Dune and Foundation:

1
Dune and Foundation

• Inverted visions of the social in Science
  Fiction

2
Dune and FoundationPoints of intersection

• Both published serially
•   - Foundation in Astounding Stories in 40s
  (collected in the 50s)
•    -  Dune in Analog Science Fact and Fiction in
  the mid 60s
• Both won awards in 1966
• Foundation Special Hugo prize for best all time
  series 1966
• Dune Hugo tied for Nebula

3
Both have been widely criticized by significant
critics

• Dune
•    The incorporation of the atmosphere of
  earths medieval, political and moral climate
  make the plot development almost traditional by
  modern standards. Furthermore, the prominent use
  of psi phenomenon adds a note of conformity,
  which combined with the political climate, robs
  the effort of realism and transforms it into
  little more than a well-done adventurous
  romance. Sam Moskowitz

4

• Foundation
• Aldiss bemoans the lack of organic unity
  caused, he says, by the serialization, and
  objects to what he sees as too much conservative
  faith in technology in the series. Knight
  attacks the foundation Trilogy for being too
  directly based on the Roman empire, saying thus
  it isnt speculative fiction any more than the
  well-known western with ray-guns instead of
  six-shooters, and he objects to sequels in
  general for their progressive diminution of the
  speculative element

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Two textual points of intersection

• Quotation headings
• Basic thematic structure Restoration of
  Civilization.

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Metatextual interconnections

• metatext is the material that surrounds the
  text the criticism, promotionall the real
  world stuff that contributes to a texts
  authority and colour.
• Asimov and Herbert represent the pinnacle
  achievements in their own times Golden Age and
  New Wave, respectively
• Consequently, much of their criticisms of each
  other arise from their times

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• Asimov longs for an ordered and structured
  humanity, where knowledge is collective and
  reigns supreme.
• Utilitarian
• objective

8

• Herbert views humanity as a messy business, prone
  to corruption from which there must be periodic
  jihad.
• Individualistic
• Subjective

9
Asimov on Herbert

• There is a growing tendency to delete the
  science from science fictionand I want to fight
  it. Im afraid Im too square to be a Nihilist.

10
Herbert on the evils of orderliness.

• the holders of power in this world have not
  awakened to the realization that there is no
  single model of a society, a species, or an
  individual. The aim of that force which impels us
  to live may be to produce as many different
  models as possible.

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Asimov was a Skinnerite

• The so-called mental sciences have been seeking
  political power for many years. This was to be
  expected as a natural outcome of their power
  posture. They assumed the position of all-health
  dealing with all-sickness. Such non-symmetrical
  relationships inevitably produce shattering
  crises. -Herbert

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Textual Interconnections

• The structure and thematic systems of each text
  mirror one another. Specifically,
• they are identical in form
• But inverted in intent

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Corruption leads to crisis

• Foundation
• Over-technology
• Elitism
• Bureaucracy
• Dune
• Butlerian Jihad
• Human compensation
• Political infighting

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Move from civility to barbarity

• Encyclopediasts
• Move to regenerate human civilization
• Enact predetermined plan
• Leto
• Moves to Arrakis to herald a new age
• The sleeper awakens in unexpected ways

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Political potential in religion

• The missionaries of Terminus move out spreading
  the culture of Foundation in the gospel of
  Seldon
• The Prophet Harry Seldon appointed the
  Foundation to carry on his commandments that
  there might some day be a return of the Earthly
  Paradise andanyone who disobeys his
  commandments will be destroyed for eternity.

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• Bene Gesseret plant the Missionaria Protectiva
• Means of protection and manipulation
• Intimidates superstitious barbarians
• It has unanticipated consequences
• Shelters Paul and Jessica
• Gives the means to build an army
• Happens to be accurate

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Translating Traders

• Independent, powerful, highly organized, traders
  influence politics in both series. They convey
  missionaries, spread new technology, and aspire
  to powerful positions
• Foundation Hobber Mallow becomes mayor of
  Terminus
• Dune The Guild representative nearly supplants
  Paul in Dune Messiah.

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Perils of Psychology

• While less formalized than in Foundation,
  prediction using the human mind plays a
  significant role in Dune.
• Foundation, psychohistorians refine prediction
  into science and academic discipline, moving
  eventually into the direct manipulation of other
  minds

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• Dunes use of this kind of psychology is twofold
•  Bene Gesserit are the psychohistorians of Dune,
  using eugenics, selective breeding, and secret
  training to create new society
• Paul develops a direct vision of future evens
  seeing time as a wave

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Herberts macabre parody

• In the end, Herbert exposes the second foundation
  by means of grotesque parody.
• As emperor, Paul laments his inability to control
  the Jihad he took power to avert
• he has killed sixty-one billion, sterilized
  ninety planets, completely demoralized five
  hundred others. He laments that well be a
  hundred generations recovering from MaudDibs
  Jihad Dune Messiah

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• At the end of Children of Dune, Pauls son,
  through fusing his DNA with that of the worms,
  becomes like the second foundation he assumes
  direct responsibility for the future of humanity,
  setting it on the golden path, but becomes a
  domineering monster.

