Dune Pilot things

[Scotty]

I have only seen the movies of Dune, and then only once.

Those Pilot bat looking things. How do they work? They eat spice right? How do they travel between systems?

Can I work them into a Star Trek series. Use them instead of Warp, transwarp, wormholing, etc.

[tmutant]

Guild Navigators live in spice. They warp space telekinetically. Without spice FTL travel is impossible. That's why the recurring theme is "He who controls the spice controls the universe." If spice is the only way to travel FTL, then it's going to be war to controll the spice. If spice is an alternative to conventional warp travel, it could be interesting. Guild navigators transit between systems essentially instantly. That is an advantage over conventional warp travel. If you keep the spice on one planet, like Dune, it would have lots of potential for roleplaying.

[Lancer]

What I never could buy into was that spice was the only way for FTL travel. I mean how likely is it that humanity traveled to Arakis in sublight ships, discovered spice and learned how to use it to warp space in the first place without having any FTL capability? Not likely at all IMHO.

The only explanation I can think of is that there was another way of FTL travel once, but it has been long forgotten by the time the Dune movie is set in. Maybe the Guild Navigators supressed knowledge of this old-style FTL travel, once they had gotten influential enough to pull it of.

Hmm, could be an interesting concept for a pre-Dune game in this universe, with the players looking for the long forgotten secrets of navigatorless FTL travel to give their house a real edge.

Now I start to wish I had a copy of the LUG Dune book.

[qerlin]

Humanity had FTL in the Dune past, but it was connected to the machine intelligences that were destroyed in the Butlerian jihad -- or so I seem to remember. As with the mentats replacing computing & expert systems, navigators were a biological alternative to the AI navigators of the past.

[Argyle]

That's pretty much it. Without "machines in the image of the mind", the Spacing Guild navigators were the only ones who could fold space and expect to arrive at their destination or indeed, back in real space at all. There was something about travellers often finding it disconcerting that a large chunk of the journey was spent Nowhere.

There was a bunch of stuff in the background about how Ix was busy trying to create a forbidden navigation machine. The Ixians never seemed to care too much what the rest of the galaxy thought of them. If I recall (been a long time since I read the series), Leto was secretly encouraging this project, or a least not quashing it since the future of humanity would be less uncertain if the Guild's (spice dependent) monopoly was broken.

[Lancer]

Seems it's longer than I thought since I read the books.
Or maybe the background on pre-Navigator FTL was in one of the books I didn't read.

[Lowly Uhlan]

Seems like it would be in the new "Butlerian Jihad" book.I'm forcing myself thruogh "House Corrino"now.Anyone else read this fluff?

[qerlin]

Read some of the Butlerian Jihad book, then put it down in favor of some good science-fiction (Greg Egan...) The writing style is just not very engaging.

[Argyle]

I think I got some of that from The Dune Encyclopedia that I checked out from the library way back when I was reading the series. It's got discussion of technology, culture, language, history, all kinds of stuff. If you can find one, snap it up.

Whoever ends up with the Dune RPG license could do worse than putting that book back into print.

[D.S.McBride]

One quick note: it was a sort of between-the-lines understanding in the Frank Herbert books - and which has been unequivocally stated in the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson prequel books - that the Guild Navigators do not fold space. The hyperdrive engines do that, and prior to the Butlerian Jihad it was the on-board computer systems that allowed safe navigation to whatever destination was set. After the Jihad, of course, all computer R & D was abandoned and outlawed, so a substitute had to be found; hence the Guild Navigators, and the all-important spice gas that gave them the prescience to select a safe route to the desired system...sort of like what Han talks about in SW: ANH when he's berating Luke about how the navicomputer has to chart a path that doesn't involve having them "fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova".

Without the spice and spice gas, humanity would be forced to either abandon star travel - which Paul threatens the Emperor and the Guild with in Dune - or start recreating the hated and feared machines that were responsible for the Jihad in the first place (which does eventually happen, at the Ixians' hands, as is related in God Emperor of Dune's epilogue).

I'm a total geek and I have no life. Having the time to be able to read these books over and over until you have the details just so is wonderful.

[oops1]

I've been looking for the encyclopedia for ages, unfortunately they're rather rare. Its a great resource though.

It gets me all the strange looks from the other geeks that I remember so much of it Or maybe its just that fact that I sound so serious about it

[D.S.McBride]

An unhappy note, but one that I don't think has been mentioned on these boards as of yet: Dr. Willis McNelly, compiler and editor of the Dune Encyclopedia, passed away on April 7, aged 82. His work in collaboration and consultation with Frank Herbert was only the tip of the iceberg in his career, and he is credited with being one of the primary academic forces that led to science fiction being accepted as a "serious" genre of literature.

I've owned a copy of the Dune Encyclopedia since it was first published in '84; the work, dedication and sheer love that went into something that was never accepted as Dune canon - although Frank Herbert did make reference to Gilbertus Albans having founded the Mentat Order on Tleilax in Chapterhouse: Dune - cannot be calculated. Dr. McNelly will be missed.

[Grutos]

As stated above, the Guild Navigators were at one point human, until they were tested by the Guild. Human candidates had to be able to do insanely difficult math in their head without much more than a sigh - all this while being inserted into a tank of pure Melange gas. Those who passed went to Junction to be trained, those who failed tried to lead normal lives again - but hard to deal with rejection from the Guild - some went to Junction to work on the Highliners or help the Guild in other, non-Navigator tasks, or went to Ix to help build the Highliners - although while Ix had fallen to the Bene Tellaxu, not many other than the suboids and Sardukar were on Ix.

Brian's books are a far cry from Frank's, but it is Dune, therefore I must read. The Butlerian Jihad begins to discuss how Melange was introduced to the known galaxy - an early (10K years prior to Paul) Bene Tlaxu flesh merchant couldn't find slaves on Arakis, but he did find an intoxicating spice that he thought he could market to the galaxy through a pharmaceuticals merchant he knew in the League worlds. The journey took months and was extremely out of his normal route - not many merchants ventured to Arakis.

Travel, according to BH's series, was (as I understood it) at near-light to light speed for human vessels because the bodies could not endure the velocity. The Machine vessles on the other hand could withstand faster than light travel. Tio Holtzman and his assistant Norma Cenneva were, from the way I read the book, on the verge of break-through with fold space when the book ended (setting up a Butlerian Jihad II?) - they had just invented a couple of the devices used throughout the original Dune Chronicle.

The way I understand it (backing up what was stated above), the Holtzman generators do the actual transportation / folding of space. The Navigator must use Melange to enhance his mind to become one with the Holtzman generators, engines, and field to successfully navigate the Highliner through fold space - if it does not go properly, the Highliner can drop out of fold space anywhere with catastrophic consequenses.

I don't see why you couldn't integrate the Highliner and Navigator into the ST universe. Prior to the Borg, the Federation had no clue of Trans-Warp. The Guild could be in another quadrant, a Highliner could have come out of fold space at the wrong place due to a catastrophic event, the Guild and Padasha Emperor could be looking for new territory in other Galaxies to aquire.

This is just how I have read and interpreted the original Dune Chronicle and Brian Herbert's Dune Prequels. The Sci-Fi mini-series did a good job (nice effects), but I had a few minor critiques on how the Mentats, BG, and Sardukar were represented - not complaints, just was expecting something different.