> I just read your "Loose Change," and was intrigued
> by the space travel implications. This led my writing
> in a direction that I'm not sure you wanted to go,
> with tiggers, so I decided to seek your blessing. I
> have no intention of posting this without your OK.
>
> Hope you like it.
I've been trying to avoid explaining where the TG nanos
came from, half expecting it to be an engineered thing
being passed from one of the futures back to the past,
all in little steps, but... hmmm...
The nanos aren't sentient by any stretch of the
imagination (I'm trying to avoid it being compared to
Hal Clement's "Needle" or "Inside John Barth" by William
Stewart) though the TG effect is, more or less, an
attempt to rationalize F M Busby's gender flip (cannot
recall the name of the novel) mixed with the benefits
the "goo" gives in Weber's "Apocalypse Troll".
Note also that the masculine form is fragile and very
easy to lose, though males can be borne by those who
were male themselves. I use transgendering as a cost
of the benefits these nanites bring. That is will
destabilize sexual politics is obviously something
the original creators engineered into it.
That being said...
(Jack slips into his Toga which is more befitting of a
Stand-Up Philosopher)
Consider, the KEY difference humankind has from almost
*ALL* of the other mammals on the planet is our lack
of visible estrus. It can be argued that this is the
true gift of the "monolith" (yeah, shades of 2001)
which opened the door to the evolution of intelligence
Yeah, I believe that hidden estrus was the enabler for
us to evolve intelligence, all because it increased
genetic diversity and competition within the species
by undermining the ability of Alpha Males to dominate
all of the reproductive capacity.
It can be argued that someone may _seed_ the genetic
changes necessary across the galaxy in order to allow
more species to evolve intelligence.
Now, thinking on your story-- which, I will admit,
did something terrible, since it got me *thinking*--
what would happen if the TG nanos were seeded by some
more advanced alien race that remains unseen (or, more
likely, the nanotech/nanites/etc were "leftovers")
which, in a universe where sexual reproduction is part
of intelligence, the current crop of advanced races
aren't even *aware* any longer that there was *ever*
a time in their own species where sexual gender didn't
flip-flop... and, prior to First Contact, or, perhaps,
as *PART* of First Contact, the "gift" would be passed
along to the new folks on the block.
Add to this that a "First Contact" situation hasn't
happened in some time. Also posit that once a species
has an extended life-span where they are driven to
fuck like bunnies with a low reproductive rate, there
is a stalling of technological advances.
So, on earth, technical advances would happen first
within the "normal" population, since these are the
folks under time pressure to achieve/profit from any
innovation. Tiggers would tend to be more easily
satisfied, since, for someone with no count-down clock
to their death, there'd be less of a hurry to make a
mark on the world.
