Are There Aliens in Dune?

[Music] [Music] there are at least 13 000 worlds under the influence of the great houses of the landsrad at the start of the dune series holtzman drive technology allows for instantaneous travel between the inhabited planets of the galaxy after the reign of the god emperor the great scattering of mankind would send humans out in all directions into the untraceable reaches of space fifteen centuries passed before anyone would return out of the scattering into the former ortradis empire over the five thousand years of the original dune saga human beings continued to diversify some groups isolated themselves to the point where they were almost inhuman but not quite but even with humankind's exploration of deep space there appears to be no concrete evidence of intelligent alien life the dune encyclopedia mentions the legend of the star searcher this was during the time before the guild the legend was spoken of on many worlds including arrakis ix getty prime and ekkus the legend speaks of the star searcher a class 3 starship that continued to take on grander proportions until becoming a class 9 starship according to the legend in the year 480 bg the crew set off on a long journey towards the noosh star system partway through their journey they came across an abandoned cargo vessel floating in space upon returning from examining the empty ship they resumed their journey two weeks later the entire crew was stricken by what must have been an anti-cytologic microspore the manifestations were high fever sweating dizziness and dementia magnum in a word the crew went mad they experienced the rarest form of psychosis group paranoia in a matter of three weeks they became convinced that all civilization had been destroyed by an invasion force of hideous aliens who attacked with unstoppable weapons from invisible starships they radioed this information to all receivers using the widest spectrum of emergency bans the crew supposedly went insane they had been fully convinced that they and the rest of humanity were under attack by an unseen enemy the crew made the decision to fly into space in search of these unseen alien attackers until they eventually ran out of stores the amperolis was never found it is said to still be searching the stars ever ready to attack the time dilation effect of near light speed travel making the crew almost immortal the people of the dune universe seem to have at least considered the idea of alien life according to the great convention the universal truce of mankind held in place by the alliance of the royal house the guild and the landsrad the use of atomic weapons is preserved for only non-human threats the use of atomics against humans was grounds for immediate planetary obliteration so it seems that the threat of alien conflict was at least somewhat thought of the dune encyclopedia also mentions that sometime after the death of the god emperor the crumpton ruins were discovered the guild ship the rondelai captained by levis crumpton explored on the farthest borders of inhabited space they were investigating a g-type star called sutter 4041 and its surrounding planets the fourth planet which would eventually be named crumpton was within the star's ecosphere upon investigating they discovered that the world was indeed habitable after days of probing the world they discovered something which appeared to be an artificial structure almost a kilometer across the structure was placed on the central continent of the world at the shore of its largest lake acting under long-standing regulations governing possible alien contact the captain ryola sincheck directed the satellite to closer and continuous reconnaissance while she ordered the ground crews to return to the ship the new photos revealed that the structure was considerably damaged with no sign of activity of any kind in the area the ground team was eventually sent to investigate the structure but found no signs of intelligent life anywhere on the surface of the world the guild was fully convinced that no human being had ever set foot on the planet they who held a monopoly on space travel were in the position to know and their records held no evidence that the world had ever been visited by humankind news would eventually get out of this discovery and the guild was determined to know the origins of these strange ruins the second visit to the world was of an enormous scale compared to the first the second expedition of 14702 consisting of five highliners carrying a host of personnel and a mass of equipment returned to crumpton while the news of alien contact spread through the inhabited worlds teams of archaeologists architects xenobiologists and the like combed every centimeter of the structure and performed the most intensive survey of an uninhabited planet ever undertaken they discovered that the ruins were between three thousand and five thousand years old further investigation of the solar system yielded no clues as to where these mysterious structures originated the consensus was in fact that intelligent alien life had been responsible for the crumpton ruins the ruins were considered solid evidence of the existence of intelligent non-human life forms and it was not hard to maintain this belief the universe is a vast region and some argue that it was not unlikely that chan's occurrence put humanity on the scene some thousands of years after the aliens had been on crumpton still they argued while we might not encounter the aliens tomorrow or next year or even in the next hundred years we know from the ruins that they are out there and we need to think about what to do when contact does take place this belief however crumbles once later the seconds no room was later discovered on the planet rakis it turned out that the structure on crumpton was basically identical to later the second's no room though it had been decomposed by microorganisms on the world that had the ability to easily break down metals and vegetable in animal fibers the accepted theory of the crumpton ruins being of alien origin was all but demolished though the specialists on the ruins made the argument that nothing had truly been solved by the discovery on raqqas the nature of the problem before them had simply shifted instead of the question being about the details of alien habitation of crumpton the question became about the mystery of how and when the god emperor had sent a construction crew to the world and why he had the structure built in the first place in many science fiction space epics aliens play at least some role either on the outskirts or out in they are as much a part of galactic society as humans are alien life forms are often used as metaphors in science fiction for different groups of people or as representatives of the unknown or the other in doom the roles that alien life forms tend to play in most science fiction are taken up by other humans the chile laksu for example are almost not human they have isolated themselves on the planet flalax for thousands of years they do not breed with outsiders and have developed the appearance of small elf-like beings the navigators of the guild also humans but they have been evolved in a process that involves huge amounts of spice melange however no matter their appearance they are not alien frank herbert wanted to tell the story that was entirely human he wanted to show us what we could become he wanted to show us our potential future and some of the many different directions that our human evolution could take even still there is at least one alien being in the doom series the planet arrakis did not always have the nickname dune eons ago arrakis was a wet planet a world of rivers oceans clouds and trees it wasn't until the sand trout were brought to the world that this changed you could never say that the sand worms of arrakis were intelligent beings certainly not before later the second's consciousness was split amongst them and yet so much of the human universe centers around the worms the entire economic structure of the galaxy is centered around one of the byproducts of its life cycle the spice melange his voice barely above a whisper he said i know what happened ganima she bent close to him yes the sand drought he fell silent and she wondered why he kept referring to the haploid phase of the planet's giant sand worm but she dared not brought him the sand trout he repeated was introduced here from some other place this was a wet planet then they proliferated beyond the capability of existing ecosystems to deal with them santrout insisted the available free water made this a desert planet and they did it to survive in a planet sufficiently dry they could move to their sand worm face the sand trout she shook her head not doubting him but unwilling to search those depths where he gathered such information and she thought sand trout many times in this flesh and others had she played the childhood game polling for sand trout teasing them into a thin glove membrane before taking them to the death still for their water it was difficult to think of this mindless little creature as a shaper of enormous events arrakis had not been special somewhere out there in space there had been another dune perhaps it still existed whether or not the worms had been brought to arrakis by accident or on purpose is unknown what is known is that the indefinite survival of the species is ensured they intertwined themselves in the fabric of human affairs the precious spice was the most valued commodity in the empire many in the empire were addicted to the substance and would die without it flalaxus spice though usable was believed by the bini jesuit to be inferior to true spice the worms had formed a kind of symbiotic relationship with humans intelligence is not the end all be all of evolution survival is the only goal the worm's ability to produce substances that affect the human consciousness and physiology on such a level has granted them an enormous evolutionary advantage it is not clear whether or not frank herbert ever intended to introduce intelligent alien life into the dune series if he was going there there are many ways he could have done it the story of the star searcher's discovery of a derelict ship for instance invokes some really great cosmic terror concepts which are common in the work of lovecraft as a horror fan i personally think this would have been an interesting and pretty terrifying way to introduce alien life into the dunes series thank you guys so much for watching my video if you enjoyed this video make sure you like and subscribe for more quinn's ideas and also if you would like follow me on twitter and you can also support this channel by clicking the patreon link or making a one-time donation through paypal also link in the description peace

