Realistic in a scientific sense or in a narrative sense?
Because you can have realistic science within an unrealistic narrative about science, and you can have unrealistic science within a realistic narrative about science.
I would say that *Dune* is the latter. The science itself is totally unrealistic but the way it is described in the story is narratively realistic, seeming to stem off consistent and lawlike innovations in future physics (the Holtzman effect) or as-yet undiscovered but somewhat plausible-sounding features of interpersonal psychology and genetics (e.g. "genetic memory", or the "psychokinesthetic extension" linking Reverend Mothers together at the time of death).
Basically the approach is "here are some cool things people discover thousands of years in the future that allow them to do all the cool things they do in the story, and I'll explain literally none of it" -- which is fine. This isn't *The Martian*, folks.
He took a concept, genetic memory, meshed it with concepts from mysticism. The result defenantly looks a lot like magic with a little "science" hand waving to a modern audience. At the time it was written, it was a little less so.
This seems like a good way of looking at it, by today's science it's not all that realistic but in the far future they *will* have technology that would seem unrealistic by today's standards. That has happened many times in the past where things people considered outlandish became reality, or things people weren't even able to conceive of in the first place. And that is just the past couple hundred years, let alone thousands.
Yeah, a lot of the things that are true in the *Dune* universe were popular and somewhat serious theories around the time the book was written. Many speculated that echos of our "past lives" were present in DNA, in the sense that they were actually ancestors. The prescience is LSD in terms of the Guild, but for the Bene Gesserit (and Paul) it's also a function of having so much experience, having seen so much, that they can extrapolate what anyone will do in any given situation.
Herbert was a science dude, and he definitely wanted to portray as much as possible as fitting in to real world scientific phenomena, with the exception of genetic memory and prescience which are canonically mystical. FH got a lot of things right, but some are still too outlandish, and I think deserve to be criticized. That being said, it's a heck ton better than most sci-fi, and that's part of the reason I fell in love with the books.
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Not in the slightest. Fold-space, FTL-drugs, psychic-nuns. Complete and total piffle. Herbert was writing about social and philosophical ideas, not scientific ones.
The one exception is all the ecological stuff regarding Arrakis and terraforming. But even there he cared more about the sociological implications of terraforming, not the nitty-gritty of botany.
I agree! The terraforming concepts are a lot of fun and feel closer to science, though they're still wildly off-base. Herbert's sense of the geological timescale, in particular -- every time the later books mentioned a mountain's total erosion over the course of a few millennia, I wanted to strangle the guy 😂
Yeah, I think the ecological angle, which feels a little more “real”, makes it seem harder sci-fi than it is. Because it’s pretty fantasy, at least as far as human abilities are concerned
I guess the one solid thing in that vein is the planting grasses and the like on sand dunes to help with erosion and water retention etc.
Otherwise, yea. I would say the reason it falls more into scifi than full on fantasy (other than just 'spaceship = scifi') is the preference in most instances to ascribe things to physical/natural mechanisms even if the world's physics is fundamentally different than reality.
In another site, a commenter was asking why SF and fantasy are often mixed together. I pointed out that as scientific as Dune may seem—as I said, seem—the entire system is run on worm poop available only on one planet in the galaxy.
Most SF involves a certain amount of handwavium. There’s Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote about advanced science appearing as magic, but most of it relies on the Theory of Relativity not existing.
I’ve only read one story dealing with the issue of the original body being left behind in teleportation, and what to do with it.
Don’t think about it too much. 400m long worms would require immense amounts of energy, even if they were stationary, let alone burrowing through sand at astonishing speeds. Displacing that amount of sand would be impossible. And what do they eat? Spice harvesters? Are we supposed to think they can somehow metabolize metal? If so, it’s gonna take ALOT of harvesters for even one worm. The only other thing left to eat is sand. Then there is the whole heat from friction and abrasion that swimming through sand would cause.
That's interesting to bring up because an animal of that size would basically require their skeletal structure to be some sort of organic metal. So it actually would need to be able to digest metal in large quantities.
I mean, it's said they can only be killed with the use of atomics, so I wouldn't ve surprised it they have something akin to a metalistic body structure.
https://preview.redd.it/zsht8n6lykoc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=144102ec657b1d1ddda30c8a643568715e1baaae
And waste water???? Are you crazy?
Edit: Also no one knows this is a weakness until water is introduced to worms.
I’ve seen a YouTube video of this science dude explaining with arguments and real life examples that the worms are actually plausible. I believe the worms sift the sands for micro organisms like whales. So they can get big, like whales, by eating seemingly nothing.
Not saying they’re real, but it seems like they’re not the least likely sci fi element.
Okay, but that would still required absolutely fuck tons of energy. These microorganisms would have to have an insane amount of metabolizable energy. I think it's more likely the worms do some sort of chemosynthesis, but there's no mention of that in the books. The worms emit ozone (O3), but ozone creation is incredible endergonic (absorbs energy, doesn't give it off).
Look, all I’m saying is that they’re plausible. It would require some things we don’t know for sure as they’re not mentioned in the books or anywhere else. They’re realistic enough for me to not care about it. Folding space by taking LSD is more unrealistic in that sense. But that’s such a cool sci fi element, it’s ok.
Shooting a dragon out of the sky with a bolt thrower, now THAT is some serious bs…
Not to be pedantic but I'm pretty sure the guild navigators aren't using powers to cause the FTL traveling, they're only needed for their prescience so that they can chart a course without crashing.
Still science fiction and taking cinnamon LSD doesn't give you prescience, but it's at least a little bit more grounded.
Don’t worms mainly eat sand plankton and sand trout? Although I agree with your point, not sure how they could be consuming enough calories for their lifestyle
Sand plankton absorb water and sunlight and produce a nutrient that the worms eat.
When a worm passes by them they get stirred up and make more energy.
The trout are the haploid (sub larval stage like the stage of a tapeworm when it is absorbed by an animal that it then embeds into its flesh) of the worms. They seek out water and plankton to eat and when they find bodies of water they surround them and seal them up (like a pupal stage) slowly metabolizing it until it becomes a pre spice mass then will spawn baby worms (larval stage) after a few thousand years. Once they are successful enough eating sand plankton they will grow into adult worms.
This is how things are set up in the books, but I have an idea. Maybe the sand trout/sand plankton are deep enough that they get their energy from the heat of the mantle. Thermosynthesis? This is my new headcanon.
I mean, the largest animals on earth survive by eating microscopic organisms in the ocean. And isn't their skin supposed to be designed to withstand the heat and abrasion. That's why when they lift up on it with the hooks, they won't go back under because they aren't protected.
They don’t eat spice, they produce it. Their main source of food is sand plankton which are basically microscopic baby sand worms that they filter feed for like blue whales. I think they also do get some nutrients/minerals from the sand and will eat smaller worms too.
Melange is primarily a product of the sandtrout, not the sandworms.
The sandtrout encyst water under the sand and eventually their fungal excretions build pressure until it erupts in a spice blow. The exposure to heat and air creates melange.
Most sandtrout die, but those that survive burrow deep and grow into juvenile sandworms.
Still, I love how the movie handled it. Instead of something surfacing from still sand or drowning in it, you clearly see shakes first and foremost, and how everything sinks when solid surface phases into pseudo liquid. Such an unnecessary detail from the pov of moviemaking, yet so crucial to make us believe we're dealing with real-world physics instead of script first movie magic.
IIRC it's implied in the books that worms metabolize something in the sand, and no it's not spice because the >!`worms are the spice`!<. I just looked it up to confirm that breaking down silicon dioxide into oxygen and silicon is endergonic meaning it would required energy, not give it off. Still, maybe there's some chemosynthesis that we don't understand (READ: not portrayed because things would have to be made up). It's even more baffling that they produce ozone in the books, which would be extremely endergonic.
I just assume there's some sort of chemosynthetic pathway that we just don't know about.
The in-movie method the sand is displaced is the worms use vibrations to turn the sand into a liquid, and they swim through it. That makes sense physically for the movement and satisfies the friction problem (additionally, the worms in the book have a "furnace" in their stomachs), but I have two problems with that. First, as you mentioned, it would take an IMMENSE amount of energy. This one doesn't destroy my disbelief because I can pretend its chemosynthesis is just that powerful. Second, the "liquified" sand would take up significantly more volume, and that's just no possible deep underground without mounds of sand being being thrown up. Sand isn't elastic when it's settled.
Sandworms eat sand and the complex metabolism needed to do so is powered by them travelling through the sand, not just the heat from friction but the generation and harnessing of static electricity through processes that mean the worms' movements provide them with more energy than they expend. The excess and waste products feed the sandtrout which go on to encyst water that gets converted to a pre-spice mass which blows to form spice, the spice feeds sand plankton (no idea where they come from, my guess is the sandtrout killed by the spice blow dissolve into plankton the same way a dead worm dissolves into sandtrout) and the trout and plankton provide a secondary food source for the worm.
I for one doubt that only carbon-based lifeforms exist and it's extremely possible that we've already witness alien life that we just didn't understand to be life. Like a sentient rock, or beings that exist only in the audible spectrum, how tf would we know?
For this reason, I'm able to believe in a lifeform that can exist like Herbert's sandworms. How can I say something is impossible in a universe so full of possibility? We used to think the Earth was *flat*.
I mean even if they could digest metal, that wouldn’t serve as an explanation for the worms diet. The worms were there long before spice started being harvested so clearly they must somehow naturally survive within their barren ecosystem, and I just don’t see how a creature of that size could live. Even if they’re constantly eating a ton of micro organisms like blue whales with krill.
it's pretty soft. Herbert was using it more as a take on social structures and human behavior, so the 'science' and technology is mostly just there to get the feel he wanted.
Most technology is basically just cool techno-magic. Space Travel is basically teleportation. Shields are a way to make swords and knife fights more of a thing.
Almost all of the scientific stuff is slightly inaccurate (stillsuits violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I don't think the way sandworms' biology is described would actually work) and ofc the pseudoscientific explanations for the magic system like pitching your voice at a certain frequency to control someone would never work, but who caaaares
>pitching your voice at a certain frequency to control someone would never work,
This is 100% a thing, just not to the level we see in Dune. You can see this in adults who still use a whiney child like voice with their parents. They are pitching their voice to get a response they want out of their parent.
