@@danceboyish yeah stinky weed that helps people with epilepsy and othet conditions... And make the world a bit more bareble... Thanks to it i am yet to commit mass murder...
@@danceboyish Yeah, let's be real that stinky ass weed has practical applications in medicine. Could replace opioids as long term pain management, for one. But they won't legalize it for selfish reasons revolving around short term gains that kill thousands of people a year.
The Spice Melange gives off a odor like that of cinnamon. Anyone arriving on Arrakis for the first time would have noticed that smell and wonder where it was coming from. Even breathing in the unrefined spice dust could have had immediate effects on the consciousness of those sensitive to it's properties.
.... I can hear Herbert right now, .... "Yeah, YEAH,..... that's the ticket." .....it is the best hypothesis I have seen in the comments. Terrifying to think of Dune in the hands of paramont. "From the creators of Star Trek" ....lol
@@Obi-Ralph-Kenobi Oof, right? Cinema is dead to me. Only a few movies have been produced within the last five years that I give a shot about. The rest is degenerative garbage
Even then, they might not have immediately attributed the changes to the spice. And considering unrefined spice is almost like sand, they might not even have noticed it or linked it to the cinnamon-y smell. Still more plausible than "aliens did it" though :D.
@@jorislemoine1488 well. Don't forget that before the spice, they used different concoctions to give them their abilities. They were just less effective. It wouldn't be that big of a leap to assume a drug trip fueled psychic vision lead them to the spice.
The Spice isn't just a "substance", otherwise some chemists of the future would have been able to synthesize it. Considering how good our chemists are today, in 20,000 years I wouldn't imagine any organic molecule would be so difficult to manufacture. Consider, the only attempt to make Spice artificially that was even close to being successful came from the Tleilaxu, a race known for their specialty of cloning. This leads me to believe that the Spice is more than just a chemical; it is actually alive, perhaps a spore of the Sandtrout. If it was only a chemical, it would be easy to make, but the spark of life is never easy to create in a lab, even with 20,000 years of experience. So the reason the reason that the Spice changes the physiology so much, for example the Guild Navigators, is because it is a symbiosis of human and Sandtrout spores. Like a lower level version of the change that happened to God Emperor Leto.
Plausible. But note that scientific knowledge isn’t necessarily linear. The fact that this generation of mankind is a little superstitious and/or suspicious of computers for example. And I’d suggest that a feudalistic political system is prone to a drain on scientific endeavour as well.
You might have noticed, though they have only breifly appeared in part one of the current Dune, but there is a great deal of difference between our world, and that of Dune. So much so that I came to the conclusion that they exist in an alternate universe when I first read the book. For instance, there are no computers in Dune. Instead, Frank Herbert gives us the Mentat: These Spice enhanced humans use life long training and meditation, together with a Spice Drink, to do tremendously complex calculations in their heads. This is displayed briefly, but never explained, during Leto's the meeting with the Emperor's Emissary. If they are our future, they have given up on our apparent attempt to introduce computers into every aspect of human life. We either gave up that knowledge, or lost it, after we discover the Spice (I assume that we could have never reached Arrakis without the aid of computers.). In fact the narrator was wrong when he said that space travel would be impossible without Spice. He never says that humanity started on Arrakis, yet it is the only place in the universe that it exists, and we discovered it apparently without help. (In fact, any aliens that might have helped us, certainly would NOT like the way that we monopolize the Spice output of Arrakis. AND we must have been there for thousands of years, as Spice must be changed refined into a useful product. One that gives Navigators the ability to travel (and bring HUGE ships along) without moving. One that sharpens the mind and quickens the thoughts. And one that allows the Bene Gesserit to commune with the dead, among other things.
Not true at all. Nature is incredibly hard (I believe impossible) to replicate. I take bio identical hormones right now for a pituitary problem. I take testosterone thats been decently "understood" for 30-40 years now and though it s"bio Identical" it is nothing like the testosterone the body creates. Thats why we don't have clones even though they claim to have the knowledge already. The process is far harder than the knowledge. Nature has an ability far beyond mans capabilities.
Pre-guild explorers found the planet. Found a spice blow. Collected samples for analysis. On a dare some person tasted the samples and got a mind opening experience. Convinced others to try some. Spice / drug trade starts.
Just watched an episode of One Step Beyond, where the presenter and the scientists try... Mexican mushrooms! (In the 5o'/6o') It's such a fun quick watch!🍃
Very close to how it's explained in the EU Dune books. The Fremen were the first to discover its uses, and eventually began trading it to traveling Merchants of medicinal and recreational pharmaceuticals. From there it spread to the various human worlds around the galaxy.
I have been here since DAY ONE of your uploads. Your first video on your balcony just talking about Ice and fire is what hooked me on your content. I have also said this to your before. YOU ARE THE REASON I GOT MY SON TO READ. When you started uploading Dune a little over 4 years ago it gave me a chance to connect with my son on a book he might enjoy. NOW 4 years later and my son is a book nerd. I CAN NEVER THANK YOU ENOUGH.
I think the mystery of the sand worms origin needs to be left a mystery. Any explanation will not live up to what has been imagined. Ridley Scott explained the origin of the Xenomorph and fans were left disappointed. Some things need to be left ambiguous.
Sadly, yes. For the sake of the unimaginative and uninspired, monsters must not be shown and answers must remain mysteries. Perhaps one day humans will evolve past their overt fascination with mystery and be just as fascinated by answers. For now, writers must write shlock or never finish.
Truly enjoyed all and every explanations about the Xenomorphs and the Builders and all. It was/is quite fascinating. If anything, it fuels imagination, not the opposite.
I always thought spice did not make space travel possible, but the precognition allowed for travel safely. It’s precognition allowed those to see collisions and change the outcome. So a pilot could have been under the influence after stopping on the planet for a short time realised quickly the advantages.
Good point. I always kind of wondered what they meant by that. He could have made an entire story of the accidents that happened in pre-guild space exploration.
They had a reliable form of interstellar travel, but only using thinking machines. That’s an entire story arc unto itself. Then things happened, no one trusted AI, and they needed another safe way to faster then light without computers. It was still doable, even without the spice, just highly dangerous.
@@juangonzalez9848 Which begs the question, defeat thinking machines that allow for more efficient space travel in a space war, how... That is one of the great deal breakers, for me, of the prequels, it hurts my suspension of disbelief. I can only imagine such a war going the Animatrix style.
@@duckdialectics8810 It’s been a decade but I think it was the finding of spice that allowed them to rebel. The humans could out think the thinking machines that were in autonomous mode, but not omnius controlled ones. The big reason omnius took over was those traitors that tried to use him to take over, then got screwed by him. The prequels were definitely a little odd, but that was partly due to his son being the author.
@@juangonzalez9848 No, the spice wasn't "found" till well after the butlerian jihad - The holtzman drive was wat allowed mankind to rebel. But without the spice's precognition, they couldn't predict safe routes so for every jump their rebel fleet had to make to avoid the machines or to attack a position, they would lose a percentage of their ships forever. I forget if the machines didn't have access to the drive or refused to use it because they assumed they could win without such losses.
@@ismata3274 At the end of Foundation and Earth Daneel reveals that his plan was to protect Humanity from alien life that is boutnd to be out there in the Universe. That's why he created Gaia. A united Humantiy would have a better chance to defend itself against an alien invasion.
The End of Eternity is implied to be a sort of prequel to the robots series, which in turn are the first episodes in the Foundation series. the End of Eternity makes alien life quite explicit, and the failure of the Eternals to protect humanity from it is why they were ultimately destroyed IIRC.
I know! I want the ending of that last Dune trilogy. I'm currently reading Chapterhouse for the first time and I have 90 pages left, but I know I'm gonna be really anxious because it's going to end on a cliffhanger. I also just love where this final trilogy is going and it sucks he couldn't finish it. I want more Dune books in general and I'm not ready for it to end.
A bit relieving too. People really hate answered questions and conclusions. If these stories didn't have that ultimate mysteriousness factor, they'd be markedly less liked.
@@somersault1123 disagree. I am of a mind that I HATE unanswered questions. Back lore that isnt explained that caused events in a story that are so large with incredible ramifications. Those unanswered questions drive me mad and i start to lose interest in a story if it doesnt get explained. Dune has several. ASOIF has TOO many. Questions need answers.
Two thoughts come to my mind: Frank Herbert was fascinated by the concept of ecological systems. Their function and change lie at the heart of the Dune saga. To imagine an invasive species maybe brought by accident to a favourable condition which resulted in that species eventually changing a whole planet's ecosphere for millennia to come is a masterpiece of an ecological thought experiment. The second part is that even on our world we have evidence of species that evolve independently but ave strange synergies with each other. Fungi who have existed long before trees, but now help trees to facilitate their species' health by transporting nutrients through their mycelium networks, or other fungi which deliver psychedelic experiences to humans who have literally evolved millions of years after they did.
@@timmo971 land plants are actually comparatively young (~ 450 million years) and in the beginning they were not seed plants like most are now but spore plants like mosses and ferns. Fossils of fngi - while rare - are a lot older than that
@@timmo971 The fossil record shows the existence of fungi well before the Carbonaceous. That said, lignin was a game-changer. Fungi had no means of biodegrading it for quite some time.
As I understand it the first land plants did not have root systems, and instead utilized mycelium networks to draw in water and nutrients. Plant roots evolved at first as a more effective means of facilitating the trade of sugar for water/nutrients with mycellial networks but eventually became relatively self sufficient.
Leto mentions that Arrakis was "wet" when the worms were first introduced. According to the Dune Encyclopedia, Arrakis originally had three moons, but 200,000 prior to the story a comet/asteroid destroyed one of them, and the debris crashed into the planet. Prior to this, Arrakis was a lush planet, but the bombardment started an ice age, and the planet later became an arid desert. So, if the worms were introduced when the planet was still "wet," it would have to have been more than 200,000 years in the past. This was long before humans in this universe had access to space travel. So, the worms couldn't have been introduced to the planet by human hands.
"If the idea can be handled properly." A key phrase, and I do not have the faith in Kevin J. Anderson, and Brian Herbert to be able to handle it properly. I think it is much better to be left a mystery, and more fun to speculate about it. Then to have it out right answered in some way that will be mostly likely unsatisfying to down right insulting.
This is the fun of these wonderful works. LotR, Dune, Hitchhiker's Guide, etc. There are unanswered corners. I loved these corners as a young reader. I stewed on them for weeks and months at a time. I'd bounce my ideas about it off my friends and my parents and other readers. The author was dead, no answers could be had, but it was fantastic dialogue and evocative and imaginative. Now we live in the dark days. Disney owns Star Wars. Amazon owns LotR. Warner appears to be doing okay with Dune thus far... but there are tangential story concepts already out there that will be manufacturing content that Frank never wrote. BH/KJA are no better than any other Hollywood script-assassin or Tor franchise parasite. These engines of noncreativity will feed off these franchises until they give nothing in return. Unimaginative consumers will suck the pap that the studios spoon feed them, and call their creations "canon," and destroy the potential for delving into the minutiae of these world. One of my favorite modern authors is Neil Gaiman. Most of his works are non-serialized. Unique worlds. Unique characters. No interdependencies between books. A complete beginning and ending of each story and world, with new motives and metaphysics as you move into a new tale. I wish Robert Jordan had done this, rather than his umpteen book collection of the Wheel of Time. Or Terry Brooks with his Shannara stories. Or Terry Goodkind with his Conan the Libertarian series. The big problem with franchises, is they build fandoms. And fandoms are fundamentally addicts. When IP is transferred, it's a kind of drug, and the owner is the new dealer with a monopoly on the addict market. And we've seen what a soup sandwich IP heirs have made of well established fantasy worlds.
