Xavier Harkonnen
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First edition cover
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| Author | Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | Scott Brick |
| Cover artist | Stephen Youll |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Legends of Dune |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
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Publication date
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2002 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 624 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 50192212 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3558.E617 D89 2003 |
| Followed by | Dune: The Machine Crusade |
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad is a 2002 science fiction novel by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, set in the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. It is the first book in the Legends of Dune prequel trilogy, which takes place over 10,000 years before the events of Frank Herbert's celebrated 1965 novel Dune. The series chronicles the fictional Butlerian Jihad, a crusade by the last free humans in the universe against the thinking machines, a violent and dominating force led by the sentient computer Omnius.
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad rose to #7 on The New York Times Best Seller list in its second week of publication.
The Butlerian Jihad introduces a generation of characters whose families will later become the most significant in the universe: the Atreides, the Corrinos and the Harkonnens. Serena Butler, daughter of the viceroy of the League of Nobles, is a strong voice for the human rebellion. Her paramour Xavier Harkonnen leads the military force on the current League capital world of Salusa Secundus. As the story begins, Xavier is repelling an attack on the planet by Omnius' army of cymeks. The cymeks are former humans whose brains have been implanted in preservation canisters, which in turn can be installed into a variety of fearsome mechanical bodies, to extend their lives indefinitely and make them nearly unstoppable. The original twenty cymeks (calling themselves the Titans) had conquered the complacent universe by exploiting humanity's reliance and dependency on machines, yet the Titans were later overthrown themselves by Omnius, an artificial intelligence of their design. Seeking to replace human chaos with machine order, Omnius thus ignited the war between machine and humanity. Vorian Atreides is, ironically, the son and subordinate of the leading cymek Titan Agamemnon (whose last name, Atreides, originates with House Atreus, from the ancient Greek epic the Iliad).
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