Daniel and Marty

[SandChigger]

They wouldn't really have had to be captured BG, would they? Just the regular females of Scattering BT.

Actually... how would the BT female and BG female lines ever mix? Does a Reverend Mother have access to the memories of the mother-line of her father? Or would those female memories be blocked from her because access would be through her male-line memories? Have we ever come up with a definitive answer for that?

Because it is relevant: if the father's mother's memories are blocked, there's no way the BT & BG lines memories could be joined in one female other than through Sharing. And after the BG who went out into The Scattering had exhausted their spice and lost the ability to create new RMs, Sharing would have been lost to them along with OM anyway.

If the memory block was a result of BT genetic engineering, shouldn't it only have been remained effective in women directly descended from BT females? Wouldn't it have become less effective as new genetic material was brought into the mix? (The HMs didn't have children only with men descended from HM females after all, right?)

Hmm...

[Freakzilla]

Does a Reverend Mother have access to the memories of the mother-line of her father? Or would those female memories be blocked from her because access would be through her male-line memories? Have we ever come up with a definitive answer for that?

Because it is relevant: if the father's mother's memories are blocked, there's no way the BT & BG lines memories could be joined in one female other than through Sharing. And after the BG who went out into The Scattering had exhausted their spice and lost the ability to create new RMs, Sharing would have been lost to them along with OM anyway.

If the memory block was a result of BT genetic engineering, shouldn't it only have been remained effective in women directly descended from BT females? Wouldn't it have become less effective as new genetic material was brought into the mix? (The HMs didn't have children only with men descended from HM females after all, right?)

Hmm...

I've always assumed OM was ALL female ancestors. Male OM is not "blocked", everyone has both male and female OM. BG choose only to access the female memories.

As for the BT block, who knows how that works, I assume they're still there just inaccessible. I'll have to think about that one...

[lotek]

This is one, if not the only one, thing I think is probably right in the Hunters/Sandworms failure. I think the best explanation for the other-memory gaps that HM have, is that their ancestors had no memories to pass on.

I admit that the idea seemed to have a strong FH vibe to me, too, when I first read it. And for all we can know at present, it may actually be based on something they found in his notes.

The problem, though, is that pesky fact that ancestral memory is genetic in the Duniverse. Completely wiping a woman's memories and her entire personality when she is made a tank (if that's really what occurs) should not affect her genetic (somatic cellular) memory. If the idea really was FH's and he had decided to include it in one of the novels, I feel certain he would have provided a much more convincing DUNE-like explanation than the "hysterical feminine solidarity amnesia" bullshit we got in McDune. I like to think it would have involved what the BT were masters at: genetic engineering. Remember Scytale's ditty: "Tleilaxu sperm does not talk." If the BT Masters engineered their own cells to be opaque to BG investigation, why would they not do the same to the cells of the women they gave to the BG?

again, Keith shows his poor understanding of logic in general and Dune in particular.
(it reminds me of an sf story where a race of aliens create copies of earth items but all text is blurred because they got their info from long lost tv signals)
It's a form of logic that only skims the surface of things, "from a distance it looks similar so to hell with detail, it was tough enough to understand this!"

[SandChigger]

I've always assumed OM was ALL female ancestors. Male OM is not "blocked", everyone has both male and female OM. BG choose only to access the female memories.

As for the BT block, who knows how that works, I assume they're still there just inaccessible. I'll have to think about that one...

OK, so if we go with your OM assumption there would have to be something about the BT female genetics that blocked access to female memories even from non-BT-female lines. That would have to be some piece of work.

[D Pope]

Is there a reference to BT females ever having been allowed a life?
Perhaps they're treated worse than veal, the BT are pretty specific about the roles allowed for females. What if their genetic memory is being the lobotomised, organic component of a baby machine? (following that idea, maybe they had memories from the mists of time or tanks were originally built from scratch)
For that matter, how much personality was left in the BG volunteer tanks and did that get passed on?

I know i'm out of my depth here. If i've 'pulled a Donnie...' well, you know the drill.

[Freakzilla]

Is there a reference to BT females ever having been allowed a life?
Perhaps they're treated worse than veal, the BT are pretty specific about the roles allowed for females. What if their genetic memory is being the lobotomised, organic component of a baby machine? (following that idea, maybe they had memories from the mists of time or tanks were originally built from scratch)
For that matter, how much personality was left in the BG volunteer tanks and did that get passed on?

I know i'm out of my depth here. If i've 'pulled a Donnie...' well, you know the drill.

No you're right, if they were mindless tanks, they wouldn't have any memories to access.

[D Pope]

I can understand the need for having a clean testtube for cooking up some gholas.

