1) The planet Arrakis, AKA 'DUNE', is the only source of 'The Spice" - a powerful and vitally important resource.

2) The Emperor has transitioned control over Arrakis from Baron Harkonnen (of the nasty House Harkonnen) to Duke Leto (of the good House Atraides).

3) Duke Leto's beloved concubine, Jessica, is a powerful "Bene Gesserit" with great physical and mental abilities. Jessica is pregnant with Leto's daughter - and their 15-year-old son, Paul Atreides, is heir to the dukedom.

4) Paul considers whether he might be the "Kwisatz Haderach", the prophecied savior. He survives an attempt on his life - as well as the "Gom Jabbar", a painful test of mental discipline.

5) The Emperor has conspired with Baron Harkonnen: The Baron will kill Duke Leto and his family, whom The Emperor views as a threat, and place his own nephew Feyd-Rautha in command.

6) Leto learns of the dangers involved in harvesting the spice, which is protected by giant sandworms. He seeks to negotiate with the planet's indigenous Fremen people, seeing them as valuable allies rather than foes.

7) Leto is betrayed by his personal physician, Yueh, who drugs the Duke and delivers him to Baron Harkonnen. His own family threatened, Yueh's scheme was to use the Duke to kill Baron Harkonnen - while sparing the Duke's relatives, Jessica and Paul.

8) Baron Harkonnen spreads the rumor that it was Jessica who betrayed Duke Leto. The Duke's ally Gurney Halleck escapes. Another ally, Hawat, is forced to work for Baron Harkonnen - but works secretly to undermine the Harkonnens.

9) Jessica and Paul to escape into the desert and are presumed dead by the Harkonnens.

10) (Martin) - Exposed to the spice, Paul has visions which reveal his own mental powers and his place in the future of Arrakis, its people, and the universe. It is also revealed Jessica is the daughter of Baron Harkonnen.

11) Paul and Jessica are captured by the Fremen. Paul is challenged to a duel - and kills his challenger, proving his mettle and earning him a place among the Fremen, who give him the name Muad'Dib.

12) Jessica drinks the poisonous Water of Life, which causes the developing child, Alia, to become infused with psychic powers. Alia is born and quickly shows unusual abilities.

13) Paul takes a Fremen lover, Chani, who bears their son, Leto. He also learns to ride the giant sand worms.

14) As two years pass, the Fremen recognize Paul Muad'Dib as their prophesied messiah. Paul believes, as his father did, that the Fremen could help him to reclaim Arrakis - but if he does not lead them properly, their jihad could consume the universe.

15) The Fremen's frequent attacks reduce spice production, crippling the Harkonnens. The Baron learns of Muad'Dib, the mysterious leader of the Fremen.

16) The Baron encourages his nephew Glossu Rabban to rule with an iron fist - so that his favored nephew, Feyd-Rautha, will be more popular when he then takes command. The Emperor and Baron Harkonnen grow suspicious of one another.

17) The Fremen raid a group of smugglers - which reunites Paul and Jessica with their old friend Gurney Halleck, now a smuggler himself. Gurney threatens Jessica, believing her to have betrayed the Duke - but Paul intervenes.

18) To develop his powers, Paul drinks the Water of Life - usually fatal to males. After three weeks in a coma, Paul awakes with clairvoyance across time and space: he is the Kwisatz Haderach, the messiah the Bene Gesserit have sought to create.

19) Paul sees that the Emperor and Baron are preparing an attack, and he readies the Fremen for battle. When the Emperor's troops attack, young Leto is among the Fremen killed, while Alia is captured and taken to the Emperor.

20) Riding giant sand worms, Paul leads the Fremen into battle against the Emperor's forces - while young Alia assasinates the Baron and escapes.

21) Paul faces the Emperor, threatening to destroy spice production forever unless Shaddam abdicates the throne.

22) (Jay, Evan, Martin) - Feyd-Rautha challenges Paul to a ritualistic knife fight - which Paul wins.