Realistically, no one has the power to write a compelling conclusion. This is why GRRM should just stop writing A Song of Ice and Fire. Preferrably now before any potential mishaps.
I don't think Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson have ever actually tried to explain the origin of the Sandworms. At least not in any of the EU Dune books I've read. The Sandworms themselves were altered and seeded onto different worlds, but I recall no attempt at explaining their initial origin.
Uroburos time travel? a pre-destination Paradox that was such a huge time loop that only the God Empiror Leto could put in place. His useing a spaceing guild navigater to not warp space but time.
One thing that's interesting about the sand worms is their complete "alien" biology. They produce oxygen. They are animals that produce oxygen! They eat sand. Their bodies are made mostly of silicone. They're one of the few forms of life that completely transforms their environment to suit their own needs. That's something that humans do. A few animals do it, but nothing like the extent of the worms. So maybe they are from an alien species. Maybe something far older and far different from humans and our animal ancestors. I don't know!
I would say you've hit the nail on the head - I do think the sandworms are not meant to be a carbon-based lifeform, but a silicon-based one! I once saw a program on TV where they speculated what alien life might look like, and I know the idea of "carbon chauvinism" brought up by Carl Sagan (i.e. we might in fact encounter alien life and not be aware of what we have before us, simply because we imagine "life" as we know it, in the sense of carbon-based life), and in that program they said that silicon was another candidate substance for a basis of life because it could bind to oxygen in a similar fashion (perhaps due to the same number of electrons in its out shell available for binding, but I could be wrong here). This might be what makes the worms so uniquely able to create their own environment (as they created Arrakis), and what also motivates Leto II to create a new species of worm that has his consciousness. Perhaps they would always remain a wild card in his Golden Path agenda otherwise due to their very alienness. They also straddle the normal classification of species because they have both animal and plant characteristics. But we do not know where the worms come from, nor if they were something quite else on their former homeworld than they are now on Arrakis. For sandworms are also determined by the environment they find themselves in; very likely they would have turned into something quite different if they had found a new home on a world quite different from Arrakis. This is suggested in the later books when attempts are made to seed other worlds with the worms in an attempt to keep the spice cycle going, and they put the worms into an ocean and the spice cycle that gets started results in a different kind of spice from the one that was produced and harvested on Arrakis.
If the worms are intelligent aliens, then they were at the center of human civilization, whether intentionally or not, but they basically convinced humans to merge their DNA with theirs, and a worm-human hybrid became god emperor for 3000yrs while ensuring humanity would never be enslaved by psychic prescience due to the merging of DNA.. Every house had massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but only to be used in case of contact with alien life, and punishable by death if used on humans.. If the sand worms somehow knew this..? They put themselves as the most valuable things in the universe, to humans anyway..
Correction, the "worms" do not produce oxygen. The microscopic sand plankton produce oxygen. Not the same thing. There is a shift in role and metabolism that happens when the sand plankton become sand trout, and some sand trout become little makers, and some little makers become sand worms.
Basically the entire life cycle is of a single species mimicking a biosphere. Everything becomes something else, but starts as the same thing -- sand plankton. The worms are obviously the ultimate final form, but the rest must exist to support it. They are all basically the result of adapting to a "dead" planet. Worms aren't particularly sentient, but they don't need to be. The sole goal is survival. The problem is, everything became soo specialized that they also can't exist anywhere else. The only thing that maybe can is the sand plankton. But there's also suspicion that there's a much deeper biosphere deep within the planet, with hidden oceans, where other possible processes are taking place that everything above relies on. There may even be a "mother" species that is entirely different, that is the source of the sand plankton. Everything may merely be the life from this deep ocean biosphere trying to spread out by bubbling up.
If the worms came from another planet it's possible, given the timescales involved in converting Arrakis to a desert world, that the star of the original planet has aged enough to effectively destroy the original planet. Perhaps it was a g or k star that has now reached it's red giant stage.
What if the spice itself is an alien species? Kinda like fungi work. And by being consumed by humans they add their alien consciousness an capabilities to them. Fungi are symbiotic with trees so the worms would be the trees in this analogy.
@@509Gman, @digitalbookworm5678; cool! Makes a lot of sense. You guys might enjoy reading 'Amanita Muscaria; herb of inmortality'. The author claims to have found what Soma was.
For about 35 years this question has been on my mind. Ever since the first time I read GEoD. Leto II talked of the idea for his "Golden Path" coming from someone in his ancestral past. Who in his ancestral past could have invisioned thousands of years of rule? I suggest that Leto wasn't the first to take on "the skin that is not his own". Perhaps in another galaxy there's a planet with Sand Plankton and Sand Trout. Someone else thousands of years ago allowed sand trout to infest their body, moved to Arrakis and died there. Setting in motion the events leading to the Spice. 🙄
Interesting idea, but probably not likely. In CoD, Leto admits he is the first of his kind. If he had been guided by a previous incarnation of human/sandtrout, I think Frank would have let the readers know explicitly. As for this ancestor you're thinking of, are you refering to Harum? Because Harum was just a dominant personality that Leto used to suppress the other lives, until Leto was able to fuse his own personality-self within a deeper trance.
Maybe the worms were once a sentient species who genetically engineered themselves to create their own intoxicant. Thus, the worms explore their melange-inspired dreams for thousands of years under the sands.
When you described spice travel as hyperspace travel without computers, it shook loose the following thought: Leto's Golden Path is Psychohistory without computers.
Quin I love your channel, it's wonderful to see all the people you are bringing together that share love for these novels. It makes me feel more connected to the dune community! Thank you.
I think it's a really cool idea that the only known ET life in the Dune universe is the very Shai Hulud which makes the universe not only possible, but distinct.
There are no sentient aliens in Dune. There are all kinds of alien flora and fauna, although the majority of plants and animals seem to derive from Earthly stock.
@@badlandskid in the "There Are No Aliens In Dune" video, it explains that earthlings are the only beings in the universe, and that all biological differences were indicative of evolutionarily necessary changes due to where a particular group ended up. While it would likely follow they would bring along animals that would also evolve/adapt to their environment, the sandworm/sandtrout evolution seems far more alien than most aspects of the Dune universe... As if Tremors was some sort of "hint of things to come" and Beetlejuice thought Dune was Saturn... Or Saturn was Dune... But that's all crazy.
Ever since finding this channel, I’ve been binge watching/listening to Quinn and his ideas. I’ve never come across anyone so well versed and knowledgeable about Frank Herbert’s epic space opera, winding what it is to be human, with modern eugenics, psychological drugs, and religion. I first started reading every book connected with the series, from Chapter House Dune, through the main series and anything in between. There are few books that I’m willing to read over and over but the Alexander Text of Will Shakespeare, and all of Dune are the tales I’ll settle down and binge read given the chance. I’m now 61-yo and although I’m told I won’t reach 62, I’ve started reading the series again. I should have the time as it’s now May 2022 and birthday isn’t until end August 2022, so no problem ! Finally, am I the only one that was disappointed by the first attempt at a Dune film, the one with Patric Stewart and Kyle Maclachlan? Those idiotic voice things were just too stupid for words and there were plenty of other examples where the filmmakers drifted away from/totally ignored the storyline (almost as if they’d had someone read it, provide a one page synopsis and the result was……….crap. Finally watched the most recent offering of Dune, which tried a bit too hard to cram Dune and Children of Dune (plus bits of Dune Messiah) into a film that needs the Peter Jackson treatment! That being said I’ll admit that I was pleased that the filmmakers tried to remain faithful to the original story, with just a few important bits missing or out of order in the timeline. Thank you so much Quinn, you’ve given me the nudge I needed to read the series once more. Not sure what my brain will do in its last few seconds of life after I’ve been reading about sand worms and Fremen but it should be good - unfortunately I won’t be able to write a book report, you know how it is. All the best from Burley in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, David
@@ericg1100 please accept mt apologies for not responding sooner but things haven’t been so good. Just to let you know that I’m Pam, David’s widow and he asked that I try to respond to anyone that contacts him through his previous posts. David reached his 62nd in August 2022, then his 63rd in 2023 but everything became clear that things were reaching the final attempt at crossing the bar even though he never explained the reference. He was able to remain at home as various organs failed but in the end he died in his sleep 6 weeks after his 63rd birthday. I’ll be trying to monitor any further contact but as I’m sure you will understand that it has hit the family and his friends quite hard especially. I hadn’t noticed that he had given the wrong dates but he was such a stubborn bugger that he kept fighting to the end (and freaked out visitors when they saw the Fairbairn & Sykes Commando knife at the side of the bed. He said it was handy in case a skeletal figure in dark robes carrying a scythe would find out what bootnecks are like. Another typical response from a Corps Pissed guy I am struggling to accept that he’s finally pain free. That’s all I’m able to say, as it feels as if it happened yesterday, but thank you for asking, Best regards, Dr. Pamela
Semi-Tinfoil theory: the worms and the spice are created by humanity in the very far future (perhaps the worms are even a human descendent!) and our descendants, ensuring their own existence, send the sand trout back in time and seed Arrakis. In a fictional universe with lots of prescience and apparently no intelligent aliens in it, this seems more likely than an alien origin to the worms and fits the themes of human potential In the series. At least to me.
I think there is a "saying" that more or less Any Alien life, is/or will always be Humans from the future. Intresting idea. And even a solution to the Fermi paradox. We as humans, evolve and kills/erase all other Alien life form we meet.
In the books, the guild found the spice before it was founded. It was found by Tuk Keedair who introduced it to Aurelius Venport (the founder of the guild/ father and husband of Norma Cenva the first navigator).
I remember that revelation in CoD, but always wondered how their memories could contain that information. The presumption was through their mother however the spice predates Freeman occupation. I started to think, or maybe heard someone else’s speculation, that worms were an old B.G. experiment in genetic engineering for the purpose of producing an age slowing drug. I never got a chance to read the Encyclopedia so I really appreciate your discussion of that source to help me better understand the story. Keep up the great work!
Wouldn't just going to Arrakis be enough to be exposed to the spice? The spice seems to be in everything on Arrakis. All you need is a few individuals with the latent innate ability to see the future make contact with the spice. someone that is part of the landing party might be enough. That might have been be enough to set things in motion. Granted the most likely scenario is that the Bene Gesserit played the Aurelian exiles. I always thought that they were the scariest aspect of the Dune universe. They have patience and are masters of subtlety. that is a very dangerous combination.
