From: ted@loft.tnolan.com
In article <10easo1$ht2$1@usenet.csail.mit.edu>,
Garrett Wollman wrote:
>In article <10eaq8r$dh7$1@reader2.panix.com>,
>James Nicoll wrote:
>>Five Ways Science Fiction Can Expand Beyond Homo sapiens
>>
>>Modern humans are fine, but what if we had a bit more variety in
>>our stories?
>>
>>https://reactormag.com/five-ways-science-fiction-can-expand-be
ond-homo-sapiens/
>
>The newsgroup has been way too quiet lately! Let's have some
>discussion.
>
>1) In Julian May's "Saga of Pliocene Exile", a population of exiles
>from a far-away galaxy shows up on Pliocene earth in the proto-Rhone
>Valley. Having similar reproductive biology to the extant hominins,
>and not being as successful at carrying their own babies to term, they
>experiment with using the local Ramapithecus (a now-obsolete taxon) as
>surrogate mothers. Much to their surprise and joy, modern-human time
>travelers start passing through a one-way time-gate into their
>territory and they are somehow genetically compatible with the aliens
>and able to engender fertile hybrids. Since they lack metapsychic
>powers (which are screened out by the operators of the time-gate) they
>are easily enslaved; those with special skills are integrated into the
>political structure... and one of them manages to make himself High
>King in the aftermath of the Zanclean Flood. It is implied that this
>hybrid population survives until the arrival of modern humanity, and
>(a) is the source of the genes that will lead to set metapsychic
>powers arising among 20th-century humans, and (b) are the source of
>the legendary heroes of Irish mythology who IRL May based the
>characters on.
>
>2) In Graydon Saunders' (late of this newsgroup) Commonweal, one of
>the things dark-lord sorcerers seem to have loved doing over a hundred
>thousand years was invent people. Many are humanoid, indeed many are
>derived from human stock (pulled out of an alternate past after
>humanity exterminated itself in an enormous global war). Some others
>are unicorns (seven independently created species), kelpies, and other
>kinds of Dangerous Sapient Creatures we don't see in the five books
>published thus far. The humanoids generally have similar anatomy (and
>at least some of them are seen to have sex) but are reproductively
>isolated.
>
>3) In Elf Sternberg's (late of this newsgroup) extended porny
>interstellar soap opera, the Journal Entries, the journaller of the
>title is a very horny libertarian bisexual geneticist with a fur
>fetish, and likes creating new species that he will later figure out
>how to have sex with. In addition, there are also humanoid species
>elsewhere in the galaxy that he encounters and at times rescues from
>imminent social collapse. (Sometimes the rescue is done
>retroactively, reconstructing a species from the genetic and cultural
>material they have left behind.) Terran humans followed their own
>path to immortality which made them sterile, so any new humans are
>grown in vats, along with a couple of species they invent but don't
>really care much for. Away from Terra, interspecies relationships are
>common, as is xenoparenting (which has its own scientific journal);
>some species are biologically capable of being surrogates for other
>species, which is aided by 12 of the species having had the same
>designer and been scaffolded on the same Terran evolutionary history.
>
Off the top of my head we have a number of post or non human humanish species
in fairly well known SF:
Slans
Baldies
Iterloo
Underpeople
Draka
Sime
Children Of The Lens
Eloi/Morlocks
The Last Men
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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