My interpretation is that Alia forced herself into RM Mohiam's vision of the future. All RM have some slight prescient powers, but Alia should have nearly as much as Paul, genetically speaking. Alia became an RM in the womb, so while she is a child, her powers have been a natural extension of her growth since birth. The scenario where she speaks to RM Mohiam is when all the future timelines are converging on a nexus, the future hinges on the actions that take place in that room with those people. Since Alia knows that and knows that everyone is trying to peek into the future, Alia was able to project a taunting version of herself into the near future - willing that future to be something RM Mohiam would see.
It is a weird thing that Herbert doesn't really use again, but it is somewhat similar to how [spoiler]Leto II were Paul's eyes and ears at the end of Dune Messiah[/spoiler]. Paul was able to see through his prescience into his son's vision. I think Alia did a twisted version of something like that, but more invasive.
Folks always seem to forget that Alia has the genetics to be a Kwizatz Haderach, in addition to being pre-born, and also receiving Bene Gesserit training. She's a goddam powerhouse.
If she forced herself into a vision of the future, when why was the RM panicking that she was “like one of the ones that came before”? In my understanding that implies that it was an ego memory of Alia talking to her from within genetic memory. Which would freak me out as well, because as far as I understand it should be impossible for Alia’s memories to already be in there, especially since her DNA is not inside the RM’s.
I know they share DNA (if the RM really is her grandmother), but Alia comes after Gaius in the sequence of the bloodline.
Perhaps there are stories the BG tell of previous abominations doing similar things?
To me it's not about the order of the bloodlines that matters. She's peering forward in the future and seeing Alia there.
The BG have come across preborn/ abominations in the past; perhaps she's horrified not because Alia is "in" her genetic memory, but because she is doing things that the BG have encountered before, and they tell horrified stories about those dangerous people?
It's a bit of a stretch, I agree...
My interpretation when I wanted to force it to make sense is that Alia herself wasn't actually in her head. What was in her head was an amalgamation of previous 'abominations' which had survived and passed on genetic memory prior to the sisterhood realizing just how much of a problem they are and deciding they need to be killed on sight. So Mohiam has memories of others that she has locked away, but being in the presence of one, the ones in her head start shouting.
But on the other hand, I'm also willing to just chalk this up and one of Herbert's continuity errors. He spent so much time perfecting the politics, the religions, the ecology, the economy....the powers sometimes get a bit wonky.
Abomination!! I thought her ability to be inside someone’s head was what made her so dangerous to the BG? That was my take but op has obviously given this more thought. Interesting.
I believe main thing that made an abomination dangerous is that, being pre-born, they had not received training to properly draw on the genetic memories, and thus were extremely susceptible to having an ego-memory take them over (>! Like we see happen to Alia later in the series !<)
I'm reminded of the Marvel show, Agents of Shield. I don't recall the lines exactly, but someone (quake I think?) was asking a hydra agent (I won't name them to avoid spoilers) about their process for evaluating powered individuals.
"We do an evaluation of the asset, and if they are useful we let them join Hydra, and if not, we eliminate the threat"
"You mean if they are too powerful?"
"Anyone who turns down Hydra is a threat."
To me the issue with abominations was never that they could do anything to the BG (such as getting in their head) - the issue was the same issue that the BG had with Paul. Someone powerful who wasn't under their control. Doesn't matter what the abilities are, if you can't manipulate them, they are a problem.
I think it's more to do with her prescience. Later in Messiah, Paul locks all the timelines into one and alia gets closed out and can't see anymore, so she tries overdosing. But at the point you mentioned, she probably just did the same thing that she did to Paul, inserting herself at some point in the future.
Hasn’t it been a big point of discussion though, that prescience isn’t actually projecting your senses into the future? Isn’t it more along the lines of using extreme knowledge of the past and present to extrapolate possible futures? Or am I understanding that wrong?
It's debated and I think even the characters of the later books debate it. Some arguments are made that the prescient don't see the future but rather create it.
I still struggle to make sense of the alia thing, and it's surprising that nobody else does that in the books. The closest thing would be the hidden message odrade finds in heretics, but that is way different than being in someone's head.