I think THIS^ is the most likely answer. I'm no Dune expert, but I think people are ignoring that just being in the desert itself on Arrakis is enough to be exposed to the Spice. 16 years? For an exploring colony of hundreds with even our level of technology it wouldn't take them more than a couple of months to accidently run into some sand worms and be exposed. With their newfound abilities it wouldn't take them long at long to being researching the worms and start mining.
@@Mutiny960 It would also take a descendant of Leto I and the Lady Jessica (wild Atreides genes) who had either taken the poison produced by the bile of a drowned sandworm and survived (Paul) or been preborn to mothers under the heavy influence of the spice like Alia, Leto II, or Ghanima to be prescient. The guild navigators who were mutated humans, through much training living in tanks saturated with spice gas had a form of prescience limited to finding the safe route through the void for use in space travel. Later in the series Leto II's breeding program produced Siona Atreides who's decedents were invisible to all prescient observers. So it wasn't as simple as being exposed to the raw spice, after all millions of Freeman lived on Arrakis for generations and showed no sign of prescient powers.
I think the part about Leto II having an ancestor who remembered Arrakis as a green world before the sandtrout were introduced is most interesting. It suggests humans have been in space for far longer than 10,000 or even 30,000 years. You don't grind a planetrary surface to sand in a few centurires.
I always assumed that spice was first discovered before the Butlerian Jihad, probably at the behest of the Bene Gesserits. Once thinking machines are gone, of course they would engineer the creation of the Guild using the magic dust only they knew about.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, the Zensunni Wanderers (who later called themselves the Fremen) were taken to Arrakis in 7193 A.G. (After Guild). It's interesting that you acknowledge that the Bene Gesserit were around before the Butlerian Jihad. Glad to see it, as so many people buy into the nonsense that they did not exist until later.
@@Shan_DalamaniNo they existed. Just better hidden. As for his comment of how did the BG would know they were heading to Praxus? Easy. They steered them to it.
My theory is that the Thinking Machines did it. When we find out that the Machines survived the Jihad we have a character that was “alien” watching the main characters.
My thoughts: 1) First, the spice may not have been the first substance used as a drug. You can call this the “Maker’s Water” hypothesis. Humans, by some chance, ingested some chemical from the worm, and gained awareness from it that would lead them to the spice. 2). “Inhalation-first hypothesis” Spice effects might be possible through inhalation, with desert dwellers getting enough of a dose that they began to make a link between psychic abilities, longevity, and the consumption of the spice. 3) “Lunch with dirty hands hypothesis”. Let;s say you have somebody working out in the desert. They work hard, and either they’re too low class to worry much about hygiene, or they’re otherwise not in the habit. They sit down after getting their hands dirty, and eat lunch... and start tripping balls! Naturally, folks are going to want to know why they’re suddenly having visions or feeling the effects.
Your videos makes me realize modern science fiction is so far behind the curve. Hopefully some day you start looking into Ring World. Either way, another great video!
I think perhaps sand worms were very different when they were first brought to Arrakis and they evolved. The combination of weather and sand minerals on Arakkis, in conjunction with worm evolution, produced melange.
Very good thoughts, all. A couple of things crossed my mind during your talk. The first is, space is big. I'm not being facetious or overly simplistic. In the past 10,000 years, we haven't fully explored Earth and we find new things every day. The second being, a good chunk, almost 10% of our current scientific advancements are accidents. A scientist working on advanced warning RADAR melts a chocolate bar in his pocket and, next thing you know, we have a new way to burn popcorn.
part of me wonders if the original plan was for the reveal to be that this is all just a gigantic cycle. After all Chapterhouse became the new Dune, the worms were seeded there just as they had been on Arrakis before it. Was Leto's job just to ensure that the lifecycle of humanity (and also maybe the worms) began again?
Looks like you read aloud the page heading ("SPACING GUILD, OPERATIONS AND ORGANIZATION") and page number (635) as though it were part of the paragraph.
Ah! Another species that had previously attained prescience long before humanity had left the worms there to find. Kind of like a trail of breadcrumbs. This is now one of my favourite theories, and not something I would have thought of. So would Leto II have been aware of these aliens? Or would they be protected from his prescience in the way Siona's descendants are?
This is the third video I've watched of yours over the course of two days. Imagine my shock when I see the advert for your graphic novel to realize that I've already bought and received it. Top work, friend.
A theory from leftfield; The war on AI machines was lead by an AI machine (as in the Foundation book) that wanted to improve humanity & had learnt of the manufactured drug spice (that was available & intended for a select few) so genetically engineered the worms to make it freely available. This AI then made it available to the Bene Gesserit with the knowledge that they would wisely use it for the benefit of all humility while he either hid in the background to nudge things in the right direction when needed or was destroyed in the war.
Absolutely loved this. Thank you. I've been hooked on your channel all week since I discovered it. I've been enraptured by Dune for 6 years now, and I love hearing other individual's thoughts on it. Now I'm off to watch the trailer for Tadhya!
My money is on they are a subsect of humanities final form that was sent back in time to allow a greater path for humanity. Think about it. After the destruction of thinking machines. Creating a better man to fill roles was extremely important. Without the spice this would have likely have gone way more perverse then what we saw in the original story.
Would the worms have genetic memory, that in itself is a whole series. And the great enemy might also have been deadly for the worms. The symbiosis of humanity and the worms may have been necessary for the ones that brought the worms. The hybrid of human, worm and machine being needed for the future
Spoiler: The Enemy was the reborn AI thay escaped into another galaxy after thr Butlerian Jihad, and returned several millennia after Leto's Imperium fell, they are the threat the Honored Matres were fleeing from.
@@theloweffortchannel7211 i think, your right about the machine civilization. Tho, other intelligence's or energy species might have existed, leto's ability to see the future is unknown.
@@heyoka33 The machines were directly stated to be the great enemy. The Scattering was implied to be not just multigalactic, but also multiuniversal. They tie directly into Kralizec (End Times, involving Idaho's last ghola becoming a Kwisatz Haderach and merging with Omnius)
@@theloweffortchannel7211 yes the machines are the great enemy, the assumption being a monolithic civilization. And the only machine civilization mentioned, being that the worms, came from somewhere else, doesn't preclude other machines. Prescient predictions, doesn't mean, leto didn't see other machines(biological)
I'd love to hear your thoughts on how everyday folks lived under the god emporers rule. We know that life was stagnant and somewhat boring during Leto's Peace, but I've always been curious about what people actually have to DO in order to comply with the God Emporers religious teachings (or even Mua'dib's for that matter)
Go about their daily lives, work, eat, sleep, breed (some were part of Leto's breeding program), participate in mandatory religious rites (both daily, annual, and for certain major life events such as marriage, birth, death), don't do anything stupid like try to rebel, and you get to live. There's a chapter in God Emperor in which Duncan Idaho and Siona visit one of the villages on Dune (Goygoa, which used to be Jacurutu until Leto tamed it and made it into a village that was essentially where farmers lived, with a marketplace and everything you'd expect to find in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, other than the fact that the people were expected to worship Leto and some of the people there served him directly as part of his bureaucracy or as a Fish Speaker. No wonder the Scattering happened after Leto's death. 3000 years of such a 'culture' would be incredibly boring.
That isn’t why the Scattering happened. It happened only as during Lego’s Reign, cities were banned except the capital. Think of the human population as pressure. Too much and the balloon pops, spreading the gas. Too much humans, Leto dies, they get spread over the universe so they colonise galaxies.
*brand new viewer here* No more than 30 seconds into listening to this video I didn't hesitate to subscribe to you! Your music is freaking epic and in that short moment, I KNEW I was going to enjoy this video!
Maybe the worms evolved to enhance intelligent species, exactly so those intelligent species ensure their survival and spread throughout the universe. They evolved to have this symbiosis. Because they give abilities, they will always be kept around, and they will as a species persist.
@@elizabethjansen2684 Got it. It was Dune: Appendix III. Summarising a report commissioned by Lady Jessica to examine the mystery of why The BG had so strangely ignored the significance of what she and Paul were doing.
I think Appendices of first Dune say that there was likely higher order dimensions behind events that they were unaware of..a bit vague..but could point to what you're saying!?
Great video. Thank you. Been a Dune fan for decades now and I read the original 6 books, plus some of the expanded universe, I never realized that the sandworms were not native to Arrakis.
Leto, in his unique ability to view time objectively and as a physical axial location could've seeded them. Either before his "death" (apotheosis) or after. I would venture to say after, as such concepts are infathomable to any conciousness still tied to an entropic (material) existence. This could explain so much that humanity was able to stumble upon such as the Holzman effect, the almost prescient tmning of the Butlerian Jihad and it's philosophy, the worms, the discovery of the process creating synthetic melange.. etc.. Im a longtime fan and have enjoyed watching you evolve fromca guy with a good narration voice to a true creator of content. I look forward to your continued success!
I think that the worms originated on a planet where they weren't the apex predator and couldn't turn the planet into a desert. When they were introduced to Arrakis, they ended up having no predators and could reach the giant sandworm phase of their life cycle.
First of all I don't want to see what the Apex is on that planet. Not that they would notice me. Secondly that planet must be astronomically massive to have something that not only hunts but controls the worm population. Then again with full access of a planet and no predators they would grow bigger.
@@dresheraton9276 It doesn't have to be that massive. All it needs is an environment that supports extremely large animals. Earth had that, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous when dinosaurs became so massive, and later when we had gigantic forms of the smaller mammals we have now.
Thank goodness for you, great googly moogly THIS WHOLE DUNE SAGA is quite the head trip for me. But, I am determined to get "into it" and all praise to you, Quinn, for helping me get there. Salute! 🧠💣💥
Those guild dudes will eat ANYTHING. It was only a matter of time before they ingested hallucinatory worm scat. J/S. Edit: the Bene Gesserit tts's to bitter jesuit, and that made my day.
I definitely like the idea that they were an ancient sentient species that “transcended” in some way, and that the sandworms are all that’s left of them. Perhaps they grew so advanced that the normal functions of life (to expand, make more of yourself) no longer interested them. Now all that remains are seemingly mindless creatures, who’s sheer power means a natural byproduct of their lifecycle can vastly empower the human mind
Would explain how Leto remembered the pre worm planet through his ancestors memories, and the heavy emphasis on human divergent evolution and breeding programs throughout the series
Trout - sandtrout, LOL. But a good idea considering the recklessness of the BT (Tleilaxu) who may have been in a race with the BG to produce a mentat that could navigate hyperspace. It's a simple plan really... 1: Crush up the silicon from thinking machines 2: Feed it to your mutant Cthulhu salmon people. 3: ??? 4: Prophet!!!!
The worms make the Spice, the spice can give people sight into time, past and future.... what if the worms history is not as linear as time? what if when the worms died off on arrakis and the beni geserate brought them back is their origin off planet? in some kind of cyclical history?> or for instance, the worm god reached back in time to inform those who were yet to know? like some kind of boot strap paradox.
My fan-theory: Leto II. was so strong in bending spacetime that he was able to travel back in time and seeded the first worms on Arrakis, thereby closing the circle. This was indeed from another world, not in space, but in time…
Well time travel is just generally garbage, but even if this were the case then that doesn't answer what made them. They have to be there for the loop to start which just leaves every question still unanswered.
