Not nearly as crazy as it sounds. Look at Highliner from recent Dune. Then at heptapod “ships” from “Arrival”. Similar texture? Heptapods live and communicate from behind a glass, their environment is low gravity and some sort of dense gas (spice gas). Look at the full body model of a heptapod.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/aliens/images/2/2f/Heptapod_Aliens.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190108232749
In the movie too, if you look carefully. The chest and abs muscle corset, the traces of hands fused to sides, legs fused together, forming “tail hand”. The skeleton beneath that must be even more recognisable. Upon closer inspection it looks much less alien and much more a mutated human. So... we have a group of creatures who master and understand space time one wholly different level, can “see the future”. They look like mutated humans. They live in low gravity gaseous environment. Human learning their language and breathing their air gains similar abilities. Main heroine interacts with them, breathes spice gas and becomes a sorta “proto Quizatz haderach”. Yup. These are not aliens and they don’t come from space. Arrival is stealth prequel of Dune. Same universe.
I recently finished reading the first book and I don’t understand why the guild isn’t in control of everything. They control travel between planets and have a monopoly so why don’t they exert absolute power over the universe?
For example they could just refuse to move the emperor and his army around or transport goods to his planets if they wanted.
Is it a plot hole?
the first one being "what the actual fuck?????"
to clarify, I kind of loved the concept of it, and its overall weirdness, paired with humanity's use of technology in-universe really shows how genius Frank Herbert apparently was a genius.
but like, how do you feel these type of high concepts work with what I felt to be a very realistic and dystopian view on human society in the future, and overall down to earth vibes (at least in the movie), compared to other sci-fi universes like star wars, with all the different alien species and stuff
with my near to zero knowledge on the series I can be completely off with the initial impression I had of the universe, so I'm just looking for other people's reactions to these high concepts, and how you think the next movies are going to approach them
I've only read the first book in the Dune series, and toward the end of the book when the emperor visits Arrakis there are two Guild Navigators that accompany him. They look and act human in every way. The only difference is shown when one of them loses a contact lens:
>The taller of the two, though, held a hand to his left eye. As the Emperor watched, someone jostled the Guildsman's arm, the hand moved, and the eye was revealed. The man had lost one of his masking contact lenses, and the eye stared out of a total blue so dark as to be almost black.
That seems to be the only unique characteristic about the Guild Navigator. He looks completely human in every way except for the eyes, which he is easily able to conceal with contact lenses. Nowhere near as inhuman as some of the art I've seen: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dune/images/9/9a/Guild_navigator.jpg/revision/latest/smart/width/250/height/250?cb=20190804012256
Are there certain Guild Navigators that mutate a lot more and this individual was a unique case? Or have artists taken a lot of liberties?
I would imagine that bringing two points in the universe together would require some form of travel and would technically take a certain amount of time relative to the cargo/passenger despite travel being almost instantaneous. If I remember correctly from the book, spice allows navigators to foresee the safest route between star systems, which would imply that they are travelling along said route in order to determine that it is in fact a viable and safe passage. Do navigators experience time dilation during the process of uniting two points in space?
It's been a while since I read the book but I've always wondered about it.
I'm only halfway through the first book, so I don't know much about the lore.
While watching the Dune movie I saw a lot of non-space-folding travel. Ornithopters on Arrakis, Bene Gesserit flying to Caladan, Sardaukar dropships, etc.
I know they aren't allowed any computers by law, and I was curious how regular (Non-prescient, non-mentat) pilots are able to navigate without the assistance of computer-assisted tools?
Are they all given a flight plan by a mentat or something? Terrestrial travel makes sense I guess, pilots made do without computers for the first several decades of flight here on earth. But low space travel just sounds too hard to safely chart out on the fly.
Do the books mention anything about it?
Potential spoilers…
The GNs have always fascinated me but one thing I cannot ever figure out is why TF would anyone ever want to do that? I’ve read the books and never really found a solid explanation as to the motivations of a guild navigator becoming such a monster just to be a pilot.
Like imagine if it were real and you went to tell your family…”hey guys, guess what! I’ve been accepted into Guild Navigator school…” they’d all be mortified. Has there been an instance in perhaps the BH books (which I won’t read) where they have someone regret becoming one?
I do find that happens a lot in the duniverse. A lot of people just resigning themselves to a certain way of life with no explanation. Another example would be the Atreides going to Arrakis. Imagine saying to your wife and kids “guess what! We’re leaving our paradise planet and moving to a barren hellhole!” No one seemed to care that much? I think that’s been my main quarrel with the whole dune series. The lack of nuance from this aspect sort of makes them unrelatable at times. Because if this were real life, I know there would be some pushback for some of the things. Maybe that’s on purpose… Idk just some thoughts…
In the books it is clear that because of a life lived in an abundance of spice the Guild Navigators transform into grotesque creatures. A parallel can of cours be drawn to the God Emperor, who over the course of his life also evolved/transformed in to a grotesque creature. The unwillingness of Paul to completely see through the Golden Path, and what makes Leto II's sacrifice so significant, is that this transformation will make him lose his humanity. So my question is, don't the Guild Navigators lose their humanity as well? If so, don't they sacrifice their humanity for way lower stakes (intergalactic travel vs. the entire fate of the human race)? Does this in some way negate (or lower in value) the importance of Leto II's sacrifice?
Just hoping to open a discussion, as it is somethng that just came up in me and couldn't find this question elsewhere.
I'm having a hard time finding details about the organizational structure and leadership of the Guild. How do they make decisions about what to do and is there anything they really want besides more spice? I figure the leaders are definitely addicts but do you think that's largely it?
I recently checked out some of the previous Dune adaptations after finishing the first book, and one thing that sticks out to me is their depiction of the Guild navigators.
After reading Dune I didn’t really get a sense that we knew what navigators looked like. Paul was curious that they might be mutated and we hear they’re not exactly human anymore from their spice diet. I sort of got the impression from reading that them not being human related more to how they interpret reality because of their prescience from the spice. The guild representatives that show up at the end are depicted as humans as well.
Is their physical appearance addressed more in the following books, or were there details I missed for my first read of the book about their appearance? Thanks.
I recently came across a mention of navigators using melange to “fold space” and I seem to remember this used as a pseudoscience explanation for guild navigation in the David lynch movie. I’ve recently re-read the original book through to GEOD and im pretty sure it’s not mentioned in the books that way. I bring it up because l’ve always been fond of the way humans are portrayed in the novels to have evolved/specialized to different extremes of human potential (mentats-computation and analysis, bene G body control and human psychology…). in the case of the spacing guild, I understood (or inferred) their ability to travel faster than light as dependant on their prescience: ie they had to be able to make accurate predictions about objects coming into their path when travelling faster than light since within a certain event horizon those objects would not be “observable” prior to making the journey. (A moving object 1 light year away would only be visible in its location one year ago etc.). Anyone with additional thoughts or a different take? Have I overlooked a reference?
I finally cracked open my Minor Guild boxes I picked up cheap and began painting those, and while I was looking over their cards I found that Minors seem to share a "Guild Rule" with every model thats in the guild. For Cooks this is intimidate, for Navigators, it's Precise Calculations. Even my Order models have one, the Ball of Light.
My question though, obviously any model on my team, Order or Union can use the Ball of Light (Which I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of besides Momentum gathering), but do Butcher models used on a Cooks team gain Intimidate? Do Fisherman models on Navigators gain Precise Calculations? It's obviously not listed on their cards, being Butcher or Fisherman cards, but I couldn't find anything in the rulebook about Guild rules at all to make me sure either way.
