Space Feudalism : DuneBattleHammer 

"Using calculators for simple math we really should be able to do in our heads" damn that hits a little close to home

From a storytelling perspective, a feudal system works well, because it puts a lot of power and agency in the hands of a few characters. Monumental decisions that reshape the universe can happen in minutes instead of months or years. As the saying goes, nobody sets out to create a feudal system, it is what you get when all others fail. Frank Herbert in Dune went out of his way to find reasons for why the world is the way it is. It wasn't just rule of cool. Technological constraints of space travel and communication affect government. Shields make melee weapons more important and bring back the need for warrior elites because of longer training times.

TechnoFeudalism fiction feels like a subconscious counter-reaction to the rapid progress of the last century mixed with the American Western mythos. One person bringing justice to a corrupt/lawless land festering in the shadow of a hubris giant's corpse. A narrative that becomes more tangible by the day.

What is common throughout these technofeudal settings is that they arise through a lack of instantaneous communication and travel. It will take weeks or even longer to travel from one system to another, which means planets are essentially on their own even though they are subordinate to a greater power. A hereditary, feudal power structure makes sense as the imperial authority can create long lasting ties with a planet’s government through royal marriages. The Traveller rpg setting has the same travel constraints and technofeudal set up but is not in a dark age. Perhaps that would be a good comparison to explore.

The role of corporations as something akin to royal houses in the neo- feudalist post Republic America is a through line in the weirdly prescient 'Network' (1976): From Ned Beatty's ' The World is a Business speech to Robert Duvall's lament at his loss of station ' I'm a man without a corporation!'

Two things that people tend to forget about the tendency for SciFi to include Feudalistic elements: 1.SciFi takes many of it's less hard science tropes from other fiction including fantasy and the historical record, until very recently the latter heavily focused on nobility and the Great Man theory of history which focused on individuals around whom history was said to bend and fiction also tilted back to the medievalist style so too did early sci-fi including the Rocket Punk genre and the entire Swords and Phasers style like Flash Gordon. It was a well established method of influence. 2.From a literary simplicity point of view the tropes of having a handful of influential people be the main movers and shakers of the story are convenient for allowing action as having to deal with single personifications of places and governments is much easier to write and understand than having to depict multiple layers of democratic all elected leaders that may change frequently. Everyone understands that what Space King says is law and he's gonna be around until he dies and his Space Prince takes over, it makes moving along with the rest of the plot much easier.

A crucial factor to keep in mind about the "space feudalism" settings in WH40K and Battletech (and their primary antecedent, Traveller) is that they were originally conceived as game-universes, designed to support gameplay, and there are many aspects of galactic-scale post-utopia medievalism that are very useful for that purpose: lots of room for the players to be self-directing in the absence of dominant higher authority, multiple factions of roughly similar modest power and contrasting motivations to interact with, a baseline tech not too far afield from 20th/21st century capabilities (making it easier for players to conceive of potential actions), lots of well-established narrative tropes lying around to use (merchant caravans, bandit gangs, warring nobles, battle-scarred ronin, weird towers, princesses to save), and a justification for occasional fun but unreproducible artifacts ("magic items" effectively). Basically, it presents a situation where a your average player-character "murderhobo" with nothing more than a decent weapon and a flexible moral compass can easily find ways to keep themselves busy, in ways that feel relevant. This, as much as anything else, is a strong reason why these sorts of settings keep showing up in our IP-driven media. Contrast this with settings first designed as mediums for literature (like Bank's Culture, or Leckie's Radch Empire, even the Imperium of Frank Herbert's later Dune novels) which are fun to read about but don't present ample opportunities to insert an average party of oppurtunistic mercanries (yes I know there are stories in those series which do exactly that, but the context allowing for it are almost always exceptional). Along these lines, I'd like to throw in a mention of Fading Suns, a game series with the most literal version of space-feudalism ever.

