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"...the people dealing with these new technologies will still be derived from the human stock we're familiar with today."
- Charles Stross
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| Crysknife | ||
| A knife blade ground from the tooth of a giant sandworm of Dune. |
The crysknife is the preferred hand-to-hand fighting weapon of the Fremen, the native people of Arrakis (the planet Dune).
| Slowly, Mapes reached into the neck of her dress, brought out a dark sheath. A black handle with deep finger ridges protruded from it. She took sheath in one hand and handle in the other, withdrew a milk-white blade, held it up. The blade seemed to shine and glitter with a light of its own. It was double-edged like a kindjal and the blade was perhaps twenty centimeters long. "Do you know this, my Lady?" Mapes asked. It could only be one thing, Jessica knew, the fabled crysknife of Arrakis, the blade that had never been taken off the planet, and was known only by rumor and wild gossip. |
| From Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
It is manufactured in two forms from teeth taken from dead sandworms. The two forms are "fixed" and "unfixed." An unfixed knife requires proximity to a human body's electrical field to prevent disintegration. Fixed knives are chemically treated for storage. All are about 20 centimeters long.
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'They designed those controls after watching you...take her out!'
'... get out the solar power apparatus and send it down to us from the air-lock by the crane.'
'And science goes on, with scientifiction as its searchlight.'
'The dragon is a skin computer... People put it on their arms and exchange personal data.'
'George Walt's corporate existence proved the workability of wholly mechanical organs...'
'...coherent beams at precise wave-lengths passing through her flesh to zap foreign molecules within her body.'