There is also a fear in the Bene Gesserit of the wild atreides genes, suggesting that there may be other abilities they haven't even experienced or discovered yet. It's possible what Alia could do was unique to her. Also, we never got Frank's final book unfortunately, but it did seem like he was going to reveal more about prescience in it. It could have contained an important missing piece.
She sees the future with her prescience and manipulates is basically, saying the right things in the right moment in time for the revered mothers to pick up with their own prescience. So when they would peer into the future they would see her speaking to them.
I understand it as a subtle difference in Abomination vs Reverend Motherhood. RM can access matrilineal memories, their own and whomever they share with. Abomination get everything. All males, all females, and not just your own line but every line of every branch available (so going out, not just in. For example RM would have her mother, then her mother, etc, and available RM from the original sharer at their water of life and what they have. Whereas Abomination gets your mother, her mother, and on, your father, his father, and on. Your mother's father, and his father and mother, and her mother... all the RM you pick up in uetro, *their mothers*, fathers etc...you get the idea. But you also get prescience so theres a future, with infinite possibilities...A spider web, lace, rather than string. Or two. The complexity is intense.) At some point in Alias much larger web, HGM and her crossed.
As far as the actual ability? I think that may be Abomination skill as well, though it's not repeated. We only have two other Abominations -- Ghani and Leto II -- to go off of. They certainly had abilities no one else had and were unique to them. I sort of chalk it up to that and let the plothole about how go.
I understand how Alia get the memories of the RM, but how did the RM get the memories of Alia (which is what she implied happened inside her head)? Gaius recieved the genetic memories LONG before Alia was born. If genetic memories are encoded into DNA from our ancestors like they imply, how did Gaius have the genetic memories of one of her own descendants?
It’s like the going back in time and becoming your own grandfather paradox, except there’s no actual time travel to allow it to happen.
Not exactly true. The rules aren’t clearly defined as to why Alia has access to her make memories. The answer is basically because Frank Herbert wanted to bring the Baron back, and that’s about it. Abominations are RM who become so in the womb. They are referred to as “the pre born”, and are explicitly stated to have happened so many times in te BG that they know how to handle one. The problem with abominations is that the have multiple complete memories before they form their own psyches, and are thus dominated by their memories
I'm late, but I think Paul being the KW, basically the first successful "reverend father," means it probably wasn't necessary for Chani to be one as well.
Mohiam and Jessica are related, so they actually share genetic memory. I would guess Alia plays with that idea a bit on the back and forth banter, but I could be wrong?!
I’ve seen this point brought up a few times, but even if they are directly related how could those generic memories move backwards through the generations? If they are encoded into DNA like genetic memories are generally implied to be, how could Alia’s memories be in the genetics of GHM if she was born only two years prior?
I'd like to share how I think of it.
Having access to your genetic memory is a lot more then you think. Because if you really consider how far back a bloodline really goes, then we are talking having memories of cave man days, and I truly believe that everyone is connected in that bloodline.
So it's not so far fetched to think of alia and Gaius being relatives on some ancient level.
Gonna refer to [Numberphile's video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0hOex4psA) on nearest common ancestor here. If you consider how the BG had been breeding into the royal families for generations it's likely Alia is pretty closely related to a lot of the BG.
Not sure if Frank knew about this or it's just a happy coincidence that the science sort of 'backs up' his idea (in a loose sci-fi sense)
This was my interpretation as well as it seems the most logically consistent with the setting, that it was basically a very old ancestral memory shared between the two. The line like the ones who gave me their memories makes it seem like it was a shared Reverend Mother memory that came to the fore in some fashion that Gaius felt 'resembled' Alia in some way. I'm not entirely convinced that Herbert had fully fleshed out the specifics of just what an abomination is at this point in his writings as I don't recall a mention within the first book of the concept of possession by a genetic memory; he instead focuses solely on the pre born into full consciousness concept as to why they are considered abominations.
It doesn't matter that you are connected, though. The memories get passed down. You would get your mother's memories, but not your aunt's. You definitely would never get the memories of someone born after you.
The one way around that is to do the ritual to obtain memories directly from another person, but as OP said, Gaius did the ritual before Alia was even born.
What I don't understand is how Alia has the Baron in her head when the entire point of the Kwisatz Haderach was to gain the male memories.
You would get your aunt's memory you would get the memory of every women in the entire bloodline.