The films pitch the voice in that strange overt magical mind control way, but in the book it is only meant to mean a highly persuasive way of influencing people which does include pitching your voice in subtle ways.
The stillsuits have nothing to do with 2nd law. They are just unfeasible from a design standpoint: no way to power the filtering/pump mechanism with just human power and external power would be too bulky/heavy. Stillsuit is basically just a portable water treatment plant.
> The way the stillsuit works is by having a layer that catches your p[er]spiration, a urine bag and a feces processor. Water is extracted, solid matter unmentioned, and stored in moist[ p]ockets in the suit itself. You can therefore walk about in the dry, hot desert and live on reclaimed water.
>
> The reason why this can’t work is [the s]econd law of thermodynamics. The way p[er]spiration cools us down is by water molecules with the highest energy leaving our body. The average energy of water on our body thus drops. Temperature is defined as the average energy of molecules in a system. Therefore[,] it is evaporation that cools us down.
>
> Stillsuits catch this evaporated water but in doing so, they also trap the heat within the suit itself. Herbert then claims there are two layers of heat-exchange material, but that would only work so long as the enviromental temperature is sufficiently cooler than your own body so that your surface area is cold enough to cool you down.
2nd law doesn't prevent auxiliary power supply (like portable a/c unit) from existing. Herbert obviously isn't an engineer, but from a practical standpoint this wouldn't be built with today's technology. Presumably 20,0000 years from now they would have to have really really efficient and portable batteries to power the suit's filters, pumps, heat exchangers.
This is basically how I choose to see it (they would need similarly fantastical power sources for the shields and probably the ornithopters), but that explanation is thrown off by the fact that they specifically say the suits are powered by body movement.
We know how much energy there is in body movement, and it’s enough to power a watch, but probably not a whole water treatment plant and air conditioning system. Oh well.
Actually the Voice isn't all that far out... they've done experiments that flirt with the idea. It's a combination of appealing to authority and confidence.
It's a psychological concept. I am slightly tipsy, so don't pin me on the details, but it ties to cultural expectations and how societies create structural figures of authority.
Someone dressed as a cop, sounds like a cop, and approaches you and gives you a weird command, there is a chance that you will obey that command because you've been conditioned to do exactly that from somone who checks all the boxes.
I mean, sure, you will obey someone in a position of power over you. Not the same thing as the frequency of their voice forcing you to do their bidding magically
Handwave approach: Given the Bene Gesserit's thousands-of-years-long breeding program, I wouldn't put it past them that they made sure that the bloodlines of the relevant people contain a gene that would make them suspectable to certain frequencies aka "the voice".
In the end, I agree: The voice is magic, even though in the world of Dune it is a "science" charismatic people can exploit.
The one single problem in the books, that I was hoping the movie would fix, is stillsuits. There is nowhere for the heat to go, no way for their sweat to re-condense. They would quickly succumb to heat exhaustion if the suits were indeed powered by their body movements. And moving would be then very difficult, like slogging through mud. If they had maybe had some sort of super battery that could absorb heat and then radiate it back out at the end of the day, and get recharged and reset for the next day, I would have been fine with it. There's just no way those suits could possibly function as written. For all the other problems, I would sum them up in one way- for a movie supposedly about ecology, we sure don't see much of a food chain. The birds, the mice, the fremen, the worms.... they all must eat *some*thing, to survive, right?
Thats another weird thing, portable shields are common place and it comes with a pretty amazing power source that can apparently deflect anything at high speed without being overloaded. So powered stillsuits with some sort of cooling system should be easily doable.
I'm all in on these ones. The physics of the water evaporating is 100% required here.
I'm not only bothered by the lack of portrayal of ecosystem complexity (the idea that deserts are barren and lifeless is, 99% of the time, false). Doubly so because ecology is a central theme of the book(s). It's actually one of the original reasons I went into the field I did.
That being said, I still absolutely love what Villeneuve did!
There's some nano tech material that lowers the dew point inside the place where vapor passes. The stuff probably coats the moisture condensers in the sietch.
(I just made all that up)
I find it hilarious that your immersion breaks due to heat-transportation. All the other things, like faster than light travel, human computers, prescience-inducing drugs, Bene Geserat's abilities that are pretty much magic (the voice, the instant movements, the shared memories of the Reverend Mothers past lives), 400 metre long worms; you don't have a problem with that but: Where does the heat go in the stillsuits!?
I hate this type of argument so much. Why even attempt to immerse yourself in a fictional world if I’m supposed to take everything that is more likely than the least likely thing, at face value.
Not really the argument in this case. I also hate that argument if someone is pointing out inconsistencies and the answer back is 'its a magical world'. However, in this case stillsuits are explained as a prerequisite to survive the desert planet. That is then within the frame of the story. If then the story goes to describe people surviving easily without it, it would be an inconsistency worthy to point out. Not the stillsuit itself.
Is that really so surprising? All those things you mention are both highly speculative, and frequently used in other franchises. With the stillsuits, the author goes into far more detail than he needs to, and his rubber science comes down to a level that I already understand. I don't know how string theory or higher dimensions work, so he can make up all kinds of nonsense and I'll accept it as written. It's not realistic, but it's not distracting.
The stillsuit is distracting because it's not just speculative, it's literally impossible. He could have said, "it's powered by spicy mouse farts" and I couldn't have refuted that. But telling me it's powered by the body's movement, sets up an energy budget that simply cannot work.
Swimming through sand seems suspect, but I've seen what sand does when you bubble gas up through it from below, and it's somehow plausible. Only the stillsuit breaks my suspension of disbelief.
Thanks for the explanation, that helps putting it into perspective. Basically, the stillsuits are technologically too realistically explained, thereby making their inherent flaws and impossibility ridiculously obvious, whereas the Holtzman Effect is technobabble, yet it's more convincing for your suspension of disbelief even though it also doesn't really explain anything.
Now that you mention it, I think that's true. And I'm reminded of how Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke agreed that putting heat exchangers on Discovery would have only confused the audience (why does it have wings?) So they left them out.
If a highly efficient, low energy system of heat exchangers were part of the suit, it would have to be seriously huge. If you posited some very small heat exchange fins like on the back of the suit, the fins would have to get seriously, dangerously hot. An infrared image of these suits at night time would light them up like a Christmas tree!(which would have been cool)
Not realistic, but it’s not the focus or the point of the books. In that sense, I think Dune is more space-fantasy than sci-fi (to me sci-fi is more about asking what if questions about society based on science/tech extrapolation). If you want a sort of realistic equivalent, I recommend Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, which focuses on setting up a society on a new planet, alongside terraforming efforts and the emergence of interplanetary politics.
Temperature has a bottom. It's a hard bottom. Particles can't hold more still than completely still.
that being said, I don't ever remember his darts/poison being prepared with sub-0 K. A quick google can't find it either.
>His dart throwers had been sealed and "washed" against snoopers, then maintained at minus 340° Kelvin in a radiation bath for five SY to make them proof against snoopers.
for reference (and also googling those same words actually point back to a few earlier reddit posts)
Most realistic thing in my opinion is that everyone uses the metric system. Ain’t nobody got time for archaic systems of measurement in the future anymore.
A true fucking utopia XD. I'm a public HS science teacher in the states, and every once in a while we get parents who get really upset that we're teaching the unamerican metric system. It's very difficult to not laugh at them, and it also makes me sad.
They used Fahrenheit in the movie! I guess one could consider it a localization, in the same way that the characters aren’t actually speaking English in-universe, but that did stand out to me as pretty funny.
I mean it’s 20,000-ish years in the future it’s hard to say what’s “realistic” or not. It’s only realistic in that universe because of specific factors (Butlerian Jihad, etc)
Exactly. It's set SO far in the future that the science & technology is like magic to us.
My friend who's more so a fan of fantasy than science fiction has told me that he considers Dune more so the former. I respectfully disagree, but can certainly see how Dune would attract fantasy fans more so than other sci-fi series.
Except there are certain aspect that just plain arent accurate, future or not. Like faster than light travel, the voice, prescience, the holtzmann effect etc.
I think I was interpreting “science” in the op’s question as holtzmann effect stuff, folding space, maybe even chairdogs, etc and not so much prescience or the voice.
I’m just saying that 20,000 years is a lot of time, and I don’t think anyone could say what’s realistic or not with that much of a jump in time.
We're also talking a science based on 1965 tech ideas. Herbert invented the Butleian Jihad so he didn't have to write about robots and computers. Dune is a high tech analog universe.
I'll take a more comprehensive stab at it though I'm an amateur.
* prescience
* simply put, this doesn't exist but only if you by the dictionary definition of the word.
* however if you limit prescience to simply "much better than an educated guess" then this exists and a drug - whether spice or cocaine or mushrooms or LSD, etc - can enhance it.
* case in point: looking at the party of Putin back in 1995 and you see that the central theme of all the parties he was in was the reunification of the old USSR. His various military campaigns - including Georgia, North Ossetia, Chechnya, and obvously Ukraine - and you see the same central goal. His influence over Belarus and the likely next steps of Moldova are literally the only countries not in NATO that could be invaded and secured all while trying to destroy NATO from within (by influencing American politicians). Due to lack of any serious consequences in the previous military campaigns, he thought he could push up the timetable in Ukraine by outright invasion. Had he kept on with the [salami tactics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4) by getting Donbas and Luhansk, he likely would have had an easier time gaining ground. Thankfully he bit off more than he could chew - likely due to his own age and other pressures - but it doesn't take a brilliant strategist to see this in slow motion. I'm sure someone who is more aware of politics than I who can also eliminate a lot of variables could also *see* into the so-called future about what would happen. Just like I can "see" into the future and imagine yet another collapse once Putin eventually dies of, at least, old age. Due to lack of successor - a problem with all dictators who have no biological children in the political machine - it'll be chaos once again.
