The universe of the conscious

Frank Herbert (1920-1986) is an American science fiction writer, author of the famous fantastic saga “Chronicles of the Dune”, translated into dozens of languages ​​and won millions of fans around the world. The most authoritative magazine of science fiction “Locus” recognized “Dune”, the first novel of the epic about the sand planet Arrakis, the best scientific and fiction novel of all times and peoples. However, the author’s creative heritage is not limited to this famous epic. In a small cycle of “Universe of the Conscious”, which includes only two novels and two stories, Frank Herbert managed to masterfully combine a bright scientific and fantastic detective and philosophical understanding of contact with reasonable inhabitants of the Universe. The novel “Otzadian Experiment”, which is part of this cycle, took an honorable 7th place in the ten “best fantastic novels of all time” according to Locus.
Thousands of planets and hundreds of reasonable races are included in the confederation of the conscious. And this confederation would live happily happily if its government, which too literally implemented the idea of ​​combating the bureaucracy, did not include the “green light” to all good (in theory) initiatives ...
The mechanism of state power earned at a terrible speed. Laws were proposed and approved within an hour. The budget cracked at the seams. The committees with the most incredible functions multiplying frighteningly. The confederation was rapidly falling into chaos. Only individual conscious understood the horror of what was happening and in the end organized the sabotage bureau, whose agents tried to slow down the monstrously promoted flywheel of power. Agents of the Bureau, uniting representatives of all planets and races, show incredible ingenuity, trying to act within the framework of the law, but the resistance of the authorities and society is so great that sometimes they have to cross this framework, and then everything is used, up to bribery, blackmail and murder