I like that the worms origins are left a mystery but I also like to think they either came from earth which would make things come full circle on my head canon or just one of the worlds they found those ruins on.
I think one possibility is that while nothing can surpass melange in strengthening prescience, it is a inherent ability of consciousness, and lesser presciences both inborn and enhanced by other, less potent pharmaceuticals could have progressively and iteratively led humanity to the futures where melange was discovered.
This would be the most acceptable theory and actually is somewhat validated by the story itself. The bene Gesserit's wierding way allows them to move at blinding speeds by warping their perception of reality. The warping of reality could have allowed them to gain some minute sense of prescience
The worms most likely came from Tleilax. That's where the meta-plot is directing itself after all. Always dig your content, bruh. I'll definitely contribute once I get on my feet.
Herbert presents Arrakis at the time of the events of the first three books as a stable ecology that is greatly harmed by the goal set forth by the planetary ecologist, Pardo and later his son, Liet to re-terraform the planet into a green water world as the result of Pardo discovering salt beds indicative of past seas and vast amounts of water sequestered underground. This "altering" of the planets ecology has catastrophic results for an entire economy built around the spice as the flow of spice is interupted. Yet, the worms were introduced to Arrakis in some distant and unknown past. The worms lifecycle forever altered a green water planet that existed prior to whatever intelligence introduced the worms. This introduction of a foreign species had catastrophic effects for the ecology of what once was a water planet. What is Herbert trying to tell us. Surely the ancient introduction of the worms that massively altered the ecology of a water planet shouldn't get a pass while Pardo and Liet's efforts get condemned. Interesting stuff. Could the message be careful what changes you make to an ecology whether intentional or accidental because life will find a way and the current intelligent species may not have a place in that new way?
Introduction of new species, whether by intention, accident, or carelessness can have dire consequences over time. Real-life example: Recreational fishing in lakes and rivers that are in or near forests. They dig up domestic earthworms from their garden or get them from a bait shop, go fishing, and at the end of the day, they throw away the unused worms. The worms that survive are not the same kind of worms that are native to the forests. Urban earthworms introduced into this biome are gradually changing it, making the soil less fertile, and negatively affecting other worm species. Moral: If you go fishing, take your bait home with you and dispose of it there, not in a wild forest.
The worms were engineered for biological warfare. The war long forgotten but for a brief memory of one of the operatives releasing the larval stage on wet Arakis buried deep in the God Emperor’s other memories.
I’ve been following you for around a year now, and your insights and wordplay are at least as powerful as the sage Mr. Herbert himself. Nobody has managed a novel that equals the master, not even his son by my measure, so whom else could do this marvelous and deeply philosophical world justice? My answer is singular. So, sage Quinn, what do you think you would have to do to take up this mantle and expand upon one of my most beloved universes? As truthfully I would trust none other to lace the subtext of the world with such vibrant and visceral colors.
I went to click like when you asked (because i dont care if i dont actually like the content, i like that you took the time to make it) and realised its already been clicked. So now i have to try and figure out when i watched this already and why i dont remember it
I haven't read any of the Brian Herbert Dune stuff, having only heard bad things about his handling of major events in the universe. So, pardon if I'm skeptical of it being handled well if he decides to touch on it. That said, it is an interesting mystery. I'm not 100% sure, but I know a lot of what wildlife is mentioned in Dune on Arrakis is said to be transplanted creatures from similar biomes.
Tbh you should give it a try. Sure, the books of Brian are not as good as Herberts original stuff, but there is a LOT of elitist gatekeeping out there. As said, the extended universe is not as good and philosophical as the original 6 books, but to call it bad is a very very wide stretch...
His work really isn't that bad, it's pretty good from a "read this novel in this series" standpoint. From a world building standpoint, they still aren't that bad - but they aren't as good as his fathers. From a continuity standpoint, they are "OK" - you have to realize that by the time of the "original dune novels" there have been powerful rulers and organizations intentionally re-writing history and destroying "continuity" for thousands and thousands of years. (Not least of which were the Butlerian Jihad and, Leto the second himself) If you're a Dune fan, you owe yourself at least a single read of Brian's works. If you're a Frank Herbert fan - NO ONE will EVER live up to your expectations, so stick to Frank's works.
@@firebornliger That's not quite true - The Butlerian Jihad was more like a female John Connor erasing skynet, all technical information about skynet, and any computer powerful enough to research skynet from human culture, and then making a religion out of preventing a future repetition.
@@firebornliger Yeah, Brian changed some things, especially the handling of the foreshadowed events in Chapterhouse are... at least unexpected and therefore somewhat not fitting. But as said, the overall flavor of 'Dune' condtinous throught the extended universe from Brian. If your are can overlook a couple changes of Brian he had to do because well he is not Frank himself, you have a good chance for a lot more reading fun ;) I formyself started to read the last two books and found they are actually well written and complete the story in generall. I also started to read the other books, but stopped at House Atredies, as I found the names of those three books are a bit missleading. I thought they tell some background about the three houses, but they dont, they tell a ongoing story just short of the events of Dune itself. But me not finishing those books has nothing to do with bad writing or something hardcorefans will say about them.
I love the original Frank Herbert Dune books. I have read a lot of the books that came after his death. I cannot put my finger the reason why but the new book do not feel like Dune to me. (This is just my opinion. Don't get your feathers ruffled.) I cannot shake the feeling that things just randomly happen in the modern books. The events are missing any deep meaning.
The new books are rotten. They are supposed to have been based on an outline that Frank Herbert had prepared, but there is very little to show that is the case.
Agreed. See if you can get a copy of the first draft of Dune. It's just sequential plot. This happens, then this happens, then this happens. There's nothing deeper, no texture, no inter-wovenness, no complexity. Someone read that and must have said something like, "This is really interesting, develop it, bring in ecology, bring in religion". It must have taken years to deepen that first draft; that deep work is lacking in the new books, and makes them an instant put-down.
I always thought they must have been some other, possibly benign and insignificant ( like an ant or something ) sort of pest creature that got there by accident when people came there. It seems like the worms must have mutated over generations to be the size they are, possibly because the radiation that arrakis gets from the sun.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, Arrakis experienced a mass extinction event, which resulted in the not-as-massive worms retreating underground and surviving, while their predators all went extinct. No predators mean they had the capacity to grow to be massive. This would have happened long before humans arrived.
I know this video is almost 2 years old, but I just wanted to mention speculation was kind of the intended purpose of sci-fi and fantasy literature back in the day. Before both genres acquired their respective tags, they were used to be called speculative fiction after all.
Never underestimate the human drive to find new and exotic things to get absolutely blitzed on.
But unlike the stinky ass weed. Spice can actually gives you superhuman abilities and prolonged life
@@danceboyish yeah stinky weed that helps people with epilepsy and othet conditions...
And make the world a bit more bareble... Thanks to it i am yet to commit mass murder...
@@danceboyish Yeah, let's be real that stinky ass weed has practical applications in medicine. Could replace opioids as long term pain management, for one. But they won't legalize it for selfish reasons revolving around short term gains that kill thousands of people a year.
In the words of George mallory: "because it's there."
Let's face it some humans will do something so wierdist chemical and crazied ideals
“Ain’t nothing here but worms and cinnamon smelling powder” “well can we smoke it?”
These are the hard hitting questions we should be asking . Has anyone tried smoking it yet , and if not why
Most hallucinogenic substances are heat sensitive alkaloids (with the exception of pure DMT crystals), so... maybe?
The Spice Melange gives off a odor like that of cinnamon. Anyone arriving on Arrakis for the first time would have noticed that smell and wonder where it was coming from. Even breathing in the unrefined spice dust could have had immediate effects on the consciousness of those sensitive to it's properties.
not to mention, if you find space cinnamon, it's not to hard to think someone added it to food, as cinnamon is a common spice used in food.
.... I can hear Herbert right now, .... "Yeah, YEAH,..... that's the ticket."
.....it is the best hypothesis I have seen in the comments. Terrifying to think of Dune in the hands of paramont. "From the creators of Star Trek" ....lol
@@Obi-Ralph-Kenobi Oof, right? Cinema is dead to me. Only a few movies have been produced within the last five years that I give a shot about. The rest is degenerative garbage
Even then, they might not have immediately attributed the changes to the spice. And considering unrefined spice is almost like sand, they might not even have noticed it or linked it to the cinnamon-y smell.
Still more plausible than "aliens did it" though :D.
@@jorislemoine1488 well. Don't forget that before the spice, they used different concoctions to give them their abilities. They were just less effective. It wouldn't be that big of a leap to assume a drug trip fueled psychic vision lead them to the spice.
The Spice isn't just a "substance", otherwise some chemists of the future would have been able to synthesize it. Considering how good our chemists are today, in 20,000 years I wouldn't imagine any organic molecule would be so difficult to manufacture. Consider, the only attempt to make Spice artificially that was even close to being successful came from the Tleilaxu, a race known for their specialty of cloning. This leads me to believe that the Spice is more than just a chemical; it is actually alive, perhaps a spore of the Sandtrout. If it was only a chemical, it would be easy to make, but the spark of life is never easy to create in a lab, even with 20,000 years of experience. So the reason the reason that the Spice changes the physiology so much, for example the Guild Navigators, is because it is a symbiosis of human and Sandtrout spores. Like a lower level version of the change that happened to God Emperor Leto.
Plausible. But note that scientific knowledge isn’t necessarily linear. The fact that this generation of mankind is a little superstitious and/or suspicious of computers for example. And I’d suggest that a feudalistic political system is prone to a drain on scientific endeavour as well.
You might have noticed, though they have only breifly appeared in part one of the current Dune, but there is a great deal of difference between our world, and that of Dune. So much so that I came to the conclusion that they exist in an alternate universe when I first read the book.
For instance, there are no computers in Dune. Instead, Frank Herbert gives us the Mentat: These Spice enhanced humans use life long training and meditation, together with a Spice Drink, to do tremendously complex calculations in their heads. This is displayed briefly, but never explained, during Leto's the meeting with the Emperor's Emissary.
If they are our future, they have given up on our apparent attempt to introduce computers into every aspect of human life. We either gave up that knowledge, or lost it, after we discover the Spice (I assume that we could have never reached Arrakis without the aid of computers.). In fact the narrator was wrong when he said that space travel would be impossible without Spice. He never says that humanity started on Arrakis, yet it is the only place in the universe that it exists, and we discovered it apparently without help. (In fact, any aliens that might have helped us, certainly would NOT like the way that we monopolize the Spice output of Arrakis. AND we must have been there for thousands of years, as Spice must be changed refined into a useful product. One that gives Navigators the ability to travel (and bring HUGE ships along) without moving. One that sharpens the mind and quickens the thoughts. And one that allows the Bene Gesserit to commune with the dead, among other things.
Not true at all. Nature is incredibly hard (I believe impossible) to replicate. I take bio identical hormones right now for a pituitary problem. I take testosterone thats been decently "understood" for 30-40 years now and though it s"bio Identical" it is nothing like the testosterone the body creates. Thats why we don't have clones even though they claim to have the knowledge already. The process is far harder than the knowledge. Nature has an ability far beyond mans capabilities.
