The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Didn't the "everyone goes apeshit for boy babies" thing predate uterine replicators of Barrayar? I was under the impression that Barrayans using replicators was still a fairly recent development midway through the series, while the hilariously short sighted sex selection was just a result of Barrayan nobles having access to other forms of galactic reproduction tech (hell, just in vitro fertilization would be enough).

Nope. They were already crazy for boy babies, that is true. But the introduction of uterine replicators to Barrayar kicked that mofo into overdrive. So much so that very few, if any, girl babies were born to the Vor class at all. Because, since the husbands could pick which sex of kid they wanted with near perfect accuracy, and they, being not very smart, wanted boys boys boys, they got them.

It seems to be getting slightly better, as the Vor class wives are actually getting pissed off at their husbands - and since the Dowry Granter Lord (Count Vormuir) has brought another two hundred or so girl babies into the world by creative use of the technology, with the price being two hundred or so dowries (yeah, that'll teach him), the competition amongst the Vor may ease even more.

edited 4th Jan '13 3:28:56 PM by TamH70

Huh. Good point about a demonstration that Cordelia done screwed up a bit in her rush to modernize the world. There will probably also be a rush of people doing the "designer baby" thing to their children to adjust skin, eye, and hair color, but I always got the impression that Barrayar was pretty monochromatic.

... Actually, this is probably my fault, in that I tend to kind of ignore race while reading, are there any black characters in the books? We know that some residents of Barrayar are of Greek descent, and thus olive-skinned, but I can't conjure up any example of someone with darker skin tones, although I'm sure there's got to be some.

I am sure one of the Jewels from CVA was black. Then again, all six of them were of various different skin tones. Barrayar seems to have been mostly Russians, French and Greeks in its original colony complement. I am not sure race issues were a main concern in the books if you are talking about relationships between white folks and black folks though.

The segregating factors of Barrayaran society are more about language than skin tone, so maybe skintones were not mentioned on purpose.

Also, remember that the Time of Isolation started not long after the colony's founding, so immigration bringing in others of differing skin colors than the founding groups wouldn't really be an issue for long enough to have a significant impact on the skin tones of Barrayar (at most it's been like two or three generations since reconnecting with the rest of the galaxy, IIRC).

edited 5th Jan '13 8:11:57 PM by Nohbody

Yeah, that sounds a bit right. I wonder what the rest of the galaxy thought about the Barrayarans when they finally rediscovered them (apart from the Cetagandan Empire - who went "Lunch!")

Probably nothing, until they kicked the Cetagandans out. Except maybe Jacksons Whole, which heard a cash register sound.

edited 7th Jan '13 9:50:14 AM by 3of4

I think they must have at first said "I really hope THESE psychopaths don't get access to space travel of their own!"

To be fair, Jackson's Whole hears that sound on a fairly regular basis.

It is their national (Er-planetary?) anthem, after all.

I wonder why the rest of the galaxy, or at least near space, thinks that Jackson's Whole is so valuable they let that nest of rats lie undisturbed apart from the odd visitation by very short and very dangerous Vor Lords?

Probably because they have enough dirt or business interest with enough Planets that any attempt to get at them would involve much interstellar politics. At least enough to prevent other planets from turning the place in a parking space.

Also, doesn't Jacksons Whole sit on quite a lot of wormhole routes?

Or: They prefer to have all that shit going on in ONE place and having needing less spies to watch it, instead of spreading it out into the underworlds of the whole galaxy. The devil you know.

My guess is:

A) Most of what Jackson's Whole is legal, but it might be tightly regulated on the customer's homeworld. If animal genetic research requires tight oversight and expensive licencing on (Say) Escobar, it might be cheaper to hire a Jacksonian House to do the research and then send the data to your lab for any final approvals.

B) If you want a cheap knock-off of a Betan technology but you have a trade agreement with Beta Colony and can't manufacture it yourself, you can get around the agreement by buying the knock-off from Jackson's Whole.

C) Jackson's Whole sits on a lot of jump points. If any one power or coaltion were to try and clean up the Whole, or force it to clean up its own act, the other regional powers would *strongly* object.

