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"We were essentially being shell-shocked by rapid change. That was one of the things you needed science-fiction writers for back in the Sixties, because we could cope with the future."
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In Dune, the Bene Gesserit tested ordinary people to find the humans, the ones with sufficient emotional intelligence to rise above a merely animal existence. One test was by pain and observation.
The box slowly induced the feelings equivalent to heat sufficient to burn his hand to ash. Pain was the axis of the test; the Bene Gesserit wanted to see which way he turned.
(Pain box from Denis Villeneuve's 2020 film Dune) In Heretics of Dune, also by Frank Herbert, this item is called an agony box. For an earlier use of the same idea, see the pain-producer from Edmund Hamilton's 1928 novel Crashing Suns, as well as the pain canopy from Fritz Lieber's 1943 novel Gather Darkness. Comment/Join this discussion ( 5 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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