Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?


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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by Omphalos »

Geez. Hasn't DHL's technology changed over the course of the six books too?
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by SandRider »

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.
I'll buy that for a dollar ....

and Hayt & the Poison Dwarf came from the same tank ... they were brothers, of a sort ...
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by MrFlibble »

Freakzilla wrote:
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 :roll:
These were no ordinary fat chicks...

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
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".

Besides, the female "tanks" were used to grow ghola babies, and it is explained that the Tleilaxu did not try to replicate the womb artificially, but rather adapted natural wombs for controlled growth. None of this is relevant if we're talking about gholas in the sense this term is used in Messiah. Revival is not exactly the same thing as fetus growth and development.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by trang »

It was a surprise the first time thru, and some folks I know who dont really care for the latter books, use this as a reason. I wasnt shocked or anything, we today, mess with "living" axlotl tanks, with artificial birth methods (test tube babies, Insemmination, Gender choice, trait picking, gene manipulation, cloning, fertility drugs, etc). Yes its a far cry from ghola's but related I think.

It seems it was a developed or flushed out idea as the books progressed, 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.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by MrFlibble »

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.
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.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

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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 ?
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.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

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Who knows what's in Fullerton? One of these days I'm just going to quit my job to work on archiving that library's contents and filling up a Dune Wiki.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

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Who knows what's in Fullerton?
I guess the obvious answer should be Brian Herbert, the Son ... but I'd bet a Confederate Dollar Bill
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 ....
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

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SandRider wrote:
Who knows what's in Fullerton?
I guess the obvious answer should be Brian Herbert, the Son ... but I'd bet a Confederate Dollar Bill
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 ....
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.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by SandChigger »

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?
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by Omphalos »

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 probably what I'm thinking of.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by TheDukester »

SandChigger wrote:... (And Kevin didn't look too pleased.) ...
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.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by inhuien »

Freakzilla wrote:
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 :roll:
These were no ordinary fat chicks...

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
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.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by MrFlibble »

I can't be sure, but these passages seem to suggest that the natural womb was used, after all.
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.
"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 think this means Duncan, at least, emerged from the natural womb, not machinery controlled by female hormones/metabolism.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by SandRider »

I am sure ... Frank meant that the axolotl tanks were (modified) human females ... at least by Heretics & Chapterhouse ...

what he thought they were during Messiah is more debatable and, again, without his (real) notes from the period,
we can only specualte ..
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by muddism »

"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?
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

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?
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).
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by Serkanner »

This must be the qoute:

"The Atreides will defeat himself!" Edric crowed.
"Stop talking riddles!" Irulan snapped. "What is this ghost?"
"A very unusual ghost," Edric said. "It has a body and a name. The body --
that's the flesh of a renowned swordmaster known as Duncan Idaho. The name . .
."
"Idaho's dead," Irulan said. "Paul has mourned the loss often in my
presence. He saw Idaho killed by my father's Sardaukar."

"Even in defeat," Edric said, "your father's Sardaukar did not abandon
wisdom. Let us suppose a wise Sardaukar commander recognized the swordmaster in
a corpse his men had slain. What then? There exist uses for such flesh and
training . . . if one acts swiftly."
"A Tleilaxu ghola," Irulan whispered, looking sideways at Scytale.

and some more:

"No Face Dancer," Edric said. "A Face Dancer risks exposure under prolonged
surveillance. No; let us assume that our wise Sardaukar commander had Idaho's
corpse preserved for the axolotl tanks. Why not? This corpse held the flesh and
nerves of one of the finest swordsmen in history, an adviser to the Atreides, a
military genius. What a waste to lose all that training and ability when it
might be revived as an instructor for the Sardaukar."
"I heard not a whisper of this and I was one of my father's confidantes,"
Irulan said.
"Ahh, but your father was a defeated man and within a few hours you had been
sold to the new Emperor," Edric said.
"Was it done?" she demanded.
With a maddening air of complacency, Edric said: "Let us presume that our
wise Sardaukar commander, knowing the need for speed, immediately sent the
preserved flesh of Idaho to the Bene Tleilaxu. Let us suppose further that the
commander and his men died before conveying this information to your father --
who couldn't have made much use of it anyway. There would remain then a physical
fact, a bit of flesh which had been sent off to the Tleilaxu. There was only one
way for it to be sent, of course, on a heighliner. We of the Guild naturally
know every cargo we transport. Learning of this one, would we not think it
additional wisdom to purchase the ghola as a gift befitting an Emperor?"

The body of Idaho was saved. hayt was a "reborn" corpse.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by muddism »

Serkanner, thanks for posting those quotes...looks like I remembered it wrong.
Religion (emulation of adults by children) encysts past mythologies: guesses, hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, pronouncements made in search of personal power, all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always an unspoken commandment: Thou shall not question! We break that commandment daily in the harnessing of human imagination to our deepest creativity.

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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by Serkanner »

muddism wrote:Serkanner, thanks for posting those quotes...looks like I remembered it wrong.
You're welcome. Pdf's are quite handy for this. :D
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,
and wrote a Dune Novel."
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by SandChigger »

muddism wrote:looks like I remembered it wrong.
D'uh. Ya think? :roll:
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by Jodorowsky's Acolyte »

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?
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by Freakzilla »

Jodorowsky'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?
"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?

~CH:D

That's about all the description we get.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by Nekhrun »

Probably looks like a comatose version of the Slurm Queen.
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Re: Axolotl Tanks.....what do you think?

Post by lotek »

I forgot about her ! I thought you were about either Hypathia, which I know only by reputation, or of course the J word
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