this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five
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It takes multiple books to cover, so this is the very, very basics:
~12,000 years in our future, Humanity goes to war with "thinking machines." The war lasted a while, humans finally win, and vowed to never create such machines again. Another ~12,000 years later, Dune takes place.
By this time, the "no AI/computers" is such a deeply ingrained belief, that it has made its way into literally every facet of culture: politics, religion, commerce/transportation, etc. Of course, having fast calculations is also really handy, so humans resort to selective breeding programs and strict social castes that result in human calculators (Mentats) and other specialized professions. Even that's not good enough to do interstellar travel calculations, so some people are imbued with "spice" (discovered on one planet, Arrakis, the Dune planet).
It's basically space magic mushrooms. Opens the mind like nothing else. That's the only way to do interstellar commerce, so it's the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, and whoever controls the planet gets enormously powerful, and also has a huge target on their back. Meanwhile, a maternal religious sect is running its own breeding program to get to fulfill some "chosen one" prophecy.