Rensa's Universe: Background 2
Both aldersprig and kelkyag asked about Rensa's world when I asked what my readers would like in a background piece. Their questions were, to me, interrelated and so I have cheated and provided background I think is needed to begin answering both their questions.
One of the technological advantages the world of Firilis had when they discovered the danger coming towards them was genetic engineering.
Firilis already had a number of daughter worlds, both privately founded and government sponsored. A government-organised colony normally began as a high-concept project. There would be extensive planetary surveys to identify resource locations and aid the selection of food crops and livestock species. Colonists would be carefully selected for personality traits, skill sets or the ability to be trained therein, and a lack of undesirable genetic characteristics. Suitably subtle genetic enhancement and modification usually occurred to make, for instance, the colonial population better able to cope with the amount of ultraviolet light received on the surface of their new world. Teams of specialists would be trained to supply the colony with meta-skill sets the colony would benefit from.
Such arrangements took time and individual crafting.
Both were things the designers of the Defensive Diaspora decided they couldn’t afford. They were determined to set up hundreds of shielding colonies and to do it as quickly as possible. All colonial endeavours that hadn’t launched were suspended, ships and colonists subsumed into the new endeavour. The teams of specialists engineered, bred and trained for the next government-sponsored colony were divided up so that each colony of the initial round of launches had a pair of each specialist type in a team rather than a team for each speciality. The male/female pairing was to ensure that each colony would receive all of the genetic upgrades the specialists had received. New cohorts of specialists in the same pattern were birthed and educated to accompany later waves of colonists. The speciality hair colour-coding used with the reassigned initial cohort was continued as there would have been additional cost to remove it from the genetic engineering package.
No genetic engineering was carried out on colonists who had not already received it. So little was known of the worlds they were going to that it was pointless to attempt to build world specific packages. It was decided to rely of miscegenation to spread the longevity, energy metabolism, immune system and skin modifications included in the specialists, now known as guides, among the colonial populations.
To obtain the number of colonists required in the time frame available, selection criteria were relaxed. In some intakes, in some criteria, the acceptable percentage variable spread from three to thirty per cent. The discussions over the relaxing of psychological criteria should, perhaps, have been more vigorous and less professional and gentlemanly.
One of the technological advantages the world of Firilis had when they discovered the danger coming towards them was genetic engineering.
Firilis already had a number of daughter worlds, both privately founded and government sponsored. A government-organised colony normally began as a high-concept project. There would be extensive planetary surveys to identify resource locations and aid the selection of food crops and livestock species. Colonists would be carefully selected for personality traits, skill sets or the ability to be trained therein, and a lack of undesirable genetic characteristics. Suitably subtle genetic enhancement and modification usually occurred to make, for instance, the colonial population better able to cope with the amount of ultraviolet light received on the surface of their new world. Teams of specialists would be trained to supply the colony with meta-skill sets the colony would benefit from.
Such arrangements took time and individual crafting.
Both were things the designers of the Defensive Diaspora decided they couldn’t afford. They were determined to set up hundreds of shielding colonies and to do it as quickly as possible. All colonial endeavours that hadn’t launched were suspended, ships and colonists subsumed into the new endeavour. The teams of specialists engineered, bred and trained for the next government-sponsored colony were divided up so that each colony of the initial round of launches had a pair of each specialist type in a team rather than a team for each speciality. The male/female pairing was to ensure that each colony would receive all of the genetic upgrades the specialists had received. New cohorts of specialists in the same pattern were birthed and educated to accompany later waves of colonists. The speciality hair colour-coding used with the reassigned initial cohort was continued as there would have been additional cost to remove it from the genetic engineering package.
No genetic engineering was carried out on colonists who had not already received it. So little was known of the worlds they were going to that it was pointless to attempt to build world specific packages. It was decided to rely of miscegenation to spread the longevity, energy metabolism, immune system and skin modifications included in the specialists, now known as guides, among the colonial populations.
To obtain the number of colonists required in the time frame available, selection criteria were relaxed. In some intakes, in some criteria, the acceptable percentage variable spread from three to thirty per cent. The discussions over the relaxing of psychological criteria should, perhaps, have been more vigorous and less professional and gentlemanly.