BLAH 142 | The Fremen Mirage, the myth of the Chosen One and military strategy in the Dune universe, with Bret Deveraux

After talking about Dune in our Conversationalist-exclusive episode with Sean T. Collins, I’m returning once more to the rolling sands of Arrakis to take a deeper look at the material. After having an expert for movies and storytelling with me last time, this time, I’m bringing one for questions of history and warfare: Bret Deveraux, who was kind enough to join me once again. A few months ago, he published his series on the so-called “Fremen Mirage” on his blog, in which he harshly critized the notion that living in desolate lands makes you superior or even a good fighter. He also had some thoughts on the anti-colonial narrative the new Dune-movie pushes, and so I invited him to talk in more detail about this. As ever with Bret, we also dive deep into other fascinating areas, like the political system of the Dune universe and why it’s great world building, how the fighting styles and technology inform each other and so on and so forth. At some point, the proverbial hour was reached, but I’m sure we could have talkes about even more stuff! Download the episode! Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour. Torrent Our iTunes page. Previous episodes. Podcast RSS feed. Bret’s blog. Stefan’s blog.