23) The Emperor reluctantly cedes the throne to Paul and promises his daughter Princess Irulan's hand in marriage.

24) As Paul takes control of the Empire, he realizes that he cannot control his own legend - so the Fremen jihad cannot be prevented.






VERY DETAILED PLOT DESCRIPTION, NOTES, ETC.

Background:

The Padishah Empire has spanned the galaxy for millennia, its economy utterly dependent on the unique and incalculably valuable Spice Melange.A highly addictive drug, withdrawal from the spice is deadly - but when taken regularly, it greatly prolongs youth and health, while also expanding the mind. In very large doses, the spice gives its user access to psychic powers of prescience and clairvoyance.

The powerful Spacer's Guild uses the spice's prescience as they navigate starships through interstellar space. Computers having been banned after the Butlerian Jihad centuries ago, there is no other way to travel the stars. Without the spice, the empire would collapse.

Also dependent on the spice is the mysterious sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit. Trained in mental and physical arts to a superhuman level, they manipulate the politics of the empire behind the scenes, training noblewomen and arranging marriages, with the long-term goal of breeding a prophesied leader: the Kwisatz Haderach, a male Bene Gesserit who will surpass them all.

But spice comes from only one place in the entire universe: the forbidding desert planet, Arrakis. Arrakis has long been ruled by the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Now, the popular Duke Leto Atriedes, ruler of the beautiful ocean planet Caladan, has been ordered by the Padishah Emperor to leave his home and take over the rulership of Arrakis...



1. Paul Atreides, the 15 year old son of Duke Leto, wakes in the night to hear his mother, Lady Jessica (an acolyte of the Bene Gesserit, who has trained Paul in its disciplines as well) talking to an old woman. They discuss whether Paul might be the "Kwisatz Haderach".

2. The next morning, Paul is brought to see the old woman, who is revealed to be a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit. She performs the test of the Gom Jabbar on Paul. This ordeal, undertaken by all Bene Gesserit acolytes (including Paul's mother at one time), is meant to determine whether Paul is a human, acting rationally, or an animal acting on instinct. While threatening him with a poisoned needle, the Reverend Mother instructs him to place his hand in a box, inducing excruciating pain, which he must accept - if he pulls his hand from the box, she will kill him. Paul recites to himself the Bene Gesserit litany against fear - "Fear is the mind-killer" - and passes the test, after enduring more pain than any female Bene Gesserit ever has.

3. Meanwhile on another world, Baron Harkonnen discusses his plans with his nephew Feyd-Rautha and their mentat servant Piter de Vries. The sworn enemy of the Atreides family, Harkonnen has been conspiring with the emperor - who is jealous and fearful of Duke Leto's rising popularity among the Landsraad aristocracy - to destroy them. The emperor has given Arrakis to Leto, but only as a trap: after he takes over there, the Atreides family will be betrayed and killed. The emperor's elite Sardaukar soldiers will participate in the attack, disguised as Harkonnen forces to conceal the emperor's complicity.

4. Back on Caladan, the Reverend Mother speaks privately with Lady Jessica. It is revealed that Jessica had previously been ordered by the Bene Gesserit to give birth to a girl, who could have married into the Harkonnen family and ended the feud, but because of her love for Leto she disobeyed orders and had Paul.

5. The Reverend Mother talks with Paul. She asks him about the prophetic dreams Jessica has told her about. He tells her about one in which he meets a girl who calls him Usul. The Reverend Mother reveals that something terrible will soon happen to Paul's father.

6. Later, Paul is visited by Thufir Hawat, the duke's mentat strategist. Hawat agrees that Arrakis is dangerous, but is not concerned that the duke will be killed. He believes the Atriedes family will find allies among the native citizens of Arrakis, the Fremen.

7. Paul is then visited by Gurney Halleck, the duke's weapon master, who challenges him to a training duel. (Duels are fought with knives because force-field body shields can repel fast-moving objects like bullets, and will explode violently if hit with a laser beam.) Halleck fights unusually hard as a lesson for Paul, knowing he may have to fight for his life soon.

