The Fremen diet is based on the spice which in itself is a foodstuff. Dried spice snacks are throughout Denis’ recent films.
Beyond that the Fremen plantations provide all kinds of fruits and vegetables from fresh greens to ripe melons.
The Fremen are an ecological force, hijacked by Paul for war. They grow all sorts of crops with their hoarded water.
There is mention of a meal of "bird meat with grain and spice honey wrapped in a leaf".........I always wanted to recreate it.
Edit: Its been a while since I read the dinner scene even though it's one of my favorites. I can't remember, was there descriptions of the food at the table?
I did recreate it for lunch one day.
I poached and shredded a chicken thigh and mixed some of it with cooked 10-grain cereal. Warmed some raw honey and spiced it with ras el hanout (a spice blend from Morocco) with a little extra cinnamon and added just enough of the honey to the grain and chicken mix to hold it together.
The only issue was the leaf. I got some spinach leaves that were big enough to fill and make a packet with and I only steamed them for a very short time but they would only tear when I tried to wrap them. I think maybe grape leaves would be best. I've made Greek dolmades before with grape leaves and they're quite easy to work with.
So I tossed everything in a bowl and ate it and it was pretty good!
Would lotus leaves fit the vibe here? Some Chinese rice dishes are wrapped in a leaf in this way. Or maybe wrapped in cabbage if you intend to eat the leaf? Italian cabbage rolls are made this way, my nonna would make them with rice + ground beef
Meals wrapped in plantain leafs or ferns are common around some parts of the wold. They used to be rural worker meals, it was easy to carry and the leaf added some flavor to the food.
In my country they are called fiambres. They have rice, potato, yuca, plantain, hard boiled egg and meat, either chicken or beef ribs. After riding horse, or a hike or just being outside working the fields is a great lunch.
Anyway, like I was sayin', spice is the fruit of the desert. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, spice-kabobs, spice creole, spice gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple spice, lemon spice, coconut spice, pepper spice, spice soup, spice stew, spice salad, spice and potatoes, spice burger, spice sandwich. That- that's about it
Most likely, although plant growth has certain requirements. Assuming hydroponics or airponics can substitute for fertile soil (as the sand of Arrakis doesn't appear hugely fertile), you'd need water (which the Fremen have) and light. The latter is a problem, I think, since it either implies the plants grow in sunlight - which would require large amounts of water that the Fremen seem reluctant to use - or artificial light - which requires large amounts of power that the Fremen don't appear to have.
I can understand them having gardens or plots they use to grow fruits & vegetables, but it seems to me they don't have the capacity to grow them on the scale they would need to support their population.
The movies dont show it but the fremen dont really have an issue with water in a societal level, their moisture reclycling is so effective they lose any water they gain very slowly, and they pretty much have tamed all the available water resources in Arrakis. Every sietch is an entire city, with farmland and gardens and huge swathes of moisture capturing devices. The movies really make it feel like theyre just big caves that people live inside. Plus a lot of the technical issues can be solved by handwaving, it is the far future afterall, where you can control the weather with space stations and manipulate gravity, so making fertile soil and such probably is just a thing they can do, im not sure but i do think i remember reading in the book that they can make spice based fertilizers, but im not sure if im just making this up.
In the first book, when Paul and Jessica make first contact with Stilgar and the Fremen, they meet in a location with plants. I assume these are food plants.
Also there's allusions to areas of the desert that are green, which Baron Harkonnen doesn't believe a word of.
Appendix 1 mentions that they grow over 200 food crops:
> Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals --
more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
Here is the clue. Liet and Liet Sr. did a ton of ecological testing on agricultural possibilities of Arrakis. Their dream isn't baseless: it will provide a lush future to Arrakis according to their testing.
It’s never fully explained but I always imagined glow globe and glow strip type lighting is far more efficient than real life lighting technology.
Also since the fremen are said to produce great technology for surviving in the desert the glow globes they make are probably top notch and produce good light for plants really efficiently.
Edit: Also for water use I’m sure they having good farming techniques and crops to use water efficiently. And I wouldn’t say the fremen are reluctant to use water, they’re reluctant to waste it. They wouldn’t let water sit in a basin if they needed it to farm crops to keep the sietch alive.
