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81 comments on Cyclone Gonu Thread 4

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Leanan on June 7, 2007 - 2:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I guess we will never know

Or maybe we will....

Herbert wrote that he intended for melange in the Dune universe to mimic the role that petroleum plays in current human society, in the way that the elites of the 20th century were dependent upon the flow of petroleum for civilization to survive week after week. Following this line, Herbert wrote CHOAM to be the corporation with a monopoly on melange distribution, as a stronger version of OPEC, which can essentially set the price of oil today by means of its control over a large amount of the world's oil production.

(From Wikipedia, but I've heard it before from other sources, and I suspect so has Chuck.)

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Dragonfly41 on June 7, 2007 - 3:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Some have even gone as far to say Herbert modelled Dune after the struggle between the Sunnis and Shiites.

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memmel on June 7, 2007 - 3:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

No I think Dune is Arab city dwellers vs Bedouin natives.
But in any case off topic ?
I think its funny that even though I caught all this growing up under Reagan made me overlay on the drug war not oil.
I graduated high school in 1986 and had no perception of oil as anything important it just existed.

I know this is a bit off topic but I think its important to some extent since most of the people my age literally can't think of oil as important by default we have never seen a oil crisis that impacted supply at best gasoline is a tad expensive. This was my view point before I stumbled on peak oil. And now everyone knows how old I am :)

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Gilgamesh on June 7, 2007 - 3:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I believe the source was Herbert himself, writing in the afterword of one of the many republications of Dune.

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methaz on June 7, 2007 - 4:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

That's what I had read somewhere, that spice=oil. I sent this little story to PG, and seeing these posts figured I'd repeat it here.

I read Dune the first time while on detached duty to the State Department (was USAF/DIA) while serving in the sandbox in the late 80's. It was a surreal experience sitting on a balcony in the Saudi Royal Conference Palace, evening call to prayer drifting through the air, reading Dune and watching the sun set over the sand . . .

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81 comments on Cyclone Gonu Thread 4

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