Battle of Corrin

The Battle of Corrin is a major event in the history of the fictional universe created by Frank Herbert in his Dune series of novels. According to the appendices of the first book of the Saga, it is the "space battle from which the Imperial House of the Corrino took its name. The battle, fought in the vicinity of Sigma Draconis in the year 88 B.G., determined the rise to power of the ruling House of Salusa Secundus" (Herbert, F.; Terminología del Imperio, in Dune; Ultramar Editores, 1982).

However, Frank Herbert only makes more or less vague allusions that do not allow us to know the exact development of the event. In 2004, the author's son, Brian Herbert, published a book entitled The Battle of Corrin, in which the battle and the events related to it are narrated in detail.

This Battle is fought between "The Machines" or artificial intelligence beings, and humans. Other characters mentioned in the book are the "Cimek" or robots with human brains and the Titans both share the brain and originality of a human personality. The original Titans were the masterminds behind the destruction of the Old Empire.

Background

Introduction

In the Old Kingdom, which the author claimed comprised 10,000 or more worlds, humans had expanded and used artificial intelligence (A.I.) robot machines as slave servants.

After several millennia of peace and stagnation, of a deep sleep of the human as an adventurer, a group of ambitious young people, seeing the laziness and accommodation of humans in many aspects of their lives, organized themselves and drew up plans to rise up in control of the Empire. To do this, Barbarossa (future name of the "Titan") reprogrammed computer networks with new features to be more aggressive and ambitious; Thus, they took control of all the computers and intelligent machines and were able to conquer the Empire by their own volition and organize it into dominions.

But not all humans had fallen to the so-called 'Titans'. Some, grouped on the periphery of the Empire, had formed a League of Nobles and Planets, devoted entirely to defending the few free human worlds.

Conflict

Titans

This group of ambitious young men determined that for effective control of the Empire their task would require many years, more than a human body could bear. For this reason, as old age with all its inconveniences was stalking them, they made a drastic decision: transplant their brains into machines, dispensing with their bodies. Thus, one by one - beginning with the future Agamemnon - the Titans were transplanting their brains into containers with a special nutritive liquid that would keep them alive for millennia. Also, this way they could use different interchangeable mechanical bodies. They were called "Cimek".

The Synchronized Planets

After his brain transplant, the Titan Xerxes did not devote the necessary attention to his tasks, delegating more and more to his subservient computers, to the point where he gave too much prominence and participation in decision-making to the computer network.

She then seized power upon seeing that humans were inefficient and, like a virus, launched a new wave of conquest. In a short time the empire of the so-called "Titans" had fallen, and both humans and Titans were forced to be slaves or serve in the bureaucracy. The artificial supermind that emerged from this rebellion, calling itself Omnius, considered humans useful for certain tasks and therefore were not exterminated.

The planets in which Omnius took control, came to be called "Synchronized Planets": each one had a copy of Omnius that from time to time received updates from the other "versions" of Omnius, sharing the knowledge acquired between them and synchronizing in this way.

Meanwhile, only the free worlds resisted Omnius' conquest.

The awakening of humanity

The life of humanity passes in the following centuries in a constant tug of war in the fight against the machines. Little by little, they conquer new free worlds to swell their list of synchronized planets, while humanity lives an existence in expectation of the next attack by the machines.

Certain events, caused by the Cimek in their eagerness to conquer, begin to ignite the flame of rebellion in humans and lead them to consider that being on the defensive will not end the war.

Unexpectedly, Serena Butler (daughter of the viceroy of Salusa Secundus, capital planet of the League of Nobles), escapes to one of the recent planets conquered by Omnius, Giedi Prime. Her intention is to help the population and force a military intervention (since she is the daughter of the viceroy of Salusa Secundus and her boyfriend is an important military chief of the League of Nobles, she trusts that they will go to rescue her) hoping that the fleet of the free humanity go rescue her and, incidentally, liberate the planet.

Just as she expects, her boyfriend comes to her aid with the fleet and new weapons (human and mechanical) unknown to the machines. Her plan ends in success, but she is captured and transferred to Earth.

Events that occurred on the planet led humanity to decide to go on the offensive definitively.

Resolution

After great battles and religious Jihad precipitated by the death of Manion, son of noble deputy Serena Butler, the Battle of Corrin centers on the Planet Corrin, the last robotic world controlled by an incarnation of Omnius, in the one that humanity conquers triumphantly and with great bloodshed destroys its fiercest opponent.

The Battle ends one Era and begins another, as Holtzman machines are used for the first time to "double" the space and the royal family "Corrino" is also founded. Which will dominate the Imperial Throne for the next 10,000 years until the coming of the messiah Muad'Dib.

With the Battle ends the rule of the machines (although certain quotes from the Butlerian Jihad and the God Emperor of Dune make it plausible to think that the machines were not totally annihilated and may still exist in remote reaches of the universe). Indeed, by secular and religious law, any attempt to imitate human capabilities by means of machines is suppressed and abolished. Thus, Worlds Ix and Tleilaxu hang perilously on the line with their innovative mechanical and biological creations.

Conclusion

Pain, slavery, bloodthirsty behaviour, nanomechanical plagues, battles, massacres and atrocities committed by robots against humans, create such an aversion towards thinking machines, that in the book Dune, chronologically set 10,000 years after the terrible war, the concept of "thinking machine" it is a taboo punishable by death and in fact codified in Imperial Law and the Ecumenical Council of Religions. And it is shown as the first verse in the first edition of the "Catholic Orange Bible": You shall not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind

Dating of the battle

According to information in Frank Herbert's original book, the Battle of Corrin took place in the year 88 B.G.; that is, Before Guild (Before the Guild, according to the Imperial Calendar based on the monopoly of the Spatial Guild).

Always conforming to Terminology of the Empire (in the first book of the saga), the Butlerian Jihad takes place between 201 B.G. and 108 B.G.; therefore, said war would have ended 20 years before the battle.