Joy in Repetition
Jan. 28th, 2010 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dsrtao(The title is a funk track by Prince that I have only recently heard.)
Neal Asher's Spatterjay vs Frank Herbert's Dune.
Dune is a vast desert world with a few habitable spots near the poles.
Spatterjay is a vast ocean world with one major inhabited island and a few scattered about.
Dune has giant sandworms that will eat you if you aren't careful.
On Spatterjay, basically everything will eat you if you aren't careful, and maybe even if you are.
The giant worm is worshipped as a god.
The giant leech of Spatterjay is an apex predator, and pretty disgusting.
Dune has the Spice, which can give you immortality. If you don't get enough after being addicted, you will die. Your eyes turn blue. If you take an awful lot, you can metamorphose into a worm.
On Spatterjay, everything is infected with a virus which will make you immortal and super-strong and super-tough. If you don't get enough uninfected food, your skin turns blue. Continual exposure, and you'll turn into a leech.
It turns out that the giant worms make the Spice.
It turns out that the giant leeches make Sprine, the only poison that will kill you after infection.
Neal Asher's Spatterjay vs Frank Herbert's Dune.
Dune is a vast desert world with a few habitable spots near the poles.
Spatterjay is a vast ocean world with one major inhabited island and a few scattered about.
Dune has giant sandworms that will eat you if you aren't careful.
On Spatterjay, basically everything will eat you if you aren't careful, and maybe even if you are.
The giant worm is worshipped as a god.
The giant leech of Spatterjay is an apex predator, and pretty disgusting.
Dune has the Spice, which can give you immortality. If you don't get enough after being addicted, you will die. Your eyes turn blue. If you take an awful lot, you can metamorphose into a worm.
On Spatterjay, everything is infected with a virus which will make you immortal and super-strong and super-tough. If you don't get enough uninfected food, your skin turns blue. Continual exposure, and you'll turn into a leech.
It turns out that the giant worms make the Spice.
It turns out that the giant leeches make Sprine, the only poison that will kill you after infection.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-28 09:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-29 01:01 am (UTC)fills the wounded space with more fibers. When a limb is amputated, the virus doesn't necessarily regrow it with something shaped like the original, but may pull from the leech genome stored inside to grow a leech-like part. It's not really a leech, because the leeches themselves are now mostly immune to the virus because they make Sprine in their bile ducts. The leeches happily eat virus-flesh or anything else.
An infected animal that doesn't die from severe wounds may eventually turn into a sterile leech-like thing. Before that, the unwounded critters can breed normally.