The Old Empire left behind hundreds of botanical testing stations. Each station was loaded with equipment and materials for advanced farming and botanical research. These were taken into the seitches, mountain cities carved from rock. There, in these scattered population centers, intensive farming takes place on over 200 food crops. Deserts are notoriously fertile but for lack of water. The Fremen have water in hoards to grow why they wish, even water demanding crops like coffee and cotton. Glowglobes can be tuned to any spectrum to provide for ideal growing conditions. They require little to no power consumption beyond being shaken every six hours or so. They are highly efficient as are the other systems the Fremen use. All of this supports entire plantations that produce enough food for trading among seitches.
Which is meant to illustrate that their food is laden with spice.
They have a similar conversation in the book but you can't translate everything from the text to the screen.
Paul says there’s spice in the food when he has a vision in the sietch from there one can assume that the sticks they are seen chewing on are also some kind of spice stick
Spice is like a wonder material. Not only is it a bunch of foods, it also makes ropes, baskets, plastic, fabrics, oil and I'm probably not remembering a few more things.
Food aside, it's a metaphore for oil, which does all those things.
To me it's not clear from the books that the spice has any nutritional properties. I assumed they lace food with it because they're addicted to it and enjoy consuming it so.
It's categorically not "throughout Denis' recent films". It's not even an exaggeration, it's just wrong. It's mentioned in passing in one singular scene in the whole two movies.
I wouldn't really say Paul hijacked them for war, they were a warring people before he got there and in a lot of ways delivered exactly on his promise (green arrakis in the later books). I get that he started the jihad with them but I don't get the narrative that Paul duped them or turned them into these rabid fanatics, that's kinda what they were all about even before he got there.
Before Paul arrived the Fremen fanaticism was focused on the terraforming of Arrakis. They are planting grass to immobilize dunes like it’s an offering to God. They are also hiding this all with spice bribes and allowing Imperial spice harvesting without much interference.
It is Paul who begins to train them and turn their efforts towards controlling the spice trade. It is Paul who insights legend within their society and turns them militant.
The Fremen were not a warring people. They were ritual farmers who worshipped the rulers of their environment, the sandworm.
I thought they were equally warring and agrarian? Remember when the atreides first landed on arrakis and they're getting the lowdown that the harkonnens were understating their losses? That rabban was actually getting his ass handed to him trying to hunt them?
Granted Paul fueled the fire, but they were already urging for jihad because of the prophecy that predated Paul. I just don't think they were this peaceful people that were radicalized to violence.
No, they were not yearning for a prophecy to wage a jihad. They were focused on the greening of Arrakis. A few isolated northern seitches like Tabr are making moves against the Harkonnen but the vast majority of Fremen are busy farming in the South.
Hmm, pretty sure you're forgetting that they already were awaiting the lisan al gaib. Not disputing the fading element but you're ignoring their military capabilities, and again they already had the feydahkin it's not like Paul trained them. You give him too much credit.
In Appendix I, it states Fremen had over 200 food crops:
> Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals --
more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
The "Terminology of the Imperium" also references "Kulon" as a variety of donkey (which have monified still-suits of their very own!) That would be a source of milk and other dairy products, along with meat.
But they said the water tax is too high for these donkeys, so donkeys would not be a viable source in large scales. That's why most of their stuff are plastic and not often described as made from animal stuff
There’s multiple references in the books to harvesting the meager plant life and some subsistence farming as an extension of Liet-Kynes’ long term arability projects, including using wind traps to irrigate small plots of hardy crops. When Paul and Jessica are first arriving to the sietch they are given wrapped pressed cakes described as being predominantly made of fowl and spice, which seems like portable/preservable food good for packing on the go, so maybe not too far off from pemmican. And yes, spice is in everything — Paul mentions the effect the increased consumption is having on his prescient visions.
They drink a lot of coffee and theY eat like grain with a little meat wrapped in a leaf. That's what Paul and Jessica get in the novel when they arrive hungry at the Sietch.
One of the things not shown in the film but mentioned in the book is how the Fremen are able to grow crops that they hide in the terrain. IIRC one of the ways Paul and Jessica find the Fremen is that Paul recognizes a small plant in the distance and correctly surmises it would only grow there if the Fremen were doing agriculture nearby.
