From: wollman@hergotha.csail.mit.edu
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-bey
nd-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.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
