From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Thu Jan 08 1998 - 19:37:06 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> The `Axolotl Tanks', as we learn in the final volume of the sequence
> (IIRC), were slave human women, or perhaps their remnants. Dirty Tleilaxu
> indeed! Cf. the `sexual stumps', if that's what they were called, in Frank
> Herbert's 1973 HELSTROM'S HIVE. Let's see now... `Each bench carried what
> appeared to be the stump of a human body from the waist to the knees. Some
> were grossly male and some female. Among the females were a few whose
> abdomens bulged as though they were pregnant. Beyond the waist and knees
> there was nothing that could be thought of as flesh - only that tubing with
> its pulsing colors' (pp. 280-1). Thanks, Frank.
>
So essentially, these 'stumps' are less than a clone, but more than just
a grown organ. Kind of a human worm, in that all it can do is eat,
excrete, and reproduce (how is that different from now???). Put a mouth
on top, strapped into a permanent outhouse, sterile but capable of
supporting a pregnancy. Also, engineer some sort of cloaca in the belly
for birthing the child without that passage through tight hips, or
engineer the hips to be much bigger.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:48:25 MST