Dune Series PHD Episode 07 Evolution and Victorian Science Fiction
Channel: Doc Sloan's Science Fiction Station
Date: 2021-09-22

This episode looks at the two dominant theories of evolution in the 19th Century, namely Lamarckism (or soft inheritance) and Darwinian Evolution. The response to these theories in literature sets the background for the one sided row between Samuel Butler and Charles Darwin, and looks at Erewhon and Vril: The Coming Race and their influence on Frank Herbert's Dune Series.

Samuel Butler's Erewhon provides the ideas and historical backdrop for Herbert's Butlerian Jihad and the proscriptions of the great convention on religion. Bulwer-Lytton's Vril is a ubiquitous drug very similar to Herbert's Melange, and together both works show at the very least, a heavy influence upon Frank Herbert and his epic Dune Series.

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