Sandtrout? Not 'round these parts...


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inhuien
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Sandtrout? Not 'round these parts...

Post by inhuien »

Now it been many a year since I’ve read CoD or GEoD so I’ve forgotten a lot of the details but it clearly stated in GEoD that Leto the second is in “possession” of the last remaining sandtrout on all of Arrakis. Where did all the millions of others go, was it simply the climatic changes he brought to bear that caused their demise?

In GEoD when LetoII is interviewing Sonia FH wrote:"I cannot walk among my fellows without their special notice. I am no longer one
of you. I am alone. Love? Many people love me, but my shape keeps us apart. We
are separated, Siona, by a gulf that no other human dares to bridge."
"Not even your Ixian woman?"
"Yes, she would if she could, but she cannot. She's not an Atreides."
"You mean that I . . . could?" She touched her breast with a finger.
"If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose my
flesh. However, if I were to die. . ."
She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.
"The Oral History tells it accurately," he said. "
Sole Man

On Let's sandtrout

Post by Sole Man »

He ate them all.

Uh...I guess the climate changes. That's what I always figured anyway, though how he brought about the climate changes I could never figure out.
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SandChigger
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Post by SandChigger »

It was dee feesh.


The predator fish in the qanats. ;)

Or maybe Leto himself ett 'em. (I see during Preview that someone has already suggested this while I was typing. :roll: ) Had to be scarfin' down something in those feeding tunnels he dug out.

There is this as well, from the Ecology Appendix:
A report came up from the palmaries:

At the desert edge of the plantings, the sand plankton is being poisoned through interaction with the new forms of life. The reason: protein incompatibility. Poisonous water was forming there which the Arrakis life would not touch. A barren zone surrounded the plantings and even shai-hulud would not invade it.
There's nothing stating that the sandtrout subsist on the sand plankton, but if the plankton were dying, the whole cycle would be endangered.

Note this is a bit inconsistent with what we discussed recently in connection with Sheeana's village and the damp sand moat. A zone of plantings should have kept the worm out. One of those famed physiological differences in the worms post-Leto? Or having been through the waterworld-to-desert-to-waterworld-to-desert cycle a few times, the Rakian sandtrout and worms were acclimated to Terran life?

Ah ... another mystery!

(Sorry. I know that according to Byron we're supposed to jump up and down and deny any FH fuck-ups; just didn't feel like it tonight. ;) )
"Let the dead give water to the dead. As for me, it's NO MORE FUCKING TEARS!"
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Re: Sandtrout? Not 'round these parts...

Post by mrpsbrk »

inhuien wrote:Now it been many a year since I’ve read CoD or GEoD so I’ve forgotten a lot of the details but it clearly stated in GEoD that Leto the second is in “possession” of the last remaining sandtrout on all of Arrakis. Where did all the millions of others go, was it simply the climatic changes he brought to bear that caused their demise?
The spice-cycle- and the carbon-cycle-based lifeforms competed for resources. By the time of Dune, the spice-cycle had arrested all the water on the planet, so that other forms of life had a very precious few drops. The climatic changes were also an ecosystem change, whereby the distribution of those resources (not only water, but energy, food, space, etc) had been artificially converted to the carbon-based life cycle, which in turn choked the sandtrout along with it's siblings.

Ecology. It is almost an economics issue.

But i believe the spice cycle is left deliberately sketchy...
Marcio (mrpsbrk) does believe in Lord Leto over all other wills and reasons ;-)
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Freakzilla
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Post by Freakzilla »

SandChigger wrote:
A report came up from the palmaries:

At the desert edge of the plantings, the sand plankton is being poisoned through interaction with the new forms of life. The reason: protein incompatibility. Poisonous water was forming there which the Arrakis life would not touch. A barren zone surrounded the plantings and even shai-hulud would not invade it.
There's nothing stating that the sandtrout subsist on the sand plankton, but if the plankton were dying, the whole cycle would be endangered.

Note this is a bit inconsistent with what we discussed recently in connection with Sheeana's village and the damp sand moat. A zone of plantings should have kept the worm out. One of those famed physiological differences in the worms post-Leto? Or having been through the waterworld-to-desert-to-waterworld-to-desert cycle a few times, the Rakian sandtrout and worms were acclimated to Terran life?
Sand Plankton are baby sandtrout:

Now they had the circular relationship: little maker to pre-spice mass;
little maker to shai-hulud; shai-hulud to scatter the spice upon which fed
microscopic creatures called sand plankton; the sand plankton, food for shaihulud,
growing, burrowing, becoming little makers.

~Dune, Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune

I don't remember Sheeana's village having plantings, just the mote.
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SandRider
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Post by SandRider »

see also the 69 McNelly interview,
posted around here somewhere, with the "missing page" ...
................ I exist only to amuse myself ................
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I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know
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SandChigger
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Post by SandChigger »

Freakzilla wrote:Sand Plankton are baby sandtrout
Yes, but I was thinking of a more immediate impact. Sandtrout also seem to propagate on their own (from the conversation in Chapterhouse). And they come from old sandworms. (And wet God Emperors.) Or are you taking that passage to mean that all sandtrout not from worms begin as sand plankton?

And there's never any explanation of where the sand plankton themselves come from, so we have to assume that they propagate on their own as well. Although it's always possible that the sandtrout spawn them. Or the worms?

There are a lot of gaps in the picture. But, yeah, if all the sand plankton died out, there would be no new sandtrout from that source.

(Here's another poser for you: if water and soil "fixed" by another form of life is poisonous to the sand plankton, how would the simple introduction of sandtrout to a planet [or reintroduction of Leto's sandtrout to Arrakis, for example] ever get the cycle [re]started? Where do the sand plankton come from?)

(SandRider, what specifically in the interview did you mean?)
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SandRider
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Post by SandRider »

where Willis stumbles thru the spice cycle and
Frank nods and says "Uh-Huh" and "Right" alot ....
................ I exist only to amuse myself ................
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I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know
how to fully interact with people.
~ "Spice Grandson" (Bryon Merrit) 08 June 2008
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SandChigger
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Post by SandChigger »

Yeah...

I wonder if there are any copies of the original recording left, 'cause I think this is a case where the transcription doesn't carry enough detail. To me, it reads like FH is possibly just going along with McNelly's summary, to be agreeable maybe.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable about the details (like the spice as "spermatic material", for example) if it had been FH voicing them first, not just giving them his (verbal) nodding approval.

Either way, the interview is extra-textual and therefore non-canonical IMO, in much the same way as those deleted chapters/sections in RtD.
"Let the dead give water to the dead. As for me, it's NO MORE FUCKING TEARS!"
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