The Myst series of adventure games had a interesting take on a feudal-style interplanetary empire, one where distance was meaningless because the rulers - the D'ni - could teleport anywhere in their holdings instantly. They also believed themselves to be the literal creators of the worlds they conquered (although they probably weren't), acting like god-emperors over their subjects. Ultimately, their instantaneous travel enabled their downfall, as an engineered deadly plague got set loose, spreading across the entire empire and ending it in a matter of days. Then the games are set in the aftermath, with the player exploring D'ni ruins as well as the works of those who followed in the D'ni's footsteps, almost more like an archaeology / anthropology simulator than an "adventure game."

Our Feral Historian has gone interstellar. Mobilise the Fleets

Just as an aside, it's fascinating to me that fiction keeps turning to these themes of civilizational collapse and societal regression. It's almost an article of faith that the end is just round the corner and what's coming is going to be grimdark rather than solarpunk.

Utopianism in fiction presents a Fukuyama style 'end of history' notion that the free bar party of techno-utopian paradise can last forever, and indeed exists as the inevitable end point of the development of civilisation, whereas Post-Utopian settings like Dune and 40K remind us that the hangover is coming sooner or later no matter how shiny and bright the light of your culture and its achievements might seem to be in the moment. That is in some ways an uncomfortable aspect of those settings, and yet at the same time an endlessly fascinating one. Here's hoping it doesn't also prove to be a prophetic sub genre of sci fi for our own times.

I think part of the appeal of these "Space Feudalism" settings is that the story is always about a King, or Noble Duke, or the brave Knight Sir Who'sit of Whocares. This causes the audience/reader to empathize and identify with the top 1% of a feudal society. None of these stories (with the possible exception of Warhammer) are told from the perspective of the poor peasant farmer who's left to fertilize his crops with his own "night soil" and just trying to stay alive day to day.

Battletech mentioned by one of my favorite RU-vidrs... Yes, please. Edit: my one comment is that Battletech does have eras where there is technological regression or stagnation, the bar does shift back and there is progress. Unlike Warhammer where it is so hardwired into the setting that you cannot really advance the technology of the Imperium without breaking the setting. Yes there have been updates, but they have not dramatically changed much, other than changing model ranges.

*FOR THE EMPEROR!!*

At work but will watch this later. I just wanted to Comment fresh. I found your channel about a month ago and have watched all your videos since then. Some of your back catalogue from the last 2 years has been coming up on my feed. You have such an engaging way of presenting your videos. Fantastic.

Honestly, a feudal future is more realistic than the Post-Scarcity Utopia of Star Trek. Space is big and even with FTL travel, it's gonna take a while to get anywhere. It's easier to delegate control of a planet or solar system to a local ruler than it is to try to directly exert authority from four hundred thousand lightyears away.

Love the use of Dune (2000) footage. The Culture Novels work in a universe that presupposes a Whig View of History is encoded into the laws of the cosmos. The series presumes that civilizations keep progressing forward, occasionally missteping, along the road to transcendence. The Culture is a young and energetic civilization inhabiting a galaxy where most races master the natural world and collectively choose to leave this universe for a higher plane of existence.

I don't think the large companies are deviations from "neofeudalism", they resemble guilds like Hansa quite closely.

One of the only channels that is must watch every time.

