“My favourite science fiction author is Frank Herbert, the
creator of the Dune series of novels. The philosophical themes he
embeds in his intriguing stories are most compelling: three of most
important of these are, first, we should not allow computers to do
our thinking for us, and second, conformity is to be avoided, and
finally, predictablity is death.“In the panoply of Herbert’s work, these themes manifest
themselves in a tale in which humanity has narrowly avoided
subjugation by machines by invoking an anti-thinking machine jihad,
and avoiding conformity, predictability and extinction through a
‘Scattering,’ after the collapse of an enforced Peace in a single
Empire has caused the energies of humanity to burst out across the
universe…”