I thought there was something in the young adult books, but couldn't find it quickly. However the topic of the percentage of "genies" on Sphinx did come up in a conversation between Honor and White Haven in IEH which seems to imply that even then there might still be a large percentage of unmodified Humans living there.cthia wrote:Dauntless wrote:probably not but in stephanie Harringtons day there was a large part of the population that was just completely base line human.[snip]
Is there any textev supporting this? I don't doubt that there is, it just floors me. After all, the appropriate passage regarding Stephanie Harrington did use the term "pure strainers."
It is difficult to believe that most of the planet were normal humans. That would include infants, children, frail and sickly adults, the general sickly as well. Difficult to fathom. You cannot install grav plates everywhere unless you erect entire walled cities completely contained like Grayson's cities.
Under the dome.
(The sequence is kind of long, so I snipped a few bits out and I underlined the key bit)
In Enemy Hands: Ch. 3 wrote:The earl blinked briefly, his expression totally blank, then nodded in sudden understanding. It was considered extremely impolite to use the term "genie" to describe someone, but given Harrington's neurosurgeon father and—especially—geneticist mother, she was probably more comfortable with the label than many. For that matter, the prejudice against genetically engineered humans was slowly dying out as the last memories of Old Earth's Final War faded from the racial forebrain. But there had been no such prejudice in the early days of the Diaspora, and quite a few colonies had been established by genies specifically designed for their new environments.
"I wasn't aware of that, Milady," he said after a moment.
"We don't talk about it much, but I'd guess the majority of Sphinxians are genies by now," she replied. He raised a polite eyebrow, and she shrugged. "Think about it," she suggested. "Heavy-grav planets are one of the most common 'hostile' environments. You know that even today most heavy-worlders have shorter than average life expectancies?" She looked at White Haven again, and he nodded. "That's because even with modern medicine you can't put a body designed for a single gravity onto a one-point-three or one-point-five-gravity planet and expect it to function properly. I, on the other hand—"
[snip]
The idea was to fit us for heavy-grav planets generally, not one in particular, and the geneticists made the changes dominant, so that every parent would pass them on to every child."
"And your diet?"
"I don't get more efficient muscles and a stronger heart for free, My Lord," Honor said wryly. "My metabolism runs about twenty percent faster—a little more than that actually, but not much—to fuel the differences. Which is why I can afford to eat like this," she finished, grinning as MacGuiness put a third plate of waffles in front of her.
[snip]
"That's fascinating," White Haven murmured. "You say more than half of Sphinx has the same modification?"
"That's only an estimate, and it's not one modification. The Harringtons are descended from the Meyerdahl First Wave, which was one of the first—in fact, I think it was the first—heavy-grav modification, and folks like us probably make up about twenty or twenty-five percent of the population. But there are several variations on the same theme, and worlds tend to attract colonists who can live there comfortably. When you add the free passages the government offered to recruit fresh colonists after the Plague of Twenty-Two AL, Sphinx wound up attracting an even bigger chunk of us than most, including a lot from the core worlds who wouldn't even have considered emigration otherwise. In many respects, the Meyerdahl genies are the most successful, in my modest opinion, though. Our musculature enhancement is certainly the most efficient, at any rate.