Rambles in the Brambles

Edited by Brantley from a thread at Superwomenmania.com

You might have thought you knew everything there was to know about the mythology of gold and Velorians. But when I posted an item at SWM about a feminist who had gone on the warpath against other feminists who thought Wonder Woman should have body hair and even armpit hair, it set off a lively discussion about Velorian hair – with Shadar taking the lead. 

It’s a hairy issue for sure! But it turns out there’s a similar rationalization for a similarly implausible idea in science fiction, best known from Frank Herbert’s Dune (1966), although it didn’t originate there.

--Brantley Thompson Elkins

Shadar: Gold doesn't work on Homo Sapiens Supremis (Arions and Velorians) like Kryptonite. Its only value is to suppress the function of the thyroid gland which in turn stops Orgone metabolism in their body. Within seconds, the level of Orgone in their bloodstream falls and their powers sink back closer to human. Their invulnerability, however, is only slightly reduced.

The only way to suppress the thyroid is to put a heavy, continuous band around their neck (just below the Adams apple and over the thyroid). Or alternatively, to be very close to a planetary-sized chunk of gold, which is the case at the core of the planets Aria and Velor.

Gold bullets or whatever else don't work, although coating their bodies in gold powder mixed with a quick setting adhesive to hold it in place (from an exploding grenade or whatever) is marginally useful. But that's not enough to stop them, but it makes them dizzy and briefly weaker. Which is why they are very hard to kill. Even if you manage to capture them and place a gold choker on them and lock them into a massive cell, you can't injure them with any weapon made my man. But... dumping them into a cylinder of liquid helium will cool them enough to make them dormant for long term storage.

But even then, if someone were to pull a single long and very fine hair from their heads, and wrap it around diamond-coated mandrels to stretch it tight, it could cut almost anything (except another Supremis). A single strand wound around the fingers of a Supremis to form a garot can remove someone's head with such speed and precision that the victim could watch their head falling and bouncing on the ground.

Unfortunately, it would cut human fingers off even easier. It would take some pretty special gloves for a human to handle it, but in the right hands, it would be a fearsome and silent weapon.

Good thing Supremis hair feels silky when not stretched and doesn't tangle, otherwise it could be dangerous, especially given it is invariably long (since it can't be cut). Normally a human could run their hands through a Velorian's hair safely. Something both parties find to be sensual.

Or so the lore goes...

Engineered-Society: Well, I'm not familiar with the Arion/Velorian universe (I really should read more of those stories), but given that their biology is weakened by gold, presumably gold material could cut their hair. Gold will hold an edge with proper sharpening, so a pure gold pair of scissors may be an effective (if expensive) method of hair control. Gold bullets are, again, expensive but effective assuming that it's the presence of gold and not contact with it that weakens them, though I presume anyone worthy of the appelation 'super' would be able to avoid something going only two or three times the speed of sound. I like the idea of tourists receiving samples though, or it becoming an export of ultralight-ultrastrong cable.

Shadar: But even then, if someone were to pull a single long and very fine hair from their heads, and wrap it around diamond-coated mandrels to stretch it tight, it could cut almost anything (except another Supremis). A single strand wound around the fingers of a Supremis to form a garot can remove someone's head with such speed and precision that the victim could watch their head falling and bouncing on the ground.

Unfortunately, it would cut human fingers off even easier. It would take some pretty special gloves for a human to handle it, but in the right hands, it would be a fearsome and silent weapon.

Good thing Supremis hair feels silky when not stretched and doesn't tangle, otherwise it could be dangerous, especially given it is invariably long (since it can't be cut). Normally a human could run their hands through a Velorian's hair safely. Something both parties find to be sensual.

Or so the lore goes...
(quote snipped slightly for brevity)

Engineered Society: Thanks for the info on Velorian physiology Shadar, as i said I'm not exactly experienced with the source material so that information is really interesting. Now I'm on a bit of a curiosity binge, so if you don't mind some additional questions, what makes Supremis hair as durable as it is? Despite its incredible durability, I presume it remains relatively ductile so as to function as hair rather than some sort of organic helmet? Based on the fact that you mentioned stretching, is its thinness based somehow on elasticity, giving it a variable 'sharpness' as it were?