Jessica did the ritual while alia was in the womb so alia was part of the ritual as well
You definitely would not get your aunt's memory. Memory is imprinted upon a persons cells and gets passed on. There isn't some magic link that just joins every single person you are related to. If that was the case, every Bene Gesserit would have the exact same memories as they would all be related if you go back far enough.
Also, it makes no sense that people can remember the deaths of their ancestors as they would have passed their memories on before that happened.
Unless there is some kind of prescience working in reverse that can only be connected by blood, but I don't think there is anything like that in the books.
Alia is pre-born. The pre-born get both sides of the memories (see Ghanima and Leto). The Kwisatz Haderach was designed to access the male ones (didn't work, so technically Paul is not the KH), safely, as an adult.
Yeah, this doesn't really make sense either. It seems like it would have been a whole lot easier to manipulate which memories go into a preborn than spend generation after generation breeding the KH. They could have also let an abomination live until they could use it to pass the memories on with the ritual or just wait it out until the BG memory they wanted to take over controlled the abomination.
Alia literally talks to Paul the same way, saying “I have breasted the future to place my words where only you can hear them.” Implying it has something to do with her prescience. She also says it’s something Paul can’t do, which is interesting.
Spoilers, unconfirmed:
>!Also in Frank Herbert’s notes, he intended Gaius Helen Mohiam to be Jessica’s mother, thus Paul and Alia’s grandmother, meaning that yes, they had a genetic connection!<
Her whole future speech to Paul is another point of note in my research I am having trouble figuring out, I was going to post another theory on that another day.
But regarding your second point >! Even if they are directly related, my point was that Gaius is not a descendent of Alia, Alia is a descendent of Gaius. So how could Alia’s memories be encoded the genetic memories of someone born before she was? !<
That's interesting in that it could be an ability that Herbert wrote into Alia and that is not present in the sequels, when the "rules" of the Dune universe are better defined. A kind of early installment weirdness so to speak. In the first book there's another example, when Alia speaks to her brother in his mind positioning her thoughts in the future so that only Paul can read them, "something even you \[Paul\] can't do". There's no instance of this in any of the subsequent novels.
The answer is that the rules are wildly inconsistent, and there is no defined framework to make sense of what happens here. There’s a lot of that in dune, especially around Alia
I have an interesting theory on Paul’s thing. Basically, she used her prescience to determine when in the future Paul would be “scrying”
(best way to describe his ability to see the present) on her. At that time, she says the message she wants him to receive. So it’s not like she left a message in his mind, but rather she knew exactly when he would see her and said the message she wanted him to hear.
In Dune Chapterhouse and Dune Heretic >!there are references to a reverend mother going on a potentially deadly mission (into enemy territory) would share her memories with another reverend mother. This is similar to the fremen reverend mother sharing with Jessica, but does not require drinking of the water of life.!<
Also in the later books, it is mentioned that people of Atreides descent had some prescient abilities. This Atreides line was through Duke Leto & Lady Jessica. The genes that produced Paul (the Kwisatz Haderach) also produced Alia. It is reasonable to think she had a similar level of hyper abilities allowing her to force herself onto RM Mohiam.
My only theory that makes sense to me is that alia is KH. She's everywhere in the past present future. All at once, she counts as an abomination, even for a KH.
She seems to be excited in RM mind long long ago like she was in the past a PM. Also, the mother said they tried as much as they could to stop alia from being born that line has made me think alot, and alia answered that the mother has played her part in the univesal role.
Does the bene gesserit were afraid of a female Kwisatz haderach and tried not to let her born? Im poetry sure, or at least 99%, alia is everywhere all at once in the past and in the future, and in the present, she said her self she dont read mind unless she existed in past...
My interpretation is that Alia forced herself into RM Mohiam's vision of the future. All RM have some slight prescient powers, but Alia should have nearly as much as Paul, genetically speaking. Alia became an RM in the womb, so while she is a child, her powers have been a natural extension of her growth since birth. The scenario where she speaks to RM Mohiam is when all the future timelines are converging on a nexus, the future hinges on the actions that take place in that room with those people. Since Alia knows that and knows that everyone is trying to peek into the future, Alia was able to project a taunting version of herself into the near future - willing that future to be something RM Mohiam would see. It is a weird thing that Herbert doesn't really use again, but it is somewhat similar to how [spoiler]Leto II were Paul's eyes and ears at the end of Dune Messiah[/spoiler]. Paul was able to see through his prescience into his son's vision. I think Alia did a twisted version of something like that, but more invasive.