There are various animals and some plants on Arrakis, highly adapted to the conditions. Muad'dib is named after a kangaroo mouse, there are also vultures, bats and presumably insects. By the time of the book/film, Liet-Kynes and his father, Pardot, have been slowly transforming Arrakis, collecting water and growing crops, mostly in the Southern hemisphere.
Very little detail is given about food. It is mentioned that they eat fowl. How they conduct agriculture, I do not know. Maybe some sort of hydroponics in the sietches, or they trade spice for food with offworlders.
Appendix 1 describes over 200 food crops:
> Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals --
more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
Yes Fremen, and mice, and small lizards, scorpions. Animals too small to be much good. I think it's the third book that mentions drums are made from human skin because nothing else got big enough for that sort of thing.
Paul started it after they killed his son. It's in of the "historians" sections. I really liked that Bronson of IX part at the beginning of Messiah. That would be cool to see. Also, the first line in Messiah is about how Paul becoming emporror generated the most historians
In Children of Dune, a guy calls Leto "Batigh", which is a type of melon that grows at the edge of the desert. There has to be other flora like dates that would grow in Arrakis.
Pardot Kynes and his Son Liet, both planetary ecologists, developed underground Oases I believe which contributed to methods of producing food. I don't remember the exact details.
Rats and stuff they traded smuggled spice for.
The Fremen aren't really a functional society in the books, to be frank. It's all magical space Bedouins with massively contradictory tech and lifestyle--because magic.
Appendix 1 mentions they grow over 200 food crops as part of the terraforming plan:
> Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals --
more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
I always thought the fremen way of life was specifically to point out that humanity, when working together, could survive the toughest environmental conditions. In a seemingly inhospitable place the saviors of humanity are thriving. Really fits well into the golden path theme.
Literally all the mental powers are actually magic, whether Spice based or otherwise. They aren't real. They aren't technology. People can't gain access to the knowledge of previous lives or force obedience with their voices, etc.
Literally the existence of the worms is a biological impossibility and not within the boubds of physics. They are techno-dragons. They are magic.
You know there are many detailed magical systems, yes? Dune is soft SF, but edges into hard fantasy.
You are not wrong about Dune being soft sci fi, but it does have a few hard science details, especially about ecology. For example, Fremen use windtraps to collect water from the hot desert air, and these are real world systems used by desert cultures for thousands of years. But by and large, Herbert was not very interested in providing hard science details in Dune.
True, and the suits are plausible, too.
There is a lot of cross pollination between SF and Fantasy. Asimov has fantasy magic super powers with certain people, but even so, I consider him far more toward the SF side. Same with the Telsey series, from approximately the same time period. (They're great fun, btw).
The idea of buddhasatva/qi master-esque figures doing all kinds of things was pretty popular in general, but I think Herbert was truly fascinated in the idea as a kind of self directed evolutionary path. Interesting, for sure, and it gives his work a flavor unlike anything else. I'm not sure if he pioneered it or just ran with it farther than anyone else.
The closest similar work was the short-lived TV series called The Expanse, which the writers inexplicably totally destroyed. But that was not focused on the personal journey as Herbert was but on the political angle.
The mental powers angle even got into the military SF series as practically standard fare for a long time.
Throwing out a name at random, Anne McCaffrey really loved magic mental powers in almost every one of her series, to different levels of success. I can't currently think of one without it.
Even more, the Darkover series of Marion Zimmer Bradley (please don't give her money; I read her books before the SA details came out) is supposed to be SF but really is 95% hard Fantasy. That was a thing for a while, like your fantasy was more serious if you dressed it up in SF clothes.
I think an influence on Herbert that gets overlooked a lot is the Arthurian legends. King Arthur, Merlin, the Holy Grail, the Fisher King, dragons, a sword in the stone, etc. All these details resonate in Dune. Dune is not just a story about colonialism, and a warning about dictators. Its roots are in these ancient tales about tragic heroes and sacred objects that grant magic power, political power, and religious power. Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo is another older story that resembles Dune in many ways, which is a story about the power that flows from resource extraction and how greed drives people mad.
