Ah, yes.. But if you read it carefully Paul elaborates. Future is not linear – which means that the act of precognition does not really “lock” the future.

Precognition is like standing on the crossroads, knowing full well that only one out of many roads will take you to your destination. The other roads all lead you into bad places where you do not want to go.

You are still free to choose whichever road you want. But if you have foreseen the future why would you ever want to choose the bad road?

Paul was in the unique situation of being the Kwisatz Haederach, and thus his choices wound have impact not only on his own future, but also the future of the whole humankind.

Precognition and responsibility for the well being of human race kindoff takes out the “free” out of “free will”. For Paul the timeline was locked, because he just could not imagine himself consciously choosing the wrong path to thread.

In a way, Dune oracles take the randomness out of history. They are shaping and changing the future by the act of predicting it. This is like the uncertainty principle in physics. The act of observing the future influences it.

Thus each precog becomes a focal point of history. Thus precognition tends to be immensely subjective and centered on the precog himself. He can only see the consequences of his own actions. All of them have blindspots in which they cannot see. These are the areas of influence of other precogs shaping their own future. Consequently they blind each other.

Paul blinded all of them – he simply was the focal point, of focal points. A figure central to the history, shadowed only by his own son who became a living god.

That all said, I’m still trying to figure out how they No technology works :P

Reading Frank Herbert can sometimes make your brain hurt – but in a good way :P The best of ways in fact :)

Something I didn’t realize about the Dune books.
Paul often spoke of how once he saw something in the future, it was locked in and couldn’t be prevented.
I always assumed that this was more of an expression of Paul’s feelings that he was simple a tool of history.
I was reading about the books recently, and, as it turns out, it was also meant to be taken literally.
Think about what that means with regards to the sheer important of human perception.