The first 20 minutes of “Dune: Prophecy” certainly leaned into the dense lore and history of the universe.
The series begins by recounting the humans’ long and bloody war against the “thinking machines” that held the galaxy in its grip. The show only dips a toe into the tail end of the war and how the loss of machines continues to affect the people of the galaxy.
The war against the machines lasted for 100 years but how they got there – and even what constitutes a “thinking machine” – isn’t really explained. Below, we break down the history of how humanity grew to hate machines and AI and how the ensuing war changed the entire shape of the galaxy.
What are Thinking Machines?
10,000 years and change before the birth of Paul Atreides, the human race was heavily relient on thinking machines – basically any computer, AI, sentient robot – that took on a growing number of tasks. Essentially, these machines were built to allow humans not to think.
As the dependence on them grew, so did the machine learning, and as the machines got smarter animosity started bubbling up in the humans that were supposed to be ruling them. Eventually Omnius – the AI hivemind that governed the machine intelligence for the humans – decided that humanity was inefficient and the machines would no longer take orders from them. So the machines enslaved the human race.
After thousands of years of enslavement, a sect of rebels called Butlerians – named after their leader Serena Butler who inspired the revolt – rose up against the machines. This rebellion came to be known as the Butlerian Jihad which lasted 100 years and claimed billions of lives.
What was the Butlerian Jihad?
The good people of the “Dune” universe never met a problem they thought couldn’t be solved with a holy war, and the thinking machine issue was no different. Serena Butler and her Butlerian loyalists believed that a machine in the shape of man was a sin – to say nothing of the fact that the machines had successfully taken over humanity.
The Butlerians feared that humanity was being replaced entirely by machines and and so the rebellion began in full. Machines and humans waged war across the galaxy for 100 years. Billions were slaughtered in the fighting but eventually the Thinking Machines were defeated and Omnius was overthrown. The final battle of the war was the Battle of Corrin – where House Corrino, the ruling family of the galaxy, got it’s name.
There were many long-lasting effects when the war came to an end. The dominating ones were the installment of noble ruling families and the idea that man could and should never be replaced by machines. They installed a commandment in the most popular religious text of the time – the Orange Catholic Bible – that read:
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
It is the highest doctrine in the scripture. Owning or making a thinking machine after the war became highly illegal and the thought of embracing AI became more and more taboo as time went on. That’s why the people react so strongly to Pruitt’s robo-lizard in the first episode of “Dune: Prophecy” even though his father claims it’s merely a toy.
What replaced Thinking Machines?
If humans became relient on machines for everything from space travel to medicine to politics, the question became once they’re overthrown, how do they replace them without more tech? The answers were the creation of the five Great Schools.
The Spacing Guild came first and claimed its own monopoly over all faster than light space travel through the galaxy. After that, the Suk Doctor Inner Schools and Ginza Swordmasters came about. The most prominent to rise alongside the Spacing Guild were the Mentats – essentially human computers that excelled at logic, mathematics, and problem solving – and the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.
The Sisterhood’s rise is the fulcrum on which “Dune: Prophecy” turns, but their focus on molding the great houses and propelling humanity forward through genetic manipulation and more than a bit of supernatural ability made them a powerhouse in the wake of machine rule.