The Antikythera mechanism shows that with the collapse of the Roman empire, technolgy was lost and forgotten, not just logistics and production capacity. Heron of Alexandria also provides a glimpse into what technology was available back then. This loss of technology happened more than once, apparently. In Europe, Africa, and Asia there are still ancient Roman ruins which could not be explained with medieval technology, and which inspired local legends about their mysterious origins and purposes. But even in late antiquity, people already refered to a lost, more glorious past. As an aside, I find it remarkable that the stories about magic and what can go wrong with it (like literal meanings differing from intended meanings, or enchanted items having unexpected properties) are exactly the things that programmers and roboticists deal with. Dune is the origin of the idea of interstellar feudalism as used in Star Wars, WH40k, and Battletech. Although Asimov's Foundation also has a collapsing galactic empire and a millennium of restoration. Ironically, the claims of legitimacy by the nobility in Dune are fake, they cosplay as feudal lords when actually they are shareholders of the one remaining monopoly; although in practice it makes little difference. It is a future where Fascism eventually won, and plus some millennia more. The other franchises take the feudalism more literally. There are those who would argue that interstellar distances make feudalism the only viable pooitical system, even, which is silly. Most of those franchises have FTL, so distance is not even an issue. Without FTL, I'd argue that distance would even prevent interstellar politics. Heinlein argued that even the moon could easily secede (and therefore inevitably would; Gundam then copied that idea). While Weinersmith argues in A City On Mars that such secession is extremely unlikely given international law and especially the Outer Space Treaty. And also pointless. (Andy Weir has an argument in The Martian how any interplanetary settlers would ipso facto be space pirates.) I would refer to Haldeman's Forever War, in particular the time dilation in interstellar travel, to illustrate why interstellar feudalism couldn't work. I'd go even further and argue that space battles are practically impossible because of orbital mechanics, except maybe for very specific edge cases. Banks' Culture is interesting because it is about settling the unfathomable void of space rather than planets (as earlier science fiction had it, with the conquest of the American West continued in space, the final frontier, because the colonisers ran out of America to conquer). The Minds of the Culture are not servants, Banks repeatedly makes the point that machine inteligences are citizens of the Culture just as much as organics are. However, the largest Minds are strongly implied to secretly manipulate society (and not always successfully; Banks was first and foremost an author of horror). You might also be interested in the lore of Elite (either Frontier or Dangerous), which has different political systems rivaling for interstellar hegemony, only one of them an empire (loosely modelled after the early British empire). The econonic system of the game takes cues from Thatcherism and probably shouldn't be taken too seriously. If you are so inclined, there is a completed web comic named Carboniferous which features an interstellar empire without FTL and with relativistic effects, explictly referencing the Roman empire, and the story is in part about how it doesn't work and how planetary colonists hate the "immortals". Another ongoing web comic named Seekers Log also features Space Romans whom nobody likes because they try to conquer and enslave their neighbours, and FTL technology from a mysterious precursor civilisation. There are also hints at different economic systems dominating different parts of the galaxy.

David Weber's Safehold series is an interesting example of the Space Feudalism trope (close to a swords and spaceships novel of the old days) where Humanity looses the war against the big bad aliens and the last surviving colony reverts to feudal muscle powered civilization with a church to enforce Ludditism (along with an orbital bombardment system to unleash the wrath of god on those who dabble in prohibited knowledge) all to hide from the marauding aliens. The 10 novels in the series then follow the good guys trying to reintroduce technology, reform the church, and prepare humanity for round two against the aliens who are still out there. But the novels cover a 20 year period where society of Safehold goes from Medieval to the Industrial Revolution with all the social disruption that goes along with it.

Feral Historian will eat ze bug and live un ze pod!!

This is rapidly becoming my favorite channel for when I want to be a ponderin'.

It blows my mind how you consistently make absolute bangers of content. And they all involve shows/media I grew loving. Keep at it.

I feel like even making stories about dark age is too heavily tied to idolization of rome. No more aquaducts? No more gigantic slavery population to build them also. No more expensive trade? You wouldn't be able to afford it anyway. Noblemen aristocracy? Atleast they are nowhere near the oligarchs like Crassus. Quality of life for normal people is higher in middle ages than roman era. Rome wouldn't have its own enlightenment, capitalism or industrial revolution. It itself was the dark stagnant imperium era that had to collapse, a burden on the europe sucking it dry. Free buffet with parallels to capitalism.

Nice work with the planets in the background. Visually enjoyable and appropriate use.

You only briefly touched on one of the most important reasons feudal societies rise after a collapse. A military vacuum. The reason Europe turned into a patchwork quilt of small baronies and fiefdoms was simply because nobody had sufficient military force to hold bigger domains. Without a strong central authority its possible to have a country, but, only if all the smaller local rulers give allegiance to the central lord. These local warlords pledge their swords to a more powerful lord for mutual defense. Lord is after all simply a contraction of warlord. And whoever has the weapons, makes the rules. But, those rules only apply as far as you can project your army and no further.

Damn my guy. All your videos are 🔥 I need to add the High Crusade to my reading list now you really expanded the scope of a story i have heard about in passing for years.

An interested, broad analysis. It's fine to not have a lot of answers. It's more important to have questions when beginning these endeavors.