8. Paul meets with Dr. Yueh, the Atreides' doctor, who gives him some information about the ecology of Arrakis - and in particular, the planet's giant sandworms - and an ancient miniature bible. (Unbeknownst to Paul, Dr. Yueh has been compromised by Baron Harkonnen, and plans to betray the Atreides after their arrival on Arrakis.)

9. Paul meets his father, and they discuss the dangers ahead. Leto believes that he has foreseen Harkonnen's traps, and intends to evade them. He believes that, if befriended, the Fremen on Arrakis have the potential to be just as strong an army as the Sardaukar.

10. The family travels to Arrakis and moves into their new home. Jessica meets her new servant, a Freman woman named Shadout Mapes. As a test, Mapes shows Jessica a strange white-bladed knife, asking her what it is. Jessica draws on knowledge from her Bene Gesserit training and begins to call it "a maker of death", but stops after "a maker" when she sees Mapes's reaction - for that is the correct answer. Mapes believes Jessica is "The One," a figure of Fremen prophecy, and gives her the crysknife as a gift.

11. Jessica meets with Dr. Yueh, and they discuss Arrakeen politics, and the feelings of the people toward the Atreides and the Harkonnens, and the resentment they feel toward wasters of water. He struggles to conceal his treasonous plans from Jessica - who, as a Bene Gesserit, is able to sense truth and falsehood. He reveals to her that his wife was kidnapped, and presumably killed, by the Harkonnens.

12. Paul is in his bedroom when a small flying robotic probe appears from the wall and tries to kill him. Using Bene Gesserit abilities, he is able to evade and then destroy the probe. In the process he saves the life of Shadout Mapes, who returns the favor by telling him what the Fremen have heard: there is a traitor among the Atreides staff.

13. Jessica finds the palace's garden, where water is wasted lavisly on decorative plants. She finds a message from another Bene Gesserit - Lady Fenring, the wife of the former governor of Arrakis - warning her that Leto and Paul are in danger and there is a traitor in their midst. Paul arrives in the garden and they discuss the messages.

14. Later, in a meeting of the Duke's staff, Hawat offers to resign for failing to prevent the attack on Paul. Leto, though rattled, refuses, and moves ahead with his plans for Arrakis, setting up initiatives to convince the spice miners who worked for the Harkonnens to carry on working for the Atreides, to win the support of the spice smugglers, and to recruit Fremen warriors.

15. The Atreides' swordmaster Duncan Idaho arrives, with a Fremen leader, Stilgar. Duncan has won Stilgar's respect, and has been offered a place in Stilgar's sietch (a cave-dwelling Fremen village). Stilgar spits on the table in front of the Duke, as a gift of water: a Fremen sign of respect. The Duke returns the gesture, and allows Duncan to join the Fremen.

16. We learn that some of the Fremen have been calling Paul the Lisan al'Gaib or Mahdi: a prophesied messianic figure who will arrive as the child of a Bene Gesserit and lead them to freedom.

17. Hawat's forces kill a Harkonnen spy, capturing a fragment of a note from the Baron, which again suggests that Leto will be betrayed by someone "beloved". Hawat believes the traitor is Jessica. Leto rejects this, perceiving it as a Harkonnen plot to undermine his trust in her. He decides to act as if he he believes it, in order to fool the real traitor - not even telling Jessica.

18. Leto privately tells Paul about the plot, requesting that if anything should happen to Leto, Paul tell Jessica he always loved her and never doubted her. He also tells Paul that in that event, he should take advantage of his "Mahdi" status to gain the Fremen's support.

19. Leto and Paul meet Dr. Kynes, the planetary ecologist, a servant of the emperor. Kynes has been ordered to betray the Atreides, but he finds himself impressed by them - especially Paul, who seems to fit the Fremen legends of the Mahdi. (For example, Paul understands how to wear a stillsuit without needing an explanation, fitting the prophecy "he shall know your ways as though born to them"). He is also startled by Leto's interest in changing the climate of Arrakis to make it a paradise, which is Kynes's secret dream.

