The lack of Earth, Done on purpose?

[TMA_1]

Frank herbert rarely mentioned earth, and when he did it seemed so casual as to not really mean much. of course it is the point of origin, and people like ghani and leto II could relive past lives as far back as ancient babylon. It really is all together not important though.

In the butlerian jihad, written by frank's son and a good starwars writer, kevin j. They seem to place earth in prime centrality. That it is somehow the hub of computerized thought. Does anybody have a problem with the addition of earth as an important part in the butlerian jihad?

obviously the jihad happened thousands of years ahead of our time, and if it wasent thought of during the time of paul atreides, wouldnt it be equally elusive in the jihad prequels?

[Andrew]

Well I would think that the earth is point of origin, and thus everyone moved outward in all directions from it. If that were true then it would make a prime spot to be centrally located, as updates would be faster.

Obviosly Earth has more in common with us than with the planet X that they coudl have come up with , and is most likely one reason why they chose it.

Also a good way to explain how it got nuked.

[TMA_1]

but if that was the case, even during pauls time earth would be almost holy, generally cultures do that. they staple superstition on all sorts of things. I really think that earth had been largely forgotten.

[Andrew]

I think it was forgotten, there were so many planets that they didnt know much about Earth (as in they didnt care about it), just like we do not know much about other places we have not been to.

But I would think there would be more to earth than was mentioned in the books. Like more than the whole 5 sentences.

[Acriku]

Probably due to the expansion of the people, and the farther away they got, the farther away they got from Earth, and gradual forgetfulness sunk in.

[Scrinlord]

After earth was destroyed, people had no reason to stay near it, and people forgot about it as they got farther from it.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

earth was never destroyed. it was only nuked. they said that life might have a chance there in 500 years or something like that.

I think it is cool that earth has a more important role than in the original books. I didn't like the lack of earth. It should be mentioned more, but not too much.

[Khan]

Didn't it say Thousands of years in the prequels?

[NHJ BV]

Didn't it say Thousands of years in the prequels?

Yep. I think they even say ten-thousand years.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

nah it couldn't have been that long. maybe it was 5000 years. but after the BJ there were people on earth deciding religious stuff and such. It is said in the dune appendix.

[Scrinlord]

Ok maybe it was not destroyed, but it was rendered uninhabitable, which amounts to the same thing.

From what I could tell, Earth was the only planet in the solar system that was worth anything, so when people no longer had a reason to go to earth, there was nothing to keep them in that area of the galaxy, so they expanded further and further out.

[NHJ BV]

nah it couldn't have been that long. maybe it was 5000 years. but after the BJ there were people on earth deciding religious stuff and such. It is said in the dune appendix.

I just noticed that as well, it says that the CET gathered on an island on Old Earth, after the Butlerian Jihad, when they carpet-nuked Earth, rendering it inhabitable for a least 1000 years imo. I consider this an error in Legends of Dune.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

finally someone else who saw that they gathered on earth after the BJ. I have used that as an argument that earth wasn't destroyed, but people don't seem to learn.

anyway I don't see it as an error. maybe it became habitable after a short time maybe they was wrong about it being uninhabitable for all those years.

[NHJ BV]

finally someone else who saw that they gathered on earth after the BJ. I have used that as an argument that earth wasn't destroyed, but people don't seem to learn.

anyway I don't see it as an error. maybe it became habitable after a short time maybe they was wrong about it being uninhabitable for all those years.

From the book I get the impression that Earth was thoroughly carpetnuked to ensure Omnius wouldn't survive. From that I conclude that Earth won't be inhabitable for at the very least 500 years, let alone inhabited by more then a few colonists. Given Brian & Kevin's record, I think it's another small inconsistancy.

[Acriku]

If they let an island be untouched by the nuclear explosions, then they failed their mission.

[TMA_1]

Earth was long ago "abandoned" before the butlerian jihad. The simple fact that there really isnt a huge cultural influence of earth, maybe the only thingwould be religion. Also the mentions about the jihad by frank always render it lightyears away from earth. They do get close as the stars named are as close as 15 lightyears away... doesnt that strike anybody as odd? how there are planets inhabited hundreds of lightyears away, but with stars so close (and my interpritation is the holtzmen generator existed a while before the jihad with computer navigation) you would think that earth would play a central role with politics, religion and superstition. I mean earth is the native land and generally people have a philosophy of importance toward their roots. These stars though are (relatively speaking) so close to earth that it begs the question, where the hell is it?lol

do any of you guys see waht I mean?

I also agree with acriku, it would seem odd that an entire island would be missed. trying to "carpet bomb" earth with computer exactness, and then missing a huge landmass seems really really questionable.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Ecaz is only 4 light years away from earth.

and weren't all the planets in dune in the same galaxy? how many lightyears is that?

[Inoculator9]

The half life of uranium and all that is 100,000's of years, Earth would be down for the count for just as long.

And according to the DE, Earth was sacked and things moved off. It eventually became something of a nature preserve, that was mostly a novelty. 10,000 years or more away from home makes it lose that luster I suppose. Humanity has been trully advancing for 2 or 3 thousand years. We can't possibly predict what that length of time would do to our culture.

[Procyon]

In the DE it says that Earth was hit by a planetoid and the Emperor Throne moved to Ceres. Obviusly this happened before the BJ.

[Acriku]

Where did the DE get that information?

[Inoculator9]

Dr. McNelly extrapolated it from tidbits and basically made it up, lol. Brian and McNelly didn't agree on much, so chances are, in the actual Dune books Earth was never hit by anything.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

I don't consider the DE to be anything but fan fiction. But I haven't read it.

I find all my info about dune from the original books and the prequels.

[Inoculator9]

Yeah, and honestly Brian Herbert has made it that by contridicting it so often. I think his father would have definitely prefered he did otherwise.

[Tio_Holtzmann]

wasnt there a meeting on earth that was after the BJ to settle the religions, which resulted in those really weird combinations of all our religions, navachristianity, zensunni, orange catholicism, etc? twas in the religion appendix of dune.

[NHJ BV]

wasnt there a meeting on earth that was after the BJ to settle the religions, which resulted in those really weird combinations of all our religions, navachristianity, zensunni, orange catholicism, etc? twas in the religion appendix of dune.

Yeah, we are currently discussing that, because Earth was nuked during the Jihad...