Gom Jabbar: A Dune Podcast

Princess Irulan Corrino, Shaddam IV's eldest daughter and Paul's wife in name only, finally gets her own character deep dive. Abu and Leo dig into what the Dune Encyclopedia says about her life and legacy, with an eye on Florence Pugh's return to the role in Dune: Part Three.

Dune historians are brutal about Irulan's Bene Gesserit abilities, yet they also credit her as an independent thinker who never fully bought into the Sisterhood, and her near silence about her own mother hints at what the record leaves out. Her schemes in Dune Messiah get written off as "small spurts of rebellion," and the hosts make the case that her history was sanded down to fit the cult of St. Irulan the Virgin that rose a century after her death. They also run through highlights of the writings recovered in the Rakis Finds, including The Chakobsa Way, Arrakis Awakening, and a drama called Ornithopera. The episode closes on how Denis Villeneuve might move her to the center of the conspiracy.

This episode contains SPOILERS for Children of Dune.

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Abu and Leo dig into "Greenslaves" and "Occupation Force," two stories Herbert wrote in the decade before Dune made him famous, to see what they reveal about the mind behind the books.

"Greenslaves," published in Amazing in March 1965 and later expanded into the novel The Green Brain, follows a Brazilian extermination program built to wipe out every last insect, and the swarm that has learned to disguise itself to survive it. In "Occupation Force," published in Fantastic in 1955, a U.S. general readies the nukes against an alien ship parked over Washington, only for its ambassador to deliver a reveal about exactly how long humans have actually been under alien rule.

This episode contains SPOILERS for Frank Herbert's short stories Greenslaves and Occupation Force. There are NO SPOILERS for the Dune novels.

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Abu and Leo finish their Lost Entries run through Carl B. Yoke's psychology manuscripts, uncovered at the Fullerton Archives. This week they read two unpublished Dune Encyclopedia entries on the psychology of the Sardaukar and the Harkonnens.

The Sardaukar entry centers on the Dhama ti Kama, the corps' secret training manual, which Lady Margot Fenring somehow stole for the Bene Gesserit. Its author, the Sardau shaman Kiwan Kalama, lays out a Freudian program for turning children into warriors, and it is every bit as grim as that sounds. The Harkonnen entry introduces Dr. Amertine Moritani Harkonnen, a granddaughter of Shaddam IV who married into the family after the Baron's death and made him the subject of her Study of the Dark Side.

This episode contains SPOILERS for Children of Dune.

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Abu and Leo finish Hunters of Dune, the first book in Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's conclusion of the Dune saga. They break down the back half of the book and vent their feelings about how this is all just so wrong.

They cover the Ithaca's stalled journey through the Scattering, Duncan Idaho's fixation on the absent Murbella, and the ghola children growing up aboard the no-ship. On Chapterhouse, Murbella's war against the Honored Matres comes to a head, including the reveal that the Honored Matres descend in part from Tleilaxu women. Uxtal's doomed attempt to resurrect a Tleilaxu master and Khrone's efforts to reawaken a young Baron Harkonnen push the ghola storylines toward their conclusions. Along the way, the mysterious old couple behind the Scattering's chaos finally comes into focus, setting up next episode's dive into Sandworms of Dune.

This episode contains SPOILERS for all six of Frank Herbert's Dune novels, plus the entirety of Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

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Get ad-free episodes and more: patreon.com/gomjabbar

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An unpublished Dune Encyclopedia manuscript called Psychology of the Fremen never made it past Willis E. McNelly's editing desk, until now. Abu and Leo dig into what got cut, in part one of a two-episode dive into the Fullerton archives' unreleased psychology entries.

Carl B. Yoke, a Kent State University professor, wrote it as one of five planned psychology profiles that also covered the Bene Gesserit, the Sardaukar, the Harkonnens, and the Imperium. Yoke's Fremen entry builds its case through an invented smuggler-poet, whose writings and observations of Fremen psychology survived in the Bene Gesserit archives on Wallach IX. From there, Abu and Leo trace a psychological system mapped almost entirely onto Carl Jung.

This episode contains NO SPOILERS for the Dune novels.

SUPPORT THE SHOW

Get ad-free episodes and more: https://www.patreon.com/GomJabbar

Say thank you with a tip: https://buymeacoffee.com/gomjabbar

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Watch video episodes and clips: https://www.youtube.com/@loreparty
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