I’ve recently borrowed and read God Emperor and Chapterhouse Dune from my library and thought they where pretty good, but a couple of questions arose.
I realise I should have read Heretics of Dune before Chapterhouse but they didn’t have it in stock.
The Golden Path was the stuff, some nice, some not so nice, Leto had to do as ruler in the present to assure humanity a perfect future, if I remember my Dune Messiah correctly
And I forget what the second one was. :\
I’m sure it had something to do with his continuing along the path of becoming a worm.
Yeah, That was a part of it, and when he died the his bosy would react with the water and bring spice back, or something.
What’re the post-Messiah books like anyway? I’ve not heard many good things about them, and that PA comic I can’t be bothered to hunt down. :\
They’re good. But reallllllllllyyyyyyyyyy confusing. I also discovered that Frank Herbet loves to put huge spaces in time between his books. A good site, but has spoilers.
I didn’t think these were even written by Frank Herbert. I thought they all got I’ve read up to and including God Emperor (not Messiah. Man I suck at remembering). I’ll probably pick up the other two at some point in second-hand shops. Dune rocks.
I also have read House Atreides by his son and Kevin J. Anderson. It’s really quite good, you should try it.
I’ve read the first Dune book, but I heard the rest were kinda substandard in compairison. i have yet to read any of the others.
They are, but that doesn’t really mean much. If you can get into them they’re all great books. To me though he should have ended it at Messiah. :\
Has anyone seen the Hallmark channel mini-series of Children Of Dune, it incorperates Messiah and it rocks immensley.
All the Dune books are good, but after Children they get very complicated.
I’ve seen the miniseries of the original Dune, but only the first part of Children.
I hated the Dune mini-series. Mostly for their pronunciation :hahaha;
Check out the rest of Children though, it’s really worth it.
Leto’s Golden Path was his way of removing humanity from the trap of prescience that his father created. The aftermath of the 3500 years of “Leto’s Golden Peace” made it such that never again could all humanity be attacked as a single entity. It was not meant as a perfect future, only as a means of fixing the mistakes of his father. It was intended to provide humanity with a lesson it could never hope to forget.
The Honored Matres are apparrently some distant decendants of the Bene Gesserit returning from the Scattering (a mass exodus from the Empire of the Million Worlds, following the death of Leto II) after what would appear to be about 1500 years outside known space. That is all that was every actually told about them. If the seventh book had been completed before Frank Herbert’s death, I am sure that they would have been explained in much greater detail.
After Dune Messiah the series deals with the aftermath of Muad’Dib’s reign. He had more or less turned humanity into a single entity, thus causing its survival to be fairly chancy. That is where the origin of the Golden Path lies.
That’s my 2 cents on the topic, I’ve read the series probably 8 or 9 times. I really like these books.
Rock on DS. You pretty much got it perfectly. Now excuse me while I go and re-read from Messiah to God Emperor and catch all that. 
You didn’t mention Heretics of Dune, you should have read that before Chapterhouse.
The golden path was also a way to wean humanity off of its spice addiction. The problem with the spice was that it was only found on Dune, could not be artificially manufactured in Letos time, and if the spice production was destroyed the result would be catostrophic. Travel between planets would become impossible, and trillions of middle class citizens would die from withdrawal.
The reason Letos rule was so harsh and confining was part of the golden path. He knew that the more he tried to control people, the more they would want to escape. This created an event alluded to in later books as The Scattering, where massive numbers of people (obviously) scattered out into space.
Deathstryke puts it best. I think the reason you are so confused DD is because Herbert did not really wish his readers to truly understand the Golden Path. He kinda kept it vague so no one could disagree with it, making it seem Leto II is really some Godlike wiseman, since Herbert himself is not some Godlike wiseman. But what DS said was pretty much the general point of the Golden Path. Another point of the Golden Path, however, was to suppress humanity’s desire for violence. The theory behind it was that if you denied mankind violence for so long, they would slowly forget about it. I find it kind of ironic that a huge war came after this. As for the Honored Matres, they are pretty much masters of sexual energies, using them to enslave the universe.
It’s true, the books slowly get worse and worse. Dune and Dune Messiah were kick ass, Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune were okay, but Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune were a plague upon the Dune series. Also, I don’t know about you guys, but I found the reoccurence of Duncan Idaho in every single book a bit annoying. He didn’t really have much of a part in the first one, but his first ghola was okay. After that, they just sucked. As for the Dune and Children of Dune miniseries, it beat that crappy 80’s Dune movie. I thought they did a pretty good job. It reminded me of LOTR, not really sticking exactly with the story, but still doing a good job.
Deathstryke puts it best
did hell just freeze over? that isn’t said too terribly often…
I very much agree that it must have been hard to pull off having a 3500 year old character that can see all aspects of both past and future, without having any such experience. Another aspect of the Golden Path can be seen in Siona Ibn Fuad al-Seyefa Atreides (I think I spelled most of that right…), she being the product of Leto’s breeding of a person whose path is invisible to time. In this way he ensures that no one can again rule by precience.
I never really thought of the later books in the series as bad, just that they take a different overall slant than the first book, which was mainly a very complicated allegory (I hate that word…) for the on going situation in the middle east.
I liked the crappy 80’s movie. It had Patrick Stewart as Gurney! ;_;