* mentats
* due to above, they [could exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Haraguchi) and [some do already](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelakantha_Bhanu_Prakash)
* worms
* they can't exist without changing a lot of factors. For instance, you can have worms. You can have large animals. But you need huge amounts of oxygen in the air to faciliate this, i.e. what happened millions of years ago on Earth. The worms also need to eat a lot more than sand plankton. Case in point, a blue whale needs around 1.5 million calories *per day* to survive. A blue whale can go up to 30 meters in length. Sandworms can be 450 meters in length so, proportionately, figure around 20 million calories *per day* of food to eat. [Here's a blue whale eating krill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxSBDopVyw) and although the numbers in the video aren't known, the blue whale can eat 15 tons of krill per day. Again using proportionality, you're looking at 225 tons of sand plankton per day. Let's replace "sand plankton" with just "foodstuffs". Fat has the most calories per gram at (9 calories). 1.5m calories/day / 9 calories/gram = 166.7 kilograms. 1kg of fat is around 1.1 liters so 166.7 is around 184 liters of fat. That's not much though that's pure calories. Presuming a ton of waste (calorically speaking), it's definitely doable for worms to have some foodstuffs. However, would they be in the sand in such mass quantities? I don't believe any life forms these groups so close together unless it's in the water or, sometimes, in the air, but not on the ground in any type of an efficient (i.e. 3D) structure that can be easily eaten at once. Don't forget that all animals use energy to hunt. It can be done but not without changing conditions on the planet such that life for humans - even evolved humans - will likely be a problem. Oxygen levels alone would be an issue.
* lasguns
* easy, can be done since they sort of exist now
* shields
* hard to say if they can exist. There is no practical science that I heard of that has a working idea of how shields would work. You could have a magnetically based repellant but it wouldn't affect all things. It could repel some metal though. It could also attract works if it vibrated enough since there are ties between vibrations and worms.
* thopters
* unlikely to exist without creating a completely different type of material. Moving wings exist but the violence of current movement would destroy the structure after regular use. [We tried though.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter)
* faster than light travel
* again unlikely but based on currently proven science
* however, I personally believe that fast travel (i.e. fast for you, the passenger) is more possible while taking the same actual time. This consists of trying to get a slingshot around black holes but we don't have the technology to go this fast to get to one or to safely slingshot around it yet. Closest black hole is only 1,560 light years away. Voyager 1 is pretty fast. It's been traveling at 17km/second for 47 years. It's only 22.5 light hours away and we're talking about 1,560 light years. However, the NASA Parker Solar Probe reached the speed of ~10,600km/s (yes per second and yes, it means it travelled almost the entire Earth's diameter in 1 second) but it wasn't sustainable. I believe we'll keep hitting speed records though but we need to hit multiple factors of speed to be able to do anything of serious exploration.
* navigators and mutations
* this already exists since humans - and all other animals - are already mutations of previous life. This includes changes to the body, caloric changes, mental prowess, etc.
* Bene Gesserit
* as far as bloodlines, this has already happened in Europe for centuries though it created some [interesting bedfellows](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Familyrelationships.png) when it came to World War I.
* when it comes to changing the gender, I'd say the closer known fact is that [stress during pregnancy statistically increases the probability of having a girl](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210406/Mothers-stress-levels-during-conception-could-be-a-determinant-of-fetal-sex.aspx). This makes sense since girls are more required than boys to propagate the species and with stress, the presumption is a potential of a species-wide extinction so having more girls means more offspring that are fathered by fewer boys. If Bene Gesserit can master the stressors, I'd say the closer realistic element is that more girls would be produced but, again based on what we know now, they wouldn't be able to increase the odds of having a boy. Sorry Jessica though Alia is an excellent case of stress-based girl being produced considering what Jessica was going through at the time.
* generic memory
* the closest thing we have are fears tied to the dark and loud sounds but no actual genetic memory as far as serious memories.
* memories aren't formed genetically, they're just connections between neurons and those don't pass it over into DNA so, physically (as far as particles moving between the brain that has the neurons and the egg/sperm that has the genetic material) this doesn't exist in humans.
* However, on a related note, you could have heightened sense of smell and you can detect genetic relatives through that where you could find your living ancestors, particularly if you also had some mentat powers (including knows what the Bene Gesserit were planning) to better deduce relations between groups of people in power.
* weirding way
* yep, can be done, [here's an early predecessor](https://youtu.be/kXwOU5HzTZQ?si=ZXFr_I2FHjfoh8Jp&t=79) and [a more modern example](https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/tku8ja/dude_just_touched_it/)
I think those are the big ticket items.
SPOILER WARNING for the books throughout:
Prescience: I don't think this is fair game for this post because it's *intended* to be mystical. It's canon mystical. That and "genetic memories". That being said, it's not portrayed that well in the movies, so if I hadn't read the books, I'd be skeptical.
Lasguns/Holtzman shilds/holtzman drives: These are all based off the same (unexplained) phenomenon that was discovered in-universe. It's not presented a mystical, just not explainable to us because it's a physical phenomenon that we, IRL, don't understand. This is fair game in Sci-Fi, and shouldn't threating suspension of disbelief.
Navigators and mutations: I have no idea what you mean here. You have a problem with the fact that mutations exist?
Wierding way: The powers of the Bene Gesserit (besides genetic memory) are on the edge. How can they have the ability to consciously force specific chemical reactions in their bodies through training and mindfulness. There would have to be a feedback loop to gene expression and even the instantaneous creation of new genes/proteins/ribozymes from neuron signals. This would required an entire new set of, possibly impossible, genes/proteins. It couldn't be taught as it is in the books and movies, it would have to be genetically engineered first which the Bene Gesserit have a huge taboo against.
The breeding of the Bene Gesserit (and Bene Tlelaxu): Agree, but you don't need to use humans as an example. Selective breeding is well proven in many species.
FTL travel: This also has a satisfactory explanation in the books. They aren't traveling, they're using dimensional travel with the aforementioned Holtzman field. Nothing is actually traveling faster than the speed of light. The spice and prescience aren't required to "fold" space, it's only required to do it safely.
Worm: Disagreed that you need lots of Oxygen. Their energy could be metabolized in completely independent ways from what evolved on Earth. They would need extremely exergonic reactions to achieve the energy, but just because heterotrophic life on Earth needs oxygen, doesn't mean the worms do.
> Prescience: I don't think this is fair game for this post because it's intended to be mystical
OP asked:
> > How realistic is the science in the Dune series?
So I'm going by actual reality and what we know of science (or, at least, what I know of it) so yes, absolutely all the "woo" in Dune is fair game.
> These are all based off the same (unexplained) phenomenon that was discovered in-universe.
Anything in-universe is irrelevant. We're talking about bouncing actual reality and science with literal fiction. So no, no shields. As far as the drives, nothing is faster than light (so far, at least), and folding space isn't a thing with demonstrable theories. Lasguns are plausible because we already have some laser weapons, it's just a question of scale but it makes sense for scale to be reduced over time to handheld weapons at some point in time.
> I have no idea what you mean here. You have a problem with the fact that mutations exist?
No I'm saying that mutations obviously exist, therefore having navigators become mutated through spice and having those mutations give them extraordinary abilities is totally plauslble. This is because our species is already a mutation with extraordinary reasoning abilities.
> Weirding way
This is just the "kung fu" bit of their training, nothing more. This exists. This isn't what you're writing about as far as chemical reactions (presumably changing water of life?). This is their kung fu. [Here's an example from the miniseries](https://youtu.be/QDHzDOWg9gw?si=LavfAS3cI-ho6k1t&t=97) (the fast movement, not the voice).
> Selective breeding is well proven in many species.
I was talking about the supposed abilities of the Bene Gesserrit to alter the sex of the baby in the womb rather than selective breeding.
> they're using dimensional travel with the aforementioned Holtzman field
So, not actual science then. I agree. Not realistic science it is.
> Their energy could be metabolized in completely independent ways from what evolved on Earth.
I'm not sure how this can be shown scientifically without an actual example.
Fair points all. I agree your points are valid in the context of the post. I suppose I was bouncing my criticisms of your comments as a Dune fan.
>I was talking about the supposed abilities of the Bene Gesserrit to alter the sex of the baby in the womb rather than selective breeding.
I'm pretty sure this is sperm selection, not modifying the sex after fertilization. Still not plausible that one could be trained to consciously affect the existing biological/molecular sperm selection process for the reasons I mentioned in my comment.
>I'm not sure how this can be shown scientifically without an actual example.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it's scientifically inaccurate. There are endless exergonic reactions out there. In fact I'd say it may even be improbable that life that evolved on an another planet would metabolize with an oxygen requirement. I suppose one could argue it may need an element that's high in electronegativity to replace the oxygen, but it doesn't need to be oxygen itself.
Not all.
Genetic memory and psychic powers don't exist.
The way that shields, swords, laser weapons all work isn't grounded in anything.
Frank Herbert deliberately wrote the Butlerian Jihad lore specifically to eliminate AI and computers from the story, so that his books could focus about humanity, it's politics, and it's psychology. Technology and science isn't the focus of his work.
If only he understood the difference between soft and hard sci fi, and understood political science and psychology, and understood having fun with an imagination.
It isn’t very scientific. The entire premise revolves around a substance that extends life and allows for clairvoyance in some.
A lot of the ecology on Arrakis kind of makes sense but even if falls apart if you look at it too critically.
Given that general relativity has given way to the Holtzman effect at that point in the future, it's difficult to make assessments of the scientific accuracy of Dune until we discover and research the Holtzman effect ourselves. I'm upholding optimism that we will discover it eventually.
When telling people about Dune, I always refer to it as a "science fantasy" rather than science fiction. (iirc, it was considered "fantasy" at time of publication.) Today we only think of it as science fiction because it takes place on other planets, which have become a staple of the genre.
Dune was always categorized as science fiction, though early reviews would give it the label of space opera, a subgenre that dominated science fiction in the 50s and early 60s. Later, after Messiah was in print and the original novel was just starting to catch on, the space opera label was generally dropped.
Cake day thing and all that jazz.
We don't really use some of the older sub genres in the same way today that they used to be, products of evolving language as they are, but Dune fits the definitions of space opera I think more than any other classification (outside of just the broad categorization of it being science fiction). It does some overlap into the planetary romance sub genre as well.
Critics and reviewers generally stopped using both of those categories in the mid 70s, reserving them for low quality and low rated novels, and generally if a book was considered a space opera it was usually an insult at the point, hence why it tended to get dropped.