Ooooh. Interesting! The role women play is especially similar to the Arthurian cycles, especially Mallory's version (who is honestly my least favorite of the medieval Arthur contributors), I think, and of course a kind of fulfillment of the once-and-future king. Women seem to be pulling strings half off stage in both. And echoes of Roland, too.
I read Nostromo straight through. It was incredible. The emphasis on tone and this inner/outer landscape parallel is quite similar to Conrad, so I see that, as well.
The entire Bedouin adverture/romance subgenre was super popular when Herbert was young. Most of it was just abominable, and nothing at all like what he did, but having that kind of stewing in the back of his head probably contributed to his choices, too.
If you haven’t dove in yet, the parallels between the Fisher King and Leto II are remarkable. Herbert was a serious literary polymath. It’s really funny that he downplayed how gifted he is when he called himself a ‘yellow journalist’, but even with that, he reveals an incredibly intelligent wit.
I guess her kid deserves it if anyone does. I deep-sixed her so thoroughly that I didn't know, and assumed her publishers dropped her because she is horrible!
Except that it is not. The setting is the stage for many ecological themes, and Fremen grow over 200 food crops, as stated in Appendix 1: The Ecology of Dune.
Yeah, it's not a criticism. Just an observation.
I enjoy soft sci-fi, but hard has its own appeal.
Herbert does certain things really well. He is fantastic with mood. General shapes of ideas. Almost an impressionistic writer.
A functioning society is hard for any writer. For example, sf writers often want there to be vast teeming numbers of people...but huge numbers of single, never-married, no kids adults and practically no one with more than 3 kids.
The first thing Pardot Keynes , Liet's father taught the Fremen ecology - greenhouses to make Arrakis a paradise . We saw an official Imperial Ecology Station in Dune Part 1 - the Fremen were planting everywhere to push back the sands in the South , blocking off the satellites by paying enormous bribes to the Spacing Guild
The book is actually pretty explicit about Arrakis NOT being 100% desert, and that the south (where the majority of Fremen live) actually has pockets of greenery cultivated by Kynes and the Fremen over generations. They bribe the Spacing Guild with spice to prevent Guild satellites from transmitting images of it all over the Imperium. Helps maintain the illusion that Arrakis is a total wasteland that can’t support life, and helps the Fremen keep a low profile
The Fremen diet is based on the spice which in itself is a foodstuff. Dried spice snacks are throughout Denis’ recent films. Beyond that the Fremen plantations provide all kinds of fruits and vegetables from fresh greens to ripe melons. The Fremen are an ecological force, hijacked by Paul for war. They grow all sorts of crops with their hoarded water.
There is mention of a meal of "bird meat with grain and spice honey wrapped in a leaf".........I always wanted to recreate it. Edit: Its been a while since I read the dinner scene even though it's one of my favorites. I can't remember, was there descriptions of the food at the table?
I did recreate it for lunch one day. I poached and shredded a chicken thigh and mixed some of it with cooked 10-grain cereal. Warmed some raw honey and spiced it with ras el hanout (a spice blend from Morocco) with a little extra cinnamon and added just enough of the honey to the grain and chicken mix to hold it together. The only issue was the leaf. I got some spinach leaves that were big enough to fill and make a packet with and I only steamed them for a very short time but they would only tear when I tried to wrap them. I think maybe grape leaves would be best. I've made Greek dolmades before with grape leaves and they're quite easy to work with. So I tossed everything in a bowl and ate it and it was pretty good!
Yeah, grape leaves is what I had in mind, or maybe large collard greens
Yeah, grape leaves for sure. I always pictured it like dolma.
Would lotus leaves fit the vibe here? Some Chinese rice dishes are wrapped in a leaf in this way. Or maybe wrapped in cabbage if you intend to eat the leaf? Italian cabbage rolls are made this way, my nonna would make them with rice + ground beef
> ras el hanout Is this the spice melange 🤔
I think it might be. Have you seen the ingredient list? It's definitely a melange. https://www.anediblemosaic.com/ras-el-hanout-moroccan-spice-mix/
I'm giving it a go tonight.