20. Kynes takes them to visit a spice-mining operation. While they are viewing it from the air, the mobile spice factory is attacked by a sandworm. The "carryall" vehicle, which should come and move the factory to safety, does not arrive due to Harkonnen sabotage. The duke lands and orders the miners to evacuate, leaving behind the spice. Kynes is further impressed by the duke's concern for human life over the spice.

21. At home, the duke holds a dinner party for wealthy and distinguished members of Arrakis society. Leto learns that there is a custom at such parties, begun by the Harkonnens, of allowing guests to wash themselves with water, slopping it onto the floor and dropping towels in it, which are then thrown to the poor to try to wring moisture from them. He ends the practice in disgust, instead ordering that a bowl of clean water be put out for the poor during the dinner party, and that everyone who asks may take a cupful.

22. The dinner is uncomfortable, as the family banters tensely with their guests - realizing that one of them, a Guild banker, is a Harkonnon spy. The banker insults Kynes, but backs down in obvious fear when challenged.

23. A drunk and angry Duncan Idaho arrives at the castle, and reveals to Jessica that he believes she is a traitor, having heard this from Thufir Hawat. Jessica angrily confronts Hawat and tries to prove that she isn't. Hawat is not convinced.

24. Late at night, Leto hears an odd sound and investigates, finding several dead bodies (including Shadout Mapes), and then being shot with a tranquilizer dart by Yueh, who reveals that he has made a deal with the Harkonnens: he has betrayed Leto in order to save his kidnapped wife from torture, but he will arrange for Jessica and Paul to escape, and he will place a false tooth full of poison gas into Leto's mouth, so that he will be able to kill Baron Harkonnen later. He takes Leto's ducal signet ring to give to Paul.

25. Jessica and Paul are seized by Harkonnen soldiers, who are ordered to fly them into the desert and leave them to be eaten by worms. Jessica is gagged to stop her from using "the Voice" - a Bene Gesserit ability that forces people to obey. In the ornithopter, Paul uses the Voice instead, making one of the guards remove Jessica's gag, and she incites the guards to fight each other. When only one guard remains, Paul kills him. In the ornithopter they find a kid left for them by Yueh, containing stillsuits, provisions, and the ducal ring.

26. Yueh confronts the Baron and demands to be reunited with his wife. The Baron agrees - and kills him. In his dying words, Yueh says that he has beaten the Baron.

27. Leto is brought before the Baron, who demands to know where Paul and Jessica are; Leto does not know, and the Baron threatens him with torture. Leto bites the tooth, releasing the poison gas; Piter de Vries and several guards are killed, but the Baron narrowly escapes.

28. Paul and Jessica are hiding in a tent. She is grieving the death of Leto, but he finds himself unable to grieve. Instead, due to the combination of exposure to spice in his food and in the desert, his mentat and Bene Gesserit training, and the Kwizatz Haderach breeding program, Paul's mind expands, and he becomes clairvoyant and prescient, seeing thousands of possible futures before him. In many futures, he is leading the Fremen in a holy war that will rage through the galaxy, killing millions. Paul is horrified and resolves to prevent this jihad if he can.

29. Paul reveals to Jessica that he knows she is pregnant with his sister - a fact she had not yet told anyone - and that she, unbeknownst to her, is the secret daughter of Baron Harkonnen. She believes he is the Kwizatz Haderach, but he tells her that he is something unexpected.

30. Thufir Hawat confers with a Fremen, reluctantly agreeing to let the bodies of dead Atreides troops be taken in order to recover their water, and thus securing a bond between the two groups. He is amazed to see Fremen soldiers easily overpowering Sardaukar forces as if it were no challenge at all. Just as Hawat and the fremen are preparing to move out of the area, though, an overwhelming force of Sardaukar attack and capture Hawat.

