Talk:Holtzman effect

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The article features complete bullshit! Faster than Light travel in Dune has nothing to do with Holtzmann. Hyperspace travel was already known thousands of years before his lifetime ( prior to Butlers Djihad) . Holtzmanns first name was not Tio but Ibrahim Vaughn. Remember that Frank herbert created a far-future-scenario in Dune that has strong arabic-islamic influence-hence the names! Forget the bullshit that was written by his son! Read the Dune Encyclopedia of Willis E- McNellys instead. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.178.76.225 (talk • contribs) 10:00, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe that even Frank Herbert himself stated that the Encyclopedia was not canon. Why anyone would take the word of a complete stranger who created a book without the express conscent of the original author over the specific "heir" to the legacy (whom Frank indicated he wanted to co-write the 7th book with) is beyond me. You may not like the prequels, and even I will admit that some of the things done in them do not reflect what I feel the original intent was that frank had... but we cannot dispute their authenticity as canon. You may disagree, but he owns it, his father passed it on to him before he died and thus its his to do with as he pleases. Enigmatical 00:51, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The Dune Encyclopedia article now spells its canon status out clearly, so you may argue that the prequels are not what Herbert intended, but the Encyclopedia isn't either. TAnthony 04:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 Name Spelling 2 Prequels 3 Sources 4 Spacing Guild chronology 5 Pre-Holtzman Travel 6 Dune Encyclopedia 7 Literary device

[edit] Name Spelling

The mention of the spelling of Holzman, and how it changed over time, is compared to the supposed "modern" spelling of Copernicus, as contrasted with the original spelling. This is more complete bullshit! Copernicus himself used exactly that spelling, not because his name changed over the years, but rather because it was the custom in Europe for scientists, writers, and other academics to use the Latin form of their names in their professional lives. Mercator, Neander, and Nostradamus are other examples (Neander chose Greek rather than Latin). The comparison between Copernicus and Holzmann is completely baseless. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.156.147.80 (talk • contribs) 07:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Academic works were published in Latin and names latinized so they could be declined in accordance with Latin grammar. (Compare "Confucius" and "Mencius" from Chinese!) I have added two (planet) name changes from the books and removed the following

A real-world example would be our current spelling of "Copernicus" as opposed to his native name of "Kopernik".

pending someone coming up with a better example. --SandChigger 08:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prequels

And hence, the problems created now that the prequels run rampant. Why Brian Herbert couldn't, at the very least, keep the names the same is beyond me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.74.216.192 (talk • contribs) 01:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I find this article adequately sourced, to the extent that appropriate books/series are referred to where necessary (Herbert's own vs. the prequels). Some individual points may need further clarification, but I think the "unreferenced" tag is overstating it. TAnthony 04:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spacing Guild chronology

The last (bolded) sentence here is inaccurate:

In 88 B.G. she discovered that this was the way to safely navigate foldspace, and essentially became the first Navigator. That same year, Norma's son Adrien Venport founded the Foldspace Shipping Company, which later became the Spacing Guild and eventually monopolized space commerce, transport and interplanetary banking. This marked the beginning of the Guild Calendar, and the universal dating system started over at 1 A.G. (After Guild).

The way it now reads, 87 B.G. = 1. A.G., which makes no sense at all, given the meaning of "B.G." and "A.G." --SandChigger 08:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-Holtzman Travel

Do any of the books mention how FTL travel was achieved prior to the discovery of the Holtzman effect? If FTL was not possible, than concepts like "interstellar empire" are useless. Chronolegion 21:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, not really. Frank Herbert himself played it safe and had only this to say in the religion appendix of Dune (emphasis added):

To begin with, early space travel, although widespread, was largely unregulated, slow, and uncertain, and, before the Guild monopoly, was accomplished by a hodgepodge of methods.

The lack of FTL transportation does not mean that instellar colonization, commerce or centralized administration is impossible, only much more difficult. The Spanish and English did quite well with just sailing ships, remember. --SandChigger 16:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but sublight travel would require a ship to take years to get from one system to another. Years that, for example, a rebel group could use to take over a planet before the central government even found out about it. If I remember my history correctly, the Spanish and the English only had months at most to deal with, while a trip to Alpha Centauri would take at least 5 years without FTL travel. It's even worse if you end up travelling at near-light speeds, which would only increase planetary time. Chronolegion 13:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

In the Butlerian Jihad and following books, pre-spacefolding space flight took only months to reach their destinations and not Years. It took several months to reach Earth from the corners of the League controlled worlds, not years. The books touch upon that although the ships could go faster, they were limited by the human passangers, as the machine ships accelerated at speeds that would crush a human. So they were going fast, they could have gone faster...but they where limited due to the passangers which the thinking machines did not. And its funny you bring up the sailing thing as in the book, Dune, The Machine Crusade a main character Aurelius Venport compares his companies early attempts at spacefolding travel to that of when Europe sent boats to the East to trade and many were lost due to a lack of navigational techniques a similar situation his vessles faced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.39.132 (talk) 07:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Um...I'm loathe to point this out, but the speed of acceleration bearable by humans has no effect whatsoever on the ultimate velocity achievable by a vessel...you simply use a lower acceleration for a longer time to achieve the same velocity. The amount of gees a human pilot could bear would of course play a role if he or she (but of course, in the misogynistic universe of the New Dune Books, they're all males, right?) were trying to catch a ship piloted by a robot (like when Vorian Atreides goes after the escaping update ship?), but otherwise, it's irrelevant.

IMO Frank Herbert came up with space-folding specifically to avoid the problem of FTL travel (which is still, so far as we know, impossible). Leave it to these two science-savvy writers to throw that all away. None of the original books provide any explicit information on when Holtzman lived. It's entirely possible that FH imagined humankind as having space-folding long before the Jihad. We'll probably never be allowed to know what he really had in mind. --SandChigger 15:41, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dune Encyclopedia

I've cleaned up a new entry here because, as discussed across several Dune articles, we try to keep The Dune Encyclopedia stuff in its own section as it has been declared non-canon. The Frank Herbert contributions/approval are discussed in the DE article, which notes that though he allowed and was amused by it, he freely contradicted it later. — TAnthony^Talk 18:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Literary device

Not really a good literary device. It'll be trivial with "dune tech" to have weapons that fire projectiles that emit directed-energy on contact with a shield, destroying the "shielded" target (and a fair bit of the surroundings). It takes a great suspension of disbelief to accept the shield as described and used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.75.240.2 (talk) 06:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)