me rich in solans that was not already rich in tangible goods As the Guild had predicted, the operation of the market brought about changes in the relative values of protects and materials which in turn changed the practical definition of the solan Every twenty five years the financial staffs of the Guild, the emperor, and the Landsraad met to review market history and make appropriate revisions of the solan value formula The basic rule of these conferences was that the formulaic changes must leave relative economic standings unchanged Although the conferences were politically charged events, die basic rule seems to have been generally well observed Most artificial manipulations of value were done to encourage or discourage production of specific kinds of goods Apparently, however, no pnce was kept fixed for more than three years at a tune (about the period it took for an economic "wave" to propagate across the Empire), and die Guild bankers could probably intervene to buy in die case of dumping, or to sell in the case of hoarding During the God Emperor's reign economic management became a great deal more rigid Leto, concerned with die present only as it opened to the future, interested in relationships only as they flowed and changed ironically presided over the last flexible cur rency in Imperial history For instance, for over twenty-five centimes, no matter what the supply, no matter what the demand, one solan bought one kilogram of pundi nee The God Emperor never minded a few famines Intent upon teaching the race the deadliness of stability, committed to forcing an explosion of unpredictable change along his Golden Path, Leto became a policeman enforcing bad laws so that stricture would provoke repeal The Scattering was certainly a repeal of the Impenum, and one result of that outburst was the polyvanant "funny ' money system familiar to us today Like the Guild, the solan has become an element of the past M M Further references CHOAM D W Alia Current Accounts The Banking Principles and Practices of the Spacing Guild (Kaitmn Linthrm UP) Dik Benat The Applica tion of the Solari Value Formula 1285 5085 3 v tr HiiZman Suradees (Gruuzman Isabel) S an Esva Cross Variant Analysis of Spice Production and the Solan Value Formula 8895 HOOO (Kaitain Varna) Hokosuna Galant Lost Mass The Commodity Market and the Adoption of the Solari (Grumman Hartley UP) K Genm A Studv of Guild Accounts from the Rakis Re cords (Butte Summo-Scama) Harq at Ada ed The Atreides Letters Lib Conf Temp Series 763 IMPERIAL POETRY, 10000-10400 No penod in die history of literature has been more praised for its accomplishments than the four centimes following the turn of the eleventh millennium Yet far from spnngmg like wildflowers from a single stem a metaphor that expresses well the first half of (his penod-the glones of the second half are like a garden full of artificially transplanted and carefully nurtured blossoms As the met aphor implies the period falls easily into two halves the first spanning the final two centuries of the reign of House Comno and the second initiating the rule of the Atreides CORRINO PERIOD In the hrst period Galach held an unquestioned supremacy as die language of culture and the arts it was the official language of the Impenum and die native tongue of billions of speakers on die settled worlds Studied as a second lan guage in thousands of schools it was the language of law and military and die path w ay to political and social advancement Although every planet had its unique tradi tional poetic and narrative forms Galach was readily adaptable to use in these forms IMPERIAL POETRY IMPERIAL POETRY and for thousands of years before the fall of the Comnos, the literature of many worlds was ornamented with works stamped unmistakably with the character of the planetary society yet written m a language understood by the whole empire Consequently, the liter ature of Galach under the Cornnos tended to be diffuse, casual in meter though mannered in form, and marked by a native vigor conveyed in a cosmopolitan language But changes in that literature, especially in its lyric forms, were noted by 10100 As if in response to a prescience of change in the universal order, the literature of Galach reached heights over the next few generations seldom equalled before Many of the best known works from that time express a sense of foreboding, of uneasiness, of anticipation, or at the least, a sense of new cosmic beginnings One of the most famous lyrics of the time is "The Earthquake,"1 written by the Corrmo Court Poet Henoor Sentraks (10035-10163) late m his life after a mild tremor had been felt at the court on Kaitam in 10159 As an omen, the tremor, rare to a geologically stable world hfceKaitain, sparked much popular anxiety Note the sense of a new creation expressed in the concluding lines "Romahna" was the resort area near the capitol m which Sentraks was staying, giving instruction in poetry to vacationing courtiers It was m Romahna that I found.