Speaking of Dune
March 8th, 2008 by Wiley CodyBrad’s post about Dune reminded me of something I noticed when I was reading Heretics of Dune. Frank Herbert wrote the original Dune in 1965. By 1977, when George Lucas released Star Wars IV, Herbert had published three of the six books he would eventually write.
Now if you’ve read to Dune books and seen the Star Wars movies, you’ll notice the similarities. They are striking. Tattooine is Dune complete with the Fremen/Sand People. The Jedi are Bene Gesserit (with X chromosomes). The list goes on - in fact Herbert counted sixteen points of what he called “absolute identity” between his book and the movie.
So as I’m reading Heretics of Dune, and in the middle of the book on page 322 Frank Herbert goes on a completely random tangent about building materials it seemed a bit out of place. So I re-read it. Here’s what it said. See if you can figure out what Herbert is saying:
In the time of the Old Empire and even under the reign of Muad’dib, the region around the Gammu Keep had been a forest reserve, high ground rising well above the oily residue that tended to cover Harkonnen land. On this ground, the Harkonnens had grown some of the finest pilingitam, a wood of steady currency, always valued by the supremely rich. From the most ancient times, the knowledgeable had preferred to surround themselves with fine woods rather than with the mass-produced artificial materials then known as polastine, polaz, and pormabat, latterly: tine, laz, and bat. As far back as the Old Empire, there had been a pejorative label for the small rich and the Families Minor arising from the knowledge of a rare wood’s value.
“He’s a three P-O,” they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from déclassé substances. Even when the supremely rich were forced to employ one of the distressful three P-Os, they disguised it where possible behind O-P (the Only P), pilingitam.
Did you catch it? “Cheap copies,” “déclassé”, “distressful”… all called the three P-Os. The 3 P-Os. The 3POs. Herbert doesn’t write things randomly, and his modus operandi is meanings within meanings within meanings. Given that this passage serves no obvious function, I can only think that Herbert was taking a (well deserved) shot at George Lucas’ intellectual heist.
Feints within feints within feints.