I kinda had this idea for a sci-fi setting where planets are privately owned by the person (and their descendants) who discovered them, and who basically get to rule over them as absolutist monarchs if they so wish. Planets used to be colonized by nations and international organizations, but as some point the territory became so massive that is became impossible to govern, not to mention it became impossible to communicate with the Earth for many of these new colonies, now referred to as the old worlds. As humanity still needed ever more resources and space to expand to, the "finders keepers" system was established, making each planet in the frontier theoretically its own independent unit.

This reminds me of an observation someone had made of humanity in general: that we are essentially still apes with stone age mentality and emotional fragility, organized into feudalistic systems of governance, while using space age technology. I think one of the central themes of each of these fictional works (Dune, Warhammer, Battletech, and more) taps into this sentiment. No matter what technologies we produce, no matter if explore and conquer the stars, we are still flawed humans, and we bring our fears, our shortsighted wants and needs, our paranoia, our anger and hatred, our ignorance, greed, along with us for the ride.

I think something that technofeudalism as a genre showcases is our tendency to put agency and choice in the hands of a single individual or a small group. Part or that probably comes from our perception of history where it is mostly centered arround men of note achieving things and changing circumstances.

I love this channel. I also like reading the comments. For the most part folks who enjoy this channel tend to be quiet brilliant, as is our host! Thanks again!

A fun watch and I like your Jinbei top! I rock one too! My friend said this about modern humans: Caveman brains, medieval morality and Star Trek tools.

It would seem the world of the 70’s Rollerball would also fit into this feudal-style organization as well- Energy, Entertainment, various other commodity-producing cities as the basis for their organization with a mixture of classes.

The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber has similar elements to Poul Andersons The High Crusade and is a lot of fun.

The amount of meaningful, quiet references to politics slipped in is pretty incredible. I am so used to people beating each other over the head with opinions, this was very refreshing.

the key is that all the other works are adaptation of dune. dune was the source material for 40k without a doubt.

The attraction of Space Feudalism is a rhyme to the popularity of Downton Abbey. There's something comforting about a situation where everyone knows their place in it, what role they are to play. Also, those downstairs may not have had spectacular wealth, but they didn't have the problems the people upstairs did. For a person willing to be honest with himself about who he really is, instead of the "hero of his own story," feudalism has its attractions, especially for people who are daunted by the prospect of real freedom.

I appreciate this video a lot. As a writer with stories set in a big feudal space world myself, it is incredibly relieving to hear all the points I mulled over in its creation laid out in such an articulate manner. In fact in my universe things were very much like the Culture, but now they find themselves in a regressed feudal mire fighting over the scraps of that high technology. I chose feudalism as one of the main methods BY which their regression is shown, a warning of the consequences of fantastic technology wielded by cultures who are not mature enough to use them responsibly.

Once again, I'm impressed by the narrator's insight.

Great video. Love all the references to Dune, The Culture, Battletech, etc. FYI, Banks said that his writing of the culture series was a response to the glut of pessimistic "conservative" sci-fi that was dominating the market at the time. He wanted to offer an alternative, more optimistic vision. You really should read the whole culture series when you get the chance, it's fantastic.

Interesting take, I always thought it was kind of ridiculous that feudalism could ever encompass the galaxy or even several worlds seeing as it wasn't until centralized imperialism that places like the British Isles and Germany were "properly" unified. Had an idea a while ago to write a tribalistic sci fi setting with planets ruled by space faring chieftains. Seeing sci fi cultural equivalents of the Gaels, Norse, Rus, Bedouin, and Mongols slowly spread out across the galaxy engaging in non total warfare against each other in order to settle disputes, gain legitimacy, earn resources, etc.

Feudalism, and hereditary aristocracy more broadly, is the single most common and stable social-political system in human history. Given how frequently democracies and republics unravel into chaos or decay into decadence it makes a great deal of sense for a stable long running society in the future to follow a feudal/aristocratic pattern. A dark age is not necessary to sustain it, but a social awareness of the decadence and instability of the past would help.

