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The Legends Of Dune - Volume 1: The Butlerian Jihad
The book starts out by giving a history of how the Titans took over the "Old Empire" after humanity had lost its drive and had relegated intelligent machines to handle the everyday tasks. The Titans used this lack of drive and the intelligent machine to quickly take over the Old Empire and conquered most of the known galaxy. Free humans rose up at the fringes of the galaxy to resist and push the Titans back, forming "The League of Nobels".
The Titans governed their planets with a increasingly sophisticated AI network and increasing brutality towards their human "slaves". In a bid to rule for centuries, and for possible immortality, the Titans underwent the transfiguration to "cymeks", robots with a human brain. After a century of Titan rule, one of the Titans, in a quest for more free time to indulge in hedonistic activity, relinquished too much control to his intelligent AI network. Eventually the sentient AI network computer evermind, which took the name Ominus, took control of all the Titan controlled planets and formed the "Synchronized Worlds".
After a thousand years of conflict and stalemate between the Synchronized Worlds and the League of Nobels the machines, with coaxing from the Titans, have determined that it is time to "corral" the wild humans and strike out, the logical target, Salusa Secundus, the center of government for the League of Nobels . Being so "unpredictable" to Ominus, the humans, taking huge losses, again resist the machine attacks. In part due to the AI scrambler shield invention of one Tio Holtzman that stops robots, but in an oversight, allowed the Titan cymeks, with their human brains, through.
Reconsidering their tactics, the machines instead move on one of the less vehemently defended planets, an industrial world with an abundance of resources, Giedi Prime. This time the machines manage to knockout the shield generator and take the planet. Once the league hears of this, the endless debates start within their government, as with any democracy, nothing gets done because all the politicians are afraid to commit. All except Serena Butler, she instead organizes a small band to sneak onto Geidi Prime and complete the secondary shield generator. This leads to Serena's capture and eventual transfer to the primary Synchronized World, Earth.
We get to see the first "friction" here between the Atreides and Harkonnen, the Sorceresses of Rossak with their telepathic and telekinetic powers are the beginnings of the Bene Gesserit. The foundation is laid for the Suk doctors, and the cover blurb that I read mentioned the Swordmasters of Ginaz, but I found only a slight mention of the planet Ginaz. Another cover blurb I read mentioned the Mentat school, but there was nothing in this book, one could see the use for them as the League of Nobels did not use any computers.
The book flows very well and I found myself drawn to read more and more. The book does not have the intricate plot within plot layout as the other Dune works, but then this book is being narrated from a historical perspective. Given this, I found most of the characters actions predictable, but I have read all other 9 books, so this being a "historical" narrative, this keeps the characters close to their roles that were hinted at/layed out in the previous novels.
I give credit to Brian Herbert for the foresight of enlisting the help of Kevin J. Anderson in the creation of the Dune "prequels" as he openly admitted that he did not possess all of the "tools" required to under take this project, kudos.
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As for the Dune books, only the first two were ever worth anything. Frank Herbert himself couldn't keep the series going at a high level of quality, and his son's work qualifies as nothing more than shameless exploitation of a franchise.
Plus it seems like a lot of the ambience was stolen from Star Wars (Tatooine anyone?).
Read Dune's copyright. Dune was published twelve years before Star Wars was released.
And the Jihad ended when cyborged Ibrahim Holzmann returned from his 400 year orbit, and was blow-up by some volunteer whose name escapes me.
I must preface this by saying I've not read this new book, so apologies if I'm off-base here, or if we're not up to the exact time in the timeline. This really makes me wonder if they're going to follow what was listed in the Dune Encyclopedia regarding Jehanne Butler being the cause of it all. Dr. Willis E. McNelly, the author of the Encyclopedia, was a friend of Frank Herbert, and Dr. McNelly was the only academic Frank Herbert trusted to do the work. Wish they'd put it back in print!
I heard Kevin in late September talk at a Denver bookstore.
So far in the series:
(1-6) Frank Herberts six Dune books.
(7-9) The three book prequel.
(10) First book of the Butlerian trilogy.
Coming:
(11-12) Second book of Butlerian trilogy done; third book being written.
(13-15) A fill-in-the-gaps trilogy between the prequels and #2 (Dune Messiah) on how Atriedes got assigned to Dune; How Paul's jihad went, etc.
(16) A "Road to Dune" book consisting of unpublished notes and short stories found in Frank's estate papers. Both authors are strongly opposed to a Christopher Toklein series, i.e. where Chris published 12 books on every scrap of paper his father wrote.
(17) A sequel to Frank's sixth book based on full outline found in the estate papers and initial work by Frank. (The amount of this material is highly controversial and we may being hoodwinked here.) Supposedly we learn more where the last no-ship went, who the mysterious farmer couple were, and something more about the scattering culture.
Kevin also mentioned how the co-authorship works. Both authors completely rewrite everything up to ten times in alternating shifts. Both authors work on other projects in the meantime. Brian H. does not fly in airplanes (a scifi tradition), so he rarely makes it out of the west coast.
No kidding! I'm only about 100 pages into it right now and it seems like they are trying to lay the foundations of the Bene Gesserit, the Guild, and the Mentats ALL into ONE FAMILY! (the mother, daughter and father respectively.) And the Sandrider stuff happening at the exact same time too. . . yeah. It just seems like it is all just too forcibly done.
Karma: NaN
From what I gleaned from some of the books and the Dune Encyclopedia, the cause of the Butlerian Jihad was quite different. A planetary intelligence ordered the abortion of Jehanne Butler child, which was to be the Kwisatz Haderach. That's Jehanne, not Serena. And Holtzman tech was created by I.V. Holtzman, not Tio.
Maybe I'm being a bit to nitpicky and nerdy, but it sounds like they're changing history.
In Greek Atreides, means "The ancestors of the house of Atreus"... (My name is Nico, so in ancient Greek 'Niceides' would be my house name!) Atreus, in the Greek Mythology was a king that established a great lineage of heros. Two famous ancestors of Atreus were Menelaus and Agamemnon, the heroes of Homer's poem 'Iliad' So, indeed Atreides was an important house. From Homer to Herbert spanning thousands of years! The name Harkonnen is not Greek so I dont know its history...