House Harkonnen is a powerful noble family in Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. The Harkonnens are featured prominently in the original 1965 novel Dune, and are also a major presence in both the Prelude to Dune (1999-2001) and Legends of Dune (2002-2004) prequel trilogies by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. The Harkonnen bloodline itself extends throughout all of the original Dune novels.
As the novel Dune begins, House Harkonnen is headed by the cruel yet cunning Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Human life is of little consequence to the Baron or his nephews, the brutish Glossu Rabban and Harkonnen's heir Feyd-Rautha; both are the legal sons of the Baron's youngest demibrother, Abulurd Rabban, who had "renounced the Harkonnen name and all rights to the title when given the subdistrict governorship of Rabban-Lankiveil." The Harkonnen homeworld Giedi Prime itself is an industrial wasteland with a low photosynthetic potential, its once-rich natural resources exhausted and the environment fouled with industrial pollution. The Baron himself is "the direct-line male descendant of the Bashar Abulurd Harkonnen who was banished for cowardice after the Battle of Corrin", and House Harkonnen's return to power "generally is ascribed to adroit manipulation of the whale fur market and later consolidation with melange wealth from Arrakis." A millennia-long rivalry exists between the decadent Harkonnens and House Atreides of Caladan; the Harkonnens have essentially bought their status while the Atreides are related to the Emperor by blood, and the fact that an Atreides once had a Harkonnen banished for cowardice in ancient times is still bitterly remembered some 10,000 years later.
The Baron's intent to exterminate the Atreides line seems close to fruition as Duke Leto Atreides is lured to the desert planet Arrakis on the pretense of taking over the valuable melange operation there. Harkonnen has an agent in the Atreides household and the secret assistance of the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV; the Baron manages to kill Leto, and the Duke's concubine Lady Jessica and son Paul are left to die in the open desert. But this Harkonnen treachery sets in motion Paul's rise to power among Arrakis' native Fremen, and positions him as a threat to the Imperial interests there. The Baron later dies at the hand of Paul's sister Alia, and Feyd is killed shortly thereafter by Paul himself. Now in control of Arrakis, the source of the all-important spice melange, Paul unseats the Emperor.
House Harkonnen is effectively crippled; Paul's son Leto II Atreides ultimately rules the Known Universe for 3,500 years as the "God Emperor", or the "Tyrant". An ancient, Harkonnen-built no-globe is discovered in Heretics of Dune (1984) on Gammu, the planet formerly called Giedi Prime, and it is noted that "the Tyrant must have known about this place." Miles Teg asks himself:
Why did the Tyrant permit Family Harkonnen to squander so much of their last remaining wealth on such an enterprise? Perhaps for that very reason — to drain them. The cost in bribes and Guild shipping from the Ixian factories must have been astronomical.
It is later said that "Gammu was Giedi Prime, a Harkonnen place ... They were rich... Rich enough to accomplish the secret installation of a no-room ... even of a large no-globe ... Bribes, third-party purchases, many transshipments ... The Famine Times were very disruptive and before that there were all those millennia of the Tyrant ... When the Harkonnens kept their heads down or lost them." Miles also notes in Heretics of Dune that the Harkonnen bloodline possesses "genetic lines tracing far away into the dawn times of Greek and Pathan and Mameluke
Название: House Harkonnen Автор: Frank Herbert Издательство: Tantor Audio Эту книгу озвучил: Scott Brick Год выпуска: 2009 Жанр: Sci-Fi, Фантастика Аудио кодек: mp3 Битрейт аудио: 320 kbps Продолжительность: 26:36:00 Качество: Отличное Размер: 1400 Мб Язык: Английский
