This post contains spoilers For the books of "Dunne" written on Frank Herbert.

Duna's book series, which extends away from where Currently planned film trilogy Expects to end, it takes place in a strange territory. There are large shakes of throwing, significant changes in thematic focus and massive time jumps. By the time you reach the fourth book, "God Emperor of Duna", almost every character in the first book has been dead for almost 3,500 years. By the time you reach the fifth book "Duna's heretics", almost every character in the fourth book is dead and about 1,500 years.

Despite all those shifts and changes, the author Frank Hebert, however, gave the series a few constants to hold. The first was Duncan Idaho (Asoneyson Momoa in the movies), the only character that exists in all six books, though in the form of a clone. The second and most important constant, however, was the idea of ​​the golden road. It is a concept that is a little unattainable and rarely defined by the readers clearly, but it is something that subtly drive the protagonists from the first page of Duna to the last page of Chapter, and continues even in many of the books written by Herbert Brian's son after Frank's death.

At the essence, the golden road is a vision of the future of mankind, lasts thousands of years, which can only be seen by someone highly trained and gifted to see the future. Paul Atreid (played by Timothy Shalamet in recent films) only fully handles the golden road after Input the water of lifeA very dangerous substance taken from the bile to die of a newborn.

This is the point in the book/film where Paul concludes that his path to the throne is inevitable, that his increase in the power and destruction that comes with that is a necessary price for the good not only of his family, but also to the universe as a whole. Paul is able to see that billions of people die in the Holy War in Fremen, spreading throughout the universe, as a direct result of his growth in power, and yet he chooses to pass by anyway - partly because he thinks he thinks that The alternative will be worse.

So what is the alternative? Well, stagnation. Mankind at the beginning of "Duna" was stuck in a long millennia; That's part of why the world of the HBO series "Duna: Prophecy", which takes place in full ten thousand years before Paul's power increased, looks so similar to the world -class. All humanity is essentially under one government, Imperium and that lack of diversity (genetic, social, political, geographical) was a long -term existential threat. There are also hints that the eventual son of Paul and Canie, summer second, fears an external threat; Maybe he was afraid of returning machines for hostile thinking (which were Prohibited during the butonic jihad Long before the series began), or maybe he was afraid of the first appropriate encounter of mankind with intelligent alien species.

In any case, Paul and Summer II believed that mankind was not ready to face any of those external threats, and even without them they seemed condemned to the internal collapse under the current trajectory. So, to protect humanity, they thought they had to radically shake the status quo of this universe.

For many reasons, maybe the main one is that Paul was a born generation earlier than expected and therefore was not the ultimate Quisac Haderach as predicted, Paul did not follow his search for the golden road. The second book, "Duna: Messiah", that focuses on Paul's fallIt is a little vague about what Paul should do to achieve this, but it is clear that the golden road would mean even more human suffering and Paul to lose even more than his humanity. He decided to give up his power and wander in the desert, never to pull the throne again.

But although Paul is giving up on the golden road, his young conscious son in summer II (probably the real Quisac Haderah) decided to follow him in his place. He does this well knowing that the road requires him to turn it into a huge immortal creature of worms (yes, really) and to rule over the universe with an iron fist. Hey, it's a lonely life, but someone has to do it.

Summer second takes over at the end of "Children of Duna" (the third book) and gives us an idea of ​​what his rule will be. Most importantly, he plans to continue with Arakis dessertization, slowly making sandy worms that produce only the spice supply to the universe. In the meantime, he would supply the shrinkage of the spices to a great extent to his close allies, while the rest of the universe would have to do without it. This was a very difficult change for many people across the universe, many of whom relied on the spice to live an unnaturally long life expectancy, but Summer II believed that it was necessary to wean humanity from the addiction to the spice melange to make it stronger and more confident. .

The other important factor is that summer second, because it is essentially a giant sensitive worm, was basically indestructible as well as immortal. The science writers have often dealt with the nature of absolute power, but rarely has a ruler in the character of the character pure scale of the summer second. He is not only almost invincible, but he is almost known.

Summer second leaves to be killed at the end of "God Emperor of Duna" after over 3,500 years of continuous rule. However, it was all part of the plan, because his death creates a deliberately powerful vacuum that leads to the human race, no longer governed by a single, coherent empire. It helps the dependence on humanity's spice to a great extent has been killed from this moment; Even if Bene Tleilax (a great political faction responsible for all those clones of Duncan Ajdaho) have finally learned to produce spice on their own, it is still not enough to prevent the decentralization of mankind. So does the great scattering, where humanity begins to pass through the evelios to the unknown areas of the universe, exactly as it was planned in summer.

Summer second rule also led to a great time for technological innovation, not only because now the planets were now needed to learn how to function without spice, but because the fractions that oppose the reign of Summer II knew they would need better technology to overthrow it. This was also clearly in favor of society in "Hereti" and "Chapter", as readers see with the invention of no-blades (starved ships that cannot be discovered by someone with conscience), as well as the introduction of more advanced Face dancers (spies that can change their appearance). In general, mankind really seems to have intensified from the beginning of the rule of summer second, physically and mentally.

Tragically, Frank Herbert passed before he could finish the series, so it is unclear what he had in mind about the planned seventh and last book. All we have to work on are the books written by his son, what are separating to say at least. We will probably never see the exact end of all summer second scheduled for mankind, assuming that it is even what Herbert planned for us to see us at all. The golden path feels much like the answer to the meaning of life in that it is difficult to define, difficult to paint, and we are not sure you would like even the answer if we got it. In a way, it feels appropriate for the series "Duna" to spend so long passing through the golden trail, just to never reach it in the end.