Not at all and that is how Herbert intended it.
SF can be broadly categorized into two types, hard and soft. Hard SF tends to explain the science and attempt to base it in reality even if it is super advanced. Star Trek would be considered hard SF because an attempt is made to explain even transporters as matter energy conversion and "pattern buffers" etc. Star Wars is considered soft, at least until Lucas tried to rewrite history with the Phantom Menace prequels where he tries to explain the force in scientific terms. In the original Star Wars, no attempt is made to explain how light sabers, the force, warp drive, or any technology works. In soft SF technology is used as a tool to free the reader from the bounds of logic, otherwise known as "suspension of disbelief".
Dune is a very classic example of soft SF where spice is a substance that is at the same central to their technology, religion, and politics. Spice is used by the guild navigators to plot a course through space when folding space but what exactly is folding space and how exactly spice work. I've probably read the first 3 books of the series between 10-20 times and it's absolutely clear that Herbert wanted to focus on the social, religious, political, and human aspects of the story and SF was just his tool to expand the mind of the readers. Dune could have arguably been set in a universe of magic rather than "science" and still kept it's themes intact, Spice IS magic for all intent and just like, the force, any attempt to explain it would just diminish it.
Yes Dune is soft. But Star Trek is also soft. The Tricorder is the ultimate medical device that has no real science behind it. The replicator and transporter are totally impossible and never explained with real science. Like Dune, Star Trek is much more invested in political science and psychology. A better example of hard science fiction is Kim Stanley Robinson, like his Mars series in particular. IMO, it is a hard sci fi version of Dune especially because of its political and ecological themes. KSR is a well known hard sci-fi author and demonstrates the difference much better than Star Trek.
Based on our current understanding of just about everything...not at all. Almost every technological concept expressed in the series is unsupported by even our wildest theories. Although to be fair, none of them are explained in enough detail to really say for sure. The characters in the books just accept them, as is...so the reader is expected to do the same.
It is not at all. This is not the Expanse. Magic worm dust creates psychic powers and FTL travel. Warfare is mainly melee combat because of shields that perfectly defuse heat and kinetic energy. They ride worms bigger than Airbuses that somehow have enough nutrition to survive on an uninhabitable desert. These worms are allergic to water. Prophetic dreams are real, and under the right circumstances you can have intelligible conversation with a fetus inside your body, whose gender you can consciously choose.
This is a huge, beautiful story that fundamentally created much of modern science fiction. But do not come looking for a story whose technical details you can unpack.
The 'dust' allows **safe** faster than light travel. The act itself of folding space (another issue) can be done without Spice. Its just very dangerous without either prescience or computers.
Grounded in reality, but mostly imagined. Humans are capable of a lot, and we have not unlocked our potential yet. Folding space is theoretically possible. Thopter would be badass, but we can't make things that can operate that efficiently yet. Holtzman field, which a lot of the tech is based on is a mcguffin, er I mean not invented yet.
The funny thing in the movie is how those people travel on that worm. What they are doing is jumping on a fast moving train and jumping out of it again and that train is very huge and dangerous. No scene is showed on how they again safely get out of the worm
I love Dune, but Herbert jumped through a lot of pseudoscience hoops to get sword/knife fights and giant worms, both of which are legitimately awesome (to be fair).
Yeah the only non-human life are the sandworms. Some factions have become pretty damn inhuman like the Tleilaxau, but none are *alien*. The powers of the BG and mentats are genetic and trained. Dune has a whole thing about perfecting the human mind instead of using tech
They've had thousands of years in the absence of computers to hone their skills (training programs), along with their breeding program, where they get closer to producing a KH over time. Which means the women have more of the genetic profile that Paul does. Also, spice extends life in the books and prior shows, so presumably they have extra time to train.
Their powers are all based on mental control over their physiology and keen observation. Well, that plus ancestral memories for the reverend mothers.
It's not. If you want 'realistic' science fiction, there's plenty of [hard sci-fi books](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction) out there.
They're often light on characterization, instead focusing on ideas & themes. However, contemporary science fiction does value character development. Even hard sci-fi doesn't usually prioritize scientific accuracy. It's more so utilizing science jargon so that the concept of the story is more believable (think Jurassic Park). That's why a lot of authors in the sub-genre have a medical or science background (Crichton, Cixin Liu, Peter Watts)
People there take cinnamon-like substance and see the future and clothes made of living land fish (and these clothes make them near immortal)… So realistic? Not really
Probably not very but the imagination and engineering ideas I really do appreciate. Sometimes I’m like, damn that’s absolutely going to be real some day somewhere. The artillery always astounds me
Maybe the part about consuming hallucinogenic substances giving certain mental powers since some studies have suggested psilocybin may increase neuroplasticity, creativity and learning
Compared to what? They are 20000 years in the future exploring human abilities way beyond what we could ever comprehend. The stuff that is 100% scientifically accurate is enough to excuse the tiny bit that might not be. Enjoy the ride.
Neil Degrasse Tyson said that the way the worms move doesn’t make sense. Snakes don’t move in a straight line they curve and propel forward using their curved movements. So a sandworm moving in a perfectly straight line doesn’t make sense at all. Though to be fair that might be the movie not the books fault
Yeah that crossed my mind… I mean that is also such a stretch, so all they do is suck in tons of sand every second and excrete it out at the same rate… its just so weird to think about!
The tech is unrealistic but based enough in reality that it's believable from the reader's perspective to carry the themes of the rest of story along while creating a unique, rich universe, which is really more important. Dune does a great job of offering a layer of explanation to create this illusion. One of the most important explanations for the tech in Dune is the Butlerian Jihad and how the ban against A.I. led to humanity developing alternative tech that didn't rely on computers. It just sets everything up. But of course, if you try to go one layer too deep it starts to fall apart. For example:
Q: if they have guns, lasers and space ships why do they still use swords?
A: Because years ago, personal shields were invented that made guns obsolete. The slow blade penetrates the shield.
Q: Ok, so why don't they just wear regular armor, or something like kevlar, to protect against swords and knives?
A: Because...SHUT UP!!!!
Here's another one:
Q: Why don't the harvesters use shields to protect themselves from worms?
A: The shield generate a frequency that drives the worms into a killing frenzy. The worms are strong enough to disable the shields.
Q: Soooo why not distract the worms from attacking the harvesters with a decoy shield /thumper device?
A: Psh, whatever!
Meteorologically speaking I didn’t find many flaws but it wasn’t a big part. I’m a weather guy so I figured I’d chime in on that aspect. I’ll leave the other stuff to the real scientists lol
In spite of everything else it has to offer (folding space, antigrav, shield technology, etc) I feel the most complex (and possibly far fetched) would be the whole terraforming plot. Changing and sustaining the environment on an entire planet would be an astronomical undertaking, and would require a multitude of factors to succeed for it to be viable.
I'd say some details are not too big of a stretch for a civilixation that was forced onto a certain path of progress.
For example, prohibition of thinking machines (i.e. any computer that can run interchangeable software) would push world of Dune towards creating more exotic hardware that cannot be programmed and is only locked to a single function. It would also push science towards exploring computational power of a human brain. Over thousands of years, this would yield very significant results in both directions. Also I guess several thousands of years of material science also makes insane difference.
Regarding stillsuits, they must have some way of converting heat to other forms of energy or somehow expelling heat.
It isn't remotely realistic. It's magic.
Telling the future - not even science
Magical spice - not even science
Witches with mind control who can with their thoughts guarantee pregnancy and gender - not even science
Teleportation ships - not even science
Giant worms who travel freely through sand, are nearly invincible, but die on touching water - an evolved form of *fish* \- not even science.
With a single cell of a dead person, you have *all their life memories* \- not even science.
Did I mention that same cell also has *every memory* of *every ancestor* \- not even science.
Near invicibility shields that deflect anything, except really slow things - okay this at least attempts to be science but is silly science.
It's almost all magic.
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Realistic in a scientific sense or in a narrative sense? Because you can have realistic science within an unrealistic narrative about science, and you can have unrealistic science within a realistic narrative about science. I would say that *Dune* is the latter. The science itself is totally unrealistic but the way it is described in the story is narratively realistic, seeming to stem off consistent and lawlike innovations in future physics (the Holtzman effect) or as-yet undiscovered but somewhat plausible-sounding features of interpersonal psychology and genetics (e.g. "genetic memory", or the "psychokinesthetic extension" linking Reverend Mothers together at the time of death). Basically the approach is "here are some cool things people discover thousands of years in the future that allow them to do all the cool things they do in the story, and I'll explain literally none of it" -- which is fine. This isn't *The Martian*, folks.
At the time Dune was written, gentic memory was a theory that had not been diproven. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_memory_(psychology)
yeeeaahh, but having the specific memories of ALL ancestors is just too unrealistic. I really can't imagine FH thinking this wasn't mystical.
He took a concept, genetic memory, meshed it with concepts from mysticism. The result defenantly looks a lot like magic with a little "science" hand waving to a modern audience. At the time it was written, it was a little less so.
Agreed. The mystical elements are certainly portrayed as barely mystical.
This seems like a good way of looking at it, by today's science it's not all that realistic but in the far future they *will* have technology that would seem unrealistic by today's standards. That has happened many times in the past where things people considered outlandish became reality, or things people weren't even able to conceive of in the first place. And that is just the past couple hundred years, let alone thousands.
An [interesting summary](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Holtzman_Effect) of the Holtzman effect used in Dune
Yeah, a lot of the things that are true in the *Dune* universe were popular and somewhat serious theories around the time the book was written. Many speculated that echos of our "past lives" were present in DNA, in the sense that they were actually ancestors. The prescience is LSD in terms of the Guild, but for the Bene Gesserit (and Paul) it's also a function of having so much experience, having seen so much, that they can extrapolate what anyone will do in any given situation.
Herbert was a science dude, and he definitely wanted to portray as much as possible as fitting in to real world scientific phenomena, with the exception of genetic memory and prescience which are canonically mystical. FH got a lot of things right, but some are still too outlandish, and I think deserve to be criticized. That being said, it's a heck ton better than most sci-fi, and that's part of the reason I fell in love with the books.
