frigate as a weather satellite?” The Duke looked at Hawat. “Nothing new there, eh, Thufir?” “We must pursue other avenues for now,” Hawat said. “The Guild agent wasn’t really negotiating with us. He was merely making it plain—one Mentat to another—that the price was out of our reach and would remain so no matter how long a reach we develop. Our task is to find out why before we approach him again.”

Note: I don’t understand this monopoly. You can’t maintain a monopoly if they’re inconveniencing people this powerful, this much, for so long, for random shit like weather satellites.

You can only enforce a monopoly with violence. It’s just not believable.

Page 420

And Kynes, returning the stare, found himself troubled by a fact he had observed here: This Duke was concerned more over the men than he was over the spice. He risked his own life and that of his son to save the men. He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men’s lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat. Against his own will and all previous judgments, Kynes admitted to himself: I like this Duke.

Note: The reader already knows this. You don’t need to rub it in

Page 096

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Note: Dude is tripping

Page 548

“And I wish to be diverted while you’re clearing out that room and studying its secrets for me,” the Baron rumbled. The guardsman lowered his eyes. “What diversion does m’Lord wish?” “I’ll be in my sleeping chambers,” the Baron said. “Bring me that young fellow we bought on Gamont, the one with the lovely eyes. Drug him well. I don’t feel like wrestling.”

Note: Yes of course he’s a gay rapist. Just so if we’re not sure who the bad guy is, it’s the gay guy. Cool thanks

Page 704

I’m a monster! he thought. A freak! “No,” he said. Then: “No. No! NO!” He found that he was pounding the tent floor with his fists. (The implacable part of him recorded this as an interesting emotional datum and fed it into computation.)

Note: I can see why logical Ben Shapiro types like this character

Page 772

Jessica pressed her hands to her mouth. Great Mother! He’s the Kwisatz Haderach! She felt exposed and naked before him, realizing then that he saw her with eyes from which little could be hidden. And that, she knew, was the basis of her fear. “You’re thinking I’m the Kwisatz Haderach,” he said. “Put that out of your mind. I’m something unexpected.” I must get word out to one of the schools, she thought. The mating index may show what has happened. “They won’t learn about me until it’s too late,” he said. She sought to divert him, lowered her hands and said: “We’ll find a place among the Fremen?” “The Fremen have a saying they credit to Shai-hulud, Old Father Eternity,” he said. “They say: ‘Be prepared to appreciate what you meet.’” And he thought: Yes, mother mine—among the Fremen. You’ll acquire the blue eyes and a callus beside your lovely nose from the filter tube to your stillsuit…and you’ll bear my sister: St. Alia of the Knife. “If you’re not the Kwisatz Haderach,” Jessica said, “what—” “You couldn’t possibly know,” he said. “You won’t believe it until you see it.” And he thought: I’m a seed.

Note: Dude is so arrogant it’s unbearable. This is the point I abandoned the book in 2020 because I couldn’t handle it.

Resuming in November 2021 because I saw the movie and it was much better.

Page 802

When my father, the Padishah Emperor, heard of Duke Leto’s death and the manner of it, he went into such a rage as we had never before seen. He blamed my mother and the compact forced on him to place a Bene Gesserit on the throne. He blamed the Guild and the evil old Baron. He blamed everyone in sight, not excepting even me, for he said I was a witch like all the others. And when I sought to comfort him, saying it was done according to an older law of self-preservation to which even the most ancient rulers gave allegiance, he sneered at me and asked if I thought him a weakling. I saw then that he had been aroused to this passion not by concern over the dead Duke but by what that death implied for all royalty. As I look back on it, I think there may have been some prescience in my father, too, for it is certain that his line and Muad’Dib’s shared common ancestry. —FROM “IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN

Note: I like these interludes. In the movie the emperor sanctions the use of the Sardaukar. I wonder how the military chain of command works here if he was surprised by this.

Page 910

But there were more than two thousand ships down on Arrakis at the last count—not just lighters, but frigates, scouts, monitors, crushers, troop carriers, dump-boxes…. More than a hundred brigades—ten legions! The entire spice income of Arrakis for fifty years might just cover the cost of such a venture.

Note: The economics don’t make sense. If any group is making this kind of revenue, they will be replaced. How do they own a monopoly? How are they supposed to collect payments?

Maybe there’s something about space travel only they can do.

Page 909

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. —FROM “THE SAYINGS OF MUAD’DIB” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN

Page 089

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”

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