[Eru]

Here's something I was thinking about:

Let's assume that Frank Herbert had intended them to be machines. But instead of those two abominations (Erasmus and Omnius), what if Daniel & Marty were more like the humanoid Cylons from Moore's series? In Heretics and Chapterhouse, we have evidence of the weakening of the prohibitions of the Butlerian Jihad (Clairby being cyborged, those autonomous service mechs the Honored Matres employed on Junction). We know that Ix pursued technologies that flaunted the BJ and that the Bene Tleilax were capable of modification of the human form (they engineered their form, implanted that metallic element in their skin to repel scanners). So, what if D&M are renegade experiments between the factions that Ix and BT sent out into the Scattering? Could explain why Masters mistake them for Face Dancers and the impressive technology they seem to possess.

Thoughts?

I just want to start by saying how much I love the comparison to BSG. I am almost finished with BSG and will never be able to watch it again w/o thinking of the Cylons as Face Dancers

As to the matter at hand. I actually still think the BT being the cause of the OM block makes a bit of sense, just once again, not as pinky and the brian thought. Maybe it's not so much an actual programed lock, but a side effect of the generations of lives as tanks. OM isn't like a encyclopedia where you can just conjure up the ancestors you want at will. I imagine the OM of the HM as vast wastelands, clogged with the emptiness of those tank lives.

Just a thought.

[SandChigger]

Hmm. Interesting.

And far more original than hysterical female solidarity-born amnesia.

[inhuien]

Eru I totally get what what you're saying, but where was it stated that the Honoured Matres had Bene Tleilax heritage? Or have misunderstood.

And yeah the Tleilaxu Tanks were basically lobotomy cases.

[Tleszer]

The abomination known as Grunters introduces the HM as having a BT heritage.

A former Honored Matre herself, Murbella eventually accesses the Other Memory from her Honored Matre ancestors, and learns their true origins. The core of the Honored Matres were vengeful Tleilaxu females, freed and assimilated by Fish Speakers and Bene Gesserits fleeing in The Scattering. The Tleilaxu women had been used as axlotl tanks by their males for millennia; though the current Honored Matres did not know their own origins, this explains to Murbella why they had been compelled to so mercilessly annihilate the Tleilaxu worlds in the Old Empire. Murbella also 'remembers' the attack by a renegade Honored Matre that first antagonized the Enemy.

[inhuien]

Oh dear.

[SandChigger]

Ugh. Is a BT heritage for the HMs another one of those insidious McDune shitsmears that seeps its way into quasi-respectability, like "artificial spice"?

[Tleszer]

McDune will never have my respect. I'm waiting for the day when a semi-intelligent member of the HLP disavows the existence of these books. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this dream will never come true.

[Omphalos]

I'm waiting for the day when semi-intelligent member of the HLP reveals him or herself.

[SandChigger]

I'd settle for one who was semi-literate, who could spell when copying text from one place to another.

[SadisticCynic]

I'd settle for one who was semi-literate, who could spell when copying text from one place to another.

Technically, that isn't even a necessary skill for that task.

[SandChigger]

YOU'D THINK, HUH?!

[DragEgusku]

I do not understand something. Duncan had visions of Daniel and Marty, but see a net like a northern lights infinite.
This net was generated by Daniel and Marty? It's a curiosity, because I have not managed to get doubting.

[Freakzilla]

I do not understand something. Duncan had visions of Daniel and Marty, but see a net like a northern lights infinite.
This net was generated by Daniel and Marty? It's a curiosity, because I have not managed to get doubting.

No, it was generated by the no-ship from the scattering's computer. The program was in the navigation charts folder, I believe.

[DragEgusku]

Now I really do not understand. What scattering's computer?
You want to say that Duncan's no-ship was connected to a computer from Scattering?

[Freakzilla]

Now I really do not understand. What scattering's computer?
You want to say that Duncan's no-ship was connected to a computer from Scattering?

The no-ship itself was from The Scattering. It's the Honored Matre no-ship Teg stole from Gammu. That navigation computer.

[inhuien]

I do not understand something. Duncan had visions of Daniel and Marty, but see a net like a northern lights infinite.
This net was generated by Daniel and Marty? It's a curiosity, because I have not managed to get doubting.

No, it was generated by the no-ship from the scattering's computer. The program was in the navigation charts folder, I believe.

Consciously?

[Freakzilla]

I do not understand something. Duncan had visions of Daniel and Marty, but see a net like a northern lights infinite.
This net was generated by Daniel and Marty? It's a curiosity, because I have not managed to get doubting.

No, it was generated by the no-ship from the scattering's computer. The program was in the navigation charts folder, I believe.

Consciously?

I don't no how, just that when Duncan wiped out the navigation memory in the no-ship's computer, The Net, Marty and Daniel disappear.

[Freakzilla]

This leads me to suspect at the very least, Marty and Daniel could track no-ships via their navigation computer.