The Legends of Dune series goes back to the time when thinking machines were a common part of life and tells the tale of woe that lead to the edict "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind". The series consists of:-The Butlerian Jihad The Machine CrusadeThe Battle of Corrin Plot ***Spoilers***The Butlerian JihadThe Butlerian Jihad introduces a generation of characters whose families will later become the most significant in the universe: the Atreides, the Corrinos and the Harkonnens. Serena Butler, daughter of the viceroy of the League of Nobles, is a strong voice for the human rebellion. Her paramour Xavier Harkonnen leads the military force on the current League capital world of Salusa Secundus. As the story begins, Xavier is repelling an attack on the planet by Omnius' army of cymeks. The cymeks are former humans whose brains have been implanted in preservation canisters, which in turn can be installed into a variety of fearsome mechanical bodies, to extend their lives indefinitely and make them nearly unstoppable. The original twenty cymeks (calling themselves the Titans) had conquered the complacent universe by exploiting humanity's reliance and dependency on machines, yet the Titans were later overthrown themselves by Omnius, an artificial intelligence of their design. Seeking to replace human chaos with machine order, Omnius thus ignited the war between machine and humanity. Vorian Atreides is, ironically, the son and subordinate of the leading cymek Titan Agamemnon (whose last name, Atreides, originates with House Atreus, from the ancient Greek epic the Iliad).Meanwhile, the Sorceresses of Rossak, a matriarchal order, are perfecting their destructive psychic powers for use against the machines, and maintaining a breeding program to create more powerful telepaths. Pharmaceutical magnate Aurelius Venport is about to discover an interesting new substance, the spice melange, and the famous inventor Tio Holtzman accepts the dimunitive genius Norma Cenva into his employ.Serena is captured by the Titan Barbarossa and put under the watch of Erasmus, an independent robot who seeks to understand humans completely so that the thinking machines may be truly superior. His methods of study often entail human vivisection and torture in his slave pens. Erasmus takes a liking to Serena, as does the young Vorian Atreides. Serena realizes she is pregnant with Xavier's child, and later gives birth to a baby boy whom she names Manion (after her father). Erasmus finds this distraction inconvenient, and not only removes Serena's uterus but kills her young son in front of her.This single event incites the entire Jihad, and young Manion is soon labelled the first martyr, Manion the Innocent. Vorian, learning about the murder and realizing the lie he lives as a machine trustee, betrays his machine masters and flees with Serena. They are joined by another trustee, Iblis Ginjo, a slave leader who masterminds the rebellion on Synchronized Earth.The first human victory of the so-called Butlerian Jihad is the destruction of Earth and the Earth Omnius using atomics. Iblis (now Grand Patriarch of the Holy Jihad) and Serena (Priestess of the Jihad) are the religious leaders of the human rebellion, and Xavier and Vorian its two generals. The brutal Titans are desperate to break free of their machine masters and wage their own techno-misanthropic war, and Omnius and Erasmus are determined to conquer and destroy all of mankind once and for all.And on a lonely desert planet known as Arrakis, the seeds of legend are sown with Selim Wormrider, an outcast from his tribe, who sees the future of Shai-Hulud and makes it his mission to save his God from those who would wish to take the spice.The Machine CrusadeDune: The Machine Crusade moves forward into the center of the Butlerian Jihad, described in the first book of the trilogy, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Leading the movement is the ex-slave and ex-machine trustee Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo. However, Iblis appears more interested in politics and his own personal legacy than in the Jihad.Vorian Atreides, despite the long life given to him by his father, the Titan Agamemnon, begins to show the vestiges of wanting to settle down after visiting the planet Caladan, and meeting Leronica Tergiet, who is to become his long-term concubine.Xavier Harkonnen manages to free Ix from the thinking machines and must eventually make the ultimate sacrifice that will tarnish his name.The robot Erasmus continues with his enlightening human experimentation, and makes a curious bet with the Omnius entity on Corrin, where he claims he can raise a human being to be orderly and civilized like a machine. This child is Gilbertus Albans, the first true Mentat.Omnius himself suffers badly from a computer virus created by Vorian and spread unwittingly by his old companion Seurat.On Ginaz, the aging Zon Noret is killed in a training accident by a mek called Chirox, a captured and reprogrammed fighting machine. Though