georgiedenbro wrote: ↑24 Jan 2024 14:41
I mean yes, the argument that "it's there but unstated" does run the risk of being a self-satisfying argument. But then again this condition is created naturally if the author
really did introduce a ton of stuff that he doesn't explain, which I think he pretty clearly does.
There's a bunch of unexplained stuff throughout, but I think on the whole FH tends to be pretty explicit about the core "superhuman" powers of the different characters.
And while I agree that not mentioning an ability doesn't logically preclude a character from having it, if we return to the passages from Analog, I do think they are very hard to reconcile with the idea of Paul having OM, because their effect would overlap in a way that is never addressed. If Paul did have OM, then that
should give him the experience of many lifetimes, make him "ancient," and so on (in the same way as Leto II). The fact that these effects are only discussed in relation to his prescience is to me an implicit indicator that he did not in fact have access to ancestral memory.
georgiedenbro wrote: ↑24 Jan 2024 14:41
Yeah, a lot of our interpretation would change if OM wasn't actually a thing (until retconned in GEoD). According to your view, then, Leto II and Ghani were the first two ever to have this power, and then we have to assume one of two things: in HoD and CH:D the BG then finally learned this technique; or that it's a straight retcon and they always knew how, but we were never told so until GEoD. Something like that?
As with Paul, I would challenge you to find
any quote from the first trilogy, aside from the line by Mohiam in the first chapter, that indicates Reverend Mothers have ancestral memory access. There are plenty of passages that talk about how they have the sequence of memories from Sharing with other Reverend Mothers, so why wouldn't there be any that talk about their ancestors?
My view is that FH retconned OM several times:
Early on while writing
Dune, he thought Reverend Mothers (including, eventually, Jessica and Alia) would have ancestral memory on the female side, and that Paul would have it on both the male and female sides. Chapter 1 was written with this assumption. But by the time he wrote the scene where Jessica becomes a Reverend Mother in "Book II: Muad'Dib," he'd decided not to include this element after all, and instead focus on the idea of Sharing memory. (Which works much better thematically and plot-wise, enabling Jessica to integrate into Fremen culture in a way ancestral knowledge would not really be helpful for.)
In "Book III: The Prophet," when Paul takes the Water of Life, this also allowed him to keep Paul's abilities focused on prescience, rather than muddle it with another power of unclear relevance, though he still gains the ability to commune, as demonstrated with Jessica—and with Leto II in
Dune Messiah. (The original plan for Book III was that Alia would be killed in the Sardaukar raid, along with Paul's son, but she would apparently somehow Share with Paul remotely/across time, so that he would gain her memories and she would live on in his mind. Although John W. Campbell convinced FH to let Alia live, this idea is still partially preserved in the words she leaves Paul "where only you can hear them," as well as in a chapter epigraph: "Though we deem the captive dead, yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice.")
By omitting ancestral memory from
Dune, it meant that FH could hold back this power for later, introducing it in
Dune Messiah as a new evolutionary step unique to Leto and Ghanima: "Or was this somehow the genetic product of his line, foreseen by the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam?" (Though contrary to his original plan for Paul, in
Messiah the twins each only have access to half their ancestors, male/female respectively: "He saw his father. He
was his father. And the grandfather, and the grandfathers before that. His awareness tumbled through a mind-shattering corridor of his whole
male line." "As he stared, she opened her eyes. Those eyes!
Chani peered out of her eyes … and the
Lady Jessica.
A multitude peered out of those eyes.")
Note that in
Dune and
Dune Messiah, Alia does not—by all indications—have ancestral memory at all: just like "regular" Reverend Mothers, she only has Shared memory. Notably, in
Messiah she explains that she has Jessica's memories because of having Shared with her ("the trance of transmigration," as she puts it), and strongly implies that she does not have her father's memories (or, for example, her paternal grandmother's).
Then comes
Children of Dune. A book we know FH struggled with. A book in which (by my interpretation) he strove to recapture whatever it was made
Dune so popular, after the less commercially successful
Dune Messiah and his failure to break out of science fiction with
Soul Catcher. So he decided to bring back Baron Harkonnen, as a ghost in Alia's mind.
This is completely inconsistent with the rules as established, but never mind! He has to retcon it so that Alia has ancestral memory on both the male and female side, which in turn means he needs to give the same to Leto and Ghanima. Ancestral memory becomes a characteristic of pre-born in general, a power shunned up until this point because it leads to insanity and/or Abomination (itself retconned to refer to possession by an ancestor, while in the first books it merely referred to the pre-born status in itself). Reverend Mothers, specifically Jessica, still don't have ancestral memory, nor does Paul. In Chapter 1 of
Children of Dune FH establishes the new rules through Stilgar's interior monologue.
Finally, in
God Emperor of Dune, Reverend Mothers now have ancestral memories as well. I tend to consider this a retcon, but—especially if by this time they are descendants of Ghanima and have Atreides genes (as they explicitly do in
Heretics/
Chapterhouse)—it could also be explained as having unlocked this ability in the intervening millennia.
My theory for why most fans miss all of this is because… well, for one thing it's fairly confusing, and for another, people have a strong need for order and things making sense, and this leads many readers to try to impose consistency on a set of works that are fundamentally inconsistent, applying claims from later books to the earlier ones even when they don't really fit.