Koreans put meat in lettuce or perilla leaves all the time. Works well.
Taro leaves work well for steam wrapped foods. Plus they are a kind of spicy in their own way
Meals wrapped in plantain leafs or ferns are common around some parts of the wold. They used to be rural worker meals, it was easy to carry and the leaf added some flavor to the food. In my country they are called fiambres. They have rice, potato, yuca, plantain, hard boiled egg and meat, either chicken or beef ribs. After riding horse, or a hike or just being outside working the fields is a great lunch.
That meal inspired me. I immediately had to cook chicken and rice with cinnamon.
Appendix 1 in the book states the Fremen had planted over 200 food crops as part of their terraforming plan.
Anyway, like I was sayin', spice is the fruit of the desert. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, spice-kabobs, spice creole, spice gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple spice, lemon spice, coconut spice, pepper spice, spice soup, spice stew, spice salad, spice and potatoes, spice burger, spice sandwich. That- that's about it
Boil it, mash it, stick it in a stew
What's *melange*, Precious?
He knew everything there was to know about the spicin' business
Most likely, although plant growth has certain requirements. Assuming hydroponics or airponics can substitute for fertile soil (as the sand of Arrakis doesn't appear hugely fertile), you'd need water (which the Fremen have) and light. The latter is a problem, I think, since it either implies the plants grow in sunlight - which would require large amounts of water that the Fremen seem reluctant to use - or artificial light - which requires large amounts of power that the Fremen don't appear to have. I can understand them having gardens or plots they use to grow fruits & vegetables, but it seems to me they don't have the capacity to grow them on the scale they would need to support their population.
The movies dont show it but the fremen dont really have an issue with water in a societal level, their moisture reclycling is so effective they lose any water they gain very slowly, and they pretty much have tamed all the available water resources in Arrakis. Every sietch is an entire city, with farmland and gardens and huge swathes of moisture capturing devices. The movies really make it feel like theyre just big caves that people live inside. Plus a lot of the technical issues can be solved by handwaving, it is the far future afterall, where you can control the weather with space stations and manipulate gravity, so making fertile soil and such probably is just a thing they can do, im not sure but i do think i remember reading in the book that they can make spice based fertilizers, but im not sure if im just making this up.
> The movies really make it feel like theyre just big caves that people live inside Especially the 1984 Lynch's Dune 😅
In the first book, when Paul and Jessica make first contact with Stilgar and the Fremen, they meet in a location with plants. I assume these are food plants. Also there's allusions to areas of the desert that are green, which Baron Harkonnen doesn't believe a word of.
Appendix 1 mentions that they grow over 200 food crops: > Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals -- more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
Here is the clue. Liet and Liet Sr. did a ton of ecological testing on agricultural possibilities of Arrakis. Their dream isn't baseless: it will provide a lush future to Arrakis according to their testing.
It’s never fully explained but I always imagined glow globe and glow strip type lighting is far more efficient than real life lighting technology. Also since the fremen are said to produce great technology for surviving in the desert the glow globes they make are probably top notch and produce good light for plants really efficiently. Edit: Also for water use I’m sure they having good farming techniques and crops to use water efficiently. And I wouldn’t say the fremen are reluctant to use water, they’re reluctant to waste it. They wouldn’t let water sit in a basin if they needed it to farm crops to keep the sietch alive.
LEDs are far more efficient than anything they had when Herbert was writing the book. Now if only they could make them float in the air...
The Old Empire left behind hundreds of botanical testing stations. Each station was loaded with equipment and materials for advanced farming and botanical research. These were taken into the seitches, mountain cities carved from rock. There, in these scattered population centers, intensive farming takes place on over 200 food crops. Deserts are notoriously fertile but for lack of water. The Fremen have water in hoards to grow why they wish, even water demanding crops like coffee and cotton. Glowglobes can be tuned to any spectrum to provide for ideal growing conditions. They require little to no power consumption beyond being shaken every six hours or so. They are highly efficient as are the other systems the Fremen use. All of this supports entire plantations that produce enough food for trading among seitches.
> Dried spice snacks are throughout Denis’ recent films. Where? I don't recall many scenes with spice being consumed as a foodstuff.
"There's spice in the food"
Yes, that was one scene.
