^ IIRC, they were serial published in one or SF magazines first, then collected into the first trilogy. Foundation’s Edge was, arguably, the first ‘real’ Foundation book. As for the ones not written by Asimov... (YMMV, just IMO) Cheers, -CM-
Makes sense, the characters are little more then plot devices for Asimov to continue his explaining how future civilization fell apart and how the Foundation is supposed to keep things going in the interim. It's not a story of characters, it's really just like a type of documentary.
Especially since the timeframe is so big in Foundation, no human character could live that long to cover Foundation in a single lifetime and Herbert got around that with the concept of genetic memory and later on Gholas.
Coming back the this movie..... With a re-read of Dune, and watching some youtube clips of the movie and miniseries..... I can't help but wonder how the new movie will depict Navigators. Quite interesting to see Villeneuve's approach.
I'm kinda hoping that other than the reveal in the climax that one of the agents was a first stage navigator that we don't see any of the fully mutates 3rd stage. Save it for Messiah. It's not necessary to the plot and would cut down on runtime or having a 5 - 10 minute sequence where they fold space like the other adaptations
Good point. They never did appear as such in the original novel. I'm mostly curious as to what they would look like in Villeneuve's style.
Yep. They, like many series, were originally serialized, then later collected into one or more books later. Most of the Elric series, all of the first Amber series (except the first book) and the entirety of the Foundation “Trilogy”. In fact, I have about three original issues, including my favorite story “The General” and bonus points: it’s illustrated! Even the original Dune stories were serialized first and I may have a chapter of Dune Messiah or CoD IIRC. Of the later Foundation books by Asimov...I remember liking Forward The Foundation most because it returned to the short(er) story format. Sadly it was another fucking prequel depicting a Seldon that didn’t really line up with classic Seldon, i.e., he achieves an incredibly prominent and powerful role that isn’t mentioned at all in his later trial. Just didn’t work for me and if Asimov had to retcon something, it should’ve been the “and they faced no more significant threats” ending of Second Foundation so that he could try finish the thousand year interregnum. As for the Dune movie, prolly my second most anticipated film this year.
I don't know; it's such an iconic part of the IP just as much as sandworms, ornithopters and stillsuits; it'd be strange not to have some kind of depiction of a navigator, however brief. Aside from the spectacle, the movie needs to establish how this universe works in terms of space travel and why the Guild is both so powerful and yet so vulnerable. Books have the advantage of doing so in prose, but a movie needs to show more than tell.
I've really got to disagree with the idea that they are as iconic and integral to the IP as Sandworms etc. In the entire OG series you only ever see 1 3rd stage navigator, and he's the villiage idiot in the second novel. The only reason they could be considered iconic is because Lynch turned them into the driving force of his film, opening the movie with them and giving them there big space folding sequence. Even so, his design is more known for being made fun of as a floating space vagina than as some great cinematic creation. Then the mini gave us that dumb puppet with his own 5 minute space folding sequence and the sequel gave us another design, this time in cgi, of the villiage idiot, for part of the first episode. Space travel mechanics are usually glossed over in movies, wouldn't be any different for this.
The navigators are kind necessary, if for no other reason than to help establish the what the spice can do. I guess they could keep them off screen for a dramatic reveal later, but I think it would work better if they showed them right off the bat.
Navigators, i.e. the Spacing Guild, are the true power behind the Imperial Throne. Everybody knows this - hell, if you were at war with another house your ships could be parked right next to each other on the way to a warzone and while inside you couldn't so much as point a BB gun at the enemy for fear of losing your transport privileges. To me it's a nice analogy to our real world corporations, especially the energy sector, that basically run the world behind the curtain and every government, even the USA, bow to them in one way or the other. It should absolutely be in the movie as it is central to the final fight between Paul and the Emperor (and in extension the Spacing Guild). Paul has the power to destroy the Spice for good thus destroying the existing political/power structure and they know it when he knocks them off their high horse. As to the actual scenes - i like the Lynch version of it very much though maybe not the navigator puppet model and i guess we'll see a modern version of a mutated human.
I would much prefer a scene showing what the spice does rather than a long voice over explaining the world. Wasn't this the original intention of the novel?
The Guild is not the power behind the throne at all. The Sardaukar are. The Guild are explicitly described as a parasitic organisation, one that absolutely cannot take control over the imperium without sealing their own destruction. Them being the "power behind the throne" is yet another addition made by Lynch. Politics in Dune are described as a tripod, the military and economic power of the Imperial House balanced against the military and economic power of the Landsraad, balanced against the Guilds space monopoly. The Emperor gives in to Paul is because he is beaten militarily, Feyd fails to kill Paul, and then Fenring refuses to kill Paul. Paul's threat to destroy spice production stops the Guild from allowing the Landsraad forces to land on the planet and dispersing the fleet. He defeats the Emperor militarily, he defeats the Guild with his threat of destroying the Spice, and he takes control over the Landsraad with his marriage to Irulan and Shaddam's abdication in his favour. He then secures his power over the Landsraad with the 12 year Jihad. The revelation of the guilds addiction to spice is handled by the guild agent losing a contact lens, showing one blue in blue spice addicted eye. Blue in blue eyes having been established throughout the novel as the definitive sign of spice addiction. I see no reason that having a sequence with a mutated human floating in a tank better expresses the idea.
I disagree - the Guild has the monopoly on space travel, if they shut down their services it would destroy the Empire as every planet would devolve to an Empire/Kingdom on their own with no way to interact with each other. As Paul said he who can destroy a thing controls the thing, the same applies to the Guild (and we are not yet at the time of the later books where they invent machines that could serve as a Navigator). All you described is a nice front for the public, a system that looks nice and balanced but in reality isn't. All the military and economic power of the Emperor and the Landsraad are based on the ability to be able to move within the Empire to exert that power and so the Guild is the lynchpin. It may not be clear to everybody how crucial Spice actually is beyond the popular use as a life extending drug and those who suspect it surely don't act on that knowledge as they rightfully fear the Guild retribution.