Alia does explicitly state that she's able to communicate with Paul by projecting herself into a future only he will see
And that it is an ability limited to her alone. Paul could not do it. Similar to Teg, in that the power seems to be a one-off.
This. If I recall, Paul even comments in some internal dialogue that Alia is more powerful than him when it comes to the ways of prescience.
Folks always seem to forget that Alia has the genetics to be a Kwizatz Haderach, in addition to being pre-born, and also receiving Bene Gesserit training. She's a goddam powerhouse.
Pity she let the Baron in.
If she forced herself into a vision of the future, when why was the RM panicking that she was “like one of the ones that came before”? In my understanding that implies that it was an ego memory of Alia talking to her from within genetic memory. Which would freak me out as well, because as far as I understand it should be impossible for Alia’s memories to already be in there, especially since her DNA is not inside the RM’s. I know they share DNA (if the RM really is her grandmother), but Alia comes after Gaius in the sequence of the bloodline.
Perhaps there are stories the BG tell of previous abominations doing similar things? To me it's not about the order of the bloodlines that matters. She's peering forward in the future and seeing Alia there.
The BG have come across preborn/ abominations in the past; perhaps she's horrified not because Alia is "in" her genetic memory, but because she is doing things that the BG have encountered before, and they tell horrified stories about those dangerous people? It's a bit of a stretch, I agree...
My interpretation when I wanted to force it to make sense is that Alia herself wasn't actually in her head. What was in her head was an amalgamation of previous 'abominations' which had survived and passed on genetic memory prior to the sisterhood realizing just how much of a problem they are and deciding they need to be killed on sight. So Mohiam has memories of others that she has locked away, but being in the presence of one, the ones in her head start shouting. But on the other hand, I'm also willing to just chalk this up and one of Herbert's continuity errors. He spent so much time perfecting the politics, the religions, the ecology, the economy....the powers sometimes get a bit wonky.
Abomination!! I thought her ability to be inside someone’s head was what made her so dangerous to the BG? That was my take but op has obviously given this more thought. Interesting.
I believe main thing that made an abomination dangerous is that, being pre-born, they had not received training to properly draw on the genetic memories, and thus were extremely susceptible to having an ego-memory take them over (>! Like we see happen to Alia later in the series !<)
I'm reminded of the Marvel show, Agents of Shield. I don't recall the lines exactly, but someone (quake I think?) was asking a hydra agent (I won't name them to avoid spoilers) about their process for evaluating powered individuals. "We do an evaluation of the asset, and if they are useful we let them join Hydra, and if not, we eliminate the threat" "You mean if they are too powerful?" "Anyone who turns down Hydra is a threat." To me the issue with abominations was never that they could do anything to the BG (such as getting in their head) - the issue was the same issue that the BG had with Paul. Someone powerful who wasn't under their control. Doesn't matter what the abilities are, if you can't manipulate them, they are a problem.
I think it's more to do with her prescience. Later in Messiah, Paul locks all the timelines into one and alia gets closed out and can't see anymore, so she tries overdosing. But at the point you mentioned, she probably just did the same thing that she did to Paul, inserting herself at some point in the future.
Hasn’t it been a big point of discussion though, that prescience isn’t actually projecting your senses into the future? Isn’t it more along the lines of using extreme knowledge of the past and present to extrapolate possible futures? Or am I understanding that wrong?
It's debated and I think even the characters of the later books debate it. Some arguments are made that the prescient don't see the future but rather create it. I still struggle to make sense of the alia thing, and it's surprising that nobody else does that in the books. The closest thing would be the hidden message odrade finds in heretics, but that is way different than being in someone's head. There is also a fear in the Bene Gesserit of the wild atreides genes, suggesting that there may be other abilities they haven't even experienced or discovered yet. It's possible what Alia could do was unique to her. Also, we never got Frank's final book unfortunately, but it did seem like he was going to reveal more about prescience in it. It could have contained an important missing piece.
