On 15 Apr 2017, at 06:43, Chuck McKnight <xxxxxx@pheonic.com> wrote:
>
> Mentat
>
> Sent from my iPhone 8
>
>> On Apr 15, 2017, at 2:01 PM, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On 4/14/2017 9:50 PM, Alex Goodwin wrote:
>>> Mentor?
>>
>> That was the only one I could think of, myself.
<snip/>
I would opt for ‘mentor’, although I will admit that I got to it from ‘mentat’ as well.
However, on reflection I decided that ‘mentat’ was completely inappropriate.
The reason I was going that way was (of course) from the early parts of the original ‘Dune’ novel, where Paul is tols that Thufir Hawat has been training him as a mentat. But this was not so that Paul could be smeone else’s ‘mentor’ but a more powerful nobleman in the Empire’s hierarchy. From all the surrounding context, it appears that a mentat is to politics what a Guild Steersman is to Space Travel - he’s able to see the fluctuating paths of the future as people are influenced in one way or another.
In the context of ‘mentors’ though, a passage from (I think) ‘First Lensman’ came to mind. All the patrol officers who have been sent to Arisia come back with their lenses, and are discussing the different appearances of their contact ‘Mentor of Arisia’. One of them (don’t have the books to hand any more, so I can’t remember which it was…) recalls that, before he had gone to Arisia, he had had cause to look up the word ‘mentor’ - and all the others aid that they had also had such cause.
Regards, Andy

--
Andrew Long
Andrew dot Long at Mac dot com