The whole story really buys into the idea of hereditary leadership, pretty much every good leaders is the child of a former good leader.
Well, the premise is a neo-feudal society, so it's hard to escape that. I'm also trying to remember if Stilgar is anyone's kid, and how the inner circle guys (Duncan Idaho, etc.) fit in. All the Harkonnen parts also show the absolute depravity that can happen unchecked in such a society, so at least there's that.
As well as spiritual messiah stories, everything falls into line with Paul becoming the savior, everything is destiny, everything meant to happen.
The whole exploration of this concept is what I think of as one of the book's strongest points. There's constant doubt from every angle about whether how true the messiah story is, and even though it winds up happening it's still unambiguously described as an artificial creation. It constantly toys with whether religion is something spiritual or a tactic of the ruling class.
spoiler
The Fremen legend is explicitly stated to have been implanted in their culture, and Paul himself is a quasi-artificial creation.
Eugenics too, I mean one of the main factions of the world has the goal of creating an ubermensch by seducing men and controlling their reproductive process while with them, and it kind of works.
Totally fair criticism.
spoiler
Nobody ever calls this out as the obvious cop out it is, “yeah sure we don’t technically have computers but you’re creating super humans who basically are computers”.
I think the idea is that at least they're still human, with increasingly-strong hints at questions like "but are you really human if you turn into X, Y, or Z?" I think your "not even graphing calculators?" argument is interesting, although you do have things like the hunter-seeker that must use some sort of non-AI computing.
Overall, I think it's OK to just lightly touch on these subjects -- having a neat story within a world that raises some interesting questions is fine for me, especially because way too many sci-fi stories geek out about those questions at the expense of better literature.
Well, the premise is a neo-feudal society, so it's hard to escape that. I'm also trying to remember if Stilgar is anyone's kid, and how the inner circle guys (Duncan Idaho, etc.) fit in. All the Harkonnen parts also show the absolute depravity that can happen unchecked in such a society, so at least there's that.
The whole exploration of this concept is what I think of as one of the book's strongest points. There's constant doubt from every angle about whether how true the messiah story is, and even though it winds up happening it's still unambiguously described as an artificial creation. It constantly toys with whether religion is something spiritual or a tactic of the ruling class.
spoiler
The Fremen legend is explicitly stated to have been implanted in their culture, and Paul himself is a quasi-artificial creation.
Totally fair criticism.
spoiler
I think the idea is that at least they're still human, with increasingly-strong hints at questions like "but are you really human if you turn into X, Y, or Z?" I think your "not even graphing calculators?" argument is interesting, although you do have things like the hunter-seeker that must use some sort of non-AI computing.
Overall, I think it's OK to just lightly touch on these subjects -- having a neat story within a world that raises some interesting questions is fine for me, especially because way too many sci-fi stories geek out about those questions at the expense of better literature.