Gowachin
Encyclopedia
Gowachin are a fictional race of frog-like humanoids featured in the Frank Herbert
books Whipping Star
and The Dosadi Experiment
. Herbert developed the race from a brief mention by Jorj X. McKie in the short story The Tactful Saboteur
.
ed onto their eyelids; one of the rituals of meeting other sapient
s is a long blink that clearly exposes the Gowachin's phylum identification to the other. Criminals are exiled from their phylum by having their tattoos burned off; while the tattoos are still visible as scars, the scars themselves are a mark of tremendous shame.
Gowachin are born in a graluz, an indoor pool into which the tadpoles are born and live until their father tests them by swimming through the graz, eating those he can catch. This winnowing process is used to eliminate the slowest Gowachin who betray an insufficient desire for survival.
The Gowachin are generally a patriarchal oligarchy, where elder male Gowachin rule the phylums, and female Gowachin are sheltered and sequestered in the home. Status in Gowachin society comes from one's relative rank in the phylum and from the phylum's overall reputation.
).
Gowachin law is illustrative of a dominant theme in Herbert's books set in this universe: that governments, law, and bureaucracy (collectively, society's tools for regulating itself) are dangerous when allowed to escape human (sapient) control. In both novels, the Bureau of Sabotage
(BuSab) plays a major role. An official bureau, its mandate is to slow the workings of government(s) to ensure that the machinery of governance never overpowers those subject to its power. Historically, BuSab was created when government had become terrifyingly efficient, with laws conceived, mandated, and funded within hours, thus subjecting sapients to an overpowering bureaucratic juggernaut.
Gowachin legal practices are to law and the courts what BuSab is to government bureaucracy: a governor on an engine, preventing a static pronouncement on the state of things (real or intended) from ever over-ruling sentient judgement or discreation at the contingent moment. Inasmuch as only sapience or full consciousness is capable of dealing with a dynamic universe, no procedural set judicial algorithm can ever supersede or effectively protect sapience.
This aspect of the novels is echoed in Dune Messiah
, when the Emperor, Paul
, rejects a request from a subject world for a constitution. Ostensibly, the purpose is to provide basic guarantees for the people; in reality, it's an attempt to check the Emperor's power with legal limits. Paul justifies his decision by arguing, in his official pronouncement, that constitutions are dead things, limited and limiting to what can be currently conceived as a threat from which the people require protection, ultimately enfeebling them by depriving them of the essential human challenge to deal with an ever-changing universe.
Jorj X. McKie is the only living human in the Gowachin bar and one of only a few non-Gowachin who have ever been admitted as Legums. The only other non-Gowachin legum whose species has been confirmed is the female Wreave Ceylang. His first, widely admired, legal victory in a Gowachin trial came when he demonstrated to the court that "eternal sloppiness was the price of liberty". In his final victory, in the Dosadi experiment, McKie killed one of the three judges (Parando), who was legally capable of being slain because he was exposed as a legalist.
Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels...
books Whipping Star
Whipping Star
Whipping Star is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. It is the first full-length novel set in the ConSentiency universe established by Herbert in his novelette The Tactful Saboteur.- Plot summary :...
and The Dosadi Experiment
The Dosadi Experiment
The Dosadi Experiment is a science fiction novel written by Frank Herbert. It is the second full-length novel set in the ConSentiency universe established by Herbert in his novelette The Tactful Saboteur and continued in Whipping Star....
. Herbert developed the race from a brief mention by Jorj X. McKie in the short story The Tactful Saboteur
The Tactful Saboteur
"The Tactful Saboteur" is a novelette by the science fiction author Frank Herbert which first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in 1964...
.
Society
Gowachin are organized in phylums (several of which are the Running Phylum, the Dry Heads, Great Awakening, Assumptive and Deep Swimmers), or extended clans; their phylum identification is tattooTattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
ed onto their eyelids; one of the rituals of meeting other sapient
Sapient
Sapient may refer to:* Sapience, the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment* Sapient Corporation, a NASDAQ-traded company...
s is a long blink that clearly exposes the Gowachin's phylum identification to the other. Criminals are exiled from their phylum by having their tattoos burned off; while the tattoos are still visible as scars, the scars themselves are a mark of tremendous shame.
