Herbert's son is a pathetic writer even by modern standards.
Of course, no sci fi writer can ever hope to compare to Frank Herbert.
The Dune prequels distorted the butlerian jihad and the background storylines of the Houses was damaging to the original timeline at best.
-The original Dune novels tell of the age of Machines, where HUMANS who OWNED machines enslaved humans without machines for thousands of years until the jihad erupted. The feared machine intelligence was not the Omnius or Erasmus type of AI but rather AI's who kept almost all humanity AS slaves under the orders of the very few powerful humans who commanded the machines.
-Serena Butler was really Jehanne Butler in Frank's original timeline..and she was a Bene Gesserit (and the B.G. existed since the formation of the first human emperium, predating Corrino and Spacing Guild by thousands of years)
-Savant Holtzman was in the original timeline a brilliant scientist who before the jihad had a 'thopter accident and his brain was put into a machine body (you can think of him as a cymek).. holtzman later turned his body into a ship and launched himself into a thousand year old orbit around the sun, during each pass next to his solar system he transmitted the 3 holtzman equations that changed humanity dramatically each time : Holtzman Theory which gave humanity foldspace ability (notoriously unreliable since there were no prescient beings to guide them, but it did allow for cargo flown by AI to spark up trade), 2nd pass he gave shields/suspensor theory, 3rd pass he gave holtzman radio which allowed instant communication inside a sector of space (not across stars but pluto-earth no time delay). Incidentally it was this 3rd pass that allowed the Jihad to flare to all human worlds quickly... On the 4th pass he was intercepted by post-jihad fanatics and killed.
-Jessica was purchased by a concubine 'seller' for Duke Leto, not given to the Atreides in exchange for some invisible ship information crapola as herbert's son put it.
-Mentats did not appear because a machine taught a human. In original timeline Gilbertus Albans was a savant on his own right and trained his mind and taught others to do the same.
-Suks existed pre-Jihad times.
-House Atreides is not as noble in its past.. the house in several occassions took over the empirium in bloody coups. The harkonnens were always bad apples.
-The Battle of Corrin was not humans vs. machines, it was Sardaukar vs. Federated Worlds in a space battle.. space battle because the federated worlds knew they sardaukar would wipe them out easy in ground combat so they chose space, where the sardaukar had no advantage over them. The Battle of Corrin is where the Sardaukar defeated everyone in one stroke and became the ruling house; starting the age of Corrino emperors. Yes, that means Corrinos are not Butler's descendants.
-The atreides that saved the day in the battle of corrin was fighting on the side of the Sardaukar as a minor bridge officer. Ablulurd Harkonnen' act of cowardice was in withdrawing a big contingent of his ships (harkonnen were also in the side of the sardaukar) which exposed the sardaukar fleet dangerously. When harkonnen withdrew, the ship in which atreides was in got hit and the bridge crew officers got killed, he took over and closed the gap, saving the sardaukar from defeat and saving the future emperor's life at the same time.
-Sorceress of Rossak is pure crap. Never existed in original timeline. Norma Cevna was a savant just like holtzman, though she lived centuries after Holtzman's death.. she was the one who made Holtzman's foldspace viable by discovering the prescient properties of spice. Spacing Guild born shortly after that.
-Fremen were originally from Earth, a nomadic zensunni tribe numbering a million. In the early years of the Spacing Guild, the Guild needed a population base for Arrakis so they could mine the spice in secret... Earth provided such population by giving the Guild the zensunni as 'voluntary exiles' . The Guild shipped them around various planets for a century or so then dumped them on Arrakis.
-Earth was nuked during a house-to-house conflict which also destroyed other planets (Ecaz as well), prompting the Great Convention to be created.
-Gurney Halleck's sister died the night the harkonnens took her and Gurney as slaves, she fell on a guard's knife rather than become a potato.
-Gurney Halleck was RESCUED by Leto Atreides during a 'black flag' raid on harkonnen slaving facilities.
-Vorian atreides did not exist. The atreides that matched the original timeline for vorian is the ensign in the atreides ship during the battle of corrin.
I could go on and on
(big dune geek I am).
All things considered, only the Bene Tleilax were accurately portrayed 'in character' by Herbert's son. Everything else was butchered to heck.