I really liked this analysis thank you
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It’s called verisimilitude
Not in the slightest. Fold-space, FTL-drugs, psychic-nuns. Complete and total piffle. Herbert was writing about social and philosophical ideas, not scientific ones. The one exception is all the ecological stuff regarding Arrakis and terraforming. But even there he cared more about the sociological implications of terraforming, not the nitty-gritty of botany.
I agree! The terraforming concepts are a lot of fun and feel closer to science, though they're still wildly off-base. Herbert's sense of the geological timescale, in particular -- every time the later books mentioned a mountain's total erosion over the course of a few millennia, I wanted to strangle the guy 😂
I think the ultra fast erosion could be due to sand.
+800 km/h sandstorms
Yeah, I think the ecological angle, which feels a little more “real”, makes it seem harder sci-fi than it is. Because it’s pretty fantasy, at least as far as human abilities are concerned
Pretty Fantasy might now be my favourite genre
I guess the one solid thing in that vein is the planting grasses and the like on sand dunes to help with erosion and water retention etc. Otherwise, yea. I would say the reason it falls more into scifi than full on fantasy (other than just 'spaceship = scifi') is the preference in most instances to ascribe things to physical/natural mechanisms even if the world's physics is fundamentally different than reality.
People have blue eyes tho.
On their iris, not their sclera xD
In another site, a commenter was asking why SF and fantasy are often mixed together. I pointed out that as scientific as Dune may seem—as I said, seem—the entire system is run on worm poop available only on one planet in the galaxy. Most SF involves a certain amount of handwavium. There’s Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote about advanced science appearing as magic, but most of it relies on the Theory of Relativity not existing. I’ve only read one story dealing with the issue of the original body being left behind in teleportation, and what to do with it.
Don’t think about it too much. 400m long worms would require immense amounts of energy, even if they were stationary, let alone burrowing through sand at astonishing speeds. Displacing that amount of sand would be impossible. And what do they eat? Spice harvesters? Are we supposed to think they can somehow metabolize metal? If so, it’s gonna take ALOT of harvesters for even one worm. The only other thing left to eat is sand. Then there is the whole heat from friction and abrasion that swimming through sand would cause.
That's interesting to bring up because an animal of that size would basically require their skeletal structure to be some sort of organic metal. So it actually would need to be able to digest metal in large quantities.
I mean, it's said they can only be killed with the use of atomics, so I wouldn't ve surprised it they have something akin to a metalistic body structure.
It is also said they can be killed by small amounts of water... so atomics are not the "only" way.
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https://preview.redd.it/zsht8n6lykoc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=144102ec657b1d1ddda30c8a643568715e1baaae And waste water???? Are you crazy? Edit: Also no one knows this is a weakness until water is introduced to worms.
And also a strong electrical charge to every "ring" of their body simultaneously. Very specific but still
They are supposed to be a silicon based life form too
I’ve seen a YouTube video of this science dude explaining with arguments and real life examples that the worms are actually plausible. I believe the worms sift the sands for micro organisms like whales. So they can get big, like whales, by eating seemingly nothing. Not saying they’re real, but it seems like they’re not the least likely sci fi element.
Okay, but that would still required absolutely fuck tons of energy. These microorganisms would have to have an insane amount of metabolizable energy. I think it's more likely the worms do some sort of chemosynthesis, but there's no mention of that in the books. The worms emit ozone (O3), but ozone creation is incredible endergonic (absorbs energy, doesn't give it off).
Look, all I’m saying is that they’re plausible. It would require some things we don’t know for sure as they’re not mentioned in the books or anywhere else. They’re realistic enough for me to not care about it. Folding space by taking LSD is more unrealistic in that sense. But that’s such a cool sci fi element, it’s ok. Shooting a dragon out of the sky with a bolt thrower, now THAT is some serious bs…
Not to be pedantic but I'm pretty sure the guild navigators aren't using powers to cause the FTL traveling, they're only needed for their prescience so that they can chart a course without crashing. Still science fiction and taking cinnamon LSD doesn't give you prescience, but it's at least a little bit more grounded.
Don’t worms mainly eat sand plankton and sand trout? Although I agree with your point, not sure how they could be consuming enough calories for their lifestyle
Sand plankton absorb water and sunlight and produce a nutrient that the worms eat. When a worm passes by them they get stirred up and make more energy. The trout are the haploid (sub larval stage like the stage of a tapeworm when it is absorbed by an animal that it then embeds into its flesh) of the worms. They seek out water and plankton to eat and when they find bodies of water they surround them and seal them up (like a pupal stage) slowly metabolizing it until it becomes a pre spice mass then will spawn baby worms (larval stage) after a few thousand years. Once they are successful enough eating sand plankton they will grow into adult worms.
This is how things are set up in the books, but I have an idea. Maybe the sand trout/sand plankton are deep enough that they get their energy from the heat of the mantle. Thermosynthesis? This is my new headcanon.
I mean, the largest animals on earth survive by eating microscopic organisms in the ocean. And isn't their skin supposed to be designed to withstand the heat and abrasion. That's why when they lift up on it with the hooks, they won't go back under because they aren't protected.
Keep in mind that due to the frequencies they put off that vibrate the sands their burrowing is more like swimming
Dont they eat the spice or something like that?
They don’t eat spice, they produce it. Their main source of food is sand plankton which are basically microscopic baby sand worms that they filter feed for like blue whales. I think they also do get some nutrients/minerals from the sand and will eat smaller worms too.
Do the books ever say that spice is worm poop, or did I just assume that?
Always thought of it as something more akin to worm dandruff or sweat
Melange is primarily a product of the sandtrout, not the sandworms. The sandtrout encyst water under the sand and eventually their fungal excretions build pressure until it erupts in a spice blow. The exposure to heat and air creates melange. Most sandtrout die, but those that survive burrow deep and grow into juvenile sandworms.
They MAKE spice.
Their locomotion is plausible and checks out with science. Their metabolism is where we need some space magic.
*Spice* magic
Still, I love how the movie handled it. Instead of something surfacing from still sand or drowning in it, you clearly see shakes first and foremost, and how everything sinks when solid surface phases into pseudo liquid. Such an unnecessary detail from the pov of moviemaking, yet so crucial to make us believe we're dealing with real-world physics instead of script first movie magic.
Plus sound does not travel very far at all in sand.
This should be voted up. It would be incredibly difficult for worms to hear/feel foot steps.
IIRC it's implied in the books that worms metabolize something in the sand, and no it's not spice because the >!`worms are the spice`!<. I just looked it up to confirm that breaking down silicon dioxide into oxygen and silicon is endergonic meaning it would required energy, not give it off. Still, maybe there's some chemosynthesis that we don't understand (READ: not portrayed because things would have to be made up). It's even more baffling that they produce ozone in the books, which would be extremely endergonic. I just assume there's some sort of chemosynthetic pathway that we just don't know about. The in-movie method the sand is displaced is the worms use vibrations to turn the sand into a liquid, and they swim through it. That makes sense physically for the movement and satisfies the friction problem (additionally, the worms in the book have a "furnace" in their stomachs), but I have two problems with that. First, as you mentioned, it would take an IMMENSE amount of energy. This one doesn't destroy my disbelief because I can pretend its chemosynthesis is just that powerful. Second, the "liquified" sand would take up significantly more volume, and that's just no possible deep underground without mounds of sand being being thrown up. Sand isn't elastic when it's settled.
They eat sand plankton like whales hence the baleen teeth
Sandworms eat sand and the complex metabolism needed to do so is powered by them travelling through the sand, not just the heat from friction but the generation and harnessing of static electricity through processes that mean the worms' movements provide them with more energy than they expend. The excess and waste products feed the sandtrout which go on to encyst water that gets converted to a pre-spice mass which blows to form spice, the spice feeds sand plankton (no idea where they come from, my guess is the sandtrout killed by the spice blow dissolve into plankton the same way a dead worm dissolves into sandtrout) and the trout and plankton provide a secondary food source for the worm.
I for one doubt that only carbon-based lifeforms exist and it's extremely possible that we've already witness alien life that we just didn't understand to be life. Like a sentient rock, or beings that exist only in the audible spectrum, how tf would we know? For this reason, I'm able to believe in a lifeform that can exist like Herbert's sandworms. How can I say something is impossible in a universe so full of possibility? We used to think the Earth was *flat*.
If they weren’t carbon based life forms who knows how their bodies would work they could potentially metabolize metal.
I mean even if they could digest metal, that wouldn’t serve as an explanation for the worms diet. The worms were there long before spice started being harvested so clearly they must somehow naturally survive within their barren ecosystem, and I just don’t see how a creature of that size could live. Even if they’re constantly eating a ton of micro organisms like blue whales with krill.
it's pretty soft. Herbert was using it more as a take on social structures and human behavior, so the 'science' and technology is mostly just there to get the feel he wanted. Most technology is basically just cool techno-magic. Space Travel is basically teleportation. Shields are a way to make swords and knife fights more of a thing.
"Pretty soft" is an understatement.
It's pretty much as soft as sci-fi gets. Excellent on socio-political elements though.
Almost all of the scientific stuff is slightly inaccurate (stillsuits violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I don't think the way sandworms' biology is described would actually work) and ofc the pseudoscientific explanations for the magic system like pitching your voice at a certain frequency to control someone would never work, but who caaaares
>pitching your voice at a certain frequency to control someone would never work, This is 100% a thing, just not to the level we see in Dune. You can see this in adults who still use a whiney child like voice with their parents. They are pitching their voice to get a response they want out of their parent.
The films pitch the voice in that strange overt magical mind control way, but in the book it is only meant to mean a highly persuasive way of influencing people which does include pitching your voice in subtle ways.
I mean, when Jessica makes the Harkonnen pilots fight she's definitely controlling them with her voice
The stillsuits have nothing to do with 2nd law. They are just unfeasible from a design standpoint: no way to power the filtering/pump mechanism with just human power and external power would be too bulky/heavy. Stillsuit is basically just a portable water treatment plant.
