NEW Video: DUNE, Where Are The Aliens?

I've got a new video coming later today. Here is the text version of my video for now. :)

There are at least 13,000 worlds under the influence of the Great Houses of the Landraad 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. 15 centuries passed before anyone would return out of the scattering into the former Atreides Empire. Over the 5000 years of the Dune Saga, human beings continued to diversify. Some groups isolated themselves till the point where they were almost inhuman, but not quite. But even with human kinds exploration of deep space, there appears to be no concrete evidence of Alien Life.

The Dune Encyclopedia mentions the Legend of Ampoliros. This was during the time before the guild. This legend was spoken of on many worlds including Arrakis, Ix, Geidi Prime, and Ecaz, the legend speaks of the “Starsearcher '' a class 3 starship that continued to take on grander proportions until becoming a class 9 ship. According to the legend, in the year 480 BG the crew set off on a long journey towards the Niushe 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 anticytologic 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 of 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 bands.)

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 Ampoliros was never found. It is said to be still 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 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 Landsraad, 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 Aliens conflict was at least somewhat thought of.

The Dune Encyclopedia mentions that sometime after the death of the God-Emperor the Crompton Ruins were discovered. The Guild ship Tharondelai, captained by Levas Crompton, explored on the farthest borders of inhabited space. They were investigating a G Type Star called Sutterer 4041 and its surrounding planets. The fourth planet, which would eventually be named Crompton, was within the star's ecosphere. Upon investigating they discovered that the world was indeed habitable. After days of probing the world, they discovered some 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, Reola senShek, directed the satellite to a 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 in 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 a position to know, and their records held no evidence that that world had ever been visited by humankind. New would eventually get out of this discovery and an onslaught of investigation was begun.

(The second expedition of 14702, consisting of five heighliners carrying a host of personnel and a mass of equipment, returned to Crompton 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 3000 and 5000 years old. Further investigation of the solar system yielded no clues as to where this mysterious structure originated. The consensus was in fact that Intelligent Alien Life had been responsible for the Crompton ruins. The Crompton Ruins were considered solid evidence of the existence of Intelligent non-human lifeforms.

(And it was not hard to maintain this belief: the universe is a vast region, and some argued that it was not unlikely that chance occurrence put humanity on the scene some thousands of years after the aliens had been on Crompton. 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 one of Leto The Second’s No-Rooms was later uncovered on the planet Rakis. It turnt out that the structure on Crompton was basically identical to Leto II No-Room, though it had been decomposed by microorganisms on the world that had the ability to easily breakdown metals, and vegetable and animal fibers. The accepted theory of the Crompton Ruins being of Alien origin was all but demolished though the specialist on the ruins made the argument that nothing had truly been solved by the discovery on Rakis, the nature of the problem before them had simply shifted. Instead of the question being about the details of alien habitation of Crompton the question became about the mystery of how a when the God-Emperor had sent construction crews 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 often they are as much a part of galactic society as humans are. Alien lifeforms are often used as metaphors in science fiction for different groups of people, or as representatives of the unknown or the other.

In Dune, the roles that Aliens Life forms tend the play in most science fiction are taken up by other humans. The Tleilaxu for example are almost not human. They have isolated themselves on the planet Tleilaxu 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 are also humans, but they have been evolved in a process that involves huge amounts of the spice Melange. However no matter their appearance they are not alien. Frank Herbert wanted to tell a 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 a least one alien beings in the Dune 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 Sandtrout were brought to the world that this changed. You could never say that the Sandworms of Arrakis were intelligent beings, certainly, not before Leto 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, Ghanima.” She bent close to him. “Yes?” “The sandtrout . . .”

He fell silent and she wondered why he kept referring to the haploid phase of the planet’s giant sandworm, but she dared not prod him. “The sandtrout,” 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. Sandtrout encysted 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 sandworm phase.” “The sandtrout?” She shook her head, not doubting him, but unwilling to search those depths where he gathered such information. And she thought: Sandtrout? Many times in this flesh and others had she played the childhood game, poling for sandtrout, teasing them into a thin glove membrane before taking them to the deathstill 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. Tleilaxu spice, though usable, was believed by the Bene Gesserit 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 are many ways he could have done it. The story of the Starsearcher’s discovery of the derelict ship for instance invokes some really great cosmic terror concepts, which are common in the work of HP Lovecraft. As a fan of horror, I personally think this would have been an interesting and pretty terrifying way to introduce alien life into the dune series.