Gowachin are born in a graluz, an indoor pool into which the tadpoles are born and live until their father tests them by swimming through the graz, eating those he can catch. This winnowing process is used to eliminate the slowest Gowachin who betray an insufficient desire for survival.
The Gowachin are generally a patriarchal oligarchy, where elder male Gowachin rule the phylums, and female Gowachin are sheltered and sequestered in the home. Status in Gowachin society comes from one's relative rank in the phylum and from the phylum's overall reputation.
Legal customs
The Gowachin regard their legal practices as the strongest evidence that they are civilized. Gowachin law is based upon the notion of a healthy disrespect for all laws; the purpose of this notion is to avoid the stultifying accretion of a body of laws and precedents that bind Gowachin mechanically. In a Gowachin trial, everything is on trial: every participant, including the judges; every law; even the foundational precept of Gowachin law. Legal ideas from other systems are turned on their head: someone pronounced "innocent" (guilty in other terms) by the court is torn to pieces by angry spectators; judges may have bias ("if I can decide for my side, I will"), though not prejudice ("I will decide for my side, regardless"); defendant and plaintiff are chosen at trial by the side bringing the complaint choosing one role or the other; torture is permitted; and all procedural rules may be violated, but only by finding conflict within procedural rules (an example of NomicNomic
Nomic is a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber in which the rules of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting...
).
Gowachin law is illustrative of a dominant theme in Herbert's books set in this universe: that governments, law, and bureaucracy (collectively, society's tools for regulating itself) are dangerous when allowed to escape human (sapient) control. In both novels, the Bureau of Sabotage
Bureau of Sabotage
The Bureau of Sabotage is a fictional government entity set in two of Frank Herbert's science fiction novels, Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment, and first introduced in his 1964 short story "The Tactful Saboteur". It is colloquially known as BuSab. Jorj X...
(BuSab) plays a major role. An official bureau, its mandate is to slow the workings of government(s) to ensure that the machinery of governance never overpowers those subject to its power. Historically, BuSab was created when government had become terrifyingly efficient, with laws conceived, mandated, and funded within hours, thus subjecting sapients to an overpowering bureaucratic juggernaut.
Gowachin legal practices are to law and the courts what BuSab is to government bureaucracy: a governor on an engine, preventing a static pronouncement on the state of things (real or intended) from ever over-ruling sentient judgement or discreation at the contingent moment. Inasmuch as only sapience or full consciousness is capable of dealing with a dynamic universe, no procedural set judicial algorithm can ever supersede or effectively protect sapience.
This aspect of the novels is echoed in Dune Messiah
Dune Messiah
Dune Messiah is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, the second in a series of six novels. It was originally serialized in Galaxy magazine in 1969. The American and British editions have different prologues summarizing events in the previous novel...
, when the Emperor, Paul
Paul Atreides
Paul Atreides is a fictional character in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. Paul is a prominent character in the first two novels in the series, Dune and Dune Messiah , and returns in Children of Dune . The character is brought back as two different gholas in the Brian Herbert/Kevin J...
, rejects a request from a subject world for a constitution. Ostensibly, the purpose is to provide basic guarantees for the people; in reality, it's an attempt to check the Emperor's power with legal limits. Paul justifies his decision by arguing, in his official pronouncement, that constitutions are dead things, limited and limiting to what can be currently conceived as a threat from which the people require protection, ultimately enfeebling them by depriving them of the essential human challenge to deal with an ever-changing universe.
Jorj X. McKie is the only living human in the Gowachin bar and one of only a few non-Gowachin who have ever been admitted as Legums. The only other non-Gowachin legum whose species has been confirmed is the female Wreave Ceylang. His first, widely admired, legal victory in a Gowachin trial came when he demonstrated to the court that "eternal sloppiness was the price of liberty". In his final victory, in the Dosadi experiment, McKie killed one of the three judges (Parando), who was legally capable of being slain because he was exposed as a legalist.