Yeah with Dune you sortof just have to ignore the tech. It never makes much sense.

Later on the books get heavy into bio-engineering. Some really strange stuff in the books w/ clones (and multiples/generations of the same clones) etc. The film sorta hinted at it a bit with the spider creature thing (which is not in the original book) but...one of the distinct things about the Dune universe is anything "alien" is really just weird Human bio-engineering.