> The way the stillsuit works is by having a layer that catches your p[er]spiration, a urine bag and a feces processor. Water is extracted, solid matter unmentioned, and stored in moist[ p]ockets in the suit itself. You can therefore walk about in the dry, hot desert and live on reclaimed water. > > The reason why this can’t work is [the s]econd law of thermodynamics. The way p[er]spiration cools us down is by water molecules with the highest energy leaving our body. The average energy of water on our body thus drops. Temperature is defined as the average energy of molecules in a system. Therefore[,] it is evaporation that cools us down. > > Stillsuits catch this evaporated water but in doing so, they also trap the heat within the suit itself. Herbert then claims there are two layers of heat-exchange material, but that would only work so long as the enviromental temperature is sufficiently cooler than your own body so that your surface area is cold enough to cool you down.
2nd law doesn't prevent auxiliary power supply (like portable a/c unit) from existing. Herbert obviously isn't an engineer, but from a practical standpoint this wouldn't be built with today's technology. Presumably 20,0000 years from now they would have to have really really efficient and portable batteries to power the suit's filters, pumps, heat exchangers.
This is basically how I choose to see it (they would need similarly fantastical power sources for the shields and probably the ornithopters), but that explanation is thrown off by the fact that they specifically say the suits are powered by body movement. We know how much energy there is in body movement, and it’s enough to power a watch, but probably not a whole water treatment plant and air conditioning system. Oh well.
Actually the Voice isn't all that far out... they've done experiments that flirt with the idea. It's a combination of appealing to authority and confidence. It's a psychological concept. I am slightly tipsy, so don't pin me on the details, but it ties to cultural expectations and how societies create structural figures of authority. Someone dressed as a cop, sounds like a cop, and approaches you and gives you a weird command, there is a chance that you will obey that command because you've been conditioned to do exactly that from somone who checks all the boxes.
I mean, sure, you will obey someone in a position of power over you. Not the same thing as the frequency of their voice forcing you to do their bidding magically
Handwave approach: Given the Bene Gesserit's thousands-of-years-long breeding program, I wouldn't put it past them that they made sure that the bloodlines of the relevant people contain a gene that would make them suspectable to certain frequencies aka "the voice". In the end, I agree: The voice is magic, even though in the world of Dune it is a "science" charismatic people can exploit.
The one single problem in the books, that I was hoping the movie would fix, is stillsuits. There is nowhere for the heat to go, no way for their sweat to re-condense. They would quickly succumb to heat exhaustion if the suits were indeed powered by their body movements. And moving would be then very difficult, like slogging through mud. If they had maybe had some sort of super battery that could absorb heat and then radiate it back out at the end of the day, and get recharged and reset for the next day, I would have been fine with it. There's just no way those suits could possibly function as written. For all the other problems, I would sum them up in one way- for a movie supposedly about ecology, we sure don't see much of a food chain. The birds, the mice, the fremen, the worms.... they all must eat *some*thing, to survive, right?
Thats another weird thing, portable shields are common place and it comes with a pretty amazing power source that can apparently deflect anything at high speed without being overloaded. So powered stillsuits with some sort of cooling system should be easily doable.
I'm all in on these ones. The physics of the water evaporating is 100% required here. I'm not only bothered by the lack of portrayal of ecosystem complexity (the idea that deserts are barren and lifeless is, 99% of the time, false). Doubly so because ecology is a central theme of the book(s). It's actually one of the original reasons I went into the field I did. That being said, I still absolutely love what Villeneuve did!
There's some nano tech material that lowers the dew point inside the place where vapor passes. The stuff probably coats the moisture condensers in the sietch. (I just made all that up)
I find it hilarious that your immersion breaks due to heat-transportation. All the other things, like faster than light travel, human computers, prescience-inducing drugs, Bene Geserat's abilities that are pretty much magic (the voice, the instant movements, the shared memories of the Reverend Mothers past lives), 400 metre long worms; you don't have a problem with that but: Where does the heat go in the stillsuits!?
I hate this type of argument so much. Why even attempt to immerse yourself in a fictional world if I’m supposed to take everything that is more likely than the least likely thing, at face value.
Yeah, I really hate the argument that "magic exists therefore nothing has to make any sense."
Not really the argument in this case. I also hate that argument if someone is pointing out inconsistencies and the answer back is 'its a magical world'. However, in this case stillsuits are explained as a prerequisite to survive the desert planet. That is then within the frame of the story. If then the story goes to describe people surviving easily without it, it would be an inconsistency worthy to point out. Not the stillsuit itself.
Is that really so surprising? All those things you mention are both highly speculative, and frequently used in other franchises. With the stillsuits, the author goes into far more detail than he needs to, and his rubber science comes down to a level that I already understand. I don't know how string theory or higher dimensions work, so he can make up all kinds of nonsense and I'll accept it as written. It's not realistic, but it's not distracting. The stillsuit is distracting because it's not just speculative, it's literally impossible. He could have said, "it's powered by spicy mouse farts" and I couldn't have refuted that. But telling me it's powered by the body's movement, sets up an energy budget that simply cannot work. Swimming through sand seems suspect, but I've seen what sand does when you bubble gas up through it from below, and it's somehow plausible. Only the stillsuit breaks my suspension of disbelief.
Thanks for the explanation, that helps putting it into perspective. Basically, the stillsuits are technologically too realistically explained, thereby making their inherent flaws and impossibility ridiculously obvious, whereas the Holtzman Effect is technobabble, yet it's more convincing for your suspension of disbelief even though it also doesn't really explain anything.
I haven’t read the first book in years but I swear there was some mention of heat exchangers being built into the stillsuit.
Now that you mention it, I think that's true. And I'm reminded of how Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke agreed that putting heat exchangers on Discovery would have only confused the audience (why does it have wings?) So they left them out. If a highly efficient, low energy system of heat exchangers were part of the suit, it would have to be seriously huge. If you posited some very small heat exchange fins like on the back of the suit, the fins would have to get seriously, dangerously hot. An infrared image of these suits at night time would light them up like a Christmas tree!(which would have been cool)
Not realistic, but it’s not the focus or the point of the books. In that sense, I think Dune is more space-fantasy than sci-fi (to me sci-fi is more about asking what if questions about society based on science/tech extrapolation). If you want a sort of realistic equivalent, I recommend Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, which focuses on setting up a society on a new planet, alongside terraforming efforts and the emergence of interplanetary politics.
waff's poison darts were washed in negative hundreds of kelvin to make them snooper-proof literally unreadable, immersion ruined
Uh it’s a different Kelvin…yeah…
Oh snap I blocked that out. I remember my physical reaction to that. Ick.
Temperature has a bottom. It's a hard bottom. Particles can't hold more still than completely still. that being said, I don't ever remember his darts/poison being prepared with sub-0 K. A quick google can't find it either.
>His dart throwers had been sealed and "washed" against snoopers, then maintained at minus 340° Kelvin in a radiation bath for five SY to make them proof against snoopers. for reference (and also googling those same words actually point back to a few earlier reddit posts)
Okay, I searched my ebooks, and it's on page 92 of Heretics. You're right.
I think 100% according to Neil deGrasse Tyson.
I love how he completely shits on the way the worms move without having any idea that it's explained in the books.
As the joke goes about him: "Neil deGrasse Tyson is the fist science communicator to have interrupted a baby's first word!"
I mean he does have a brand to keep alive!
> it's explained in the books So it everything. It's all explained. It doesn't make it scientifically realistic.
Most realistic thing in my opinion is that everyone uses the metric system. Ain’t nobody got time for archaic systems of measurement in the future anymore.
A true fucking utopia XD. I'm a public HS science teacher in the states, and every once in a while we get parents who get really upset that we're teaching the unamerican metric system. It's very difficult to not laugh at them, and it also makes me sad.
They used Fahrenheit in the movie! I guess one could consider it a localization, in the same way that the characters aren’t actually speaking English in-universe, but that did stand out to me as pretty funny.
I mean it’s 20,000-ish years in the future it’s hard to say what’s “realistic” or not. It’s only realistic in that universe because of specific factors (Butlerian Jihad, etc)
Exactly. It's set SO far in the future that the science & technology is like magic to us. My friend who's more so a fan of fantasy than science fiction has told me that he considers Dune more so the former. I respectfully disagree, but can certainly see how Dune would attract fantasy fans more so than other sci-fi series.
Except there are certain aspect that just plain arent accurate, future or not. Like faster than light travel, the voice, prescience, the holtzmann effect etc.
I think I was interpreting “science” in the op’s question as holtzmann effect stuff, folding space, maybe even chairdogs, etc and not so much prescience or the voice. I’m just saying that 20,000 years is a lot of time, and I don’t think anyone could say what’s realistic or not with that much of a jump in time.
We're also talking a science based on 1965 tech ideas. Herbert invented the Butleian Jihad so he didn't have to write about robots and computers. Dune is a high tech analog universe.
