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"I started writing in the 1930's when I was eighteen years old. And deep inside me I'm still eighteen and it's still 1938."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Face Dancer | ||
| Mimicry enhanced through genetic manipulation. |
| Scytale shrugged. He had chosen a bland, round-faced appearance for this meeting, jolly features and vapid full lips, the body of a bloated dumpling. It occurred to him now, as he studied his fellow conspirators, that he had made an ideal choice -- out of instinct perhaps. He alone in this group could manipulate fleshly appearance across a wide spectrum of bodily shapes and features. He was the human chameleon, a Face Dancer, and the shape he wore now invited others to judge him too lightly...
The Reverend Mother drew back, and Scytale saw her reassessing him. They were all products of profound prana-bindu training, capable of muscle and nerve control that few humans ever achieved. But Scytale, a Face Dancer, had muscles and nerve linkages the others didn't even possess plus a special quality of sympatico, a mimic's insight with which he could put on the psyche of another as well as the other's appearance. |
| Technovelgy from Dune Messiah,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1969 Additional resources -
|
Here's a description of what a Face Dancer does.
Scytale, observing her attention, exercised his Face-Dancer powers -- shape flowing into shape, flesh moving and readjusting. Presently, a slender man stood before her. The face remained somewhat round, but darker and with slightly flattened features. High cheekbones formed shelves for eyes with definite epicanthic folds. The hair was black and unruly.
"A ghola of this appearance," Edric said, pointing to Scytale.
Compare to the abilities of the TW-55 from Babel 17 by Samuel R. Delany.
"A Tleilaxu ghola," Irulan whispered, looking sideways at Scytale.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Dune Messiah
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Tech news articles related to Dune Messiah
Tech news articles related to works by Frank Herbert
Face Dancer-related
news articles:
- Face Dancer Puts Fizz In Your Phizz
| What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells? |
| Black Fungus Blocks Radiation |
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
| Let's Make Slaver Sunflowers! Engineering Plants To Reflect Light |
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
