In "Freehold" by Poul Anderson, Evagail exercises her Mistress of War Skill. After rhythmically contracting muscles and releasing adrenalin, she runs in a blur, picks up a strong man by his wrists and ankles and carries him like a doll. Consciously mobilizing and controlling her body's ultimate resources, she is voluntarily amok, berserk, hysterical, able to crush the man's skull with her hands if provoked. Her Skill also heightens her perception and data storage capacities. Aphrodites have another Skill...
In "The Sensitive Man," Simon Dalgetty, trained with physical exercises, mental practice, hypnotism, diet etc, consciously controls bodily functions, temporarily enhancing his perception, strength and speed, enabling him to go into a coma, as if he were psychotic or hysterical.
Thus, these psychophysical skills are developed but are put to limited use in both the Psychotechnic and the Technic Histories.
6 comments:
There's a reason people usually don't function at 100% except in emergencies. I've done it, and the result is physical and emotional/psychological exhaustion. If you do it too often, it can become addictive and debilitating.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Which makes me think people with such Skills are always going to be few. Because most of us simply don't need them!
Aside from emergencies, of course.
Ad astra! Sean
My understanding is that humans *can* briefly contract most of the fibers in a muscle, but this comes with two problems.
It takes a while to replenish the energy stores, so you can't do much for a while after.
It risks tearing ligaments or breaking bones.
This suggests to me two things one might do in hard SF to create a super-athlete who looks superficially normal.
Carbon fiber reinforcement in ligaments & bones so they are both stronger & lighter. This allows for higher bursts of activity.
Rearrange the lung system to be more like the bird system where the air passes one way through thin passages in the lung & the blood passes the opposite way. A counter-current O2 CO2 exchanger to allow faster intake of O2 & expulsion of CO2, so the energy replenishment can be faster. This allows for higher sustained activity.
Not things that will be done soon in real life, but are there any inherent show stoppers?
Kaor, Jim!
Muscular weakness? I've found out too well what that can be like when cervical myelopathy surgery this past July to correct pressure on the spine in my neck left me seriously deconditioned. I'm much better but I still have a ways to go.
I think Stirling had his abominable New Race Draka, Homo drakensis genetically engineered to have changes analogous to what you suggested.
Ad astra! Sean
Irony: chimps don't need to exercise much to maintain a high mass of muscle.
Human beings do. It's probably the result of genetic drift in small founding populations.
A mutation like that wouldn't be very unfavorable in the environment we evolved in, because you -had- to exercise a lot just to stay alive.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I need to do a set minimum of therapeutic exercises every day (plus others I do voluntarily) to slowly regain strength. It can be so tempting to slack off--even tho that would mean being feeble.
Ad astra! Sean
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