She sees the future with her prescience and manipulates is basically, saying the right things in the right moment in time for the revered mothers to pick up with their own prescience. So when they would peer into the future they would see her speaking to them.
That was my other best theory! I just wasn’t sure if there was any validity to that
It's like the prescience version of getting feedback by putting a microphone too close to its own speaker.
Indeed
I understand it as a subtle difference in Abomination vs Reverend Motherhood. RM can access matrilineal memories, their own and whomever they share with. Abomination get everything. All males, all females, and not just your own line but every line of every branch available (so going out, not just in. For example RM would have her mother, then her mother, etc, and available RM from the original sharer at their water of life and what they have. Whereas Abomination gets your mother, her mother, and on, your father, his father, and on. Your mother's father, and his father and mother, and her mother... all the RM you pick up in uetro, *their mothers*, fathers etc...you get the idea. But you also get prescience so theres a future, with infinite possibilities...A spider web, lace, rather than string. Or two. The complexity is intense.) At some point in Alias much larger web, HGM and her crossed. As far as the actual ability? I think that may be Abomination skill as well, though it's not repeated. We only have two other Abominations -- Ghani and Leto II -- to go off of. They certainly had abilities no one else had and were unique to them. I sort of chalk it up to that and let the plothole about how go.
Don't even have to go very far to get that web to cross, as the good Reverend Mother is a direct ancestor of Alia.
I understand how Alia get the memories of the RM, but how did the RM get the memories of Alia (which is what she implied happened inside her head)? Gaius recieved the genetic memories LONG before Alia was born. If genetic memories are encoded into DNA from our ancestors like they imply, how did Gaius have the genetic memories of one of her own descendants? It’s like the going back in time and becoming your own grandfather paradox, except there’s no actual time travel to allow it to happen.
Yes, well. That bit is screwy. Maybe prescience?
Not exactly true. The rules aren’t clearly defined as to why Alia has access to her make memories. The answer is basically because Frank Herbert wanted to bring the Baron back, and that’s about it. Abominations are RM who become so in the womb. They are referred to as “the pre born”, and are explicitly stated to have happened so many times in te BG that they know how to handle one. The problem with abominations is that the have multiple complete memories before they form their own psyches, and are thus dominated by their memories
Leto and Ghani are both preborn, despite Chani not being a RM at all.
I'm late, but I think Paul being the KW, basically the first successful "reverend father," means it probably wasn't necessary for Chani to be one as well.
Mohiam and Jessica are related, so they actually share genetic memory. I would guess Alia plays with that idea a bit on the back and forth banter, but I could be wrong?!
I’ve seen this point brought up a few times, but even if they are directly related how could those generic memories move backwards through the generations? If they are encoded into DNA like genetic memories are generally implied to be, how could Alia’s memories be in the genetics of GHM if she was born only two years prior?
I am saying that the statement "get out of my mind" is not literal but figurative. I could be wrong, like I said. That's just how I've always read it.
Ahh, I see
People seem to be forgetting that GHM is Alia's maternal grandmother.
I'd like to share how I think of it. Having access to your genetic memory is a lot more then you think. Because if you really consider how far back a bloodline really goes, then we are talking having memories of cave man days, and I truly believe that everyone is connected in that bloodline. So it's not so far fetched to think of alia and Gaius being relatives on some ancient level.
Gonna refer to [Numberphile's video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0hOex4psA) on nearest common ancestor here. If you consider how the BG had been breeding into the royal families for generations it's likely Alia is pretty closely related to a lot of the BG. Not sure if Frank knew about this or it's just a happy coincidence that the science sort of 'backs up' his idea (in a loose sci-fi sense)
This was my interpretation as well as it seems the most logically consistent with the setting, that it was basically a very old ancestral memory shared between the two. The line like the ones who gave me their memories makes it seem like it was a shared Reverend Mother memory that came to the fore in some fashion that Gaius felt 'resembled' Alia in some way. I'm not entirely convinced that Herbert had fully fleshed out the specifics of just what an abomination is at this point in his writings as I don't recall a mention within the first book of the concept of possession by a genetic memory; he instead focuses solely on the pre born into full consciousness concept as to why they are considered abominations.
