The god-emperor of the desert planet
The God Emperor of the Desert Planet (Original: God Emperor of Dune ) is the fourth volume from the Dune cycle by Frank Herbert , which was originally published in 1981 .
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The fourth novel in the series takes place around 3500 years after Leto II , the son of Paul Atreides (Muad'Dib), took over the government. Leto II entered into a symbiosis with the sand trout and is now a hybrid being, half human, half worm. He makes this sacrifice of his humanity in order to gain time for the necessary developments and changes that are to prevent the downfall of humanity. He calls his millennia-long tyranny "Leto's Golden Path". This so-called “Golden Peace” is an epoch of stagnation and relative non-violence that has been forced upon humanity and encompasses the entire human universe. The aim of the Golden Peace is to prepare people for the coming events and to stir up their longing for expansion and further development.
Siona Atreides , the youngest member of the Atreides line and daughter of Moneo Atreides (Letos Majordomus and chief adjutant), is the leader of the current rebellion against the tyrant. She penetrates Leto's citadel and steals the blueprints and a volume with diary entries of the god emperor, which later become known as the stolen journals. She succeeds in the theft despite (or perhaps because of) the foresight of the God-Emperor, whose intention is to give people insight into his thoughts and goals. Siona in particular has been chosen by him to serve and perfect his golden path.
Another ghola from Duncan Idaho rebels against Leto II, which costs him his life. The Bene Tleilax send an immediate replacement. The new Duncan ghola behaves like its predecessors: Although it has problems adapting to the changed conditions in Leto's empire, it is still loyal to the Atreides and is appointed the new commander of the Fish Talking Guard. After that, his doubts about Leto's honorable motives increase.
Ix sends a new ambassador, Hwi Noree. She is such a perfect embodiment of everything the God Emperor values and strives for that he inevitably falls in love with her and asks for her hand. Duncan is also very impressed by her and the two spend a passionate night together, against the will of the god-emperor. Hwi explains to Duncan that it will stay this one night because she will marry the god emperor. There is further tension between Leto II and Duncan.
Siona is subjected to a life-threatening test by Leto II, with which he draws her to the side of the Golden Path. Now Siona accepts the Golden Path as a necessity for human survival, but her goal remains to overthrow the god-emperor. Leto II decides at short notice to move the wedding celebrations to the remote museum village Tuono, where Duncan and Siona have been accommodated so that they do not disturb this celebration. When the two find out, they devise a plan to destroy Leto II. Its weak point is the worm's aversion to water. As the god-emperor crosses the Idaho River in his car, Nayla, Siona's subordinate fish orator, destroys the bridge with a lasgun. Leto, Hwi Noree and Moneo fall to their deaths.
Leto's body disintegrates in the water of the river and the resulting sand trout form the basis for the rebirth of the desert planet and the sandworms.
Action characters and groups
- Leto II , the god emperor, ruler of the empire for 3500 years, hybrid being, half human, half sandworm
- Moneo, a descendant of Atreides, majordomo of the god-emperor
- Duncan Idaho , a ghola, old comrade of the Atreides, carried out the fatal assassination attempt on Leto
- Siona , daughter of Moneo, first rebel, then commander of the fish speakers
- Nayla, a fish orator, secret agent of the god emperor, Siona's only subordinate, ensures that Leto is assassinated.
- Hwi Noree, Ixian ambassador, later Bride of Letos
- Malky, uncle and genetic counterpart of Hwi Noree, ex-envoy of the Ixians, developer of the Hwi project
- Anteac, Venerable Mother of the Bene Gesserit, tracks down the non-room where Malky is hiding on Letos’s order.
- Fish orator , the god- emperor's army of women
- Bene Geserrit , an order of sisters
- Tleilaxu , specializing in genetic engineering, maker of the Duncan Idaho gholas
- Ixians , inventors and high-tech producers
Framework story
religion
Compared to the first trilogy, practiced religion plays an astonishingly small role in the fourth volume. Nothing is left of the Islamic-inspired beliefs. There is a lot of philosophizing about the role of religion in human history, there is also a state church, but the main thing is that people simply believe - in the God Emperor. The real presence of a being endowed with god-like abilities makes anything other than pragmatic monotheism impossible.
The main bearers of this belief are the fish speakers . Leto allows them only one ritual, Siaynoq, the great oneness, which only takes place every ten years. The ceremony contains echoes of the Christian Eucharist (an oblate is shared), but it also relates to the religion of Muad'Dib (his cryknife is shown to the assembled). In essence, however, it is about a highly emotional declaration of love and loyalty that is made - by the god emperor as well as by his fish speakers. He calls them "my only brides".
When, with Hwi, the new Ixian ambassador, an actual bride appears who is not a fish orator, the first ruptures occur in the close relationship between the god emperor and his army of women.
