Dune category

Technology

26 entries tagged Technology, 26 of them long reads. The rest of the wiki points here most often at Gom Jabbar and Ghola.

Maula pistol: the Fremen poison-dart gun of DuneThe maula pistol is a spring-loaded gun that fires poison darts, with a range of about forty metres. It is a small detail in Frank Herbert's Dune, but it makes sense on Arrakis, where shields draw sandworms and an old-fashioned dart gun still kills.
Stilltent: the Fremen water-saving tent of DuneA stilltent is a small sealed tent that catches the moisture its occupants breathe out and turns it back into drinking water. It is the stillsuit's shelter-sized cousin, and in Dune it is where Paul Atreides first sees his future.
Atomics: the forbidden arsenals of the Great HousesAtomics was the Imperial term for nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the fission devices every Great House hoarded but almost never dared to use. The Great Convention made their offensive use against human targets grounds for planetary annihilation, yet the Houses kept their family arsenals in reserve, and history recorded the terrible occasions on which the ban failed.
Botanical testing station: the forgotten laboratories of ArrakisThe botanical testing stations were scientific outposts on Arrakis. Pardot Kynes used his station to train Fremen and pass them the tools for hidden windtraps and catchbasins, and an abandoned one is where Duncan Idaho died holding off the Sardaukar in Dune.
Emperor's Blade: the Corrino dagger that shadowed Muad'DibThe Emperor's Blade was a jewel hilted dagger handed down from Emperor to Emperor of House Corrino. Given to Duke Leto Atreides and returned, offered to Feyd Rautha for his death duel with Paul Atreides, and driven into Muad'Dib by Count Fenring, it ended its known history enshrined on Caladan, where the blood preserved on its edge yielded the clone Paolo.
Heighliner: the great foldspace carrier of the Spacing GuildThe Heighliner was the immense starship of the Spacing Guild, a vessel large enough to hold whole fleets of smaller craft and many thousands of passengers. Piloted by melange saturated Navigators, it folded space to cross the universe in an instant, and the Guild's monopoly over it made the Heighliner the quiet arbiter of Imperial power.
Hunter-seeker: the assassin's sliverThe hunter-seeker was a tiny remotely controlled assassination device, a poisoned needle carried inside a floating metal sliver no more than five centimetres long. House Harkonnen used one in a failed attempt on the life of Paul Atreides on Arrakis in 10191 AG.
Projectile weapons: the old guns of the ImperiumProjectile weapons, firing miniaturised poisoned needles, bolts and darts, were the standard armament of the House Troopers and the militaries of the Imperium. The coming of the Holtzman shield made most of them obsolete, yet the maula pistol, the slow-pellet stunner and the assassin's dartgun endured wherever shields could not be worn.
Windtrap: the water harvester of ArrakisThe windtrap was a facility on Arrakis built to reclaim the faint moisture of the night air and funnel it into great underground catchbasins. It sustained the sietch communities of the Fremen, served the terraforming program of Pardot Kynes, and calmed the water riots that greeted the arrival of House Atreides.
Carryall: the lifter of the spice harvestThe carryall was a large winged aircraft used by spice mining teams on Arrakis. It ferried harvesters across the sand and, above all, lifted them clear when a sandworm came, making it indispensable to spice production.
CathedralCathedral was the center of the Thinking Machine world of Synchrony, where the Computer Evermind Omnius ruled the reborn robotic empire. It housed the probe launched from Giedi Prime that had carried the machines back into being, and it was here that the events of Kralizec reached their climax.
CrysknifeThe crysknife was a knife made from the tooth of a sandworm, the primary weapon of the Fremen of Arrakis. Milky white and double-edged, it was sacred to its bearers and could not be sheathed once drawn until it had drawn blood.
FremkitA fremkit was a desert survival kit devised by the Fremen for staying alive in the open desert of Arrakis. Packed with navigation, shelter, wormriding, and water tools, it kept Paul and Jessica Atreides alive after they fled Arrakeen.
GholaA ghola was an artificially regrown human, replicated from the cells of a dead individual in the axlotl tanks of the Bene Tleilax. Originally created without the memories of the source being, gholas were later made to recover those memories through trauma, a technique that shaped the secret history of the Imperium.
Gom JabbarThe gom jabbar was a handheld needle tipped with meta-cyanide poison that brought almost instant death. The Bene Gesserit used it to enforce their test of humanity, holding it to a subject's neck to measure whether awareness could master instinct in the face of pain.
Holtzman effectThe Holtzman effect was a scientific theory concerning the repellent force of subatomic particles. From it sprang the defensive shield, the suspensor, the glowglobe, and above all the folding of space that made instantaneous travel across the universe possible.
LasgunThe lasgun was a continuous-wave laser projector, perhaps the most widely used hand weapon in the Imperium. Its great danger lay in shields: contact between a lasgun beam and a Holtzman shield triggered a nuclear explosion that could kill everyone nearby.
OrnithopterThe ornithopter, or thopter, was the most common small transport aircraft of the Imperium, flying by jet propulsion and by mimicking the wingbeats of birds. It carried passengers and cargo, served in war, and on Arrakis dueled with the sandworms above the spice sands.
Poison snooperPoison snoopers were mechanical devices that detected poison in food and drink by analyzing radiation within the olfactory spectrum. A staple of the feuding Great Houses of the Faufreluches, they came in fixed ceiling mounted and portable hand held forms.
PresciencePrescience was the ability to perceive past, present, and future. Certain awareness-spectrum narcotics, the spice melange foremost among them, could open this sight in their users. The Atreides line carried prescience to its greatest heights, from Paul Muad'Dib to the God-Emperor Leto II.
ShieldThe shield was a protective energy field generated by Holtzman technology that surrounded its wearer and admitted only objects moving below a set velocity. Its ubiquity drove the Imperium back to blade combat, while its reaction to lasgun fire made directed energy weapons too dangerous to use.
Spice harvesterThe spice harvester, also called a crawler, was a vast mobile factory used on Arrakis to mine and process melange from the desert sand. Dropped onto spice fields by carryalls and watched over by spotter thopters, harvesters worked under constant threat of the sandworms drawn by their rhythmic noise.
StillsuitThe stillsuit was a full body garment worn in the open desert of Arrakis to reclaim and recycle the wearer's own moisture. Fremen-made suits were the finest, losing only a thimbleful of water a day and allowing survival in the deep desert for weeks.
Stone burnerA stone burner was a particularly destructive weapon that released J-rays to dissolve eye tissue and blind every creature within its radius, while also capable of immense physical destruction. Powered by an atomic charge yet legally distinct from atomics, it was the weapon used to blind Emperor Paul Atreides.
SuspensorSuspensors were hovering devices that used the secondary phase of a Holtzman field generator to nullify gravity within limits set by mass and energy use. They buoyed everything from glowglobes and furniture to the bulk of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
WatertubeThe watertube was a Fremen device of wide use in the transfer of liquids, woven through the stillsuit, the stilltent, the deathstill, and other water apparatus of Arrakis. Its simple appearance concealed a sophisticated design born of the desert's absolute need to conserve moisture.