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Prince Charon · 08-24-2019, 05:53 AM

The Eugenics Wars question

The Eugenics Wars are pretty important in Star Trek, because they give a cultural reason for at least humanity and the (strongly human-influenced) Federation to be a Safe-Tech setting. I'm fine with transhumanism in general, but I do want Psi Trek to look somewhat like Star Trek, which means it needs to be a mostly Safe-Tech setting. There are a few ways we might do this:

* TOS timeline: Take the dates given in TOS mostly at face value, and try to make sense of them when fitting something like the Eugenics Wars into the Psi Trek timeline (which isn't the same as using the exact dates, people, and events). (So, 'the eugenics experiments of the 1990s' can be taken as verbal shorthand for either 'experiments that became famous (and infamous) in the 1990s, but were started much earlier,' or 'the people (the 'young supermen') who were the results of those experiments.') I'm fairly fond of this one, mostly because I like alternate histories. See below for a possible timeline.

* TNG timeline: Ignore or fudge most of the dates given in TOS, and use some of the dates given in TNG, which make more sense to us. (So, the 'eugenics' experiments (which probably had a lot more to do with genetic engineering than selective breeding) are remembered by history as having begun in the 1990s, or just the preliminaries for them did (the Human Genome Project formally began in 1990 in our history), the Eugenics Wars probably started in the 2040s, and transitioned into and were effectively ended by WWIII in the 2050s, leaving many parts of the earth still suffering from the Post-Atomic Horror decades later.) I'm reasonably fond of this one as well. See below for a possible timeline.

* New timeline: Ignore the dates from TOS and TNG, and develop the Eugenics Wars from more-or-less whole cloth. I don't really object to this, but it does mean rather more work, and there's a lot of other stuff to decide while developing this setting.

* No Eugenics Wars or equivalent: Self-explanatory, but it does mean that we'd need to come up with a different, preferably still plausible, explanation for Psi Trek being a Safe-Tech setting (saying 'well, it just is' can work, but is kind of unsatisfying). I'm least fond of this option.

Note that the two timelines below are preliminary suggestions, and while they could be used as-is, they're closer to Star Trek than I think Psi Trek is likely to end up as.

08-24-2019, 05:53 AM	#5
Prince Charon Join Date: Dec 2012	Re: [Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding The Eugenics Wars question The Eugenics Wars are pretty important in Star Trek, because they give a cultural reason for at least humanity and the (strongly human-influenced) Federation to be a Safe-Tech setting. I'm fine with transhumanism in general, but I do want Psi Trek to look somewhat like Star Trek, which means it needs to be a mostly Safe-Tech setting. There are a few ways we might do this: * TOS timeline: Take the dates given in TOS mostly at face value, and try to make sense of them when fitting something like the Eugenics Wars into the Psi Trek timeline (which isn't the same as using the exact dates, people, and events). (So, 'the eugenics experiments of the 1990s' can be taken as verbal shorthand for either 'experiments that became famous (and infamous) in the 1990s, but were started much earlier,' or 'the people (the 'young supermen') who were the results of those experiments.') I'm fairly fond of this one, mostly because I like alternate histories. See below for a possible timeline. * TNG timeline: Ignore or fudge most of the dates given in TOS, and use some of the dates given in TNG, which make more sense to us. (So, the 'eugenics' experiments (which probably had a lot more to do with genetic engineering than selective breeding) are remembered by history as having begun in the 1990s, or just the preliminaries for them did (the Human Genome Project formally began in 1990 in our history), the Eugenics Wars probably started in the 2040s, and transitioned into and were effectively ended by WWIII in the 2050s, leaving many parts of the earth still suffering from the Post-Atomic Horror decades later.) I'm reasonably fond of this one as well. See below for a possible timeline. * New timeline: Ignore the dates from TOS and TNG, and develop the Eugenics Wars from more-or-less whole cloth. I don't really object to this, but it does mean rather more work, and there's a lot of other stuff to decide while developing this setting. * No Eugenics Wars or equivalent: Self-explanatory, but it does mean that we'd need to come up with a different, preferably still plausible, explanation for Psi Trek being a Safe-Tech setting (saying 'well, it just is' can work, but is kind of unsatisfying). I'm least fond of this option. Note that the two timelines below are preliminary suggestions, and while they could be used as-is, they're closer to Star Trek than I think Psi Trek is likely to end up as. __________________ Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.