Talk:Azi (clone)

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[edit] Questions on azi

Just curious about a couple details & unanswered questions I'd hoped to find in this stub, ranked in order of importance:

(1) How the heck is "azi" pronounced?

Since the main C.J. Cherryh bio article specifies the pronunciation of both her middle and last names, perhaps someone who knows--or has heard Ms. Cherryh herself speaking of her clone creations--could clear this up. Is it EH-zee as in "daisy", EAH-zee as in "yeah, see", or Latin-short-a AH-zee? Is the last syllable a hard "tz", as in "Nazi" and "pizza"? Also the second syllable could be accented, uh-ZEE.

I've always said Ah-ZAI. Bo-Lingua

(2) Is there an origin/explanation of the term--foreign language, abbreviation, acronym, or just made up?

Somehow I'm of the impression that "azi" is shorthand to refer to the entire spectrum of clone classes in Brave New World, which ran through the alphabet (English or Greek?) from brilliant Alphas down to useful-idiot Zetas; hence "A-Z" might be pronounced "EH-zee". I'm not sure whether this connection was explicit in Huxley or if some work of Cherryh's alludes to his portrayal of clones in some way. Probably Cyteen, or maybe an early book (Serpent's Reach? Hunter of Worlds?) which first introduces her conception of azi as more than just clones.

I've never run across a specific reference. Bo-Lingua

(3) Come to think of it, what's the difference between azi and clone--in other words, why invoke a new word when there's already a perfectly good one (which everybody knows how to pronounce)? In Cyteen, Cherryh doesn't haphazardly interchange the terms; PRs (Personal Replicates) such as Justin Warrick and Ari II are clones, but not azi. While any organism can be mass-produced in artificial womb-tanks or implanted into appropriate surrogates, certain aspects of azi set them apart from the typical run-of-the-mill SF-trope clones.

Cloning is customarily defined as using the complete geneset of a particular person to make genetic copies...no more and no less. What Reseune does in Cyteen seems to me more along the line of building, tweaking and tailoring as much of the human genome as necessary to produce people with specific traits--perhaps even from scratch, more or less synthesizing and sequencing out every bit of DNA onto 46 "artificial" chromosomes like the ticker-tape output of early computers. I imagine such genetic modifications as radiation-resistance, toleration of prolonged microgravity, immune systems pre-fortified against xenobiota, etc. would prove useful azi types. Azi genesets are designed first--custom-engineered for a particular job, social role and/or environment--then mass-produced; there is no specific progenitor or "original" genotype from which DNA copies are Xeroxed, which distinguishes azi as a subset (if not a disjunct) of clones.

Furthermore, cloning doesn't specify any method of upbringing or education: A copy of a regular "born-man" could be brought up any which way. Azi, however, are typically raised in a communal, tightly-structured, authoritarian environment, and get a leg up on their education, training and personality development thanks to Huxleyan hypnopaedia--regular supplements of which are required to maintain emotional stability.

Thus, most azi are long-term indentured servants, having been manufactured for a purpose and expected to pay for themselves to whomever they literally owe their birth & subsequent life. However, they can go on to earn their way into citizenship: They work off their Contract to the Supervisor, earn their CIT papers, and take the final deep-psychset hypnopaedic tape that enables them to function and be treated as independent, autonomous, private citizen. Hobbling/delaying their self-actualization in this manner offsets the azi's innate advantages for a more-level-playing-field society.

Cyteen also goes into deep detail of how the mental structures are different, comparing a "born-man" mind (as ours) to a vast collection of erlenmeyer flasks, whereas the azi mind is highly structured, logic as the substrate, and emotion the superstrate, in opposition to the born-man mind of logic over emotion. Bo-Lingua

(4) A derogatory term for azi is "annie", as in "Orwell-A1984 went dumb-annie on me again; guess he needs another tape." I think this derives from a contraction for "anybody", since "if there's a job for one of these dozen Huxley-Gammas, just pick one, any body will do... Eenie-menie-miney-moe, how about...you, Huxley-G5541." Of course, azi amongst themselves refer to unadulterated CIT genomes as "born-men", and sometimes without envy: "Super's gone crazy after trying to fix that pipe and bashing his knuckles, but what can you expect from uppity born-men?"

(5) Are azi truly a separate new "race"? Good question! Cherryh's fairly non-racist with most characterizations; figure the eclectic mix and smallish population of colonists would make most Beyonder born-men mutts after a few generations anyways. While azi tend to be described as flawless, fit and beautiful, that's up to the eye of the beholding character, not to mention the mind's eye of the reader. A few extremely modified azi types might indeed share less genetic material in common with humans than with chimpanzees (maybe even rhesus monkeys or gorillas, provided they're not already extinct). But I got the impression that born-men and azi interbreed freely, and that nearly all azi are fertile, and that this is deliberate.

Cyteen speaks to this, as Ariane Emory (spoiler) has been engineering society, and giving specific ethics and morality to the Azi; they are meant to be a basis for population, but not to be permanent slaves (as they become). They are meant to eventually integrate with the population, passing on the engineered mindsets to their progeny. (40k in Gehenna). Bo-Lingua

(6) So do you suppose Reseune will ever get around to making azi resistant to the organic carcinogens intrinsic to Cyteen's native flora, so that they can finally live in the woolwood and work out in the open without precipitator perimeters, respirators and decontamination suits?

I say no. The goal is not to modify humans, but to increase human genetic representation. Because the original colonists (per Cyteen) were such a limited genotype, there was high risk for genetic drift, and Reseunes goal with the Azi was to dramatically increase the representation of the genome, avoiding the founder effect, and ensuring the lack of diseases like Tay-Sachs disease. Bo-Lingua 01:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I wrote too much... "More than you ever wanted to know" ought to be Wikipedia's tagline.

67.163.0.29 23:30, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

• I've always said "AH-zee", but I don't know that I've ever seen an official pronunciation for the word. For the best understanding of the psychology of Azi and Emory / Resune's intent for them, I'd recommend re-reading Cyteen. Secondary sources would be 40K in Gehenna and Serpent's Reach. But Cyteen is definitely the best source to answer your questions. Enjoy! Fairsing 16:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)