I don't know how it might have fit into your discussion here, but it does feel a bit odd that foundation wasn't mentioned. The feudal aspects of those stories may have been less at the forefront as the contemporaries you mentioned. Foundation is in many ways the catalyst which directly or indirectly inspired most neofeudalistic fiction and the hierarchical structures of nobility which followed it. Then there is of your closing comment and how foundation wrestles with that very idea. In that struggle the focus of the foundation itself is also interesting in what it inspired. It represents the other closely entwined half of mostly Europe's but sometimes other culture's feudal ruling structures. The church. They and their struggle against collapse is also echoed in many entries to neofeudalistic sci-fi. The foundations own predictive ability, attempts at preservation and restoration, and the use of religion to both bring social influence and intergenerational stability to the institution. Battletech's Comstar is the most comparable, but it rejects the assumptions of benevolence and good intent in favor of a callous and dogmatic orginization willing to commit the worst of atrocities for a vision which is incoherent at best and malevolent at worst. Though, notably, both fundamentally fail to avert the civilizational collapse they forsee. The others also have their techno religious cults, multiple in fact which focus on different aspects, but these are primarily groups that arise not as an attempt to address forseen events, but but are spawned by their unforseen occance.

Fear is the algorithm killer

Aye man... someone should point out the absolute beauty of a background for when he is shown speaking to the camera this man probably had to hike miles and miles with heavy camera equipment just to get such a minute detail to not even be talking about. All that just to talk about dune which is already a kinda complicated fictional story. My hats off to you my friend. As someone in my late 20's i wish i had friends like this guy to just go and fart around with.

Yes! Haven’t watched this yet, but I’m super excited to hear what you have to say

Fans of the Empire always think they'll be Vader or a stormtrooper. It's the same with space feudalism - people imagine being warrior class or better, not a serf. "No matter how incompetent I am IRL, my class would be guaranteed and my heroism would win out"

The Culture is pretty much exactly the sort of future I’d be willing to do almost anything to reach, but with the caveat that I’m opposed to the intellectual off-shoring to machines for precisely the reason mentioned in the video. There’s no time to rest or relax. There is more to be done.

That opening monologue equally describes the Empire of Man in The Mote in God's Eye.

Asimov's Foundation trilogy is a nice counterpoint to this thought vlog. Do cyberpunk next.

A Republic, if you can keep it.

Another great video. However, you failed to articulate why only House Kurita is fit to rule the Inner Sphere. The Coordinator is displeased.

Such wise words. Very insightful.

What beautiful view.

Come one bro Battletech needs a god damn video.

Great video

My Battletech senses were tingling

Great video.

Classic Traveller had a discussion about how communication distance can promote feudalism instead if central rule on a galactic scale. The fastest means of communication is a courier ship, either carrying mail or a courier. FTL travel us fast but not so fast that relating a message from one end of a stellar realm to another doesn't take a year. The local representatives of both government, companies, NGOs, armed forces etc are therefore almost as appointed viceroys. They have leeway to react to local issues within the scope of their mandate. Classic Traveller is otherwise not technically ir socially stagnant. Local level can run on many other principles.

As a sidenote to a sidenote; you may want to read 'Against a Dark Background' also by Iain Banks. Its status as a 'CULTURE' book is debatable, but let's just say it doesn't matter from a narrative standpoint. I would be interested in your opinion on whether it could be counted as a 'post-utopian' story or not.

It’s strange, because in a certain way, I see the sort of near feudal settings and a bit more not utopian, but overall better in the long run. Yes that are solidified social classes, added many cases, conflict and war, but barring Warhammer the settings to me at the very least, seem to have more honesty about the nature of their societies. In our current society we live with this set of elites, who will do everything in their power to say that they’re not, and we’re actually all free agent capable of making our own decisions, and who should be in charge. Many of us know that’s not really the case in the settings it’s more honest. These people rule, but at the very least for the most part take on the responsibilities of rulership, and they are subject to creeds overs and honours, and know that I content population at the very least works harder. The main benefit of these kind of near feudal settings at the very least. The people with power and wealth are under the watchful eye of whatever authority is Bob above them, whether that be a king or whatever funny title they have come with. They need to honour their obligations to their state or they are to be removed. Unlike today were megarich CEOs 10 pocket millions, and for the most part, we have no bloody idea who any of these people are, or even their businesses, not to mention, at least in the case of Dune and BattleTech. Truly evil oppressive leaders seem to be quite rare. The fact that House Atreides, for example, is growing popular in the Empire, implies that their idealised method of rulership is something to be followed an idealised, or at the very least many in the Empire, follow them leading to me to guest at the houses of horror like the Harkonans are not as common. As I’ve said it’s not that the societies are without issue, but at least for me I respect the fact they’re more honest in the display of Power and who is in charge and that overall people seem to be better off in many places because of it, for after all the enlightened despot is democracies, greatest adversary.