Yet in Dune it's mentioned that no-one other than their agents have seen the mutated guild navigators and Paul wants to get a look at one. He's warned off because his attempt to see a navigator could cost House Atreides it's shipping privileges.
It doesn't apply to the Guild because Paul, Leto II, and the Guild explicitly state in the novels that using there power as such would destroy the Guild. That they had their navigators explore the paths where they used there monopoly over space travel to explore futures where they abandoned neutrality for power and all those futures ended in disaster for them. The only way for the Guild to continue existing was for it to remain a 3rd party, neutral in all political affairs, never using the power that came from its space faring monopoly beyond as a business enterprise. "And he thought then about the Guild—the force that had specialized for so long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword…and now they could not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of specializing on the melange awareness-spectrum narcotic for their navigators. They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they’d existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce a new host when the old one died. The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation. Let them look closely at their new host, Paul thought."
Wasn't it that kind of "Safe" thinking that led Leto II to go for his Golden Path plan? He wanted to create a new future for humanity where there'd be no way for any prescient, a person or group, to be able to see Humanity's future and try to control it.
Interesting discussion. I thought Lynch had several great visual/expositional elements that helped translate book to film in first act: 1. The Irulan intro - one of my favourite ever movie openings (the extended/TV cut with paintings is horrible) 2. The Secret Report - atmospherically creepy and informative 3. The throne room scene - it very quickly establishes conspiracy of diverse forces against the Atreides. And having 3rd Stage Guild Navigator helped set up just how strange this universe is 3. Introduction to Paul - reading of these other worlds 4. Having established the Navigators, the 'folding space' trip from Caladan to Arrakis makes perfect sense and saves costly FTL sfx I don't believe Villeneuve will slavishly duplicate. But I suspect he's a Lynch and/or Lynch Dune fan and he'll take from the best of Lynch's version. I'd forgotten this is how Dune the novel opens....a lot of expo dumping Spoiler A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place. —from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul. It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather. The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed. By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow—hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels. "Is he not small forhis age, Jessica?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset. Paul's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence." "So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already fifteen." "Yes, Your Reverence." "He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach ... well...." Within the shadows of his bed, Paul held his eyes open to mere slits. Two bird-bright ovals—the eyes of the old woman—seemed to expand and glow as they stared into his. "Sleep well, you sly little rascal," said the old woman. "Tomorrow you'll need all your faculties to meet my gom jabbar." And she was gone, pushing his mother out, closing the door with a solid thump. Paul lay awake wondering: What's a gom jabbar? In all the upset during this time of change, the old woman was the strangest thing he had seen. Your Reverence. And the way she called his mother Jessica like a common serving wench instead of what she was—a Bene Gesserit Lady, a duke's concubine and mother of the ducal heir. Is a gom jabbar something of Arrakis I must know before we go there? he wondered. He mouthed her strange words: Gom jabbar ... Kwisatz Haderach. There had been so many things to learn. Arrakis would be a place so different from Caladan that Paul's mind whirled with the new knowledge. Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet. Thufir Hawat, his father's Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreides in fief-complete—an apparent victory for the Duke Leto. Yet, Hawat had said, this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Leto was popular among the Great Houses of the Landsraad. "A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful," Hawat had said. Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet.
The Guild was not part of the conspiracy against the Atreides though, that again was an addition by Lynch. The Harkonnens and the Emperor were the only two forces allied against the Atreides. The Harkonnens because they're the Harkonnens and the Emperor because the Atreides had developed a small fighting force nearly the quality of the Sardaukar and Leto was raising in popularity among the Landsraad, so the E Perot needed to take him down before Leto could expand his near Sardaukar level forces/increase his baking among the Landsraad and become a legit threat to his thrown. The Guild, as always, was neutral, exploiting the situation for profit, not instigating the entire situation as in the Lynch film.
Yeah, the Lynch movie is a big part of it, but that doesn't make it any less so. IP that cross mediums often grow and pick up new elements that feed back into them (see: kryptonite originating from the radio serials and begin integrated into every subsequent incarnation.) When people think of sandworms, odds are they're thinking of Lynch's take on sandworms. Images are powerful and pervasive, and that's just how it goes. Except in this story, they're vital to the plot. (See below) The Sardaukar are not the power behind the throne, they're the power in front of the throne. They're a very visible and overt threat that keeps any one Great House from making an open grab for power. They are not a power unto themselves, but an extension of the Emperor's will...and incidentally pose exactly ZERO threat to the Spacing Guild since they NEED the Guild to get them off Salusa Secundus. This is covered in some depth in the later books; the Guild *could* have easily ceased control of the Imperium long ago, but instead chose to act as a parasite. Taking only what the "host" would tolerate (if just barely.) The reasoning behind this is tied up with their precience and their fear of the uncertainty and potential chaos that such a move would unleash. The point being, it was well within their power. All they lacked was the will. Paul understood this since his entire insurrection was built on the idea that if you can destroy a thing, you control it. He found a way to destroy the spice, which in turn would destroy the Guild and with them all of human civilisation as they knew it. The Guild was the key to power in the Imperium and so that's where he applied pressure, and ultimately it was the Guild that forced Shaddam to surrender the throne. Then it was Paul's stranglehold on Arakkis and spice production that leashed the Guild to his will and forced them to facilitate his jihad. So yeah, the Guild are the real power behind the throne...until Muad'Dib.