The story begins 10,000 years before the events of Frank Herbert's DUNE -- Machine and Human are locked in a deadly struggle for supremacy. The centuries-long battle is finally in its last stages and the Human Race knows that somehow they must repel the tide that has begun to rise inexorably against them. Their opponents are seemingly invincible: Omnius, the evermind, the soulless artificial intelligence that is overlord of countless robots and machines on the Synchronized Worlds, and the Titans, whose sadistic and imperially arrogant human brains are housed in massive mechanical bodies designed to be weapons of destruction.

For centuries, the valiant men and women of the planets under human control have somehow managed to battle their remorseless enemies to a standstill but recently have grown complacent. Amid the political and shortsighted squabbling between the representatives of the League of Nobles, however, new leaders have begun to come to the forefront -- Xavier Harkonnen, the resolute and courageous military leader of the Planet of Salusa Secundus, Xavier's fiance, Serena Butler, a passionate activist who will become the unwilling leader of millions, Tio Holtzman, the brilliant scientist whose genius has begun to fade, struggling to devise a weapon that will help the human fight for freedom. Against the brute strength and faultless efficiency of their adversaries, these leaders and the human race have only their boundless imagination, their ever-expanding capacity for compassion, their lightning fast ingenuity and the irresistible desire for hope and love. It will have to be enough.

And on the backward, nearly forgotten planet of Arrakis, traders have discovered the remarkable properties of the spice melange.

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