Channel: Quinn's Ideas

Views: 1,012,635

Keywords: Dune, Aliens, Tleilaxu, Guild, Space, Planets, Exploration, Dune Lore, Explained, Guide

Id: HdWDZyTv010

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/fyodor_mikhailovich]

No. Frank Herbert was very specific about that.

[u/letsgocrazy]

In Children of Dune Leto 2 observes that the sandworm were not native to Arrakis. That means they had to have been brought there somehow.

I find it implausible that any humans could accidentally (or deliberately) have brought sandtrout from another planet and put them on Dune for two reasons: One, because there is no other planet that has or had sandworm in human memory, and none is ever found with prescience, and Two: all attempts to transplant the sandtrout failed before Leto 2's Golden Path which meant that each sandworm had a pearl of his wisdom in them which seemed to be the key to moving them.

It was Leto's intervention that made sandtrout transplantable - concious effort from those without the correct knowledge, and mere accident alone seems to be impossible.

I therefore conclude that a long disappeared and long distance alien race was responsible.

One might then wonder why they transplanted sandworms to Arrakis. Is or was there an alien species that valued Melange as much as humans?

[u/EnviableButt]

These guys are so desperate for content these days

[u/[deleted]]

The Dune books are entirely centred around aliens. Including a very much intelligent human/alien hybrid who dominates human society for thousands of years.

"I am no longer human" - Leto II, CoD

"It was difficult avoiding the thought that Leto’s face was an obscenity, a lost bit of humanity trapped in something alien" - Duncan Idaho, GEoD

"his many hearts once more were reforming in their slow transformation toward something profoundly alien" - re. Leto II, GEoD

"I am the ultimate alien" - Leto II, GEoD