From: Frank Herbert by Timothy O'Reilly

http://itunes.com/apps/Stanza. "Part 6": The Heaven Makers (1967) touches on many of the same ideas as The Eyes of Heisenberg. It, too, is about immortality and its consequences. The Chem, ageless rulers of the galaxy, face the same problem as the Optimen. Although they are older than suns, their science is not really that much more advanced than our own. They are frozen in time. The device that gives them immortality is appropriately named–they are all caught in Tiggywaugh's Web. In the face of forever, the Chem play games of participation in life–the "pantovive," in which they manipulate planetary histories for their amusement–to lose the taste of eternity. Humans, locked into time and forced to deal with death, have a truer grasp of forever. They seem larger than life to the Chem; their life force itself so much more intense.

Herbert does a beautiful job of evoking the poignant thrill the Chem receive from their pantovive excursions into mortality. We, too, feel the thrill, because their pantovive is our history, conceived with an artist's sense of passion and color. The Chem were the gods of our distant past. One of them recalls fondly, "I once was the God Ea, striking terror into captive Jews … in Sumeria a while back. It was harmless fun setting up religious patterns among you." Now the Chem continue to "produce and direct" the present.