Noret did not live to pass on his skills to the other Ginaz mercenaries, Chirox remained to train them into the greatest of all mercenaries, the Swordmasters, who will be the ultimate fighting force against the thinking machines.On the planet of Poritrin, Norma Cenva leaves the world just in time to avoid a slave uprising during which a slave, unaware of the consequences, fires a lasgun into a Holtzman personal shield. The resulting explosion wipes out Tio Holtzman's labs; the slave revolt is eventually brutally crushed. Meanwhile Norma, due to her heritage as daughter of the main Sorceress of Rossak Zufa Cenva, finally taps into her latent powers under great pressure (precipitated by her capture and subsequent torture by the Titan Xerxes) to become the spearhead of humanity. She envisions a future in which massive ships transport goods and humans instantaneously across the universe, using the Holtzman effect to fold space. Norma's ships are the first of what will later be known as heighliners, and her family uses their monopoly on such travel to found the Spacing Guild.As for the slaves on Poritrin, a small band of Zensunnis steal the first space-folding ship and flee to a lonely desert planet called Arrakis, where they will join the followers of Selim, and become the Free Men of Arrakis.Finally, the remaining Titans take their chance becoming independent from their machine master Omnius on the planet of Bela Tegeuse.The Battle of CorrinThe machine evermind Omnius is continuing with his plans to eradicate all humans in the universe. After first being suggested by the traitor Yorek Thurr, an RNA retrovirus is designed by the captured Tlulaxa Rekur Van and the independent robot Erasmus. Omnius then launches capsules containing the retrovirus to infect the planets inhabited by the hapless humans. With a 43% direct-mortality rate, the virus succeeds in effectively crippling the League of Nobles, leaving them vulnerable to attack.It is discovered that consumption of the spice melange has the effect of both bolstering immunity to the retrovirus and stopping its progression in some of those already infected. Omnius, unaware that the virus has been effectively stopped, prepares for the second phase of its attack. Gathering the bulk of the machine armies stationed at the different synchronized planets, the evermind launches the massive fleet towards the League capital Salusa Secundus. After learning of the imminent destruction headed their way in the form of the machine fleet, Vorian Atreides formulates a plan whereby the humans can launch pulse-atomic attacks on all of the undefended Synchronized Worlds, ridding the universe of Omnius altogether. However, this plan called for the use of the still unreliable space-folding technology in order to carry out the attacks before the machines have a chance to recall the fleet en route to Salusa. The Great Purge is successful in destroying Omnius on all but one planet, albeit with an appalling cost in human lives because each planet was turned into slag, and while all the machines were obliterated, all the captured humans and slaves on these planets were also killed. Each time the human armies fold space to a new location there is a 10% attrition rate due to the undependable space-folders because of the uncertainty principle. In all, it amounted to billions of lives lost. The humans are also unable to destroy Omnius on the primary synchronized world, Corrin. While the other Evermind incarnations are being attacked, the cogitor Vidad travels to Corrin and warns Corrin-Omnius of the human counter-offensive. The machine fleet is recalled to defend their last remaining stronghold. Despite this, Serena Butler’s Jihad is declared over. The Great Purge ended with an impasse between humans and thinking machines on the planet Corrin. While unable to destroy the machines, the human army is able to trap them on Corrin by surrounding the planet with a net of scrambler satellites, so that any thinking machine attempting to leave would have its gelcircuitry mind destroyed. This situation continues for almost 20 years with the machines unable to escape, and most humans unwilling to enter another battle. Omnius, again at the suggestion of Thurr, sends machines with primitive minds that can evade the scrambler network to attack Salusa Secundus and Rossak. These attacks have a limited effect, but are enough to remind the humans that the machines are still a threat. Touting his victory over the Titans (see below), Vorian Atreides convinces the League to attack Corrin. Facing robots using human shields and unable to use their main tactical weapons due to treachery by Abulurd Harkkonen, the Army of Humanity is bogged down around Corrin. They are forced to use most of their atomics to destroy the robot defenders. There is a ground offensive by Ginaz mercenaries that finally destroys Omnius, but not before he sends out an unknown radio message into space. Following the Battle of Corrin, Viceroy Faykan Butler renames himself Faykan Corrino in commemoration.
