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"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today -- but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Fencing Mirror | ||
| A dummy fighting instructor for the young Kwisatz Haderach-in-training. |
In the world of Dune, very advanced technology mingles oddly with very simple political forms like feudal monarchies. Gurney Halleck is a weapons master teaching the young Paul Atreides to fight.
| A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars. He gestured to the practice dummy. "Now, we'll work on your timing. Let me see you catch that thing sinister. I'll control it from over here where I can have a full view of the action. And I warn you I'll be trying new counters today." Paul stretched up on his toes to relieve his muscles. He crossed to the dummy, slapped the switch on its chest with his rapier tip and felt the defensive field forcing his blade away. "En garde!" Halleck called, and the dummy pressed the attack. |
| Technovelgy from Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
Although many powerful weapons were available, Paul followed the Bene Gesserit teaching that his mother gave him: "Use the instruments only when they are absolutely necessary to amplify the flesh." (From Heretics of Dune.)
Here is another, more descriptive quote from Dune Messiah:
Later, when Paul is alerted to Alia's reckless behavior, he observes:
As she moved into the training room, Alia caught her own reflection multiplied thousands of times in the crystal prisms of a fencing mirror swinging in the heart of a target dummy. She saw the long sword waiting on its brackets against the target, and she thought: Yes! I'll work myself to exhaustion -- drain the flesh and clear the mind.
The sword felt right in her hand. She slipped the crysknife from its sheath at her neck, held it sinister, tapped the activating stud with the sword tip. Resistance came alive as the aura of the target shield built up, pushing her weapon slowly and firmly away.
Prisms glittered. The target slipped to her left.
Alia followed with the tip of the long blade, thinking as she often did that the thing could almost be alive. But it was only servomotors and complex reflector circuits designed to lure the eyes away from danger, to confuse and teach. It was an instrument geared to react as she reacted, an anti-self which moved as she moved, balancing light on its prisms, shifting its target, offering its counter-blade.
Many blades appeared to lunge at her from the prisms, but only one was real. She countered the real one, slipped the sword past shield resistance to tap the target. A marker light came alive: red and glistening among the prisms . . . more distraction.
Again the thing attacked, moving at one-marker speed now, just a bit faster than it had at the beginning.
She parried and, against all caution, moved into the danger zone, scored with the crysknife.
Two lights glowed from the prisms.
Again, the thing increased speed, moving out on its rollers, drawn like a magnet to the motions of her body and the tip of her sword.
Attack -- parry -- counter.
Attack -- parry -- counter . . .
She had four lights alive in there now, and the thing was becoming more dangerous, moving faster with each light, offering more areas of confusion.
Five lights.
Sweat glistened on her naked skin. She existed now in a universe whose dimensions were outlined by the threatening blade, the target, bare feet against the practice floor, senses / nerves / muscles -- motion against motion.
Attack -- parry -- counter.
Six lights . . . seven . . .
Eight!
She had never before risked eight.
In a recess of her mind there grew a sense of urgency, a crying out against such wildness as this. The instrument of prisms and target could not think, feel caution or remorse. And it carried a real blade. To go against less defeated the purpose of such training. That attacking blade could maim and it could kill. But the finest swordsmen in the Imperium never went against more than seven lights...
And risking her life in that foolhardy way! Eleven lights in the fencing prisms! That brainless automaton loomed in his mind with all the aspects of an ancient horror creature. Its possession was the shibboleth of this age, but it carried also the taint of old immorality. Once they had been guided by an artificial intelligence, computer brains. The Butlerian Jihad had ended that, but it hadn’t ended the aura of aristocratic vice which enclosed such things.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Dune
More Ideas
and Technology by Frank Herbert
Tech news articles related to Dune
Tech news articles related to works by Frank Herbert
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- PR2 Fencing Robot Perfect For Kwisatz Haderach-in-training
| 'Warrior Suit' Combat Exoskeleton Project Still Alive |
| Sea Drones Attack Russian Fleet |
| Slaughterbot AI KIller Quadcopter Drones |
| Russia Working On Military Exoskeletons |
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'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
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'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
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