@@MrJamezk if you HAD actually read the book, you'd know what the Butlerian Jihad was, and WHY there are no "thinking Machines" in Dune.
But eventually the same faction that made golas was able to artificially produce Spice. So it is chemically reproducable.
Pre-guild explorers found the planet. Found a spice blow. Collected samples for analysis. On a dare some person tasted the samples and got a mind opening experience. Convinced others to try some. Spice / drug trade starts.
@Major Problems it's called an ”ornithocycle” :-)
Just watched an episode of One Step Beyond, where the presenter and the scientists try... Mexican mushrooms! (In the 5o'/6o')
It's such a fun quick watch!🍃
Very close to how it's explained in the EU Dune books. The Fremen were the first to discover its uses, and eventually began trading it to traveling Merchants of medicinal and recreational pharmaceuticals. From there it spread to the various human worlds around the galaxy.
I have been here since DAY ONE of your uploads. Your first video on your balcony just talking about Ice and fire is what hooked me on your content. I have also said this to your before. YOU ARE THE REASON I GOT MY SON TO READ. When you started uploading Dune a little over 4 years ago it gave me a chance to connect with my son on a book he might enjoy. NOW 4 years later and my son is a book nerd. I CAN NEVER THANK YOU ENOUGH.
Yeah. I’m from back then as well. Quinn on point w commentary from the start.
Awwww... Good...
This is good to hear 👍🏻
Where can one find these early tomes?
👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
I think the mystery of the sand worms origin needs to be left a mystery. Any explanation will not live up to what has been imagined. Ridley Scott explained the origin of the Xenomorph and fans were left disappointed. Some things need to be left ambiguous.
Remember the force ?
Sadly, yes. For the sake of the unimaginative and uninspired, monsters must not be shown and answers must remain mysteries. Perhaps one day humans will evolve past their overt fascination with mystery and be just as fascinated by answers. For now, writers must write shlock or never finish.
Scott shat on the xenomorph. Cameron didn't make them good favours either IMO.
Truly enjoyed all and every explanations about the Xenomorphs and the Builders and all.
It was/is quite fascinating.
If anything, it fuels imagination, not the opposite.
@@ChristmasLore I agree! I liked the alien prequels
I think the sand worms were a once sentient species that chose their 'golden path' or their variation of it.
that's an interesting idea
Reject society, return to worm
they may have foreseen the merge into humanity and beyond... what seems futile now may be a glorious end game plan
Maybe as cows are to Hinduism?
I like this idea.
I always thought spice did not make space travel possible, but the precognition allowed for travel safely. It’s precognition allowed those to see collisions and change the outcome. So a pilot could have been under the influence after stopping on the planet for a short time realised quickly the advantages.
Good point. I always kind of wondered what they meant by that. He could have made an entire story of the accidents that happened in pre-guild space exploration.
They had a reliable form of interstellar travel, but only using thinking machines. That’s an entire story arc unto itself. Then things happened, no one trusted AI, and they needed another safe way to faster then light without computers. It was still doable, even without the spice, just highly dangerous.
@@juangonzalez9848 Which begs the question, defeat thinking machines that allow for more efficient space travel in a space war, how... That is one of the great deal breakers, for me, of the prequels, it hurts my suspension of disbelief. I can only imagine such a war going the Animatrix style.
@@duckdialectics8810
It’s been a decade but I think it was the finding of spice that allowed them to rebel. The humans could out think the thinking machines that were in autonomous mode, but not omnius controlled ones. The big reason omnius took over was those traitors that tried to use him to take over, then got screwed by him. The prequels were definitely a little odd, but that was partly due to his son being the author.
@@juangonzalez9848 No, the spice wasn't "found" till well after the butlerian jihad - The holtzman drive was wat allowed mankind to rebel. But without the spice's precognition, they couldn't predict safe routes so for every jump their rebel fleet had to make to avoid the machines or to attack a position, they would lose a percentage of their ships forever.
I forget if the machines didn't have access to the drive or refused to use it because they assumed they could win without such losses.
It is really sad that both Herbert and Asimov passed away before they could complete their stories. Both were hinting at aliens, especially Asimov.
@@ismata3274 At the end of Foundation and Earth Daneel reveals that his plan was to protect Humanity from alien life that is boutnd to be out there in the Universe. That's why he created Gaia. A united Humantiy would have a better chance to defend itself against an alien invasion.
The End of Eternity is implied to be a sort of prequel to the robots series, which in turn are the first episodes in the Foundation series. the End of Eternity makes alien life quite explicit, and the failure of the Eternals to protect humanity from it is why they were ultimately destroyed IIRC.
I know! I want the ending of that last Dune trilogy. I'm currently reading Chapterhouse for the first time and I have 90 pages left, but I know I'm gonna be really anxious because it's going to end on a cliffhanger. I also just love where this final trilogy is going and it sucks he couldn't finish it. I want more Dune books in general and I'm not ready for it to end.
A bit relieving too. People really hate answered questions and conclusions. If these stories didn't have that ultimate mysteriousness factor, they'd be markedly less liked.
@@somersault1123 disagree. I am of a mind that I HATE unanswered questions. Back lore that isnt explained that caused events in a story that are so large with incredible ramifications. Those unanswered questions drive me mad and i start to lose interest in a story if it doesnt get explained. Dune has several. ASOIF has TOO many. Questions need answers.
Two thoughts come to my mind:
Frank Herbert was fascinated by the concept of ecological systems. Their function and change lie at the heart of the Dune saga. To imagine an invasive species maybe brought by accident to a favourable condition which resulted in that species eventually changing a whole planet's ecosphere for millennia to come is a masterpiece of an ecological thought experiment.
The second part is that even on our world we have evidence of species that evolve independently but ave strange synergies with each other. Fungi who have existed long before trees, but now help trees to facilitate their species' health by transporting nutrients through their mycelium networks, or other fungi which deliver psychedelic experiences to humans who have literally evolved millions of years after they did.
Makes sense. I dig it
I believe there were trees before fungi actually hence coal deposits but point is taken
@@timmo971 land plants are actually comparatively young (~ 450 million years) and in the beginning they were not seed plants like most are now but spore plants like mosses and ferns. Fossils of fngi - while rare - are a lot older than that
@@timmo971 The fossil record shows the existence of fungi well before the Carbonaceous. That said, lignin was a game-changer. Fungi had no means of biodegrading it for quite some time.
As I understand it the first land plants did not have root systems, and instead utilized mycelium networks to draw in water and nutrients. Plant roots evolved at first as a more effective means of facilitating the trade of sugar for water/nutrients with mycellial networks but eventually became relatively self sufficient.
I love how grumpy you sound at the end when you said, "If it can be handled properly."
Yeah, Quinn often speaks for us.
"Was it aliens? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes."
Yes, ... Especially when you see Bradford Dourif's hair!!
Good one!
Im not saying it was aliens, but...
and if so...
*The MEN IN BLACK know all your locations, STAY WHERE YOU ARE*
@Nolan Your payment has been processed.
Leto mentions that Arrakis was "wet" when the worms were first introduced. According to the Dune Encyclopedia, Arrakis originally had three moons, but 200,000 prior to the story a comet/asteroid destroyed one of them, and the debris crashed into the planet. Prior to this, Arrakis was a lush planet, but the bombardment started an ice age, and the planet later became an arid desert.
So, if the worms were introduced when the planet was still "wet," it would have to have been more than 200,000 years in the past. This was long before humans in this universe had access to space travel. So, the worms couldn't have been introduced to the planet by human hands.
The Guild did not discover the Spice.... the Spice created the Guild
"If the idea can be handled properly." A key phrase, and I do not have the faith in Kevin J. Anderson, and Brian Herbert to be able to handle it properly. I think it is much better to be left a mystery, and more fun to speculate about it. Then to have it out right answered in some way that will be mostly likely unsatisfying to down right insulting.
This is the fun of these wonderful works. LotR, Dune, Hitchhiker's Guide, etc. There are unanswered corners. I loved these corners as a young reader. I stewed on them for weeks and months at a time. I'd bounce my ideas about it off my friends and my parents and other readers. The author was dead, no answers could be had, but it was fantastic dialogue and evocative and imaginative.
Now we live in the dark days. Disney owns Star Wars. Amazon owns LotR. Warner appears to be doing okay with Dune thus far... but there are tangential story concepts already out there that will be manufacturing content that Frank never wrote. BH/KJA are no better than any other Hollywood script-assassin or Tor franchise parasite. These engines of noncreativity will feed off these franchises until they give nothing in return. Unimaginative consumers will suck the pap that the studios spoon feed them, and call their creations "canon," and destroy the potential for delving into the minutiae of these world.
One of my favorite modern authors is Neil Gaiman. Most of his works are non-serialized. Unique worlds. Unique characters. No interdependencies between books. A complete beginning and ending of each story and world, with new motives and metaphysics as you move into a new tale. I wish Robert Jordan had done this, rather than his umpteen book collection of the Wheel of Time. Or Terry Brooks with his Shannara stories. Or Terry Goodkind with his Conan the Libertarian series.
The big problem with franchises, is they build fandoms. And fandoms are fundamentally addicts. When IP is transferred, it's a kind of drug, and the owner is the new dealer with a monopoly on the addict market. And we've seen what a soup sandwich IP heirs have made of well established fantasy worlds.
Realistically, no one has the power to write a compelling conclusion. This is why GRRM should just stop writing A Song of Ice and Fire. Preferrably now before any potential mishaps.
@@somersault1123 that is not true
I have full faith in Brian Herber to blow it, I have never found any of his material to be wothy of putting in the same bookcase as his fathers.
I don't think Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson have ever actually tried to explain the origin of the Sandworms. At least not in any of the EU Dune books I've read. The Sandworms themselves were altered and seeded onto different worlds, but I recall no attempt at explaining their initial origin.
Uroburos time travel? a pre-destination Paradox that was such a huge time loop that only the God Empiror Leto could put in place. His useing a spaceing guild navigater to not warp space but time.
One thing that's interesting about the sand worms is their complete "alien" biology. They produce oxygen. They are animals that produce oxygen! They eat sand. Their bodies are made mostly of silicone. They're one of the few forms of life that completely transforms their environment to suit their own needs. That's something that humans do. A few animals do it, but nothing like the extent of the worms. So maybe they are from an alien species. Maybe something far older and far different from humans and our animal ancestors. I don't know!
I would say you've hit the nail on the head - I do think the sandworms are not meant to be a carbon-based lifeform, but a silicon-based one! I once saw a program on TV where they speculated what alien life might look like, and I know the idea of "carbon chauvinism" brought up by Carl Sagan (i.e. we might in fact encounter alien life and not be aware of what we have before us, simply because we imagine "life" as we know it, in the sense of carbon-based life), and in that program they said that silicon was another candidate substance for a basis of life because it could bind to oxygen in a similar fashion (perhaps due to the same number of electrons in its out shell available for binding, but I could be wrong here). This might be what makes the worms so uniquely able to create their own environment (as they created Arrakis), and what also motivates Leto II to create a new species of worm that has his consciousness. Perhaps they would always remain a wild card in his Golden Path agenda otherwise due to their very alienness. They also straddle the normal classification of species because they have both animal and plant characteristics.