When I was young and foolish, I was as taken with Frank Herbert’s Dune at the rest of the world, but I found myself significantly less enchanted with his sequels. I subsequently became aware that his son and another writer were continuing the series, but I stuck my nose in one of the books at a book store and decided I was not interested. Last summer, however, I purchased one of them at a library book sale, only to discover that the very thick book I had purchased was in fact the sequel to a book that was a prequel to another set of prequels to Dune, so I set it aside until such time as I might find the first of the two. This is that first book, and I find it troubling. What can I say? Brian Herbert collaborated with his father on at least one novel, and he has published several prize-winning science-fiction novels in his own right, and Kevin Anderson has published some thirty-odd science-fiction novels; there can be no doubt that they are professionals, well learned in the craft. But this book reads largely as though it were written by a high school kid with a big vocabulary--big because it is filled with made-up words. The characters are more two-dimensional than Dickens’s much denigrated characters were, and their dialog (what little there is of it) is so stilted that it seems almost Elizabethan. There is plot aplenty--a sweeping plot that covers the cultures of a 41 different planets, 68 different characters (all with difficult names, and several of whom have two different names at various times), and a variety of spaceships and weapons and places and creeds that are named but never really described or defined. This is 612 pages of pure drudgery, much of it seeming to be foolish. And yet …And yet I have sat herein my kitchen chair late into the night for too many nights, unable to stop turning the pages, to go on for one more chapter and then another and then another, even when I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. How are we to measure the value of a book other than to say it had to be finished? There was never any question of putting it down uncompleted. As silly as the young lovers were, I had to find out what happened to them. As inane as the various subplots were (and there are many), I had to see how they worked out. And did I? No! This 612-page book is merely the first half of the story, and now I must go find and read the book I purchased last summer … hoping all the way that I will find the story to end there, and not be continued in some other successive installments I have not yet been made aware of.The time is some ten thousand years before the advent of the Dune episode … and a thousand years after 20 teenagers took over Earth’s empire, which had grown complacent and dumb, which at that time consisted of some 14-odd planets. Those 20 hooligans employed unexplained life-extending techniques and then followed that up by transferring their brains into robotic bodies, in which they continue to enslaved and terrorize the rest of humanity. Along the way, however, one of them got careless and let the robots with artificial intelligence take on too much power, until one of the latter developed so much self-awareness that it took over the empire itself, which thus became known as the Synchronized Worlds, with the “evermind” now ruling the 20 conquerors. Aside from these there are some 18 planets which have managed not to become synchronized (that is, maintaining an unexplained independence from the “evermind” that is the central AI intelligence), called the League of Worlds, along with nine other planets that belong to neither side and are called the Unallied Planets. On one of the League worlds there is an incredibly accomplished and beautiful young woman named Serena Butler, the daughter of her planet’s Viceroy to the League, who falls in love with an equally incredibly accomplished and handsome young soldier. He wants to fight the evil robotic empire; she wants to incorporate the Unallied Planets into the League (even though most of them seem to be backwater societies that would not be of much use). Then the evil robotic empire strikes, and the story begins.There are numerous subplots that never get resolved; I have to presume that they will be continued in the sequel, which I seem to remember to be as thick as this one. I can hardly wait …but first I think I’ll go cleanse myself by reading a couple biographies of real people.
What do You think about The Butlerian Jihad (2003)?
OK, so after the critical phenom success of Herbert & Anderson's first DUNE prequel trilogy...they decide to cash in their chips and do another one. Jesus wept. This series chronicles the Butlerian Jihad hinted at in Frank Herbert's original books, the war by man to cast of the shackles put on them by thinking machines. However...you don't really get an appreciation for humanity's suffering here. There's plenty of free humans living on Salusa Secundus even though Omnius and his machine hordes have taken over Earth. And worse, the humans on Salusa are assholes. They could give a shit less about all the humans living in (semi) bondage on Earth. Worse STILL, is that humans themselves still enslave other humans as in the case of the Zensunni and Zenshiite slaves.BUTLERIAN is tremendously sci-fi compared to the original DUNE novels. There's machines, machine brutality and torture, life-extension, explosions, planet busting, blah blah blah. ALL your general sci-fi conventions are present here. Again with Herbert & Anderson, there's the "oh cool" factor of seeing how the spice was discovered, how Holtzman developed folding technology, how the Atreides/Harkonnen feud began. But ultimately, this is a book (nay, a TRILOGY!) of PLOT VOMIT. That's right, it's just one thing happening after the other, melodramatic moment piled on top of meodramatic moment in the vain hopes of eliciting sympathy for any of the characters. The only sympathy I had for any character was for the Cogitors, the disembodied brains that just sit in tanks and think all day. Gee, that must be nice. Go fuck a sandworm, Anderson!The worse crime is that these books get WORSE AND WORSE. At least this one's a passably OK sci-fi read if you ignore the larger narrative it's supposed to be contributing to.
—Dufour
As other reviews have stated, this is not the most well written of books, and some of the plot holes are pretty hard to ignore. In particular the behaviours of the machine overlords and the idea that humans, reduced to slave status, would have any impact is a stretch. This kind of scenario has been done much better elsewhere.However, this is the world of Dune and for those who loved Dune as kids, as I did, you'll find it easy to forget the difficulties with the novel and just enjoy the exploration of the Dune back-story and the origins of the complex society that Herbert described. For that alone it is well worth a read of any Dune fan, and I for one will happily work my way through the whole series.
—Mark Cheverton
Long, long from now in a galaxy too close for comfort, humanity (fondly called "feral humans" by the thinking machines) is struggling for existence. Besieged as they are, the humans themselves are of course not entirely blameless and many of them have not discovered the concept of "human rights" and "equality."Bravery, treachery, deceit, galactic battles - it's all there - lots of fun. Seen through the long glass of our future prospects, based on where we are now, the concepts are believable. It's a good read, has good pacing, with each chapter having a nice arc to it, and the characters are colorful/interesting/flawed, many having great obstacles to overcome. The perspective has a certain distance, being not as far as historical reading, but not as close as first-person or day-to-day following one person through various doings. I like the perspective very much and think the authors did a great job managing the parallel threads of the story. I plunged right into the next one, The Machine Crusade.
—Flash Beagle