2:37 And still uses the concept of 'felony' (an offence ranking feudal commits against next higher rank) to designate more significant crimes...

Travller/MegaTravller/TNE by FFE for an other look at Feudalism in Space, in this case a Feudal-Technocracy in the case of the Third Imperium.

Adding to your space feudalism kick: the RPG _Traveller_ for one, and kinda-sorta Glen Cook's _The Dragon Never Sleeps_.

It makes sense. Because travel time is a thing.

Please checkout Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium stories! It covers the Russian / American alliance which dominated earth. It's expansion out into the stars. And it's eventual collapse and following dark age. The surviving CoDominium remnants would then go on to form the 1st Empire of Man centered on the planet Sparta. The later War World books would cover the 1st Empire's destruction and subsequent collapse; after a genocidal war with the Sauron "Supermen" and their Coalition. These remnants or Outies would plague the 2nd Empire's attempts to consolidate and re-conquer known human space. Pournelle's & Nivens' - Mote in the Eye of God takes place hundreds of years later during the 2nd Empire. And their discovery of sentient alien life - The Moties. I definitely recommend it to any Hard Sci-fi / Military Sci-fi fan.

I'll give The High Crusade a read, it sounds like fun.

The Dune encyclopedia is the book you need, the only one really. Frank Herbert approved of it, and either contributed to it or helped edited it. Brian attempted to seize control of it by suing Willis E. McNelly, and only succeeded in forcing it out of print. In doing this he lost access to a great deal of material his father considered to be canon. Not everything in it is, some bits don't fit at all, but I enjoy it and overall the encyclopedia is vastly closer to what's in at least the early books than Brians work, which might as well be a parallel universe version of Dune, a universe that got created with no subtlety or nuance atoms. How on earth can one simulflow vision of a hospital for infectious diseases get spun out into the origin of the Bene Gesserit?

Can you do a video on the challenges of becoming spacefaring

Dude. Where are you filming? That view is absolutely gorgeous

Fading Suns is an interesting ttrpg with similar concepts for anyone interested.

It’s here

I mean think about it, isn't we already have lords and kings nowadays who run the big companies? If they fully take some essential technology, isn't they functionally became kings ?

I enjoyed Ian Bank's "Use of Weapons" the most.