30. Duncan Idaho, who was helped to escape by Yueh, arrives with Dr. Kynes to rescue Paul and Jessica. In the distance there is a massive explosion, because Duncan had secretly placed a force-shield as a booby trap for Harkonnon forces using lasers.

31. Kynes takes them to an old ecological testing facility. They learn that Kynes is also called Liet, and is the supreme leader of the Fremen. Paul makes an offer to Kynes - he wishes to use the Fremen to choke off the spice, forcing the emperor to capitulate and put Paul on the throne in his place, whereupon Paul will support Kynes's effort to change Arrakis's climate. He offers to pledge his loyalty to Kynes, even at the expense of his own life, and Kynes decides to pledge loyalty to Paul in return. He sends messages to the Fremen to protect Paul.

32. Sardaukar attack the ecological facility. Duncan is killed in the battle. Kynes shows Jessica and Paul to an ornithopter they can use to escape. They fly into a sandstorm to cover their tracks, barely keeping it above the dangerous winds.

33. The Baron's guard captain tells him that Paul and Jessica must be dead, as they were seen to fly into a storm and no one could survive. The Baron is angry that the captain did not actually see the dead bodies. The captain also tells the Baron he believes Kynes was helping the Atreides; the Baron orders that Kynes be killed, but because Kynes works for the emperor, it must be made to look like an accident.

34. The death of Piter de Vries has forced the Baron to change his plans: rather than letting Piter rule Arrakis temporarily, he will now give command of the planet to his psychopathic nephew Rabban, with orders to violently oppress the people and make them hate him, so that when the Baron's more favored nephew Feyd-Rautha takes over, he will be welcomed as a savior.

35. After hours of flying through the sandstorm with the help of Paul's prescient powers, Paul and Jessica land near a rocky area; as they run toward the rocks, a sandworm eats the ornithopter.

36. Paul and Jessica cross the desert by night and rest during the day. Paul teaches her how to walk without rhythm so as not to attract sandworms, which are attracted to any rhythmic sound.

37. While descending a slope, Jessica is caught in a sandslide. Paul abandons their survival pack to save her, and it is buried. With great effort, he rescues Jessica and recovers the pack.

38. Meanwhile Gurney Halleck, who has survived the Harkonnen attack, meets with the spice smugglers. He decides to join them, hoping one day to be able to avenge himself on the Harkonnens.

39. In order to cross a large sandy area, Paul and Jessica plant a "thumper" - a device that makes a rhythmic thumping noise to divert sandworms away from them while they are crossing. They nearly reach the next rocky area, but step on "drum sand", a kind of sand that amplifies footsteps. The worm comes for them and nearly catches them, but another thumper in the distance draws it away.

40. As they reach the rock zone, they are challenged by a group of Fremen.

41. Meanwhile, Kynes stumbles through the desert, where he has been dumped by the Harkonnens without a stillsuit. Delirious, he imagines the voice of his father - the planetary ecologist before him - lecturing him about the ecology of Arrakis and the sociology of the Fremen. In his final moments he realizes that he is above a "pre-spice mass" - a stage in the development of spice - which is about to explode and kill him. He dies.

42. Paul and Jessica are interrogated by the Fremen group. Paul recognizes their leader as Stilgar, who had visited Duke Leto with Duncan Idaho. Stilgar realizes Paul is the one Kynes gave orders to protect, and offers the tribe's sanctuary to him. However, he judges that Jessica is too old to learn the ways of the Fremen, and that she should be killed and her water taken. Jessica quickly overpowers him, and he realizes that she is a "weirding woman". He changes his decision, saying that if she will teach the Fremen her way of fighting, the tribe will give her sanctuary as well.

43. The Fremen travel together to Sietch Tabr. Paul's guide is Chani, Kynes's daughter - the girl he has seen in his dreams, calling him Usul.