With Leto's death, pragmatic monotheism ends in one last grand gesture. The self-sacrificing God is an often used motif in theology. The consciousness of the god emperor dissolves into millions of sand trout and thus already lays the core for a next religion - Shai-Hulud, the dismembered god, awaits the believers.
Technological development
In terms of weapons technology, the era of the god-emperor is not much further than the old empire. The peaks of progress are laser weapons, so-called lasguns. Their use is officially reserved for the Fish Talker Guard.
Technologies that were banned after Butler's jihad are still taboo. Unofficially, however, Leto II asks the Ixians to develop highly questionable machines for his own use. The mind-controlled dictation machine with which he writes his journals is the best example. He knows about the attempts to develop a machine replacement for the navigators of the spacemen's guild, but also knows that they will fail in his lifetime.
The climax of technological research is the construction of so-called non-spaces. These are perfectly camouflaged rooms that hide their existence not only from energetic measurements, but also from the clairvoyance of a medium. The Ixian Ambassador Hwi Noree was conceived, born and trained in such a room to hide her from the attention of the God Emperor. As you will learn later, Letos Dar-Es-Balat, the museum dedicated to the memory of the history of Arrakis, was one of the first non-rooms.
Non-rooms are the first step on the way to the development of the non-ships, which play a decisive role in the following volumes of the second trilogy.
The Golden Path - The New Creation of Humanity
The Golden Path is a complex endeavor, at the end of which the survival of humanity should be ensured. To implement the plan, the Gottkaiser works at two central control points. The social restructuring and disciplining happens through the fish speakers . The individual genetic optimization follows his special breeding program.
The very fact that a women's army maintains order in its empire is a revolution. He thus assigns men a completely new and unfamiliar role in society. At one point he explains: “My Houris tame men. They domesticate them, and that is something women have necessarily known about for eons. "(Leto II, God Emperor of the Desert Planet, p. 257)
Ultimately, the social component of the Golden Path culminates in the sentence: "I formed this human society and spent over three thousand years on it so that the entire species would finally grow up." (Ibid.)
His breeding program, on the other hand, is an ambivalent affair. The aim of the program is to produce people who are protected from beings like himself, i.e. clairvoyants and prophets. You no longer appear on the radar of such powers and are thus safe from persecution. With Siona he has achieved this goal, which then promptly leads to death, or rather to the next level of being, of the god-emperor (the “dismembered god”). A rule like his will be impossible in the universe in the future.
The 1000 Lives of Duncan Idaho
Strictly speaking, Duncan Idaho is the "hero" of the entire Dune cycle. He appears as the only character in every volume, so that one is tempted to see in him a kind of alter ego of the author.
Only in the first volume does the reader get to know and appreciate the original Duncan Idaho. Then one ghola duplicate follows the next, until a kind of over-ghola is created in the last volume, which carries the memories of all of its existences.
“You are just an older model”, with this insulting classification the angry Moneo assigns him his place in the universe of the god-emperor.
His unswerving loyalty, but also his ability to persist in the old Atreidic values, make him an important corrective for the god emperor. It can be used to measure how much humanity has actually changed. It is the standard for the society of the future.
However, within the Leto universe, Duncan Idaho also has a very practical role. The God Emperor sees in him a new "Adam". Together with Siona he will form the genetic basis for the new undetectable humanity.
See also: Figures of the Dune Cycles
The fish speakers
The Bene Gesserit on the Golden Path
A remark made by the God-Emperor to Hwi Noree most clearly expresses his attitude towards the sisterhood: “The only ones I have ever considered completely eradicated were the Bene Gesserit .... They are what they are should be so close and yet so far. "(Leto II, the god emperor of the desert planet, p. 266)
He detests their way of using religions to manipulate cultures. He hates her emotional coldness. He detests their bigotry and the smugness with which they presume to define what humanity is.
Out of a good deal of nostalgia for his grandmother Jessica, he lets her continue to exist. But more important is their useful necessity, which he sees at the end of his golden path. Hence, he is doing what he has done in all societies, cultures, and religions; he changes them until they finally, as a willing part, have adapted to his “golden path”.
His dealings with the sisterhood are rude to cruel. Their essential melange rations are extremely tight, which significantly limits the growth of the Bene Gesserit. They are just able to maintain their nominal strength. Their breeding program is meticulously monitored by the fish orators and every suspicious newborn is mercilessly wiped out.
It is noticeable that with the fourth volume, but also in the following, the goals of the Bene Gesserit breeding program are no longer recognizable. With Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach, the breeding program itself had come to an end. But it is still being bred. What is being bred for is unclear, only a second Kwisatz Haderach must be avoided at all costs.