Pausing halfway through to mention I technically "studied" under Kevin J. Anderson in grad school for my MFA, a degree I never finished for reasons that don't relate to this, yet a point I feel obligated to mention upfront. For context, this was the summer of 2023. Based on the panel discussion I went through (where I irritated him a lot with specific questions) and a presentation of *his* grad school work at the same university, I can offer this about the man, at least from my perspective. None of it necessarily means anything, but by understanding the author, I believe you can comprehend their work far better, which, funny enough, was a major source of contention between me and my professors (not Anderson). 1. His pitch about "success as a writer" was very much a "just do stuff and something will work." 2. To contrast that point, I implied (before he cut me off) that his bootstrapping approach in genre fiction was conditional, especially in Star Wars, where he really got established as a writer. This was due to Anderson being noticed and elevated by LucasFilm in the early 1990s, around the Thrawn Trilogy, where they realized that books were a lucrative and efficient way to capitalize on an IP while test-firing new or potential story arc ideas. It is *critical* (in my opinion, at least) for people to grasp that with writers like Anderson. It seems to me that his Star Wars EU work had very little staying power, as it lacks controversy or general acclaim. However, in a personal and professional sense, Anderson's timing and connections made him a bankable author, as he was on the ground floor of LucasFilm's first generation of publishing, which was a major benefit when that industry was only in its infant stages. 3. Though I mentioned this in point 2, I want to clarify that Anderson scowled at me before I reached my point and cut me off, doubtless because he knew what I was about to say. There was a bit of "just try harder" in his response, but the truth (as I have seen from him and several other successful writers) was the process of "cutting the ladder on your way up," which is to say that authors in genre fiction often find a path to success, then block/gatekeep anyone else from using the same method. 4. He was very keen on talking about the new Dune films, which he swung between calling his or "Frank's" depending on how he wanted to present the point. 5. For his mandatory staff reading, Anderson wrote (and read before the students) a story about a maid in a medieval setting poisoning the duke and his retinue during a feast, then running away with a serving boy. This was for his mandatory "romance story" during his time as a former student. For what it is worth, I didn't like it. To show my hand and reveal my bias, here, I will make it transparent I didn't much care for the man, and I was never much of a Dune fan to begin with. Either way, he was a physicist, something of an intellectual, and whenever he was in a room, the other professors and students were kind of expected to treat him like a superior life form. I suspect this was due to our university seeing him as a major catch for a new and untested genre fiction masters program. And I also suspect that if anyone was asked if they acted that way, they'd vehemently deny it. So, take that as you will. All I can offer is the perspective of a guy who met him, spoke with him professionally, and saw how other people did during our million mandatory "social events" during a week-long retreat on-campus.

Are there any warnings remaining that we don't see used as handbooks around us? Or is it that what is recognized as a handbook born from a warning becomes well known?

i believe you are mistaken. the culture is not a society that has shucked off it's responsibilities to machines, the culture is the machines, a lot of them just happen to keep (the equivalent of) goldfish. also, you're wrong the dark age can't be avoided, but with the right steps we can shorten it from 10,000 years to a mere thousand... j/k

I'm with @melvinlemay7366 on this one. You shouldn't have broached this topic without discussing Foundation. Yes, the tone and result are different, but the deliberate pessimism of DuneBattleHammer is much more significant when seen in context. Asimov's introduction to Foundation also explains the original genesis of the concept-basically, he'd just finished reading Gibbon.

Also how many recommendations do you have by this point? I alone have recommended 5 short books, 1 anime, and the ending movie for said anime.

Fantastic video, although I’m surprised you didn’t bring up Issac Asimov’s Foundation series. It’s a classic piece of sci-fi, not to mention the first one to conceptualize a grand Galactic Empire. Asimov himself said he based it off of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of Rome.

I have honestly never understood the fascination of having feudalism in a Sci-Fi setting. In sci-fi, I figured there would be much more focused on what other possibilities of future could hold, yet so many authors who writes Sci-fi want to just slap on a feudalistic setting when that happens you think to yourself: "oh here we go, it's the medieval ages in space how derivative." Of all the things that you can do in a futuristic setting, you want to slap on feudal setting for a story when you could affect anything else you wanted....

i hope you can check Project Morningstar's stuff! It is has stuff like this on a corportarotratic bent, the Patreon has a lore pdf that is updated. I so would love to see you analyze how the Hegemon does things, the humans in that setting as so damn WEIRD. *Greed* is seen as a good thing.

I very much enjoyed the Dune prequel trilogy - House.... I don't know what happened, but I found the Butlerian Jihad unreadable. I enjoyed Poul Anderson's, The Long Way Home. Lous McMaster's Bujold's, Vorkosigan Saga series of books are outstanding. This is (at least with the Barrayaran Imperium) Feudalism. With an Emperor, Lords, etc with Vor being some version of the German Von. The early settlers were of Russian stock and it has a, pre soviet era, Russian Empire flavour to it.

Cause the feudal times where the coolest shit

Playing a ttrpg with FH would be interesting

I always looked at 40k and Dune with a perverse sense of longing. It isn't a pleasant world and every human is only a speck of light in vast, dark galaxy, but everything there just "hits" much harder, feels more worthwhile and meaningful than the real world. I sometimes feel I'd rather die for a god who doesn't know I exist than live for nothing at all. I want to be a part of a grand narrative, to stand defiant against the odds. I want all the inconveniences and horrors and pains and misery to loosely paraphrase Huxley.

