Full context of chairdogs:
Ten thousand years before Dune takes place, when humans still live on earth, there’s an AI uprising and the human race is enslaved by robots. Eventually, the humans overthrow the robots and make a law against any and all computers. They also add a rule against computers to the Bible. “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” The problem is, computers are important. So they have to come up with new solutions for problems that require computers. For example, space travel requires computers so that when they’re traveling really fast they don’t crash into a star; so they use a drug called Melange or “spice” to make people called Guild Navigators really good at math. Or, without computers wealthy people can’t do math really fast; so they use a drug called Melange or “spice” to make people called Mentats really good at math.
But in the fifth book Heretics of Dune, they have a new problem even more complicated than rocket science or calculus: how do you make a massage chair that can predict what you need to be most comfortable if computers are against the Ten Commandments? So, the secret society of cloners called the Bene Tleilax have a solution. What if you used genetic modification to make an animal that’s also a massage chair?
Enter the chairdog: it’s a dog. Shaped like a chair. So it can think, and thus automatically submit to your needs; but it’s a living thing and therefore doesn’t count as an illegal computer.
Do they eat? I’m on page 398 but Frank Herbert has yet to reveal that information. Do they shit? Same answer but I hope not. Do they fuck? I don’t even want to know if I’m being honest.
They can be blue, but blue chairdogs are canonically rare. I don’t know what other colors they come in though. They conform automatically to the contours of your body. Some people consider them to be immoral and see them as animals, but most people think of them as furniture.
The weirdest thing is, they don’t show up until book five. In Dune, Paul Atreides and his allies sit their asses on regular chairs. In Dune Messiah, chairs are inanimate objects. In Children of Dune, the eponymous children sit on chairs made of wood and stone and plastic and metal. In God Emperor of Dune, the characters sit in fucking chairs (not to be confused with fucking chairs, which chairdogs may or may not be depending on how they reproduce) that stand around on legs that remain still on the ground. But in Heretics of Dune, Frank Herbert unveils his latest brilliant idea to add to the Dune Saga: chairs. That are alive.
