Herbert wrote that Dune "was to be an ecological novel . . . with many overtones" (Heretics of Dune, 5:v/none).1  As I argue in "'Plots Within Plots . . . Patterns Within Patterns': Chaos-Theory Concepts and Structures in Frank Herbert's Dune Novels" (Palumbo 1997), this ecological motif is integrated with many of the other most prominent elements of the DUNE CHRONICLES, the "overtones," through mutual connections to chaos-theory concepts and structures.  As chaos theory is the study of orderly patterns in turbulent, erratic, or dynamical systems--and as an ecology is by definition a dynamical system--chaos-theory concepts provide insight into the dynamics of any ecology, and the orderly patterns discernable within an ecology will reveal chaos-theory structures.  Dune's Imperial Planetary Ecologist, Dr. Kynes, views Dune's ecology from a chaos-theory model, as a dynamical system that might be radically altered through a minimal change in a key variable, "the water cycle," affecting its interlocking feedback loops (Dune, 1:274/269, 1:139/137).  And many of the characters or groups embroiled in the schemes within schemes that constitute the plot of the DUNE series reveal themselves to be de facto chaos theorists in the recurring similarity of their statements or actions to chaos-theory axioms.  This circle of nascent chaos theorists includes, not only Kynes, but also Paul, Leto II, the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, and the Fremen; and, as ecology is a chaos-theory science, their declarations or representations of chaos-theory maxims implicitly, and often explicitly, reinforce the series' ecological theme.

          As in the specific instance of an ecology, key elements in any dynamical system are by definition mutually interdependent:  the behavior of one variable affects the behavior of other variables.  Thus, any dynamical system is fundamentally recursive, rather than linear; and feedback is therefore an essential aspect of this characteristic nonlinearity (Briggs & Peat, 24).  Because they are generated by repeatedly feeding the result back into a nonlinear equation to replace one of the initial terms, fractal geometry images are visual representations of feedback; and fractal geometry is indispensable to the analysis of dynamical systems because "the structures that provide the key to nonlinear dynamics prove to be fractal" (Gleik, 114).  "A visual representation of chaotic behavior," a fractal is an image "with an infinite amount of self-similarity" generated in "the realm of dynamical systems" by the "repeated application of an algorithm" or by the reiteration of recursive geometric procedures (Laplante, 20, 3-4, 14-15).  "Above all, fractal [means] self-similar" (Gleik, 103).  And "'self-similarity' . . . means [both] a repetition of detail at descending scales" (Briggs & Peat, 90)--"pattern inside of pattern" (Gleik, 103)--and duplication of details across the same scale.  Thus, "the structure of the whole is often reflected in every part," and any part might appear to be both "a small reproduction of the larger image" and a near-clone of innumerable like structures on the same scale (Laplante, 3). . . .