Given that, I think the most interesting application would be heavy industrial tools. If you were to, say, load a bandsaw with a stretched lock of super-hair, it would likely never wear out, and between its cycle-speed and inherent sharpness would likely be able to cut most materials without the heating you have to deal with when using a traditional blade. Similarly, while safety precautions would have to be used, braiding longer hair into a rope would shift lifting capacity load limits to the pullies and machinery involved, rather than the rope used for it.

Shadar: The pseudo-science is that the cells of their body have membranes that exhibit 5th order non-linear binding. Or put more understandably, they respond like ordinary cells under low levels of stress, but their resistance to being disturbed/broken/penetrated/burned/whatever increases extremely rapidly (5th order geometric) to higher forces.

What that means that Velorian tissues (including dead tissue like hair) feel very soft if pushed or pulled with low force, but that skin or hair can be harder than anything when hit with enough force. A light punch in the arm would feel very human, but if you threw a Mohammed Ali grade punch with your bare hand, it would hurt.

Further up the scale (much further), a depleted uranium sabot round from an M1A1 Abrams barrel would splatter, although not before dimpling deeply as it transferred a great deal of force. Our unlucky target might be tossed a quarter mile backward, and shook up and possibly concussed if shot in the head, but she wouldn't have any bruises (no broken blood vessels). Very hard to kill, even with nukes.

Which is why the Supremis have developed some odd ways to fight that involve energy transfers.

To your point, rigging a single extremely fine strand of Velorian hair to a bandsaw (or whatever) would make it an incredible cutting tool. Able to go through anything -- including the mandrels or whatever that the ends were wound on to hold it in place. Very difficult to secure. But... you could touch the "blade" gently and not be cut.There's a little give and stretch. But not much before that 5th order rate of increase in stiffness makes it unimaginably dangerous. And, the cool part, the more stress it's under, the stronger it gets.

Of course, getting a strand of Velorian hair is like Gimli securing a lock of Galadrial's blonde hair, if you're a Tolkien nut like me. It could be bestowed on a heroic admirer, but it would be a very bold request.

I have a related concept for why they are strong or have laser eyes (ring lasers in the circle of the iris).

Anyway, this is all my fancy way to explain how they could feel completely human, even in very "up close" situations, (albeit with better muscle tone), but also bounce that anti-tank round off their chest or survive being in the fireball of a nuke (not comfortably, but thankfully blown far away very fast).

Unlike the usual comic book where things "just are", or are vaguely attributed to illogical things given their powers (Kryptonians are strong because they lived on a high-gravity world), I wanted to have something calculable, even if it was more comic book science than SF.

Woodclaw: That explanation about Supremis skin reminds me a lot of how the personal force fields from Dune works.

Brantley: Woodclaw's citation of those personal force fields in Dune brings up the issue of how and why rationalizations like that get into science fiction:

<<But even the most playful sf ideas can serve the evolution of storytelling in the genre. Thomas J. Roberts, in An Aesthetics of Junk Fiction (1990), cites the body shield, a device used to rationalize sword fights in high-tech worlds. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoomians fight with swords and spears in A Princess of Mars (1912), although they have radium rifles with a range of 200 miles. Burroughs meant readers to believe that his Barsoom is “caught up in a culture of heroism and that its warriors actually preferred to fight with primitive weapons at close range,” Roberts notes.
They recognized the implausibility of those sword fights, even while they wanted them for their romantic appeal. And then came the body shield. Roberts couldn’t pin down a source, but he was probably thinking of Charles L. Harness’ The Paradox Men (1953), in which the Society of Thieves in a romantic future uses force shields that “spread the bullet impact over a wide area,” so that being shot with a gun feels like being hit with a pillow. Only, those shields are not actually invulnerable, as the Chancellor of America Imperial explains:
"Since the screen resistance is proportional to the velocity of the missile it offers no protection against the comparatively slow-moving things, such as the rapier, the hurled knife or even a club."
Voilà! Frank Herbert embraced the same rationale in Dune 13 years later.>>