But we do not know where the worms come from, nor if they were something quite else on their former homeworld than they are now on Arrakis. For sandworms are also determined by the environment they find themselves in; very likely they would have turned into something quite different if they had found a new home on a world quite different from Arrakis. This is suggested in the later books when attempts are made to seed other worlds with the worms in an attempt to keep the spice cycle going, and they put the worms into an ocean and the spice cycle that gets started results in a different kind of spice from the one that was produced and harvested on Arrakis.
If the worms are intelligent aliens, then they were at the center of human civilization, whether intentionally or not, but they basically convinced humans to merge their DNA with theirs, and a worm-human hybrid became god emperor for 3000yrs while ensuring humanity would never be enslaved by psychic prescience due to the merging of DNA..
Every house had massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but only to be used in case of contact with alien life, and punishable by death if used on humans..
If the sand worms somehow knew this..? They put themselves as the most valuable things in the universe, to humans anyway..
The sandtrout come from sand plankton, the sand plankton are eaten by the worms, who have to scoop up the sand to get the plankton
Correction, the "worms" do not produce oxygen. The microscopic sand plankton produce oxygen. Not the same thing. There is a shift in role and metabolism that happens when the sand plankton become sand trout, and some sand trout become little makers, and some little makers become sand worms.
Basically the entire life cycle is of a single species mimicking a biosphere. Everything becomes something else, but starts as the same thing -- sand plankton. The worms are obviously the ultimate final form, but the rest must exist to support it. They are all basically the result of adapting to a "dead" planet. Worms aren't particularly sentient, but they don't need to be. The sole goal is survival. The problem is, everything became soo specialized that they also can't exist anywhere else. The only thing that maybe can is the sand plankton. But there's also suspicion that there's a much deeper biosphere deep within the planet, with hidden oceans, where other possible processes are taking place that everything above relies on. There may even be a "mother" species that is entirely different, that is the source of the sand plankton. Everything may merely be the life from this deep ocean biosphere trying to spread out by bubbling up.
If the worms came from another planet it's possible, given the timescales involved in converting Arrakis to a desert world, that the star of the original planet has aged enough to effectively destroy the original planet. Perhaps it was a g or k star that has now reached it's red giant stage.
Gork star?
@@espalier class g or class k.
Most stars fall into one of several spectral classes:o,b,a,f,g,k,m. Our sun is class g.
@@kaseyboles30 K G B F O A M
@@targard.quantumfrack6854 o7 CMDR…
@@theodorekurita9025 07 CMDR
What if the spice itself is an alien species? Kinda like fungi work. And by being consumed by humans they add their alien consciousness an capabilities to them. Fungi are symbiotic with trees so the worms would be the trees in this analogy.
If you ever get the chance, read Herbert's original story of Dune. Fungus was an integral part of the life cycle.
Psilocybe mushrooms are the stated inspiration for the spice according to Frank Herbert.
@@509Gman, @digitalbookworm5678;
cool! Makes a lot of sense. You guys might enjoy reading 'Amanita Muscaria; herb of inmortality'. The author claims to have found what Soma was.
@Gg2 Hh hahaha
@Gg2 Hh 😅🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
For about 35 years this question has been on my mind. Ever since the first time I read GEoD. Leto II talked of the idea for his "Golden Path" coming from someone in his ancestral past. Who in his ancestral past could have invisioned thousands of years of rule?
I suggest that Leto wasn't the first to take on "the skin that is not his own". Perhaps in another galaxy there's a planet with Sand Plankton and Sand Trout. Someone else thousands of years ago allowed sand trout to infest their body, moved to Arrakis and died there. Setting in motion the events leading to the Spice. 🙄
Ohhhh I like that idea..cool
Interesting idea, but probably not likely. In CoD, Leto admits he is the first of his kind. If he had been guided by a previous incarnation of human/sandtrout, I think Frank would have let the readers know explicitly.
As for this ancestor you're thinking of, are you refering to Harum? Because Harum was just a dominant personality that Leto used to suppress the other lives, until Leto was able to fuse his own personality-self within a deeper trance.
Read the books all of them
Kilgore Trout ?
Which means the sand trout still had to come from somewhere. Aliensdidit is no more a valid solution than Goddidit.
Dune and Hyperion are my two all time favorite universes. A channel like this with so many videos on each is a dream come true. 🥰
Maybe the worms were once a sentient species who genetically engineered themselves to create their own intoxicant. Thus, the worms explore their melange-inspired dreams for thousands of years under the sands.
That is an interesting idea. I'm probably going to be thinking about that all day.
That's Awesome
When Quinn posts a video about Dune on UA-cam, I stop what I'm doing and watch.
When you described spice travel as hyperspace travel without computers, it shook loose the following thought: Leto's Golden Path is Psychohistory without computers.
Quin I love your channel, it's wonderful to see all the people you are bringing together that share love for these novels. It makes me feel more connected to the dune community! Thank you.
I think it's a really cool idea that the only known ET life in the Dune universe is the very Shai Hulud which makes the universe not only possible, but distinct.
"if the idea can be handled properly" nice subtle burn there ;)
Ah... This was actually my first question when I saw the "There are no aliens in Dune" video. But... Might suggest that the Worms ARE human in origin.
There are no sentient aliens in Dune. There are all kinds of alien flora and fauna, although the majority of plants and animals seem to derive from Earthly stock.
If you were from Dune you wouldn’t have been alien. Anything that came to your planet would be “alien”
@@badlandskid in the "There Are No Aliens In Dune" video, it explains that earthlings are the only beings in the universe, and that all biological differences were indicative of evolutionarily necessary changes due to where a particular group ended up. While it would likely follow they would bring along animals that would also evolve/adapt to their environment, the sandworm/sandtrout evolution seems far more alien than most aspects of the Dune universe... As if Tremors was some sort of "hint of things to come" and Beetlejuice thought Dune was Saturn... Or Saturn was Dune... But that's all crazy.
@Joseph Douek The fremen arrived pre-Butlerian Jihad after being subjugated and oppressed planet after planet for religious reasons.
👀
Ever since finding this channel, I’ve been binge watching/listening to Quinn and his ideas. I’ve never come across anyone so well versed and knowledgeable about Frank Herbert’s epic space opera, winding what it is to be human, with modern eugenics, psychological drugs, and religion. I first started reading every book connected with the series, from Chapter House Dune, through the main series and anything in between.
There are few books that I’m willing to read over and over but the Alexander Text of Will Shakespeare, and all of Dune are the tales I’ll settle down and binge read given the chance. I’m now 61-yo and although I’m told I won’t reach 62, I’ve started reading the series again. I should have the time as it’s now May 2022 and birthday isn’t until end August 2022, so no problem !
Finally, am I the only one that was disappointed by the first attempt at a Dune film, the one with Patric Stewart and Kyle Maclachlan? Those idiotic voice things were just too stupid for words and there were plenty of other examples where the filmmakers drifted away from/totally ignored the storyline (almost as if they’d had someone read it, provide a one page synopsis and the result was……….crap.
Finally watched the most recent offering of Dune, which tried a bit too hard to cram Dune and Children of Dune (plus bits of Dune Messiah) into a film that needs the Peter Jackson treatment! That being said I’ll admit that I was pleased that the filmmakers tried to remain faithful to the original story, with just a few important bits missing or out of order in the timeline.
Thank you so much Quinn, you’ve given me the nudge I needed to read the series once more. Not sure what my brain will do in its last few seconds of life after I’ve been reading about sand worms and Fremen but it should be good - unfortunately I won’t be able to write a book report, you know how it is.
All the best from Burley in Wharfedale, Yorkshire,
David
David, did you make it to 62? Best wishes, Eric
@@ericg1100 please accept mt apologies for not responding sooner but things haven’t been so good. Just to let you know that I’m Pam, David’s widow and he asked that I try to respond to anyone that contacts him through his previous posts. David reached his 62nd in August 2022, then his 63rd in 2023 but everything became clear that things were reaching the final attempt at crossing the bar even though he never explained the reference.
He was able to remain at home as various organs failed but in the end he died in his sleep 6 weeks after his 63rd birthday. I’ll be trying to monitor any further contact but as I’m sure you will understand that it has hit the family and his friends quite hard especially. I hadn’t noticed that he had given the wrong dates but he was such a stubborn bugger that he kept fighting to the end (and freaked out visitors when they saw the Fairbairn & Sykes Commando knife at the side of the bed. He said it was handy in case a skeletal figure in dark robes carrying a scythe would find out what bootnecks are like. Another typical response from a Corps Pissed guy I am struggling to accept that he’s finally pain free.
That’s all I’m able to say, as it feels as if it happened yesterday, but thank you for asking,
Best regards,
Dr. Pamela
It was me. I put them there. This epic story had to happen. So I put the worms on Arrakis.
@@ninjabreadman8166 Do not put your trust in those words
I see plans within plans within plans
He was not here, he did not say these words......
Yes indeedy! Praise YOU!
And I am the one who woke up early enough to wake up Lemon so that he could put the worms on Arrakis and we could get this story rolling!
I'm so glad I pulled that all nighter to wake Hamyncheese so they could wake Lemon
Semi-Tinfoil theory: the worms and the spice are created by humanity in the very far future (perhaps the worms are even a human descendent!) and our descendants, ensuring their own existence, send the sand trout back in time and seed Arrakis. In a fictional universe with lots of prescience and apparently no intelligent aliens in it, this seems more likely than an alien origin to the worms and fits the themes of human potential In the series. At least to me.
This seems to make sense the most.
@Gg2 Hh Trans Temporal Cannibalism is the name of my next band!
I think there is a "saying" that more or less Any Alien life, is/or will always be Humans from the future.
Intresting idea.
And even a solution to the Fermi paradox. We as humans, evolve and kills/erase all other Alien life form we meet.
They sent the sand trout back THROUGH A WORMHOLE
@Gg2 Hh and The back end is The worm "Hole".... Get it?
In the books, the guild found the spice before it was founded. It was found by Tuk Keedair who introduced it to Aurelius Venport (the founder of the guild/ father and husband of Norma Cenva the first navigator).
Alabama!
@andrewh That doesn't answer the origin of the spice. That is just a claim about when it was introduced to human political systems.
I remember that revelation in CoD, but always wondered how their memories could contain that information. The presumption was through their mother however the spice predates Freeman occupation. I started to think, or maybe heard someone else’s speculation, that worms were an old B.G. experiment in genetic engineering for the purpose of producing an age slowing drug.
I never got a chance to read the Encyclopedia so I really appreciate your discussion of that source to help me better understand the story. Keep up the great work!
Wouldn't just going to Arrakis be enough to be exposed to the spice? The spice seems to be in everything on Arrakis. All you need is a few individuals with the latent innate ability to see the future make contact with the spice. someone that is part of the landing party might be enough. That might have been be enough to set things in motion.