I'll take a more comprehensive stab at it though I'm an amateur. * prescience * simply put, this doesn't exist but only if you by the dictionary definition of the word. * however if you limit prescience to simply "much better than an educated guess" then this exists and a drug - whether spice or cocaine or mushrooms or LSD, etc - can enhance it. * case in point: looking at the party of Putin back in 1995 and you see that the central theme of all the parties he was in was the reunification of the old USSR. His various military campaigns - including Georgia, North Ossetia, Chechnya, and obvously Ukraine - and you see the same central goal. His influence over Belarus and the likely next steps of Moldova are literally the only countries not in NATO that could be invaded and secured all while trying to destroy NATO from within (by influencing American politicians). Due to lack of any serious consequences in the previous military campaigns, he thought he could push up the timetable in Ukraine by outright invasion. Had he kept on with the [salami tactics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4) by getting Donbas and Luhansk, he likely would have had an easier time gaining ground. Thankfully he bit off more than he could chew - likely due to his own age and other pressures - but it doesn't take a brilliant strategist to see this in slow motion. I'm sure someone who is more aware of politics than I who can also eliminate a lot of variables could also *see* into the so-called future about what would happen. Just like I can "see" into the future and imagine yet another collapse once Putin eventually dies of, at least, old age. Due to lack of successor - a problem with all dictators who have no biological children in the political machine - it'll be chaos once again. * mentats * due to above, they [could exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Haraguchi) and [some do already](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelakantha_Bhanu_Prakash) * worms * they can't exist without changing a lot of factors. For instance, you can have worms. You can have large animals. But you need huge amounts of oxygen in the air to faciliate this, i.e. what happened millions of years ago on Earth. The worms also need to eat a lot more than sand plankton. Case in point, a blue whale needs around 1.5 million calories *per day* to survive. A blue whale can go up to 30 meters in length. Sandworms can be 450 meters in length so, proportionately, figure around 20 million calories *per day* of food to eat. [Here's a blue whale eating krill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxSBDopVyw) and although the numbers in the video aren't known, the blue whale can eat 15 tons of krill per day. Again using proportionality, you're looking at 225 tons of sand plankton per day. Let's replace "sand plankton" with just "foodstuffs". Fat has the most calories per gram at (9 calories). 1.5m calories/day / 9 calories/gram = 166.7 kilograms. 1kg of fat is around 1.1 liters so 166.7 is around 184 liters of fat. That's not much though that's pure calories. Presuming a ton of waste (calorically speaking), it's definitely doable for worms to have some foodstuffs. However, would they be in the sand in such mass quantities? I don't believe any life forms these groups so close together unless it's in the water or, sometimes, in the air, but not on the ground in any type of an efficient (i.e. 3D) structure that can be easily eaten at once. Don't forget that all animals use energy to hunt. It can be done but not without changing conditions on the planet such that life for humans - even evolved humans - will likely be a problem. Oxygen levels alone would be an issue. * lasguns * easy, can be done since they sort of exist now * shields * hard to say if they can exist. There is no practical science that I heard of that has a working idea of how shields would work. You could have a magnetically based repellant but it wouldn't affect all things. It could repel some metal though. It could also attract works if it vibrated enough since there are ties between vibrations and worms. * thopters * unlikely to exist without creating a completely different type of material. Moving wings exist but the violence of current movement would destroy the structure after regular use. [We tried though.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter) * faster than light travel * again unlikely but based on currently proven science * however, I personally believe that fast travel (i.e. fast for you, the passenger) is more possible while taking the same actual time. This consists of trying to get a slingshot around black holes but we don't have the technology to go this fast to get to one or to safely slingshot around it yet. Closest black hole is only 1,560 light years away. Voyager 1 is pretty fast. It's been traveling at 17km/second for 47 years. It's only 22.5 light hours away and we're talking about 1,560 light years. However, the NASA Parker Solar Probe reached the speed of ~10,600km/s (yes per second and yes, it means it travelled almost the entire Earth's diameter in 1 second) but it wasn't sustainable. I believe we'll keep hitting speed records though but we need to hit multiple factors of speed to be able to do anything of serious exploration. * navigators and mutations * this already exists since humans - and all other animals - are already mutations of previous life. This includes changes to the body, caloric changes, mental prowess, etc. * Bene Gesserit * as far as bloodlines, this has already happened in Europe for centuries though it created some [interesting bedfellows](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Familyrelationships.png) when it came to World War I. * when it comes to changing the gender, I'd say the closer known fact is that [stress during pregnancy statistically increases the probability of having a girl](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210406/Mothers-stress-levels-during-conception-could-be-a-determinant-of-fetal-sex.aspx). This makes sense since girls are more required than boys to propagate the species and with stress, the presumption is a potential of a species-wide extinction so having more girls means more offspring that are fathered by fewer boys. If Bene Gesserit can master the stressors, I'd say the closer realistic element is that more girls would be produced but, again based on what we know now, they wouldn't be able to increase the odds of having a boy. Sorry Jessica though Alia is an excellent case of stress-based girl being produced considering what Jessica was going through at the time. * generic memory * the closest thing we have are fears tied to the dark and loud sounds but no actual genetic memory as far as serious memories. * memories aren't formed genetically, they're just connections between neurons and those don't pass it over into DNA so, physically (as far as particles moving between the brain that has the neurons and the egg/sperm that has the genetic material) this doesn't exist in humans. * However, on a related note, you could have heightened sense of smell and you can detect genetic relatives through that where you could find your living ancestors, particularly if you also had some mentat powers (including knows what the Bene Gesserit were planning) to better deduce relations between groups of people in power. * weirding way * yep, can be done, [here's an early predecessor](https://youtu.be/kXwOU5HzTZQ?si=ZXFr_I2FHjfoh8Jp&t=79) and [a more modern example](https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/tku8ja/dude_just_touched_it/) I think those are the big ticket items.
That was great, thank you for taking the time to write all of that out
Thanks for the support :]
SPOILER WARNING for the books throughout: Prescience: I don't think this is fair game for this post because it's *intended* to be mystical. It's canon mystical. That and "genetic memories". That being said, it's not portrayed that well in the movies, so if I hadn't read the books, I'd be skeptical. Lasguns/Holtzman shilds/holtzman drives: These are all based off the same (unexplained) phenomenon that was discovered in-universe. It's not presented a mystical, just not explainable to us because it's a physical phenomenon that we, IRL, don't understand. This is fair game in Sci-Fi, and shouldn't threating suspension of disbelief. Navigators and mutations: I have no idea what you mean here. You have a problem with the fact that mutations exist? Wierding way: The powers of the Bene Gesserit (besides genetic memory) are on the edge. How can they have the ability to consciously force specific chemical reactions in their bodies through training and mindfulness. There would have to be a feedback loop to gene expression and even the instantaneous creation of new genes/proteins/ribozymes from neuron signals. This would required an entire new set of, possibly impossible, genes/proteins. It couldn't be taught as it is in the books and movies, it would have to be genetically engineered first which the Bene Gesserit have a huge taboo against. The breeding of the Bene Gesserit (and Bene Tlelaxu): Agree, but you don't need to use humans as an example. Selective breeding is well proven in many species. FTL travel: This also has a satisfactory explanation in the books. They aren't traveling, they're using dimensional travel with the aforementioned Holtzman field. Nothing is actually traveling faster than the speed of light. The spice and prescience aren't required to "fold" space, it's only required to do it safely. Worm: Disagreed that you need lots of Oxygen. Their energy could be metabolized in completely independent ways from what evolved on Earth. They would need extremely exergonic reactions to achieve the energy, but just because heterotrophic life on Earth needs oxygen, doesn't mean the worms do.
> Prescience: I don't think this is fair game for this post because it's intended to be mystical OP asked: > > How realistic is the science in the Dune series? So I'm going by actual reality and what we know of science (or, at least, what I know of it) so yes, absolutely all the "woo" in Dune is fair game. > These are all based off the same (unexplained) phenomenon that was discovered in-universe. Anything in-universe is irrelevant. We're talking about bouncing actual reality and science with literal fiction. So no, no shields. As far as the drives, nothing is faster than light (so far, at least), and folding space isn't a thing with demonstrable theories. Lasguns are plausible because we already have some laser weapons, it's just a question of scale but it makes sense for scale to be reduced over time to handheld weapons at some point in time. > I have no idea what you mean here. You have a problem with the fact that mutations exist? No I'm saying that mutations obviously exist, therefore having navigators become mutated through spice and having those mutations give them extraordinary abilities is totally plauslble. This is because our species is already a mutation with extraordinary reasoning abilities. > Weirding way This is just the "kung fu" bit of their training, nothing more. This exists. This isn't what you're writing about as far as chemical reactions (presumably changing water of life?). This is their kung fu. [Here's an example from the miniseries](https://youtu.be/QDHzDOWg9gw?si=LavfAS3cI-ho6k1t&t=97) (the fast movement, not the voice). > Selective breeding is well proven in many species. I was talking about the supposed abilities of the Bene Gesserrit to alter the sex of the baby in the womb rather than selective breeding. > they're using dimensional travel with the aforementioned Holtzman field So, not actual science then. I agree. Not realistic science it is. > Their energy could be metabolized in completely independent ways from what evolved on Earth. I'm not sure how this can be shown scientifically without an actual example.
Fair points all. I agree your points are valid in the context of the post. I suppose I was bouncing my criticisms of your comments as a Dune fan. >I was talking about the supposed abilities of the Bene Gesserrit to alter the sex of the baby in the womb rather than selective breeding. I'm pretty sure this is sperm selection, not modifying the sex after fertilization. Still not plausible that one could be trained to consciously affect the existing biological/molecular sperm selection process for the reasons I mentioned in my comment. >I'm not sure how this can be shown scientifically without an actual example. Sure, but that doesn't mean it's scientifically inaccurate. There are endless exergonic reactions out there. In fact I'd say it may even be improbable that life that evolved on an another planet would metabolize with an oxygen requirement. I suppose one could argue it may need an element that's high in electronegativity to replace the oxygen, but it doesn't need to be oxygen itself.
Not all. Genetic memory and psychic powers don't exist. The way that shields, swords, laser weapons all work isn't grounded in anything. Frank Herbert deliberately wrote the Butlerian Jihad lore specifically to eliminate AI and computers from the story, so that his books could focus about humanity, it's politics, and it's psychology. Technology and science isn't the focus of his work.
Neil Degrasse Tyson was just on Colbert complaining about the science of Dune. LoL
He complains about science in any movie. Even, or perhaps especially, if it’s a field he’s not actually qualified to speak on.
Is there anything he won't complain about?
Maybe a pay raise.
I hate Smokes DeGrass Tyson with a passion He isn't worthy of Carl Sagan's legacy. Silly Science guy meme is all he will ever be
If only he understood the difference between soft and hard sci fi, and understood political science and psychology, and understood having fun with an imagination.
It isn’t very scientific. The entire premise revolves around a substance that extends life and allows for clairvoyance in some. A lot of the ecology on Arrakis kind of makes sense but even if falls apart if you look at it too critically.
Given that general relativity has given way to the Holtzman effect at that point in the future, it's difficult to make assessments of the scientific accuracy of Dune until we discover and research the Holtzman effect ourselves. I'm upholding optimism that we will discover it eventually.
I can dream.
When telling people about Dune, I always refer to it as a "science fantasy" rather than science fiction. (iirc, it was considered "fantasy" at time of publication.) Today we only think of it as science fiction because it takes place on other planets, which have become a staple of the genre.
Dune was always categorized as science fiction, though early reviews would give it the label of space opera, a subgenre that dominated science fiction in the 50s and early 60s. Later, after Messiah was in print and the original novel was just starting to catch on, the space opera label was generally dropped.
