Thursday 27 June 2002

Pic of the day: Let's see... Green Lantern, superpowers from technology that cannot be distinguished from magic. Sunfire, mutant who believed himself to descend from the Japanese sun deity. Captain Marvel, superpowers derived from a pantheon of Greek gods. And Nate "X-man" Summers, a product of breeding for superpowers. Yup. Seems like the right cast for today's entry. (Screenshot from The Sims.)

Ever smaller gods

Well, perhaps I should put stuff like this is a separate column, kinda like "Schroeder's Speculations". But at least until the speech recognition software arrives, I won't be able to keep up several competing projects. Even my fantasy fiction is on hold. So instead of a real entry today, here's a bit of science fiction / fantasy alternate history world-building. Enjoy.

***

It all started with the idea of super people who are not really super heroes or super villains. Just common people with uncommon powers. Actually the part I like best about super comics is the part where the heroes are not fighting super villains, but just trying to live a life with their (and each other's) powers. There have been occasional good displays of this in some of the team based super comics, most lately Young Justice and the late, lamented Gen 13. (On a side note, I think Gen 13 deserved better. I am quite disgruntled by the way the series ended, and it negatively influences my buying decision for related series from the same publisher. But enough of that.)

As I cast about for an idea of how to generate super people out of the random population, the recent intake of mythology came to the fore. How about letting the super people be descendants of the old gods? That would put them in the right power range. Let old diluted bloodlines meet, and a few of the offspring would be at least partly super powered. Kinda like when offspring between black and white have kids, some of the kids will be whiter and some darker, and most not.

So in my imagination, when the first generation of barely super heroes start to interbreed, some of their offspring will be ordinary people, some will be above average like their parents, and some will be much more. This is nifty enough – people born to superpowers, raised to be heroes but not all that motivated for the task. But then I started to think up a whole new alternate explanation for mythology. (Well, there is supposedly nothing new under the sun, so I bet someone else has written it, but I haven't read it yet. I think.)

***

Imagine: Around the end of the ice age, something visits our world. An alien craft from far away stops by for a short while, by their standards. Like any star-faring race, their life span is enormous by our measures, and their technology indistinguishable from magic. Exploring the life-bearing world, they discover that there is a species with budding sentience: The beach apes have a language, art and craft skills. They can make the bow, the flute and the anorak – but they still lack the spark of civilization, and may do so forever if left to themselves. The aliens capture some of them and place in a safe environment on an isolated island. They then take sperm and ova, make some quick genetic surgery, and implant the improved embryos in the confused females. Nine months later, the first batch of Homo Superior is born. They are outwardly much like their ancestors, but a couple of crucial details have been changed to the aliens' image: They now have a life span of nearly a millennium, and an intelligence far above the ordinary hunter-gatherers. Their genome is also cleansed of all genetic disease, and their immune system is beefed up to the point where they are immune to all except massive damage.

So far it sounds like the von Däniken version of Genesis. But here is where the two diverge: The aliens are not the gods. The kids are the gods, they just don't know it yet. The aliens are probably not even humanoid; it matters not to the story what they look like. They raise the small neo-humans and educate them in science and technology. When the aliens leave, the tiny colony of superior humans has some hyper-technology and the knowledge to create more with the advanced tools they got.

At first, the Children live in peace on their safe island, and they have offspring of their own. (A phase of incest is really not a problem, genetically speaking, since they have no dormant genetic bombs that would be brought out by inbreeding.) They breed slowly, as long-lived races tend to, but over the centuries their numbers keep growing, till there are dozens of them on the island. They start to move out to the world they have been exploring. This world is already populated – sparsely, but still populated – by their short-lived and retarded cousins. Awed by the superior technology of the neo-humans, the ordinary humans worship them. And the "gods" discover that they like it. Different families of them move to different parts of the world and found their own little "god-doms", where they jump-start civilization. They teach their humans to cultivate plants and domesticate animals, to smelt metals and build cities. All over the world, or at least in the hospitable parts, suddenly these same arts blossom. But each of them works with the plants and animals that live naturally in that part, and each of them develop their own writing and their own architecture.

But there is another side to this, that nobody had counted on. The male gods in particular start to lust after the dumb but pretty women of the lesser races, and they are still genetically compatible. Demigods start to crop up more and more often. Some of them are recognized, but others go unnoticed. And they breed much faster than their "divine" ancestors. The goddesses are not immune to the vice either; and gradually over the course of millennia, the god-kings' bloodlines are diluted, while the human gene pool is enriched. The gods die out, then the heroes dwindle. History, as we know it, gradually disentangles from the age of mythology.

But again and again through history, the "holy blood" meets again, is concentrated for a generation or two, raising heroes that seem larger than life to those around them. They may have only one or a few traits of their ancestors, but that is enough to make them stand out. Physical heroes whose strength and skill make them invincible in battle. Geniuses whose inventions are centuries ahead of their time, or whose art mesmerizes millions by its astounding beauty and detail. Strategists who build great empires in a lifetime. Philosophers who change the way people see their world. Prophets who reform religions or create new ones when the old are ossified, giving their people good and wise rules to live by.

***

(Of course, this is all science fiction, and there's not the slightest seed of truth in it. Come on, aliens and ice-age genetic engineering? But it would make for a nifty series of stories, don't you think?)

OK, off to watch the movie UNBREAKABLE again ... ^_^