It doesn't matter that you are connected, though. The memories get passed down. You would get your mother's memories, but not your aunt's. You definitely would never get the memories of someone born after you. The one way around that is to do the ritual to obtain memories directly from another person, but as OP said, Gaius did the ritual before Alia was even born. What I don't understand is how Alia has the Baron in her head when the entire point of the Kwisatz Haderach was to gain the male memories.
You would get your aunt's memory you would get the memory of every women in the entire bloodline. Jessica did the ritual while alia was in the womb so alia was part of the ritual as well
You definitely would not get your aunt's memory. Memory is imprinted upon a persons cells and gets passed on. There isn't some magic link that just joins every single person you are related to. If that was the case, every Bene Gesserit would have the exact same memories as they would all be related if you go back far enough. Also, it makes no sense that people can remember the deaths of their ancestors as they would have passed their memories on before that happened. Unless there is some kind of prescience working in reverse that can only be connected by blood, but I don't think there is anything like that in the books.
Alia is pre-born. The pre-born get both sides of the memories (see Ghanima and Leto). The Kwisatz Haderach was designed to access the male ones (didn't work, so technically Paul is not the KH), safely, as an adult.
Yeah, this doesn't really make sense either. It seems like it would have been a whole lot easier to manipulate which memories go into a preborn than spend generation after generation breeding the KH. They could have also let an abomination live until they could use it to pass the memories on with the ritual or just wait it out until the BG memory they wanted to take over controlled the abomination.
If Alia had been a boy I wonder if Mohiam would have not been freaking out?
Alia literally talks to Paul the same way, saying “I have breasted the future to place my words where only you can hear them.” Implying it has something to do with her prescience. She also says it’s something Paul can’t do, which is interesting. Spoilers, unconfirmed: >!Also in Frank Herbert’s notes, he intended Gaius Helen Mohiam to be Jessica’s mother, thus Paul and Alia’s grandmother, meaning that yes, they had a genetic connection!<
Her whole future speech to Paul is another point of note in my research I am having trouble figuring out, I was going to post another theory on that another day. But regarding your second point >! Even if they are directly related, my point was that Gaius is not a descendent of Alia, Alia is a descendent of Gaius. So how could Alia’s memories be encoded the genetic memories of someone born before she was? !<
That's interesting in that it could be an ability that Herbert wrote into Alia and that is not present in the sequels, when the "rules" of the Dune universe are better defined. A kind of early installment weirdness so to speak. In the first book there's another example, when Alia speaks to her brother in his mind positioning her thoughts in the future so that only Paul can read them, "something even you \[Paul\] can't do". There's no instance of this in any of the subsequent novels.
The answer is that the rules are wildly inconsistent, and there is no defined framework to make sense of what happens here. There’s a lot of that in dune, especially around Alia
I have an interesting theory on Paul’s thing. Basically, she used her prescience to determine when in the future Paul would be “scrying” (best way to describe his ability to see the present) on her. At that time, she says the message she wants him to receive. So it’s not like she left a message in his mind, but rather she knew exactly when he would see her and said the message she wanted him to hear.
Exactly. It's the first of the wild traits that crop up from time to time in the Atreides. See Teg and Odrade for other examples.
In Dune Chapterhouse and Dune Heretic >!there are references to a reverend mother going on a potentially deadly mission (into enemy territory) would share her memories with another reverend mother. This is similar to the fremen reverend mother sharing with Jessica, but does not require drinking of the water of life.!< Also in the later books, it is mentioned that people of Atreides descent had some prescient abilities. This Atreides line was through Duke Leto & Lady Jessica. The genes that produced Paul (the Kwisatz Haderach) also produced Alia. It is reasonable to think she had a similar level of hyper abilities allowing her to force herself onto RM Mohiam.
My only theory that makes sense to me is that alia is KH. She's everywhere in the past present future. All at once, she counts as an abomination, even for a KH. She seems to be excited in RM mind long long ago like she was in the past a PM. Also, the mother said they tried as much as they could to stop alia from being born that line has made me think alot, and alia answered that the mother has played her part in the univesal role. Does the bene gesserit were afraid of a female Kwisatz haderach and tried not to let her born? Im poetry sure, or at least 99%, alia is everywhere all at once in the past and in the future, and in the present, she said her self she dont read mind unless she existed in past...