20 Things You Didn’t Know About Dune

Given the incomprehensible distances humans have managed to spread themselves across the universe in Herbert’s book, it’s something of a surprise that humankind hasn’t uncovered any evidence of other intelligent species. Once again going against the sci-fi grain, this was intentional on the part of the author. To Herbert, humans having undergone 20,000+ years of growth and development from our own time, people themselves had become alien from their origins. It’s part of the reason the characters in Dune talk and think in ways we see as peculiar.

The Bene Gesserit sisterhood are able to control their bodies at a cellular level, think in multiple trains of thought at once and move at superhuman speeds, Mentats can compute at a level equal to or beyond supercomputers and Guild Navigators are so mutated from their copious consumption of Spice they now resemble floating lizard people.

Other offshoots of humankind explored later in the book series include the Facedancers - essentially shapeshifters - and the Bene Tleilax; a patriarchal inverse of the Bene Gesserit who have transformed themselves over centuries of gene manipulation to resemble pale, elf-like dwarves. Herbert was fascinated by limitless human potential when given an infinite universe to scatter over and decided to portray this diversity by making his human characters the real aliens of the story.