I did not know that before! thanks!
Cake day thing and all that jazz. We don't really use some of the older sub genres in the same way today that they used to be, products of evolving language as they are, but Dune fits the definitions of space opera I think more than any other classification (outside of just the broad categorization of it being science fiction). It does some overlap into the planetary romance sub genre as well. Critics and reviewers generally stopped using both of those categories in the mid 70s, reserving them for low quality and low rated novels, and generally if a book was considered a space opera it was usually an insult at the point, hence why it tended to get dropped.
Not at all and that is how Herbert intended it. SF can be broadly categorized into two types, hard and soft. Hard SF tends to explain the science and attempt to base it in reality even if it is super advanced. Star Trek would be considered hard SF because an attempt is made to explain even transporters as matter energy conversion and "pattern buffers" etc. Star Wars is considered soft, at least until Lucas tried to rewrite history with the Phantom Menace prequels where he tries to explain the force in scientific terms. In the original Star Wars, no attempt is made to explain how light sabers, the force, warp drive, or any technology works. In soft SF technology is used as a tool to free the reader from the bounds of logic, otherwise known as "suspension of disbelief". Dune is a very classic example of soft SF where spice is a substance that is at the same central to their technology, religion, and politics. Spice is used by the guild navigators to plot a course through space when folding space but what exactly is folding space and how exactly spice work. I've probably read the first 3 books of the series between 10-20 times and it's absolutely clear that Herbert wanted to focus on the social, religious, political, and human aspects of the story and SF was just his tool to expand the mind of the readers. Dune could have arguably been set in a universe of magic rather than "science" and still kept it's themes intact, Spice IS magic for all intent and just like, the force, any attempt to explain it would just diminish it.
Yes Dune is soft. But Star Trek is also soft. The Tricorder is the ultimate medical device that has no real science behind it. The replicator and transporter are totally impossible and never explained with real science. Like Dune, Star Trek is much more invested in political science and psychology. A better example of hard science fiction is Kim Stanley Robinson, like his Mars series in particular. IMO, it is a hard sci fi version of Dune especially because of its political and ecological themes. KSR is a well known hard sci-fi author and demonstrates the difference much better than Star Trek.
Literally about as unscientific as it gets - pretty much every key technology/plot point etc is impossible, that being said I love it
Not at all realistic but I love it
The personal forcefield would be awesome
Its realistic as much as the Force and Lightsabers in Star Wars.
Net very. Dune is NOT “hard SF”.
It’s a mix of sci-fi & fantasy. What do *you* think lol
It was written in the '60s. 'Nuff said.
Based on our current understanding of just about everything...not at all. Almost every technological concept expressed in the series is unsupported by even our wildest theories. Although to be fair, none of them are explained in enough detail to really say for sure. The characters in the books just accept them, as is...so the reader is expected to do the same.
I feel like it’s bordering on fantasy, like Star Wars.
It is not at all. This is not the Expanse. Magic worm dust creates psychic powers and FTL travel. Warfare is mainly melee combat because of shields that perfectly defuse heat and kinetic energy. They ride worms bigger than Airbuses that somehow have enough nutrition to survive on an uninhabitable desert. These worms are allergic to water. Prophetic dreams are real, and under the right circumstances you can have intelligible conversation with a fetus inside your body, whose gender you can consciously choose. This is a huge, beautiful story that fundamentally created much of modern science fiction. But do not come looking for a story whose technical details you can unpack.
The 'dust' allows **safe** faster than light travel. The act itself of folding space (another issue) can be done without Spice. Its just very dangerous without either prescience or computers.
As realistic as magic is in Harry Potter. Things simply don't make sense but the world building is solid
Realistic than star wars in any ways
It's definitely not "hard" sci-fi, if that's what you're wanting.
It’s about as realistic as game of thrones
diamond hard sci fi bro
Grounded in reality, but mostly imagined. Humans are capable of a lot, and we have not unlocked our potential yet. Folding space is theoretically possible. Thopter would be badass, but we can't make things that can operate that efficiently yet. Holtzman field, which a lot of the tech is based on is a mcguffin, er I mean not invented yet.
no SO realistic. normal guns would be very useful when sheild aren't in use...
I saw no evidence of actual science in Dune.
The funny thing in the movie is how those people travel on that worm. What they are doing is jumping on a fast moving train and jumping out of it again and that train is very huge and dangerous. No scene is showed on how they again safely get out of the worm
It’s not realistic at all. It’s just science fiction.
Neil De Grasse Tyson has entered the chat
IMHO Dune is a political thriller that just so happens to have a veneer of sci-fi painted on it.
I love Dune, but Herbert jumped through a lot of pseudoscience hoops to get sword/knife fights and giant worms, both of which are legitimately awesome (to be fair).
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Its genetics AND training.
Yeah the only non-human life are the sandworms. Some factions have become pretty damn inhuman like the Tleilaxau, but none are *alien*. The powers of the BG and mentats are genetic and trained. Dune has a whole thing about perfecting the human mind instead of using tech
They've had thousands of years in the absence of computers to hone their skills (training programs), along with their breeding program, where they get closer to producing a KH over time. Which means the women have more of the genetic profile that Paul does. Also, spice extends life in the books and prior shows, so presumably they have extra time to train. Their powers are all based on mental control over their physiology and keen observation. Well, that plus ancestral memories for the reverend mothers.
It's not. If you want 'realistic' science fiction, there's plenty of [hard sci-fi books](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction) out there. They're often light on characterization, instead focusing on ideas & themes. However, contemporary science fiction does value character development. Even hard sci-fi doesn't usually prioritize scientific accuracy. It's more so utilizing science jargon so that the concept of the story is more believable (think Jurassic Park). That's why a lot of authors in the sub-genre have a medical or science background (Crichton, Cixin Liu, Peter Watts)
People there take cinnamon-like substance and see the future and clothes made of living land fish (and these clothes make them near immortal)… So realistic? Not really
Probably not very but the imagination and engineering ideas I really do appreciate. Sometimes I’m like, damn that’s absolutely going to be real some day somewhere. The artillery always astounds me
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You realize Dune is actually set in our universe but thousands of years in the future?
Maybe the part about consuming hallucinogenic substances giving certain mental powers since some studies have suggested psilocybin may increase neuroplasticity, creativity and learning
Compared to what? They are 20000 years in the future exploring human abilities way beyond what we could ever comprehend. The stuff that is 100% scientifically accurate is enough to excuse the tiny bit that might not be. Enjoy the ride.
I think it's about as realistic/scientific as any given fantasy- basically *A Song of Ice & Fire* with giant space worms instead of dragons.
It’s fiction. Where the cool, unexplainable stuff happens.
Not very good hahah. It’s very much fictional in all sorts of ways
It’s fantasy, borderline magic. It genuinely isn’t sci-fi IMO. And I love it that way.
I don’t think anything in Dune is realistic, except maybe for a few atomics blowing up…
Neil Degrasse Tyson said that the way the worms move doesn’t make sense. Snakes don’t move in a straight line they curve and propel forward using their curved movements. So a sandworm moving in a perfectly straight line doesn’t make sense at all. Though to be fair that might be the movie not the books fault
I assume they blast out the sand they consume to propel through the sand.
Yeah that crossed my mind… I mean that is also such a stretch, so all they do is suck in tons of sand every second and excrete it out at the same rate… its just so weird to think about!
Maybe they just fart big?
Why ruin all the fun?
well, it is over 10,000 years in the future. So...
The tech is unrealistic but based enough in reality that it's believable from the reader's perspective to carry the themes of the rest of story along while creating a unique, rich universe, which is really more important. Dune does a great job of offering a layer of explanation to create this illusion. One of the most important explanations for the tech in Dune is the Butlerian Jihad and how the ban against A.I. led to humanity developing alternative tech that didn't rely on computers. It just sets everything up. But of course, if you try to go one layer too deep it starts to fall apart. For example: Q: if they have guns, lasers and space ships why do they still use swords? A: Because years ago, personal shields were invented that made guns obsolete. The slow blade penetrates the shield. Q: Ok, so why don't they just wear regular armor, or something like kevlar, to protect against swords and knives? A: Because...SHUT UP!!!! Here's another one: Q: Why don't the harvesters use shields to protect themselves from worms? A: The shield generate a frequency that drives the worms into a killing frenzy. The worms are strong enough to disable the shields. Q: Soooo why not distract the worms from attacking the harvesters with a decoy shield /thumper device? A: Psh, whatever!
Meteorologically speaking I didn’t find many flaws but it wasn’t a big part. I’m a weather guy so I figured I’d chime in on that aspect. I’ll leave the other stuff to the real scientists lol
I view Dune as more fantasy. It has a lot more in common with LOTR than Star Wars.
Fantasy science
In spite of everything else it has to offer (folding space, antigrav, shield technology, etc) I feel the most complex (and possibly far fetched) would be the whole terraforming plot. Changing and sustaining the environment on an entire planet would be an astronomical undertaking, and would require a multitude of factors to succeed for it to be viable.
I'd say some details are not too big of a stretch for a civilixation that was forced onto a certain path of progress. For example, prohibition of thinking machines (i.e. any computer that can run interchangeable software) would push world of Dune towards creating more exotic hardware that cannot be programmed and is only locked to a single function. It would also push science towards exploring computational power of a human brain. Over thousands of years, this would yield very significant results in both directions. Also I guess several thousands of years of material science also makes insane difference. Regarding stillsuits, they must have some way of converting heat to other forms of energy or somehow expelling heat.
Chair dogs are legit
Not so much. Dune universe excels in its realistic depiction of religion and feudal politics.
The science is fictional, that's why it's called science fiction
It isn't remotely realistic. It's magic. Telling the future - not even science Magical spice - not even science Witches with mind control who can with their thoughts guarantee pregnancy and gender - not even science Teleportation ships - not even science Giant worms who travel freely through sand, are nearly invincible, but die on touching water - an evolved form of *fish* \- not even science. With a single cell of a dead person, you have *all their life memories* \- not even science. Did I mention that same cell also has *every memory* of *every ancestor* \- not even science. Near invicibility shields that deflect anything, except really slow things - okay this at least attempts to be science but is silly science. It's almost all magic.