Dune-the Butlerian Jihad technology question

Ok I am beyond confused here. I read the original Dune novels a long time ago and on a whim decided tor ead these prequels as well.
Question: Before they invent the space folding drive, space travel is slow.
It still is faster than light, cause it takes only months to go between planets and relativity isn't mentioned.
From the descriptions of spacecraft and amneuvers though it seems that all they do is accelerate, burn propellant and stuff. Which does not allow a spaceship to go faster than light because of relativity. No way to circumvent that is mentioned before the appearance of the space folding drive.
Doesn't make freaking sense!!!
I can't believe that respected sci-fi authors would make such lapses of logic.

I would disagree. Unless you're reading what is generally called hard-sci-fi, ignoring incovinient laws of physics is very common. This was probably even more true at the time when Dune was written than it is now.

That said, I don't know the exact details of what is said or used in the book, so I can't really say for now.

dune(the original novels) are beyond hard sci-fi. actually beyond sci-fi. highly reccomended read.
the butlerian jihad series is very recent, and nowadays sci-fi authors strive to be technically correct, at least that's what I've seen so far.

moral of the story: the prequels suck.

Nice summary, TerraMrs.

I could probably write up a technological explanation and send it to BH and KA to include in their novels.

The Keven J Anderson books (Butlerian Jihad, House Harkonnen, etc) are about as awful as everything else this unoriginal hack has churned out. But as I recall in the real series of books, travel without spice was brought up in either Chapterhouse or Heretics. It was never the spice that did the job, it just allowed to the navigators to comprehend the navigation itself, since they were not permitted thinking machines.

yes, but there was also a way of ftl without... foldspace is it? wasn't instantaneous but still. i don't think it was brought up though. but i don't remember chapterhouse too well, all this brings to mind is them trying to get the axlotal tank from the last tlelexau master. yes i know atrocious spelling.