After the god-emperor's death, the Bene Gesserit took over his functions in many areas as planned. They become the order force of the empire and significantly expand their role as teachers of humanity. Nonetheless, they regard him as “the tyrant” until the end.
See also: Figures of the Dune Cycles
The role of MAFEA and Landsraad
Since the trade in melange no longer takes place and thus their greatest profit and influencing factor has broken down, they have limited themselves to ordinary commodities. The MAFEA is politically insignificant, shrunk to a pure intergalactic trading company. However, it is still very profitable to get involved in this organization.
The Landsraad , if it is still in session, has degenerated into a debating club. Many Great Houses have fallen into ruin during Leto's reign. If they were lucky and had enough MAFEA investments, they would have succeeded in maintaining the status of small houses - a development that was entirely in keeping with the egalitarian tendencies in Leto's rulership.
The spice monopoly - hydraulic despotism under Leto II.
At the end of the third volume, Leto II concentrated all of the Empire's spice stocks on Arrakis. His clairvoyant skills enabled him to find even the most hidden hiding spots. His army of fish speakers took care of the rest. After the ecological transformation initiated by the Fremen had been completed and the sandworms had been destroyed, he had an absolute monopoly on melange. Every politically relevant group, with the possible exception of the Tleilaxu, was dependent on the spice, and now on Leto's benevolence.
He himself distributed the hidden supplies according to quotas that were set every 10 years on the Siaynoq. A decrease or increase in the spice rations was basically dependent on good political behavior, but sometimes also pure arbitrariness.
But stinginess with the spice was his basic attitude, and rightly so. He had an exact idea of how long the last reserves would have to last. After his death in 3,500 years, it would take another 500 years for the sand trout on his body to retransform from arrakis back to a desert planet. Only then would there be fresh mélange, but until then, interstellar trade and communication could not come to a standstill. After the god-emperor's death, when the Tleilaxu had succeeded in producing melange synthetically and in large quantities in their axolotl tanks, this part of the Golden Path had become obsolete.
Leto's metamorphosis into a sandworm and his eternal life
From the third volume, when Leto puts on his sand trout skin, the sand trout begin to infiltrate and merge with every cell in his body. This skin acts like a biological still suit, protecting it from dehydration and heat and giving it the opportunity to slide through the sand like a worm.
By the fourth volume he was already an almost fully grown worm. Worm rings protruded from under his body, making it several meters long. His originally child-like body itself did not undergo any changes from the time of the metamorphosis, so that his human body was embedded above the later worm's mouth. To protect himself from danger, he could retract his body into the worm's shell.
He knew from the start that his physical death would be a difficult one. He had to die near water for the sand trout to activate. Fortunately, Siona and Duncan Idaho took the opportunity to attack a bridge. In the water of the river, the sand trout broke away from him and spread. Now they would begin to multiply and encapsulate the planet's waters. The ecological transformation began all over again. If all the water on the desert planet was trapped, worms could arise again. However, each of these worms carries a small part of Leto's consciousness. Thousands of years, imprisoned speechless in an eternal dream, he then has to wait until Sheeana appears , who understands him and whom he will obey.
Hwi Noree - the bride of the god emperor
Hwi Noree is an art product. She is a reciprocal clone of her uncle Malky, the former envoy from Ix to Leto's court. She was the first person born in a non-space. She received extensive training, including from the Bene Gesserit, and passed all exams with distinction.
As the new ambassador of Ix, her mission is to create an emotional bond with Leto II. The Ixians, who knew about the emotional weaknesses of the god emperor, practically committed a love assassination with Hwi. In fact, it works. However, Hwi's personality was too good for them. Almost immediately she broke away from Ix in order to marry the god-emperor. On the way to the wedding location, the car in which she was sitting with Leto II was attacked and both of them died.
The ecology of Arrakis
The desert planet has long been a green planet in this volume. The vegetation is lush and diverse. Rivers run through the landscape and flow into a sea. A satellite-based weather control system was installed to regulate precipitation and temperature. Only a small area of the planet, the sareer, was left as desert for Leto's personal well-being.
The position of the Fremen
The Fremen are only a shadow of themselves in this volume. Without the extreme living conditions offered by the desert planet, the iron discipline inherent in Fremenite culture can neither be maintained nor justified. They actually only exist because the order of the god-emperor condemns them to a existence as museum friars. For the tourists, they reproduce, at his behest, the ways of life and traditions of their forefathers. Their belief in Muad'dib has given way to belief in the God Emperor. The military strength of the empire lies in the hands of the fish speakers, who are drawn from all cultures.
literature
- Frank Herbert The god emperor of the desert planet Heyne May 2001, ISBN 3-453-18686-9
Web links
- Official Dune site (English)
