The crysknife is also referred to as "the Death Maker". Before Paul came to
Dune, no
off worlder had ever seen a crysknife (and lived to tell about it). "Known only by rumor and wild gossip." None were ever allowed to be sold and taken off world. Once drawn, a crysknife could not be returned to its
scabbard without drawing blood.
It's possible
Frank Herbert's inspiration for the crysknife came from a symbolic wavy dagger found in
Bali called the "
Kris Knife", which is used in a ritual "
Kris Dance".
As every Dune fan knows, knives intended for storage are "fixed". Knives attuned to the owner's electrical field are classified as "unfixed". However, this basic fact seems to have been missed by Dune prequel authors
Brian Herbert and
Kevin J. Anderson. In their first prequel
Dune: House Atreides, the authors describe a fixed crysknife as "keyed to the body of the owner so it would dissolve upon his death". This is of course the exact opposite of the way Frank Herbert describes a fixed knife.
This
oversight would not be so bad, if one was writing, say,
fan fiction ... or maybe
slash. But when
Brian Herbert and
Kevin J. Anderson come right out and claim their new
Dune novels "continue to establish
canon in the Dune universe" (emphasis mine) and hint that they're working from detailed notes left by Brian's father, you have to wonder how they could have made such a basic
slip up.