In a message dated 97-06-22 17:48:35 EDT, Redneck wrote:

Asking questions like, for instance, "What if this
android, which we know works, didn't really work?" spoils the story for me
before it begins. 

I was going to stay out of this whole discussion... but I can keep quiet no
longer.  Redneck, I'm not going to try to change your mind about lawson's
fics.  In fact you have every right to dislike them or avoid reading them.
 That's your choice. What I am getting tired of is your assertation that
Lawson's premise completely invalidates the entirety of the Nuku-Nuku
storyline.. 

The HNK unit was a prototype, and the operation to transfer the cat's brain
to the body was experimental, and made under less than ideal conditions.
 Either of these alone would be enough in my mind to allow for a "successful"
android to be made that would later deteriorate.  Look at the Jarvik 7
mechanical heart.  that was a prototype, a late model prototype that had gone
through several levels of testing on lower primates.  The operation was a
success.  And the patient died about three months later.  In part from
complications associated with the heart itself.  

So I think it would have been quite reasonable for Lawson to choose a
relatively easy way for Atsuko to be re-introduced to mortality, by simply
having tissue rejection or some similar process leading to an eventual
breakdown.  

Instead he took two trends that are just as valid from any rational point of
view:  That messing with a complex system will ALWAYS have unexpected
consequences; and that biological systems degrade with age and activity.  He
took these two together, and reminded us of Atsuko's origins, as both a cat
and as an experimental animal.  

And to my mind he did so by adding realism to the original idea.  Not
removing it.  I think you do both him and yourself a disservice by insisting
that he has violated something from the original story.  


  Just my two cents...


                         -Mike (the OtakuLoki)