The Bene Gesserit control people by knowing how to modulate their voice to trigger people’s base instincts. Like, that instinct that tells you to run when you hear a tiger’s roar, or shiver when you hear a whisper. It’s just that, cranked up to 11. Iirc, they can only really use the Voice on a person after having studied them to find what they will react to (or if they happen to be particularly weak-willed).
As for seeing the future: Computers were replaced with humans long ago in Dune, but they continued to fill and develop those niches with the human mind. Future-sight is essentially like a supercomputer running a simulation, which is why Paul is able to see the future better when he takes spice, or the Water of Life. By gaining the latent genetic knowledge of his ancestors and thereby having more data to work from, he is better able to run these mental simulations.
The explanations were thorough and fun (in my opinion), just not the most scientific. But I think Dune, like star wars, was always more of a space opera than hard scifi. It definitely does a better job, but if your looking for a better “predict the future with data” scifi story, then foundation is a better fit from that era.
The Bene Gesserit control people by knowing how to modulate their voice to trigger people’s base instincts. Like, that instinct that tells you to run when you hear a tiger’s roar, or shiver when you hear a whisper. It’s just that, cranked up to 11. Iirc, they can only really use the Voice on a person after having studied them to find what they will react to (or if they happen to be particularly weak-willed).
As for seeing the future: Computers were replaced with humans long ago in Dune, but they continued to fill and develop those niches with the human mind. Future-sight is essentially like a supercomputer running a simulation, which is why Paul is able to see the future better when he takes spice, or the Water of Life. By gaining the latent genetic knowledge of his ancestors and thereby having more data to work from, he is better able to run these mental simulations.
The explanations were thorough and fun (in my opinion), just not the most scientific. But I think Dune, like star wars, was always more of a space opera than hard scifi. It definitely does a better job, but if your looking for a better “predict the future with data” scifi story, then foundation is a better fit from that era.
Foundation is awesome. It also has a very fun BBC radio drama on archive.org
Oh so complete fantasy
Well, yeah, it’s a fiction novel.