44. Stilgar, knowing that Jessica will need to find a place in the tribe, mentions that their Reverend Mother is old and will need replacing soon, and also mentions the prophecy that the Mahdi will be the son of a Bene Gesserit. Jessica has an intuitive vision and recites several lines of biblical text, impressing the Fremen.

45. One of the Fremen, Jamis, challenges Paul to a knife fight to the death. Paul is hesitant, not wanting to kill him, but bests Jamis and thus proves his worthiness to the tribe. They are impressed when he cries over Jamis's death, giving his moisture to the dead. The tribe welcomes him and gives him the secret name Usul that he had dreamed of. Asked to choose the name he will use outside the tribe, Paul chooses to be called Muad'dib, after the desert mouse - a name he has seen in his visions - but he alters the vision by asking also to keep the name his father gave him, and be known as Paul-Muad'dib.

46. At Jamis's funeral, his water is given to Paul, and his possessions are distributed. Chani asks Paul to play a song on Jamis's baliset (a zither-like instrument). He sings her a love song, disturbing Jessica. Paul has an insight that Jessica will be responsible for causing the jihad he has seen in the future.

47. On Giedi Prime, the Harkonnen homeworld, Count Fenring and his wife are visiting the Baron. They watch Feyd-Rautha kill a slave in gladiatorial combat, which has been rigged so that he can't lose.

(the rest of the synopsis from wikipedia:)

Jessica opts to undergo a ritual to become a Reverend Mother by drinking the poisonous Water of Life. Pregnant with Leto's daughter, she inadvertently causes her unborn child, Alia, to become infused with the same powers in the womb. Paul takes Chani as his lover and has a son with her, Leto II.

Two years pass and Paul's powerful prescience manifests, which confirms for the Fremen that he is their prophesied messiah, a legend planted by the Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva. Paul embraces his father's belief that the Fremen could be a powerful fighting force to take back Arrakis, but also sees that if he does not control them, their jihad could consume the entire universe. Word of the new Fremen leader reaches both Baron Harkonnen and the Emperor as spice production falls due to their increasingly destructive raids. The Emperor, suspecting the Baron of trying to create troops more powerful than the Sardaukar to seize power, sends spies to monitor activity on Arrakis. Hawat uses the opportunity to sow seeds of doubt in the Baron about the Emperor's true plans, putting further strain on their alliance.

Gurney, who survived the Harkonnen coup and became a smuggler, reunites with Paul and Jessica after a Fremen raid on his harvester. Believing Jessica to be the traitor, Gurney threatens to kill her, but is stopped by Paul. Paul did not foresee Gurney's attack, and concludes he must increase his prescience by drinking the Water of Life, which is traditionally fatal to males. Paul falls into unconsciousness for three weeks after drinking the poison, but when he wakes, he has clairvoyance across time and space: he is the Kwisatz Haderach, the ultimate goal of the Bene Gesserit breeding program.

Paul senses the Emperor and Baron are amassing fleets around Arrakis to quell the Fremen rebellion, and prepares the Fremen for a major offensive against the Harkonnen troops. The Emperor arrives with the Baron on Arrakis. The Emperor's troops seize a Fremen outpost, killing many including young Leto II, while Alia is captured and taken to the Emperor. Under cover of an electric storm, which shorts out the Emperor's troops' defensive shields, Paul and the Fremen, riding giant sandworms, assault the capital while Alia assassinates the Baron and escapes. The Fremen quickly defeat both the Harkonnen and Sardaukar troops.

Paul faces the Emperor, threatening to destroy spice production forever unless Shaddam abdicates the throne. Feyd-Rautha attempts to stop Paul by challenging him to a ritualistic knife fight, during which he attempts to cheat and kill Paul with a poison spur in his belt. Paul gains the upper hand and kills him. The Emperor reluctantly cedes the throne to Paul and promises his daughter Princess Irulan's hand in marriage. As Paul takes control of the Empire, he realizes that while he has achieved his goal, he is no longer able to stop the Fremen jihad, as their belief in him is too powerful to restrain.

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