Granted the most likely scenario is that the Bene Gesserit played the Aurelian exiles. I always thought that they were the scariest aspect of the Dune universe. They have patience and are masters of subtlety. that is a very dangerous combination.
I think THIS^ is the most likely answer. I'm no Dune expert, but I think people are ignoring that just being in the desert itself on Arrakis is enough to be exposed to the Spice. 16 years? For an exploring colony of hundreds with even our level of technology it wouldn't take them more than a couple of months to accidently run into some sand worms and be exposed. With their newfound abilities it wouldn't take them long at long to being researching the worms and start mining.
@@Mutiny960 It would also take a descendant of Leto I and the Lady Jessica (wild Atreides genes) who had either taken the poison produced by the bile of a drowned sandworm and survived (Paul) or been preborn to mothers under the heavy influence of the spice like Alia, Leto II, or Ghanima to be prescient. The guild navigators who were mutated humans, through much training living in tanks saturated with spice gas had a form of prescience limited to finding the safe route through the void for use in space travel. Later in the series Leto II's breeding program produced Siona Atreides who's decedents were invisible to all prescient observers.
So it wasn't as simple as being exposed to the raw spice, after all millions of Freeman lived on Arrakis for generations and showed no sign of prescient powers.
@@vergyltantor3211 actually they had minor abilities but suppressed it because they were uncomfortable with it. Paul did say something like that.
@@elizabethjansen2684 yes!
The graphics and the artwork are just stunning. They are as compelling as the Dune series itself.
This just makes me like dune more👍
I think the part about Leto II having an ancestor who remembered Arrakis as a green world before the sandtrout were introduced is most interesting. It suggests humans have been in space for far longer than 10,000 or even 30,000 years. You don't grind a planetrary surface to sand in a few centurires.
I always assumed that spice was first discovered before the Butlerian Jihad, probably at the behest of the Bene Gesserits. Once thinking machines are gone, of course they would engineer the creation of the Guild using the magic dust only they knew about.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, the Zensunni Wanderers (who later called themselves the Fremen) were taken to Arrakis in 7193 A.G. (After Guild).
It's interesting that you acknowledge that the Bene Gesserit were around before the Butlerian Jihad. Glad to see it, as so many people buy into the nonsense that they did not exist until later.
@@Shan_DalamaniNo they existed. Just better hidden.
As for his comment of how did the BG would know they were heading to Praxus? Easy. They steered them to it.
My theory is that the Thinking Machines did it. When we find out that the Machines survived the Jihad we have a character that was “alien” watching the main characters.
My thoughts: 1) First, the spice may not have been the first substance used as a drug. You can call this the “Maker’s Water” hypothesis. Humans, by some chance, ingested some chemical from the worm, and gained awareness from it that would lead them to the spice. 2). “Inhalation-first hypothesis” Spice effects might be possible through inhalation, with desert dwellers getting enough of a dose that they began to make a link between psychic abilities, longevity, and the consumption of the spice. 3) “Lunch with dirty hands hypothesis”. Let;s say you have somebody working out in the desert. They work hard, and either they’re too low class to worry much about hygiene, or they’re otherwise not in the habit. They sit down after getting their hands dirty, and eat lunch... and start tripping balls! Naturally, folks are going to want to know why they’re suddenly having visions or feeling the effects.
Google, spice blow. That would cause involuntary ingestion.
Excellent video. There should be mysteries in books, it's very enjoyable to speculate and speculate with others, good job!
Your videos makes me realize modern science fiction is so far behind the curve. Hopefully some day you start looking into Ring World. Either way, another great video!
Yes ringworld!!! Amazing series
I think perhaps sand worms were very different when they were first brought to Arrakis and they evolved. The combination of weather and sand minerals on Arakkis, in conjunction with worm evolution, produced melange.
Very good thoughts, all. A couple of things crossed my mind during your talk. The first is, space is big. I'm not being facetious or overly simplistic. In the past 10,000 years, we haven't fully explored Earth and we find new things every day. The second being, a good chunk, almost 10% of our current scientific advancements are accidents. A scientist working on advanced warning RADAR melts a chocolate bar in his pocket and, next thing you know, we have a new way to burn popcorn.
They first got Mikey to try Melange: "Snort it, Mikey. Snort it!"
The rest is psychohistory.
He likes it! Hey Mikey!
You're mixing sagas, this ain't Trantor!
@@the_kombinator I know but it works!
@@guitarsarelikestupid7200 I suppose if you're high, it does :P
I love all your Dune content. I know your Chapterhouse video will be worth the wait :))))))
Quinn, your content is definately getting more sophisticated. Keep it up!
part of me wonders if the original plan was for the reveal to be that this is all just a gigantic cycle. After all Chapterhouse became the new Dune, the worms were seeded there just as they had been on Arrakis before it. Was Leto's job just to ensure that the lifecycle of humanity (and also maybe the worms) began again?
Looks like you read aloud the page heading ("SPACING GUILD, OPERATIONS AND ORGANIZATION") and page number (635) as though it were part of the paragraph.
This is the only reason why I scrolled through the comment section, lol.
Worms are like living versions of the 2001 Space Odyssey monoliths
Yeah. I do suppose they are. I wouldn't have made that connection.
My theory as well. Herbert used similar trope in Whipping Star.
Ah! Another species that had previously attained prescience long before humanity had left the worms there to find. Kind of like a trail of breadcrumbs. This is now one of my favourite theories, and not something I would have thought of. So would Leto II have been aware of these aliens? Or would they be protected from his prescience in the way Siona's descendants are?
@@CZpersi I loved that book. I must reread it.
@@CZpersi loved it
This is the third video I've watched of yours over the course of two days. Imagine my shock when I see the advert for your graphic novel to realize that I've already bought and received it.
Top work, friend.
A theory from leftfield; The war on AI machines was lead by an AI machine (as in the Foundation book) that wanted to improve humanity & had learnt of the manufactured drug spice (that was available & intended for a select few) so genetically engineered the worms to make it freely available. This AI then made it available to the Bene Gesserit with the knowledge that they would wisely use it for the benefit of all humility while he either hid in the background to nudge things in the right direction when needed or was destroyed in the war.
Absolutely loved this. Thank you. I've been hooked on your channel all week since I discovered it. I've been enraptured by Dune for 6 years now, and I love hearing other individual's thoughts on it. Now I'm off to watch the trailer for Tadhya!
My money is on they are a subsect of humanities final form that was sent back in time to allow a greater path for humanity. Think about it. After the destruction of thinking machines. Creating a better man to fill roles was extremely important. Without the spice this would have likely have gone way more perverse then what we saw in the original story.
Imagine having memories of your ancestors, that would be so powerful
Would the worms have genetic memory, that in itself is a whole series. And the great enemy might also have been deadly for the worms. The symbiosis of humanity and the worms may have been necessary for the ones that brought the worms. The hybrid of human, worm and machine being needed for the future
The great enemy for sandworms is water.
Spoiler: The Enemy was the reborn AI thay escaped into another galaxy after thr Butlerian Jihad, and returned several millennia after Leto's Imperium fell, they are the threat the Honored Matres were fleeing from.
@@theloweffortchannel7211 i think, your right about the machine civilization. Tho, other intelligence's or energy species might have existed, leto's ability to see the future is unknown.
@@heyoka33 The machines were directly stated to be the great enemy. The Scattering was implied to be not just multigalactic, but also multiuniversal. They tie directly into Kralizec (End Times, involving Idaho's last ghola becoming a Kwisatz Haderach and merging with Omnius)
@@theloweffortchannel7211 yes the machines are the great enemy, the assumption being a monolithic civilization. And the only machine civilization mentioned, being that the worms, came from somewhere else, doesn't preclude other machines. Prescient predictions, doesn't mean, leto didn't see other machines(biological)
Late entry here but it is so satisfying to see a channel with the same enthusiasm for nerd stuff that I have!
Looking forward to this. Love your content. Stay awesome!
Thank you so much for doing these videos.
I have been a fan of Dune my whole life. It's a real gift thank you
I'd love to hear your thoughts on how everyday folks lived under the god emporers rule. We know that life was stagnant and somewhat boring during Leto's Peace, but I've always been curious about what people actually have to DO in order to comply with the God Emporers religious teachings (or even Mua'dib's for that matter)
Go about their daily lives, work, eat, sleep, breed (some were part of Leto's breeding program), participate in mandatory religious rites (both daily, annual, and for certain major life events such as marriage, birth, death), don't do anything stupid like try to rebel, and you get to live.
There's a chapter in God Emperor in which Duncan Idaho and Siona visit one of the villages on Dune (Goygoa, which used to be Jacurutu until Leto tamed it and made it into a village that was essentially where farmers lived, with a marketplace and everything you'd expect to find in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, other than the fact that the people were expected to worship Leto and some of the people there served him directly as part of his bureaucracy or as a Fish Speaker.
No wonder the Scattering happened after Leto's death. 3000 years of such a 'culture' would be incredibly boring.
That isn’t why the Scattering happened. It happened only as during Lego’s Reign, cities were banned except the capital. Think of the human population as pressure. Too much and the balloon pops, spreading the gas. Too much humans, Leto dies, they get spread over the universe so they colonise galaxies.
*brand new viewer here* No more than 30 seconds into listening to this video I didn't hesitate to subscribe to you!
Your music is freaking epic and in that short moment, I KNEW I was going to enjoy this video!
I have heard that Frank Herbert approved the Dune Encyclopedia and enjoyed reading it, but did not consider it canon.
I'm not even that into dune but the lore is strangely entertaining and relaxing
Maybe the worms evolved to enhance intelligent species, exactly so those intelligent species ensure their survival and spread throughout the universe. They evolved to have this symbiosis. Because they give abilities, they will always be kept around, and they will as a species persist.
This is a comment to help with the algorithm. This channel is criminally underrated.
Seem to remember a suggestion in an appendix to Dune that The BG were being covertly manipulated by someone else with an even more long term plan.
Fascinating find the reference and share
@@elizabethjansen2684
I don't have the book any more.
I was hoping someone else would.
Quinn are you there?
@@alanpennie8013 now I'm really intrigued
@@elizabethjansen2684
Got it.
It was Dune: Appendix III.
Summarising a report commissioned by Lady Jessica to examine the mystery of why The BG had so strangely ignored the significance of what she and Paul were doing.
I think Appendices of first Dune say that there was likely higher order dimensions behind events that they were unaware of..a bit vague..but could point to what you're saying!?
Great video. Thank you. Been a Dune fan for decades now and I read the original 6 books, plus some of the expanded universe, I never realized that the sandworms were not native to Arrakis.
I’ve been Audiobooking the Dune series because of these videos. I would like to hear an audio book version where you narrate.
How could you listen to it and retain anything?
It's a mystery to me. My mind needs written words to truly remember anything..
Leto, in his unique ability to view time objectively and as a physical axial location could've seeded them. Either before his "death" (apotheosis) or after. I would venture to say after, as such concepts are infathomable to any conciousness still tied to an entropic (material) existence.
