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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear
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| Syrup Sac | ||
| A device used to provide an efficient source of nutrition to Meks, servants of the aristocrats of Earth. |
In this marvelous novel by Jack Vance, the Meks are brought to Earth to serve the needs of the last aristocrats - expatriots who had returned to the deserted Earth in the far future.
| The Mek, standing as if a specimen in a museum case, was a manlike creature, native, in his original version, to a planet of Etamin. His tough rusty-bronze hide glistened metallically as if oiled or waxed; the spines thrusting back from scalp and neck shone like gold, and indeed were coated with a conductive copper-chrome film. His sense organs were gathered in clusters at the site of a man's ears; his visage ... was corrugated muscle, not dissimilar to the look of an uncovered human brain.
 (The Mek from 'The Last Castle' by Jack Vance) His maw, a vertical irregular cleft at the base of this "face" was an obsolete organ by inclusion of the syrup sac which had been introduced under the skin of the shoulders; the digestive organs, originally used to extract nurition from decayed swamp vegetation and coelenterates, had atrophied... his superb brain also functioned as a radio tranceiver. |
| Technovelgy from The Last Castle,
by Jack Vance. Published by Del Rey in 1967 Additional resources -
|
The syrup sac is an ingenious device, which supplied all of the nutritional needs of the Meks without the need to grow crops, catch food, and spend time eating. Despite these advantages, the gentlefolk of the last castle on Earth did not see fit to make use of syrup sacs themselves.
This illustration of a solitary Mek is from the original publication of the novel in Galaxy:
(Mek from 'The Last Castle' by Jack Vance)
The name of these creatures is a play on the word mech, a simple robot, from Helen O'Loy (1938) by Lester del Rey.
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'...small electric motors at the principal joints worked the prosthetic framework by means of steel cables...'
'Living protoplasm incorporated into the Ampek F-a2 recording system...'
'Twoflower's Luggage, which was currently ambling along on its little legs...'
'He came to as the ship went into free flight, arching in a high parabola over the plains...'
'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'
‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
