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Comment by Houshalter | Hacker News Reader

Dune's setting feels almost medieval instead of futuristic. Some futuristic technologies exist. But in many ways it shows how humanity has regressed rather than advanced.

A lot of it feels an awful lot more like magic than science. Like the mind reading and prophecy stuff. The more interesting technology, personal shields, is just an excuse to explain why people fight with swords instead of modern weapons. Which lends to the medieval feel thing. And an awful lot of technology is missing, like anything remotely like a computer. The robot wars happened in the distant past and aren't part of the story. Just an explanation for why there aren't any computers. It's barely mentioned in the book at all actually.

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Mindreading? Was that in the books, have I forgotten it? I believe it's in the movie, sort of, but in the book the Bene Gesserit were trained to communicate with covert hand signals while simultaneously carrying on a verbal conversation. I think they conveyed this in the movie as mindreading, but it's been years since I watched it.

The parent comment used the phrase mind reading. In the book it wasn't technically mind reading but picking up on body language and stuff. But to such an insane level it might as well be mind reading. Also they could literally mind control people through their voice. And at one point they drink a potion that lets them communicate telepathically and some other crazy stuff. Not to mention Paul's future seeing ability.

s/mindreading/truthseeing/

Ah, yeah, forgot about that. Reminds me a bit of Lie to Me taken to an extreme.

It's still SF though:

Human computers (mentats), drug-assisted spaceship navigation, genetic manipulation and cloning (the Tleilaxu), ecological reshaping of planets, complex ecological lifecycles, etc.

Anyway you dice it, Dune is a genuine work of SF with a rennaissance/medieval flavor.

I've only read the first book, perhaps the rest of the series does get more sci-fi. But there are no clones or genetic engineering, and nothing about drug assisted spaceship navigation. The mentats are just highly trained people.

If your definition of sci-fi is anything set in the future or with some futuristic technology, then sure. But there is something very different between Dune and "typical" sci fi. It reminds me a lot of Star Wars, which people have described something like "fantasy adventure that just happens to take place in space". But at least star wars is filled with blasters and droids and space battles.

No, sci-fi is not "anything set in the future", which is why I didn't use the word "future" in my post at all. By that token, SF is also NOT "filled with blasters and droids and space battles"... that's space opera! ;)

It's true there are no clones in the first Dune book, but there is genetic engineering (that's what the Bene Gesserit breeding program is, after all). There is drug assisted navigation -- how else do you think the Guild Navigators manage to do it? That's a main plot point and why Arrakis and melange are so important. The mentats go beyond being "highly trained" people (they are the "human" response to computers after the Butlerian Jihad), and they claim the drugs they sip (called "sapho juice") assist them in their mental powers -- but if they were merely highly trained people, that would still be firmly within the realm of SF and outside Fantasy :) This is all from the first book, by the way.

Dune has plenty of SF, as myself and others have already mentioned.

Both the mentat and the navigators are assisted by spice (the juice of saphoo or whatever is a spice concoction). The navigators themselves are potentially a new species after evolving under heavy influence by the spice.

> nothing about drug assisted spaceship navigation

I think you missed something.

Quite possibly. Is it in the last 76 pages because I haven't finished it yet. So far the guild has only been mentioned as some mysterious organization no one knows anything about. I think they said no one has even seen a guildsman. They certainly haven't been an important part of the story.

There are a number of references, some oblique and some more direct. One of the clearer you've probably not hit yet (at least at the writing of your comment). But you've earlier passed, for instance, "But the idea of living out his life in the mind-groping-ahead-through-possible-futures that guided hurtling spaceships appalled him. It was a way, though. And in meeting the possible future that contained Guildsmen he recognized his own strangeness."

> They certainly haven't been an important part of the story.

Directly? No. But they're why the spice is necessary to space travel, which plays a major role in the economics (and thereby politics) of the situation.

The sci-fi take is basically "what would the future look like if we had interstellar FTL travel and enhanced humans, but no computers, lasers, or bullets?"

It's hard to imagine any kind of modern government where your armies have to be trained in hand-to-hand rather than conscripted with rifles, and where you can't have computers to keep track of records.

I can understand why you might not buy into it, but it is very much a speculative fiction type book.

They have lasers, but if they hit a personal shields it explodes the the shooter, the victim and anyone near both.

They also have computers, but they're limited.

Trying to classify Dune, I think it's more of a Hyper-Postappocalyptic setting with today's eyes.

I tend to think of Fantasy as linked to philosophy (moral choices etc), while Sci-fi is linked to sociology (what would society be like if...). But those classes don't really help with Dune, so I choose the HPA definition.

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