D) Related to points A and C, Jackson's Whole provides a lot of deniable services. Too many governments and corporations find the Whole too useful to shut down.

Doesn't mean to say that in some point in the future, some deniable operation comprised of all the local empires obliterate the shit out of Jackson's Whole.

After all, that is what happened to the closest Earth-bound equivalent, the Caribbean settlement of Port Royal, when the empires who dealt with that place and traded looted goods from there got fed up.

Oh, had a thought there. What tech from the series do you want used on Earth now? I bagsie the uterine replicators.

edited 10th Feb '13 7:41:10 AM by TamH70

Port Royal was destroyed by an earthquake. Did you have a different place in mind?

The problem is that the trade that disgusts everyone - The clone-transplant business - is a minor part of Jackson's Whole's galactic trade. And it's a problem that can more easily be solved by improved biotechnologies than military force.

Modern biotechnologies suggest that tissue engineering could be used to 'build' synthetic bodies, growing cloned tissues over biopolymer matrices to create a brainless adult body. My personal guess is that Vorkosigan-era technology can do this as well, and the only reason that the clone-transplant option exists is technical. Probably a cloned and slow-grown body is more robust and healthy than one grown in a vat. Maybe tissue-engineered bodies have weak immune systems. All Mark and the Durona Group have to do is improve tissue-engineering to the point where that technology is competitive with cloning. Much cheaper than trying to conquer a world with a widely dispersed population in the tens if not hundreds of millions.

(I read somewhere that LMB has a degree in some sort of bioscience. But back when she started the series tissue engineering was barely a gleam in a researcher's eye, so she can't really be blamed for missing that. Plus the clone-transplant business is much more dramatic than growing a new body over a bioprinter-built framework in a giant vat.)

Forgot to add - I'd vote for the uterine replicators as well. There are so many solved bioscience problems inherent in that technology that they'd be a huge kickstart for modern medicine.

Yeah, can you imagine the amounts of Nobel Prizes for Medicine and Physiology, Chemistry and Physics the first successful team that got them into public hands would get?

And it isn't just the plain medical implications that are mind blowing. The moral problems that they would ameliorate would be as well. Remember what they are used for in Shards of Honor by the Escobarans? And why?

Of course, if you thought the clamor over unclaimed fertilized ova at bankrupted fertility clinics is bad, imagine what it will be like when these are babies much further in their biological development. Sociologically, I suspect it would force a lot more people to confront the fact that these aren't just blobs of tissue, meaning that the "contraceptive abortion" would become a more vile act, particularly since people would no longer have the excuse of "I can't afford to carry this baby to term". I suspect we'd see much more effective contraceptives very quickly.

Uterine replicator tech might allow researchers to begin making inroads on the kind of apparently 100% effective, completely safe IUD that the Betans use. Being able to mass produce those implants would probably lead to a Nobel Prize of its own.

If you had Betan tech, then the obvious thing to do is get everyone's tubes tied. Effective and relatively harmless.

Getting your tubes is still a complex bit of surgery. Saying everyone should get it only sounds simple because a lot of folks get it done - it is still incredibly easy to screw up. Remember, it is still an operation that involves breaching the blood-air barrier, with all the attendant infection risks and possibility of adverse reactions to anaesthetics that those entail.

The Betan implant is preferable in my opinion.

And while we can always throw the "HIGH TECHNOLOGY!" buzzword into it, the failure rate of tubal ligation is around 0.5%, comparable to the symptothermal method or The Pill.

There is that. There is also the widespread perception that tubal ligation is pushed on women by men who would never have the balls (hehe) to get the similar in function male equivalent, the vasectomy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasectomy

They also don't seem to be foolproof either, given this New York Times article.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-vasectomy-expert.html

I just re-read a huge batch of LMB's books, and read Falling Free for the first time. Wow, she really likes her May-December romances. Miles-Taura, Leo-Silver, Caz-Beatriz, even Ivan-Tej (She's what 24-25?). I don't have a problem with it, I just think it's odd how often it happens.