Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?
Posted: 06 Jun 2010 03:00
Geez. Hasn't DHL's technology changed over the course of the six books too?
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I'll buy that for a dollar ....merky wrote: ...and I don't think there's any inconsistency between the tanks as they're portrayed in DM and what they're revealed to be later. But the quotes MrFlibble referred to from DM suggest, to me, that FH probably wasn't thinking of the tanks as women when he wrote that book.
Yes, the females used as tanks are portrayed as immensely large and grossly disfigured, but the quote here still refers to Duncan as a ghola-baby, not an adult regenerated corpse. Even in the context of a science fiction novel where there are shape-shifters and clones with memories stretching thousands of years back in time, I find it difficult to imagine a female body changed so much as to incorporate another body of a full-grown adult as if he were a baby. That would be conceivable if these females were genetically engineered that way, but from Chapterhouse we know they were regular females converted into "tanks".Freakzilla wrote:These were no ordinary fat chicks...MrFlibble wrote:Personally I do lack an imagination that vivid to picture Duncan being first inserted into a female womb, regenerate there and then come out of it again
He remembered emerging time after time: bright lights and padded mechanical
hands. The hands rotated him and, in the unfocused blurs of the newborn, he saw
a great mound of female flesh -- monstrous in her almost immobile grossness . .
. a maze of dark tubes linked her body to giant metal containers.
Axlotl tank?
~HoD
Well, the "dirty Tleilaxu" was part of the image the BT themselves created and promoted to conceal their true identity. Yet Frank frequently portrays them as completely amoral (they're called "scientific amoralists" in Messiah), and the "tanks" contribute to this image.trang wrote:maybe just bring to light the term "dirty Tleilaxu", in a sense that they mess with the breeding artificially instead of "natural" ways of the Bene Gesserit or other factions.
That's the quote, yes. It was in my original post. I'm pleased to find that others are wondering the same things as I did.SandRider wrote:there you go, that's the passage I had in my mind, but wasn't going to ferret it out ...
knew someone would ...
whether or not Frank thought of the tanks during the Messiah period the same way he did by Dune 7,
in Messiah, he really gives no ideas on the tanks ... BTs are a secretive society, and we the readers
haven't been informed yet ... so you could take "tank" in Messiah as a standard Sci-Fi technological
convention, or, if you're re-reading, as what Frank described later ... whether or not this was on
purpose can only be determined by Frank's notes at the time ...
Omph, do you think there would be anything on this at Fullerton ?
or was that in the box of stuff Brian let get water-logged in his basement and Spanky then burned ?
I guess the obvious answer should be Brian Herbert, the Son ... but I'd bet a Confederate Dollar BillWho knows what's in Fullerton?
The librarians told me that they think Bobo and Spanky were there, and I think one of them has written a sentence or two about going. When I got to the archives, they were all fucked up and things were in different boxes. Before them maybe ten or fifteen people had gone; most there to research for a book or a dissertation about Herbert. I wondered if Bobo and Spanky were the ones who messed up the order of things.SandRider wrote:I guess the obvious answer should be Brian Herbert, the Son ... but I'd bet a Confederate Dollar BillWho knows what's in Fullerton?
he's never even been there .... and even-money on Spanky McDune even being aware of the archive's
existence .... I don't think Merritt would know about it if you hadn't told him ... I guess the HLP can't
claim ownership of those papers, so they don't care ....
That's probably what I'm thinking of.SandChigger wrote:Didn't Brian say they had gotten information (copied things?) from Fullerton in one of the videos of a talk or interview last year? (And Kevin didn't look too pleased.) Wasn't there something like that?
That's classic. He felt his control over all things Dune slipping a bit, I'm sure. Which caused him to pinch his sphincter even tighter than normal.SandChigger wrote:... (And Kevin didn't look too pleased.) ...
I think of the Bene Tleilax women as control modules, regulating the external womb, think about it, there's no need for the ghole/clone/baby to gestate in their belly.Freakzilla wrote:These were no ordinary fat chicks...MrFlibble wrote:Personally I do lack an imagination that vivid to picture Duncan being first inserted into a female womb, regenerate there and then come out of it again
He remembered emerging time after time: bright lights and padded mechanical
hands. The hands rotated him and, in the unfocused blurs of the newborn, he saw
a great mound of female flesh -- monstrous in her almost immobile grossness . .
. a maze of dark tubes linked her body to giant metal containers.
Axlotl tank?
~HoD
Clever, clever, the Bene Tleilax. Far more clever than we suspected. And they have dirtied us with their axlotl tanks. The very word "tank" - another of their deceptions. We pictured containers of warmed amniotic fluid, each tank the focus of complex machinery to duplicate (in a subtle, discrete and controllable way) the workings of the womb. The tank is there all right! But look at what it contains.
The Tleilaxu solution was direct: Use the original. Nature already had worked it out over the eons. All the Bene Tleilax need do was add their own control system, their own way of replicating information stored in the cell.
I think this means Duncan, at least, emerged from the natural womb, not machinery controlled by female hormones/metabolism."That accumulation could be very valuable to us, Duncan. Do you also remember the axlotl tanks?"
Her question sent his thoughts into the misty probings that caused him to imagine strange things about the Tleilaxu - great mounds of human flesh softly visible to the imperfect newborn eyes, blurred and unfocused images, almost-memories of emerging from birth canals. How could that accord with tanks?
I don't quite remember the Irulan quote, but Hayt was definitely a repaired corpse not a clone (no time anyways, only around 15 years passes between his death and Dune Messiah, so that Duncan clone would have been a teen).muddism wrote:"Did you really see me go into the Tleilaxu tanks?" Hayt asked, fighting an odd reluctance to ask that question.
"Did I not say it?" Bijaz demanded. The dwarf bounced to his feet. "We had a terrific struggle with you. The flesh did not want to come back."
But earlier on the Princess Irulan, I think it was, makes a reference to her father's Sardaukar having wisdom enuf to grab a few of Duncan's cells so the Tleilaxu could regrow him.
Why would they regrow him, then reinsert him to repair him.
Am I mistaken or is this a small error?
You're welcome. Pdf's are quite handy for this.muddism wrote:Serkanner, thanks for posting those quotes...looks like I remembered it wrong.
D'uh. Ya think?muddism wrote:looks like I remembered it wrong.
"That accumulation could be very valuable to us, Duncan. Do you also rememberJodorowsky's Acolyte wrote:Awkward question but... Have there been any artistic recreations of what an Axolotl Tank looks like? I've gathered that they are biomechanically disfigured women, but exactly do their bodies look like?