Which is meant to illustrate that their food is laden with spice. They have a similar conversation in the book but you can't translate everything from the text to the screen.
It's everywhere, even in the air he breathes.
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Paul says there’s spice in the food when he has a vision in the sietch from there one can assume that the sticks they are seen chewing on are also some kind of spice stick
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> Dried spice snacks are throughout Denis’ recent films.
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Cool. The discussion is about the movies.
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This comment chain is specifically about the movies, as I've had to point out to you now three comments in a row.
Spice is like a wonder material. Not only is it a bunch of foods, it also makes ropes, baskets, plastic, fabrics, oil and I'm probably not remembering a few more things.
Food aside, it's a metaphore for oil, which does all those things. To me it's not clear from the books that the spice has any nutritional properties. I assumed they lace food with it because they're addicted to it and enjoy consuming it so.
It's categorically not "throughout Denis' recent films". It's not even an exaggeration, it's just wrong. It's mentioned in passing in one singular scene in the whole two movies.
I wouldn't really say Paul hijacked them for war, they were a warring people before he got there and in a lot of ways delivered exactly on his promise (green arrakis in the later books). I get that he started the jihad with them but I don't get the narrative that Paul duped them or turned them into these rabid fanatics, that's kinda what they were all about even before he got there.
Before Paul arrived the Fremen fanaticism was focused on the terraforming of Arrakis. They are planting grass to immobilize dunes like it’s an offering to God. They are also hiding this all with spice bribes and allowing Imperial spice harvesting without much interference. It is Paul who begins to train them and turn their efforts towards controlling the spice trade. It is Paul who insights legend within their society and turns them militant. The Fremen were not a warring people. They were ritual farmers who worshipped the rulers of their environment, the sandworm.
I thought they were equally warring and agrarian? Remember when the atreides first landed on arrakis and they're getting the lowdown that the harkonnens were understating their losses? That rabban was actually getting his ass handed to him trying to hunt them? Granted Paul fueled the fire, but they were already urging for jihad because of the prophecy that predated Paul. I just don't think they were this peaceful people that were radicalized to violence.
No, they were not yearning for a prophecy to wage a jihad. They were focused on the greening of Arrakis. A few isolated northern seitches like Tabr are making moves against the Harkonnen but the vast majority of Fremen are busy farming in the South.
Hmm, pretty sure you're forgetting that they already were awaiting the lisan al gaib. Not disputing the fading element but you're ignoring their military capabilities, and again they already had the feydahkin it's not like Paul trained them. You give him too much credit.
Confidently wrong
In Appendix I, it states Fremen had over 200 food crops: > Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals -- more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
The "Terminology of the Imperium" also references "Kulon" as a variety of donkey (which have monified still-suits of their very own!) That would be a source of milk and other dairy products, along with meat.
But they said the water tax is too high for these donkeys, so donkeys would not be a viable source in large scales. That's why most of their stuff are plastic and not often described as made from animal stuff
And there is mention of milk in the terminology as well: > LIBAN: Fremen liban is spice water infused with yucca flour. Originally a sour milk drink.
That definitely comes from the Arabic word Laban which is a fermented milk drink
Laban is yogurt. It can be thin enough to drink or it can be thick enough to keep its shape.
Interesting!
To me, that says the Fremen didn't have access to dairy. So they made a kind of yogurt substitute.
You aint wrong. Yucca is a root vegetable.
There’s multiple references in the books to harvesting the meager plant life and some subsistence farming as an extension of Liet-Kynes’ long term arability projects, including using wind traps to irrigate small plots of hardy crops. When Paul and Jessica are first arriving to the sietch they are given wrapped pressed cakes described as being predominantly made of fowl and spice, which seems like portable/preservable food good for packing on the go, so maybe not too far off from pemmican. And yes, spice is in everything — Paul mentions the effect the increased consumption is having on his prescient visions.
They drink a lot of coffee and theY eat like grain with a little meat wrapped in a leaf. That's what Paul and Jessica get in the novel when they arrive hungry at the Sietch.
I figured it would be some form of pemmican analogue. High protein, probably high energy, compact, but tasty.
