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"As opposed to illiteracy, where you can't read, aliteracy means that you can but you just can't be bothered. They say aliteracy is on the rise these days."
- Peter Watts
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| Distrans | ||
| Device produces a temporary neural imprint on the nervous system of Chiroptera or birds. |
In Dune, a variety of animals from earth have been introduced. Bats are used as message carriers. But Frank Herbert has a great twist on the idea of tying a message to the leg of a pigeon.
This is such a striking idea; it meets the author's need to present a medieval society that nevertheless uses space travel. A bat is also an animal more in keeping with the dark tone of the novel
| "We will fight in the time of fighting," the man said. He reached beneath his robes, brought out a small cage, lifted a creature from it. Hawat recognized a tiny bat ... Saw its blue-within-blue eyes. The Fremen stroked the bat, soothing it, crooning to it. The man took a tiny tube, held it beside the bat's head and chattered into the tube; then, lifting the creature high, he threw it upward. The Fremen folded the cage, thrust it between his robe... |
| Technovelgy from Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
The creature's normal cry then carries the message imprint which can be pulled out of the normal cry (carrier wave) by a matching distrans unit carried by another person.
Compare to the Argento-Platinoid Dispatch Box from Schachner and Zagat's 1931 story Venus Mines, Incorporated, the personal capsule from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, the single sheet molecule from Dorsal! (1960) by Gordon R. Dickson, truffle skins from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) by Philip K. Dick and the message cylinder from Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert.
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'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'