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The Necessary Jihad

• Herbert takes the control of the second
  foundation and presents it not as a final Utopia,
  but as a repeating cycle of domination, death,
  and rebirth.
• The real motive of domination is not civility, as
  Asimov claims, but control it is the desire of
  one person or a group to control others and force
  their values and life-styles upon them

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•     Herbert reverses the second foundation
  utopia in his ending, perceiving the planned
  universe and the controllers from the point of
  view of those who lack power and are simply led
  by force of one kind or another. He sees
  ultimate horror, horror which leads to revolt
  sooner or later, or a return to a sort of
  necessary barbarism.
• John Grigsby

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Never say in conclusion

• Thus, the dune series becomes the Foundation
  series reversed a narrative from the
  perspective of the controlled, the manipulated,
  who rise up against the manipulative and
  egomaniacal few.

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The final nature of evil

• What is evil for Asimov is a lack of order.
• What is evil for Herbert, is control. A
  barbarous people will still maintain the most
  important element their knowledge of freedom
  and their creative energy their ability to
  respond spontaneously and completely to a complex
  universe in all the multitude of ways such a
  universe calls for

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Fractal metaphors in Dune
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Ecological fractals

• Dr. Keynes and Sensitive Dependence
• If we can get three percent of the green plant
  element on Arrakis involved in forming carbon
  compounds as foodstuffs, weve started the cyclic
  system
• Feedback loops and the Gaia hypothesis

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A bit about Chaos systems

• the elements of an ecology are interconnected
  effecting one variable will impact on other
  variables, thus the ecological system is
  dynamically recursive, rather than liner.
• Feedback
• Positive
• Negative

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Plans Within Plans

• Mentats
• A process cannot be understood by stopping it
  the first law of Mentat. 31
• Patterns in Chaos
• there is in all things a patternin the way sand
  trails along a ridge, in the branch cluster of
  the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves
  380
• the broken, chaotic patterns of fremen walking
  is like the natural shifting of the landlike
  the wind 264

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Fractal Time

• Branching and Forking time
• Paul sees time as branching into paths,
  obscured by waves. as though his mindsampled
  the winds of the future.He remembered once
  seeing a gauze kerchief blowing in the wind and
  now he sensed the future as though it twisted
  across some surface as undulant and impermanent
  as that of the windblown kerchief

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Chaos Theorists say

• each decision made at a branch point moment of
  decision, a crisis involves an amplification of
  something small branching takes place
  unpredictably
• Thus, small mutations, over time, become primary
  elements in the new system

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Sensitive dependence on initial conditions

• A beginning is the time for taking the most
  delicate care that the balances are correct 3
• beginnings are a time of such great peril 392
• What of the harmonics inherent in the act of
  prophecy? Does the prophet see the future of does
  he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage
  that he may shatter with words or decisions as a
  diamond cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a
  knife? 277

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Timely pressure points

• Two significant moments of bifurcation
• Janus Fight
• a boiling of possibilities focused here in the
  cave, wherein the most minute action the wink
  of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of
  sand moved a gigantic lever across the known
  universe. He saw violence with the outcome
  subject to many variables that his slightest
  movement created vast shiftings in the pattern
  296

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Bifurcation in time possibilities leads to a
narrowing of Pauls vision

• Pauls sight is like that of a man standing on
  the floor of a valley whose view of the terrain
  is blocked by surrounding hills (218), and is
  eventually obscured in his meeting with the
  emperor

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• Meeting with the Emperor
• As Paul addresses Feyd Rautha, he finds he is
  blind he sampled the time-winds, sensing the
  turmoil, the storm nexus that now focused on this
  moment place. Even the faint gaps were closed
  now 482

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Replication of Rebellion

• We witness in the narrative only the middle of a
  series of revolutions that replicate themselves
  across scale.
• The butlerian Jihad, the Atredies revolution,
  Maud-dibs Jihad anticipates a larger system that
  Herbert builds over the series
• Of clones and empires

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• These rebellions, in turn, have patterns inherent
  in them that mirror the larger system
• The Atradies are forced to Arrakis by the emperor
  
• an untenable position
• the emperor sows the seeds of his own destruction
  
• They are betrayed by the emperor to the
  Harkonnens
• Just as the emperor installs Leto to set up the
  Baron, so the baron installs Rabban to set up
  Feyd Reutha

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• By harnessing the power of the Fremen to overrun
  the Emperors forces he must take on a religious
  mantle that sows the seeds of his own downfall
• the Jihad he sets out to prevent happens because
  of his actions of prevention
• by setting a president of revolution, and vesting
  the Fremen with vast power, he creates an enemy
  who turns on him when they see that theyve been
  used.

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Replications in Leadership Links in Genetics

• Noble houses are deeply interlinked
• creates an ecology for which Arrakis is a
  metaphor
• Leadership is system of replication
• Genetic inheritance and evolutionary
  unpredictability

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Physical resemblance as evolutionary metaphor

• Paul and his grandfather
• Leto and the emperor
• Leto II and Baron