This could explain so much that humanity was able to stumble upon such as the Holzman effect, the almost prescient tmning of the Butlerian Jihad and it's philosophy, the worms, the discovery of the process creating synthetic melange.. etc..
Im a longtime fan and have enjoyed watching you evolve fromca guy with a good narration voice to a true creator of content. I look forward to your continued success!
I think that the worms originated on a planet where they weren't the apex predator and couldn't turn the planet into a desert. When they were introduced to Arrakis, they ended up having no predators and could reach the giant sandworm phase of their life cycle.
First of all I don't want to see what the Apex is on that planet. Not that they would notice me. Secondly that planet must be astronomically massive to have something that not only hunts but controls the worm population. Then again with full access of a planet and no predators they would grow bigger.
@@dresheraton9276 It doesn't have to be that massive. All it needs is an environment that supports extremely large animals. Earth had that, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous when dinosaurs became so massive, and later when we had gigantic forms of the smaller mammals we have now.
I could listen to dune universe talk all day for the rest of my life.
I always thought that Arakis was Earth, and that they were brought there from somewhere, which is why Earth was forgotten
Thank goodness for you, great googly moogly THIS WHOLE DUNE SAGA is quite the head trip for me. But, I am determined to get "into it" and all praise to you, Quinn, for helping me get there. Salute! 🧠💣💥
Those guild dudes will eat ANYTHING. It was only a matter of time before they ingested hallucinatory worm scat. J/S.
Edit: the Bene Gesserit tts's to bitter jesuit, and that made my day.
I definitely like the idea that they were an ancient sentient species that “transcended” in some way, and that the sandworms are all that’s left of them. Perhaps they grew so advanced that the normal functions of life (to expand, make more of yourself) no longer interested them. Now all that remains are seemingly mindless creatures, who’s sheer power means a natural byproduct of their lifecycle can vastly empower the human mind
The "salmon" and "worms" are genetically modified humans, that's how the B.G. directed it, and it's how they had first exposure to spice.
Where did you read this ? I’m curious
No
Would explain how Leto remembered the pre worm planet through his ancestors memories, and the heavy emphasis on human divergent evolution and breeding programs throughout the series
There are no salmon involved in this series at all, and the rest of your statement is nonsensical.
Trout - sandtrout, LOL. But a good idea considering the recklessness of the BT (Tleilaxu) who may have been in a race with the BG to produce a mentat that could navigate hyperspace. It's a simple plan really...
1: Crush up the silicon from thinking machines
2: Feed it to your mutant Cthulhu salmon people.
3: ???
4: Prophet!!!!
Hi, Quinn. I consider your videos so interesting that I always click the like before seeing it. Well done.
Or perhaps, and hear me out...Tzeentch.
I just binged watched these video. They added so much to the story.
The worms make the Spice, the spice can give people sight into time, past and future....
what if the worms history is not as linear as time? what if when the worms died off on arrakis and the beni geserate brought them back is their origin off planet? in some kind of cyclical history?>
or for instance, the worm god reached back in time to inform those who were yet to know? like some kind of boot strap paradox.
Also, what if time is not linear? What if people's, even navigator's, brains lack the capacity to understand all about time and the universe?
the worms are the cause of the worms
yeah, I wonder if Leto II had the memories of the worm's lives
Maybe the sand worms are descendants of humanity from the future?
If that so, than the current timeline of the Dune Universe is the time of the worm people
Initially I missed your song of ice and fire videos but the dune videos have become just as great if not far better.
My fan-theory: Leto II. was so strong in bending spacetime that he was able to travel back in time and seeded the first worms on Arrakis, thereby closing the circle. This was indeed from another world, not in space, but in time…
Google "time loop".
Well time travel is just generally garbage, but even if this were the case then that doesn't answer what made them. They have to be there for the loop to start which just leaves every question still unanswered.
I like that the worms origins are left a mystery but I also like to think they either came from earth which would make things come full circle on my head canon or just one of the worlds they found those ruins on.
I think one possibility is that while nothing can surpass melange in strengthening prescience, it is a inherent ability of consciousness, and lesser presciences both inborn and enhanced by other, less potent pharmaceuticals could have progressively and iteratively led humanity to the futures where melange was discovered.
This would be the most acceptable theory and actually is somewhat validated by the story itself. The bene Gesserit's wierding way allows them to move at blinding speeds by warping their perception of reality. The warping of reality could have allowed them to gain some minute sense of prescience
The worms most likely came from Tleilax. That's where the meta-plot is directing itself after all. Always dig your content, bruh. I'll definitely contribute once I get on my feet.
Herbert presents Arrakis at the time of the events of the first three books as a stable ecology that is greatly harmed by the goal set forth by the planetary ecologist, Pardo and later his son, Liet to re-terraform the planet into a green water world as the result of Pardo discovering salt beds indicative of past seas and vast amounts of water sequestered underground. This "altering" of the planets ecology has catastrophic results for an entire economy built around the spice as the flow of spice is interupted.
Yet, the worms were introduced to Arrakis in some distant and unknown past. The worms lifecycle forever altered a green water planet that existed prior to whatever intelligence introduced the worms. This introduction of a foreign species had catastrophic effects for the ecology of what once was a water planet.
What is Herbert trying to tell us. Surely the ancient introduction of the worms that massively altered the ecology of a water planet shouldn't get a pass while Pardo and Liet's efforts get condemned. Interesting stuff. Could the message be careful what changes you make to an ecology whether intentional or accidental because life will find a way and the current intelligent species may not have a place in that new way?
Introduction of new species, whether by intention, accident, or carelessness can have dire consequences over time.
Real-life example: Recreational fishing in lakes and rivers that are in or near forests. They dig up domestic earthworms from their garden or get them from a bait shop, go fishing, and at the end of the day, they throw away the unused worms.
The worms that survive are not the same kind of worms that are native to the forests. Urban earthworms introduced into this biome are gradually changing it, making the soil less fertile, and negatively affecting other worm species.
Moral: If you go fishing, take your bait home with you and dispose of it there, not in a wild forest.
You should read the biography of Herbert. He came up with Dune while doing erosion studies on coastal dunes.
You hav such a nice voice to listen to. I enjoy these videos before i go to sleep. Thank you! Please keep doing what u do 🙏
The worms were engineered for biological warfare. The war long forgotten but for a brief memory of one of the operatives releasing the larval stage on wet Arakis buried deep in the God Emperor’s other memories.
Your videos have provided me an enormous sense of well-being
I’ve been following you for around a year now, and your insights and wordplay are at least as powerful as the sage Mr. Herbert himself. Nobody has managed a novel that equals the master, not even his son by my measure, so whom else could do this marvelous and deeply philosophical world justice?
My answer is singular. So, sage Quinn, what do you think you would have to do to take up this mantle and expand upon one of my most beloved universes? As truthfully I would trust none other to lace the subtext of the world with such vibrant and visceral colors.
I went to click like when you asked (because i dont care if i dont actually like the content, i like that you took the time to make it) and realised its already been clicked. So now i have to try and figure out when i watched this already and why i dont remember it
I haven't read any of the Brian Herbert Dune stuff, having only heard bad things about his handling of major events in the universe. So, pardon if I'm skeptical of it being handled well if he decides to touch on it.
That said, it is an interesting mystery. I'm not 100% sure, but I know a lot of what wildlife is mentioned in Dune on Arrakis is said to be transplanted creatures from similar biomes.
Tbh you should give it a try. Sure, the books of Brian are not as good as Herberts original stuff, but there is a LOT of elitist gatekeeping out there. As said, the extended universe is not as good and philosophical as the original 6 books, but to call it bad is a very very wide stretch...
@@Randleray
Well, the one I've heard that sticks me the worst is that they made the Butlerian Jihad into a skynet-style machine uprising.
His work really isn't that bad, it's pretty good from a "read this novel in this series" standpoint. From a world building standpoint, they still aren't that bad - but they aren't as good as his fathers. From a continuity standpoint, they are "OK" - you have to realize that by the time of the "original dune novels" there have been powerful rulers and organizations intentionally re-writing history and destroying "continuity" for thousands and thousands of years. (Not least of which were the Butlerian Jihad and, Leto the second himself)
If you're a Dune fan, you owe yourself at least a single read of Brian's works.
If you're a Frank Herbert fan - NO ONE will EVER live up to your expectations, so stick to Frank's works.
@@firebornliger That's not quite true - The Butlerian Jihad was more like a female John Connor erasing skynet, all technical information about skynet, and any computer powerful enough to research skynet from human culture, and then making a religion out of preventing a future repetition.
@@firebornliger Yeah, Brian changed some things, especially the handling of the foreshadowed events in Chapterhouse are... at least unexpected and therefore somewhat not fitting. But as said, the overall flavor of 'Dune' condtinous throught the extended universe from Brian. If your are can overlook a couple changes of Brian he had to do because well he is not Frank himself, you have a good chance for a lot more reading fun ;) I formyself started to read the last two books and found they are actually well written and complete the story in generall. I also started to read the other books, but stopped at House Atredies, as I found the names of those three books are a bit missleading. I thought they tell some background about the three houses, but they dont, they tell a ongoing story just short of the events of Dune itself. But me not finishing those books has nothing to do with bad writing or something hardcorefans will say about them.
Quinn. You're awesome. I really love your productions and explanations of the nerdy and other worldly. Love from Colorado
I love the original Frank Herbert Dune books. I have read a lot of the books that came after his death. I cannot put my finger the reason why but the new book do not feel like Dune to me. (This is just my opinion. Don't get your feathers ruffled.) I cannot shake the feeling that things just randomly happen in the modern books. The events are missing any deep meaning.
ITA Ditto
The new books are rotten. They are supposed to have been based on an outline that Frank Herbert had prepared, but there is very little to show that is the case.
@@Ubu987 Agreed.
I called bullshit on it from day one.
Agreed. See if you can get a copy of the first draft of Dune. It's just sequential plot. This happens, then this happens, then this happens. There's nothing deeper, no texture, no inter-wovenness, no complexity. Someone read that and must have said something like, "This is really interesting, develop it, bring in ecology, bring in religion". It must have taken years to deepen that first draft; that deep work is lacking in the new books, and makes them an instant put-down.
Agreed
Thanks for getting me really interested in Dune again after 30 years! Great stuff!
I always thought they must have been some other, possibly benign and insignificant ( like an ant or something ) sort of pest creature that got there by accident when people came there. It seems like the worms must have mutated over generations to be the size they are, possibly because the radiation that arrakis gets from the sun.
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, Arrakis experienced a mass extinction event, which resulted in the not-as-massive worms retreating underground and surviving, while their predators all went extinct. No predators mean they had the capacity to grow to be massive. This would have happened long before humans arrived.
They would repeat this after the end of Chapterhouse after Arrakis had been destroyed by the Honoured Matres.
I always know in going to like these videos before they even start
I DON'T LIKE ALIENS PUTTING WORMS IN THE PLANETS THAT TURN THE LANDSCAPE TO HELL
I know this video is almost 2 years old, but I just wanted to mention speculation was kind of the intended purpose of sci-fi and fantasy literature back in the day. Before both genres acquired their respective tags, they were used to be called speculative fiction after all.