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Some of the toughest fighters come from Tanith, a demanding jungle planet that is, as Wikipedia puts it, an “infamous dumping ground for transportees.”Īs a kid, I was fascinated by a Tom Godwin SF novel called The Survivors (1958 also known by the cheesier title Space Prison reprinted in the 2003 collection The Cold Equations & Other Stories). Jerry Pournelle’s “ CoDominium” future history postulates a future in which a number of worlds are settled by political prisoners and other riffraff who are sent there by the combined U.S.-Russian world government. We wouldn’t choose to live in so taxing an environment-which is why the population is generally conceived as being there not entirely by their own choice.

Part of Paul’s eventual plan to take over the Imperium himself is to neutralize the Emperor’s forces by making Salusa Secundus “a garden world, full of gentle things” (481)-a much pleasanter place for the former Emperor to retire in peace, but no longer a source of formidable warriors.Īrrakis, like Salusa Secundus, tests its people rigorously, winnowing out the weak, toughening up the strong. That stock may have been hardy to begin with, but it’s clear that the harsh environment is what made the difference. It’s suggested at one point that the Fremen come from the same stock as the original inhabitants of Salusa Secundus-transported there at a time when they had “grown soft with an easy planet” elsewhere (352). The Fremen are so tough that even their civilians, “ women and children and old men,” can beat full-fledged Sardaukar (454). But the exigencies of survival in the Dune environment are so demanding that, as one character realizes, the Fremen are actually “an entire culture trained to military order” (283)-an invaluable resource for the main character, Paul Atreides, who needs such a cadre to recapture the holdings and status that the Emperor and Paul’s Harkonnen enemies have illegally taken away. The “ Fremen,” the Dune population, appear to be simple barbarian nomads. 370).īut Arrakis, the planet called Dune, is harsher still. When you add the very best of military training-” (Thufir Hawat, p. “A man who survives Salusa Secundus starts out being tougher than most others. It turns out that the Sardaukar are recruited from the Emperor’s prison planet, Salusa Secundus-a planet so hostile that only the strongest can live. The “ Sardaukar” are so formidable that even the highly-trained private armies of the feudal Houses are reluctant to face them.

One of the things that allows the galactic Emperor in Dune to stay on top in the civilization’s complex politics is his legion of crack troops.

What TV Tropes calls the “ Death World” plays a key role in the plot of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965). Or you can do it by throwing your candidates into an environment so fierce that those who survive have to become impossibly “ badass” just to live through it. You can do it by postulating a lifetime of intense training, as with Batman. If you want to develop an inhumanly formidable army, you can do it by administering a “ super soldier serum,” as in the Marvel comics. (It sometimes seemed that original-series Star Trek planets could be divided into “piles of rocks” and “places exactly like Earth.” Much easier on the special-effects budget.) Here I’d like to look at one particular variety-the worlds that serve as training locales for tough guys. Science fiction postulates lots of types of planets-although, for the convenience of humanoid characters, most of the ones shown end up being pretty Earthlike.

#TV TROPES THE BANNER SAGA FULL#

#TV TROPES THE BANNER SAGA CRACK#

#TV TROPES THE BANNER SAGA TV#

Tv tropes the banner saga