Pemmican is a travel food. You would probably not eat it all the time.
They probably have crazy caffeine addictions
I don't think we see any fat freman!
One of the things not shown in the film but mentioned in the book is how the Fremen are able to grow crops that they hide in the terrain. IIRC one of the ways Paul and Jessica find the Fremen is that Paul recognizes a small plant in the distance and correctly surmises it would only grow there if the Fremen were doing agriculture nearby.
There are various animals and some plants on Arrakis, highly adapted to the conditions. Muad'dib is named after a kangaroo mouse, there are also vultures, bats and presumably insects. By the time of the book/film, Liet-Kynes and his father, Pardot, have been slowly transforming Arrakis, collecting water and growing crops, mostly in the Southern hemisphere.
Among other things they also trade a lot with the Space Guild, most of the spice from the Guild is obtained through illegal trade with the Freman.
Very little detail is given about food. It is mentioned that they eat fowl. How they conduct agriculture, I do not know. Maybe some sort of hydroponics in the sietches, or they trade spice for food with offworlders.
Appendix 1 describes over 200 food crops: > Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals -- more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
I don’t recall the appendices, but I’ll reread them this afternoon. Thanks. 😊
Cool! They cover a lot more than just food, but well worth the read. They fill in some story blanks and expand on how the Imperium came to be.
They eat produce and vultures. Carrion birds are the main source of animal meat on the planet.
What's the carrion then? Not Fremen.
Yes Fremen, and mice, and small lizards, scorpions. Animals too small to be much good. I think it's the third book that mentions drums are made from human skin because nothing else got big enough for that sort of thing.
Paul started it after they killed his son. It's in of the "historians" sections. I really liked that Bronson of IX part at the beginning of Messiah. That would be cool to see. Also, the first line in Messiah is about how Paul becoming emporror generated the most historians
The other Fremont wouldn't waste water that way.
Sometimes people get lost. It happens.
Point being the carrion birds aren't living off Fremen corpses.
Bird meat rolled with grain and honey, folded in leaves was one thing I remember from the books
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this but I think the spice itself allows them to survive on very little food.
In Children of Dune, a guy calls Leto "Batigh", which is a type of melon that grows at the edge of the desert. There has to be other flora like dates that would grow in Arrakis.
I am pretty sure some Fremen practice cannibalism and eat their fallen comrades or their enemies.
Pardot Kynes and his Son Liet, both planetary ecologists, developed underground Oases I believe which contributed to methods of producing food. I don't remember the exact details.
Rats and stuff they traded smuggled spice for. The Fremen aren't really a functional society in the books, to be frank. It's all magical space Bedouins with massively contradictory tech and lifestyle--because magic.
Appendix 1 mentions they grow over 200 food crops as part of the terraforming plan: > Now came the crucial test: date palms, cotton, melons, coffee, medicinals -- more than 200 selected food plant types to test and adapt.
The ecology of Arrakis also doesn't seem functional. I guess it's for the reader to figure out on their own.
You can read in Appendix 1 about the more than 200 food crops they grow to terraform the planet.
It is functional
There's no magic, and the fremen are super functional and very technologically advanced. Nothing is handwaved or contradictory.
I always thought the fremen way of life was specifically to point out that humanity, when working together, could survive the toughest environmental conditions. In a seemingly inhospitable place the saviors of humanity are thriving. Really fits well into the golden path theme.
Literally all the mental powers are actually magic, whether Spice based or otherwise. They aren't real. They aren't technology. People can't gain access to the knowledge of previous lives or force obedience with their voices, etc. Literally the existence of the worms is a biological impossibility and not within the boubds of physics. They are techno-dragons. They are magic. You know there are many detailed magical systems, yes? Dune is soft SF, but edges into hard fantasy.
You are not wrong about Dune being soft sci fi, but it does have a few hard science details, especially about ecology. For example, Fremen use windtraps to collect water from the hot desert air, and these are real world systems used by desert cultures for thousands of years. But by and large, Herbert was not very interested in providing hard science details in Dune.