Recommend you read the later Culture books they include the idea of intelligent opting out where small groups can tryout alternative culture and politics (splinter sects, ascended and the forgotten) or drop out of the Culture to join other civs at will rejoining if and when you like, remembering a significantly extended life span let’s you do different things as you age - I particularly like the idea that any one of the thousands of GSVs housing millions is a microcosm of the Culture and if catastrophe strikes can effectively re-start civ at the same level. I also like the 25,000 year old man obsessed with sound or the option to move your mind into different forms (whale, cloud, bush, alien floating chlorine breather) to explore a different experience. The point being unlike scarcity based polities (ie pre jihad dune) an advanced post scarcity civ can afford dissidents without collapse and is not at risk of ‘stagnation’

It's kind of a myth at least in European history where the Middle Ages with stagnant and there's a lot of wars. The truth is Medieval Europe had less Wars than the modern era or the ancient era. Medieval Europe also had less violence overall compared to the modern era and the ancient era. Also, the medieval European civilization continued the technological progression and made lots of brake throughs. The problem is a lot of these things have been debunked more recently with new studies and give me archeology in finding more original sources. The problem is, is when these fictions like 40K into some aspect Dune were written they have this Twisted view of medial history that's been more recently debunked.

I wonder if the rise, fall and rise again of the Systems Commonwealth from Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda is applicable here.

I dont think its our feudal past thats effecting us, I think its our nature that shaped our Feudal past and shapes how we behave today. So not really a factor of culture but rather of human nature.

The High Crusade bought the book in a 2nd hand book store, Simple Storytelling but a good read

Speaking of latin phrases... Google translate gave me "Heus tu, vigilante hock" for the input of "Hey Y'all, Watch this". That's weighty ain't it? It's at least the moto of my Kerbal Space Program :) i loved the High Crusade, can't wait for your take :) Have you read any of the "Bolo" books? The original stories are good but the expanded version make it that much more entertaining.

"Dark ages can be avoided if we could see them coming".. maybe we could have some kind of Foundation ;)

CULTURE SERIES REFERENCED!

⁠Repost Comment Hope You See This I Immensely Enjoy Your Videos! Honestly I would love to hear your analysis or meditative thoughts on the Xeelee Sequence and The Culture series of books. As I think they make a great contrast between each other with one I think being a somewhat outlandishly speculative (in terms of technology) but realistically cynically pessimistic perspective. While the other is a bit more grounded (at least less technologically theoretical) but also an overly optimistic utopian libertarian socialist outlook on humanity’s future.

Something overlooked but that I think should be pointed out - the fiction of WH40K & Battletech were both developed not as a means to an end in & of themselves, but rather to provide a backdrop for tabletop wargames. First & foremost, said fiction is designed to serve the needs of the game, rather than tell a story, or ruminate upon themes or communicate morals embedded into a story. A wargame specifically has a few things it needs from it's lore - 1st, there of course needs to be war. Second, it needs to establish factions; & preferably, a lot of them, &/or a lot of internal division within major factions; in order to establish means for players to customize their armies, create a multitude of possible scenarios, etc. The 2 factors combined strongly incline any wargame to have a feudalistic setting, since feudalism checks both boxes nicely. Dune of course stands on it's own as originally being a series of books... there are Dune games, including wargames... but they're adaptations of the existing lore vs. lore created to serve the needs of a game. And interestingly, I would point out that Dune really isn't quite set in the dark ages... Technology hasn't been really lost in Dune so much as certain tech is deliberately unutilized... the people of Dune are no more fallen for avoiding AI in their minds than we are for banning asbestos or regulating fossil fuels in ours. Put in context of the later books, the Padishah empire I think might be more analogous to republican Rome evolving into a monarchic empire than it is to the petty kingdoms living in the ashes after the pillaging. It's heavily implied that all things considered, humanity is the best it's ever been in the age of the feudal space lords... & even better under the rule of Leto the god emperor.

Pournelle's First & Second Empire of Man ( _The Mote in God's Eye_ , _King David's Spaceship_ ) was at least semi Fuedal

Lets check out Fitzpatricks War soon by Theodore Judson.