Depicting "under construction" bioroids

[Michael Thayne]

Transhuman Space offers some tantalizing hints about what an under-construction bioroid looks like. The opening vignette has a line about biogenesis tanks which "held skeletal, half-formed, and fully adult bioroids, the latter already immersed in virtuality training simulations", while later on the book says that "People who see them forming in biogenesis tanks or examine diagrams of their skeletons, chromosomes, or nanofactories get a sense of 'living machine.'" However, I'm struggling to visualize what exactly this looks like. For example, it seems to imply their skeletons are non-standard, but I'm not sure in what way. And what does the "half-formed" stage look like? One thing I think might really help me here is some art—unfortunately the couple pics of maybe-bioroids in Transhuman Space are already at the "covered in skin" stage.

[Anthony]

The anime/comic book standard is tanks of greenish liquid containing floating bodies, which in an incomplete state are just a head, upper torso, and bits extending from that (a reasonable example here). The realistic answer is that we have no idea how to build a bioroid or even if possible, and in any case it's not likely to be transparent.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The anime/comic book standard is tanks of greenish liquid containing floating bodies, which in an incomplete state are just a head, upper torso, and bits extending from that (a reasonable example here). The realistic answer is that we have no idea how to build a bioroid or even if possible, and in any case it's not likely to be transparent.

What's that from? It's somewhat useful as inspiration, though it somewhat conveys "grown in a bizarre way" to me rather than "living machine".

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

What's that from? It's somewhat useful as inspiration, though it somewhat conveys "grown in a bizarre way" to me rather than "living machine".

That particular panel is from some Marvel comic (I think it's someone growing weird clones of Black Widow, not sure, just something I found on the internet). In any case, that's not really realistic, but it's probably the kind of thing THS has in mind.

[Michael Thayne]

The whole thing where they're supposed to be machine like makes me think maybe something more Westworld? But even then (as long as we're talking about the later host designs rather than the earlier host designs) the aesthetic is more "3D printed human" than "machine".

[vicky_molokh]

An okay inspiration for the skeletal and muscle phases.

[Fred Brackin]

From some online conversations with David during playtest and maybe even before that (and please remember that these were almost 20 years ago) I said that it seemed clear to me that bioroid orignes were clearly rooted in biogenesis (i.e. organ cloning).

If you could artificially produce every organ in the human body what was to stop you from taking all those organs and making a whole (if artificial) human out of them?

This would make bioroids conceptual descendants of Frankenstein's monster only you didn't have to use dead parts and you could grow living skin over everything else after you'd assembled the parts.

The bits about the skeleton may have come from remarks I made about it probably being much simpler to 3-D print a skeleton from unbreakable plastic than to grow living, functional bone.

Most of the glandular system might be blatantly artificial nano-factories rather than fully organic glands. There might be other places where artificial was much easier than organic.

I've never been certain how much of this David adopted as his own views but I do sort of see hints.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The realistic answer is that we have no idea how to build a bioroid or even if possible, and in any case it's not likely to be transparent.

There's good reason for it *not* to be transparent. Most animal cells and tissues don't like having light shining on them, and processes that need molecular level precision are not going to be helped by exposure to a random flood of photons with enough energy to move molecules around.

[TGLS]

Yes, but there's also good reason for it to be transparent; namely dramatic courtroom scenes to prove bioroids are really machines, and fight scenes where they naturally get blown open and create a big slippery mess.

[Anthony]

Both of the above statements are completely true.