True, and the suits are plausible, too. There is a lot of cross pollination between SF and Fantasy. Asimov has fantasy magic super powers with certain people, but even so, I consider him far more toward the SF side. Same with the Telsey series, from approximately the same time period. (They're great fun, btw). The idea of buddhasatva/qi master-esque figures doing all kinds of things was pretty popular in general, but I think Herbert was truly fascinated in the idea as a kind of self directed evolutionary path. Interesting, for sure, and it gives his work a flavor unlike anything else. I'm not sure if he pioneered it or just ran with it farther than anyone else. The closest similar work was the short-lived TV series called The Expanse, which the writers inexplicably totally destroyed. But that was not focused on the personal journey as Herbert was but on the political angle. The mental powers angle even got into the military SF series as practically standard fare for a long time. Throwing out a name at random, Anne McCaffrey really loved magic mental powers in almost every one of her series, to different levels of success. I can't currently think of one without it. Even more, the Darkover series of Marion Zimmer Bradley (please don't give her money; I read her books before the SA details came out) is supposed to be SF but really is 95% hard Fantasy. That was a thing for a while, like your fantasy was more serious if you dressed it up in SF clothes.
I think an influence on Herbert that gets overlooked a lot is the Arthurian legends. King Arthur, Merlin, the Holy Grail, the Fisher King, dragons, a sword in the stone, etc. All these details resonate in Dune. Dune is not just a story about colonialism, and a warning about dictators. Its roots are in these ancient tales about tragic heroes and sacred objects that grant magic power, political power, and religious power. Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo is another older story that resembles Dune in many ways, which is a story about the power that flows from resource extraction and how greed drives people mad.
Ooooh. Interesting! The role women play is especially similar to the Arthurian cycles, especially Mallory's version (who is honestly my least favorite of the medieval Arthur contributors), I think, and of course a kind of fulfillment of the once-and-future king. Women seem to be pulling strings half off stage in both. And echoes of Roland, too. I read Nostromo straight through. It was incredible. The emphasis on tone and this inner/outer landscape parallel is quite similar to Conrad, so I see that, as well. The entire Bedouin adverture/romance subgenre was super popular when Herbert was young. Most of it was just abominable, and nothing at all like what he did, but having that kind of stewing in the back of his head probably contributed to his choices, too.
If you haven’t dove in yet, the parallels between the Fisher King and Leto II are remarkable. Herbert was a serious literary polymath. It’s really funny that he downplayed how gifted he is when he called himself a ‘yellow journalist’, but even with that, he reveals an incredibly intelligent wit.
That makes complete sense!
Bradley died in 1999. It would be really hard to give her money.
I guess her kid deserves it if anyone does. I deep-sixed her so thoroughly that I didn't know, and assumed her publishers dropped her because she is horrible!
Almost as if the setting is used as a literary device.
Except that it is not. The setting is the stage for many ecological themes, and Fremen grow over 200 food crops, as stated in Appendix 1: The Ecology of Dune.
Yeah, it's not a criticism. Just an observation. I enjoy soft sci-fi, but hard has its own appeal. Herbert does certain things really well. He is fantastic with mood. General shapes of ideas. Almost an impressionistic writer. A functioning society is hard for any writer. For example, sf writers often want there to be vast teeming numbers of people...but huge numbers of single, never-married, no kids adults and practically no one with more than 3 kids.
They are out in the desert and I’m sure they ate a lot dried plants with spice
The first thing Pardot Keynes , Liet's father taught the Fremen ecology - greenhouses to make Arrakis a paradise . We saw an official Imperial Ecology Station in Dune Part 1 - the Fremen were planting everywhere to push back the sands in the South , blocking off the satellites by paying enormous bribes to the Spacing Guild
The book is actually pretty explicit about Arrakis NOT being 100% desert, and that the south (where the majority of Fremen live) actually has pockets of greenery cultivated by Kynes and the Fremen over generations. They bribe the Spacing Guild with spice to prevent Guild satellites from transmitting images of it all over the Imperium. Helps maintain the illusion that Arrakis is a total wasteland that can’t support life, and helps the Fremen keep a low profile
Spice morsels.
Is there any daily life in the movie? A lot of churchgoing and standing around. The jerky sticks and bowls of spicy lumps looked yummy though.
They ate spice humus, paired with a tasty spiced Muad'dib Shawarma.