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Ghola
A living, functioning person who is regrown or recreated from the tissues of a dead person. (Read the full article)
| "When I first came across the term Ghola in the Dune books I immediately thought of the Seljuk Turkish term Ghulam. A ghulam was a slave (by definition, a non-Muslim) educated and trained for state service. " (David 5/4/2004 4:45:27 PM ) |
| "David - Thanks for letting me know! Good find. Herbert was certainly well-versed in the history and terminology of that era of middle eastern history. I also found this tidbit - "Ghulam" refers to Turkish troops who were recruited to serve in Arab armies." (Bill Christensen 5/4/2004 5:49:11 PM ) |
| "I think it may also come from "ghoul," which is a sort of borrowing from Arabic itself. Possibly the original root was closer to Ghola." (Taeyoung 12/3/2004 2:09:12 PM ) |
| "'ghola' may have also come from the Hebrew term 'golem', which means 'artificial human'." (St. Simon 1/22/2005 6:53:35 PM ) |
| "We are now seeing the same distrust of doctors involved in cloning experiments. Perhaps, despite the name, this is what Frank Herbert meant - I certainly think of the ghola Duncan as a clone of the original. It also allows for the further growth of the character in later books in the series/" (Stu Lloyd 3/2/2005 12:00:05 PM ) |
| "In Dune: House Harkonnen, the Tleilaxu are described as extremely ugly, and C'tair wonders if they have women of their own or hoe they reproduce themselves. Supposedly, the Tleilaxu themselves are Gholas, or at least barely human." (any user 1/1/2006 11:47:56 AM ) |
| "It also says in hte books that when Ser Waff came back that his duty was to spread his seed among the women. As we know from the books, all women in that society are turned into axlotyl tanks. The only idea that comes to mind in that is the new Battlstar: Galactic on Kobol when they are trying to breed the new cylons" ( 5/3/2006 6:56:55 PM ) |
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