Tio Holtzman

Savant Tio Holtzman was an enigmatic genius before and during the Butlerian Jihad, best remembered as the inventor of the Holtzman Effect and its subsidiary technologies, including the Holtzman shield, which proved critical to numerous later developments. His celebrated reputation rested in large part on the unacknowledged genius of Norma Cenva, whose theories he claimed as his own.

Career on Poritrin#

Holtzman was born on Ix but resided for most of his life on Poritrin, a world where slavery was commonplace, working under the protection and patronage of the nobleman Lord Niko Bludd. He gained celebrity when his inventions became the major defense against the thinking machines, and was honored with the Poritrin Medal of Valor, the Medal of Glory, and the Service to Poritrin Award. His standing faltered when the weakness of his shields was exposed at the Battle of Zimia: cymeks, possessing human brains, could pass through the scrambler shields unharmed and prepare the ground for a machine attack.

With fewer brilliant inventions than before, Holtzman encountered the work of Norma Cenva, a small woman from Rossak, and, recognizing her genius, invited her to work with him on Poritrin. Cenva, more interested in improving defensive shields and developing foldspace travel than in recognition, helped humanity against the forces of Omnius, and her name was largely forgotten by history.

The lasgun-shield discovery#

Cenva saved Holtzman's life, and the lives of many citizens of Starda, when she prevented him from testing a personal force-shield against lasgun fire. Holtzman was reluctant to take her warnings seriously until she appealed directly to Lord Bludd. The test was finally carried out on an asteroid, and Cenva was proven right: the interaction of the two technologies produced sub-atomic fusion and a nuclear explosion. The oversight, born of his eagerness, was a serious blow to his morale.

After the nuking of Earth, Holtzman was among the cyber-experts who attempted to interrogate the captured Earth-Omnius gelglobe taken by Xavier Harkonnen. He gradually cut Cenva off from his dockside main-project workrooms in favor of other assistants and developed a fierce antagonism toward her. Persuaded by Aurelius Venport, he and Lord Bludd agreed that Cenva could leave her government contract to work for VenKee Enterprises in exchange for commercial rights and back profits from glowglobes. When Holtzman realized their new project was a revolutionary space-folding drive, he moved to interfere, persuading Bludd to close the project and expel Cenva and Tuk Keedair from the planet, raiding her laboratories under the pretext of state security and claiming she had undermined the security of Poritrin.

Character and death#

Despite his abilities as a savant and scholar, Holtzman cared most about his public image and the retention of his celebrity, and spent much of his time socializing at balls and noble gatherings. Having discovered that Norma Cenva was far more creative than he was and been twice upstaged by her genius, he came to despise her and took credit for her mathematical theories, which yielded many practical applications of the so-called Holtzman Effect, including the Holtzman Drive, Holtzman shields, suspensors, and glowglobes. He also endorsed the slave policy on Poritrin and was wholly indifferent to the welfare of the slaves, which Cenva strongly opposed.

During Aliid's slave rebellion, Holtzman realized that slave intruders had entered his mansion. Aliid, who had once worked there as a young solver, remembered its layout and sought personal revenge. Holtzman wore a personal force-shield for protection, but Aliid was armed with a lasgun. Ignorant of the effect, Aliid fired, and the resulting explosion destroyed them both along with most of Starda.