Human Hybridization

It's now widely believed that early Homo sapiens crossbred with Neanderthals. Here's an article speculating on why interbreeding may have happened:

Human Hybridization

Offspring from mates of two different species often display "hybrid vigor." This author also suggests (using the example of mules) that a hybrid may have higher intelligence than either ancestral species.

These factors show that interbreeding may bestow advantages on the offspring; however, they don't explain why individuals would be motivated to mate with other-species partners. Mistaken identity? As a last resort when members of their own species aren't available? From positive attraction?

In one of my favorite novels, CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, Cro-Magnon (Homo sapiens) child Ayla, adopted by Neanderthals, grows up to bear a Cro-Magnon-Neanderthal baby. Her pregnancy results from rape. Like the rest of the clan, the father of her child considers her ugly, or at least odd-looking, and he rapes her to assert dominance, not from desire. Because human babies are born less developed than Neanderthals, Ayla's adopted people think her infant son is deformed. At birth he can't even hold up his head! As he matures, of course, he outstrips his Neanderthal kinfolk in many ways. (As a child, Tarzan in the original novel fares similarly among the apes, who at first take a dim view of she-ape Kala's adopting a hairless, frail creature that will obviously never be able to care for itself. Burroughs' series, by the way, assumes that his "great apes"—definitely not gorillas, which are shown as lesser animals, so the great apes must be a "missing link"—are related closely enough to human beings to interbreed, as seen in Tarzan's visits to the ruined lost city of Opar.) In later books, Ayla learns that other hybrid children exist, usually conceived by rape of Neanderthal girls by gangs of Cro-Magnon men. She speculates that her son may have to look for a mate among these crossbreeds, since both types of human beings often view "children of mixed spirits" as abominations.

James Tiptree's story "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" postulates that human beings have a powerful exogamous drive. We're drawn to exotic partners because, in prehistory, marrying out of the tribe kept the genes circulating. A girl's elopement with a boy from the strange people on the other side of the mountain gave evolutionary benefits to her descendants. In Tiptree's story, this impulse has gone wild and become a liability as human beings traveling among the stars pursue the irresistible attractions of exotic aliens, with whom no fertile mating is possible.

Science fiction teems with fascinating human-alien hybrids, such as Spock. In most cases, the writer and reader simply agree to suspend disbelief in inter-species crossbreeding, with no inconvenient mention of incompatible genes. Larry Niven's well-known essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" uses Superman and Lois Lane to highlight how improbable this crossbreeding would be. To make such characters biologically plausible, the author would have to assume the galaxy was purposely "seeded" with life from a single point of origin or perhaps that meteors transported DNA through interstellar space.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Teens, Trekkies, and Heroic Ideal

I remember back when I was just a reader I thought authors knew everything about their worlds and how they worked.  Naturally, authors who’ve been around know a whole lot, but I’m a brand new baby author and, let me tell you, I feel pretty stupid most of the time.  Much of what I do know I learned right here on this blog, like Theme. 

Ophelia is a Trekkie.  She’s the heroine of my YA SFR, Sugar Rush.  Why is she a Trekkie?  It all comes down to Theme.  The story’s theme is Achieving the Freedom to Live.

Ophelia and her sister are obsessed with movies.  They live in a small, isolated Alaskan town.  Movies, via a massive DVD collection, and the Internet are their windows to the world.  Ophelia’s favorite movies happen to be Star Trek.  Ophelia went to a real movie theater in the big city when she was diagnosed with diabetes at age nine and her sister has never been to one. 

This brings to mind a hilarious movie starring Eddie Murphy, Daddy Daycare.  He’s an unemployed dad who opens a daycare with a friend. (I used to be a professional childcare provider, so I loved this movie.) 

After overcoming some initial bias against male childcare providers, they begin caring for a few children.  One little boy seems to speak only gibberish.  When Eddie must hire a new dad-care provider, the new employee, a Trekkie, immediately recognizes that the little boy is speaking Klingon, a fictional language from the Star Trek universe.  Very sweet, but I was most intrigued by the little boy who constantly wears a superhero costume.  He wears the costume of a superhero, because he’s working through his fear of the new daycare situation.  A superhero fears nothing, you know.  Once the little boy learns to trust his new caregivers, he takes off the costume. 

The bad guys have Ophelia cornered like an animal in Sugar Rush.  She’s a smart girl desperate to be free, but she hasn’t figured out her own strengths or how to use them.  Like the little boy wearing the superhero costume, she clutches a Captain Janeway Christmas tree ornament (her boyfriend gave it to her) at her father’s funeral in the first half of the book.  Her courage matures over the course of the story, however, and by the last battle she’s on her own.

A hero or heroic ideal helps even an adult focus and believe in themselves.  In the story, it’s not enough for Ophelia to have a perfect grade point average.  She needs to believe herself capable. 

And that is why Ophelia is a Trekkie.

Speaking of heroes, the authors of this blog helped me believe I could achieve publication too, and here I am!  A great, big, huge THANK YOU!

Kimber An

Worldbuilding in the grocery aisles

Hybrids aren't just cars that run on more than one fuel source.

There are hybrid animals, and hybrid plants which occur either naturally or with the assistance of mankind, also hybrids in Greek and Roman mythology. Some hybrids are sterile, and some are not. Some hybrids are called after a combination of the father's name and the mother's (father's name first). The mythological creatures do not appear to follow this convention... and in fact, now I understand the convention, my mind boggles over the Manticore (man-lion-scorpion).

wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid


The etymology is delightful. According to wikipedia, hybrid comes from the ancient Greek for "son of outrageous conduct."

I could have called my Tigron world's black sabre-toothed tigers ... pangers, or tigthers, but I think that would have complicated matters.

This week, I'm more interested in plant hybrids. For world-building in a hurry --not that I recommend taking a short cut, but sometimes one has to-- a few hours in the grocery aisles can be quite inspiring.

There are some astonishing hybrids available, as well as exotic fruits and vegetables that might or might not have been hybridized. I look at the Ugly Fruit, and I wonder whether it evolved to be visually appealing to anything (assuming that its fruit is "designed" to be dispersed with the assistance of creatures that eat the fleshy parts and eject the pits).

There's something spiny and orange that looks like a cross between a sea urchin and a sea slug, and I'm fascinated by those waxy green globes that come inside a pale green papery looking flower. If you were to change their colors, rename them, and describe them carefully as if you'd never seen them before, you'd hardly need to dream up your own fruits and vegetables for your alien romance's world. And, then there are the roots. You have to be careful what you do with your root vegetables, in my opinion.

How did we ever start to eat root veg? Did we observe a primate and copy them? Did our earliest ancestors' curious gaze fall upon something intriguingly orange, or pleasantly white, pushing up through loose soil? I suppose we do have an instinct (as children) to pull things out of the ground and bite them as an experiment. I'm told that I ate a worm once when I was a toddler! Would your aliens have similar instincts?

Your human heroine has to eat in outer space, so not all her food can be unrecognizable (or she'd have to have major allergy testing) or her gut would not be adapted to handle it. We're accustomed to stories about our domestic pets eating human delicacies which are not natural for them... which their guts are not adapted to handle. I've been thinking about what natural carnivores can and cannot eat, because I want my tigers to play a larger role in my next story.

In fact, having spent several hours reading the ingredients on dry pet food for research purposes, I do have to wonder under what circumstances a dog in the wild would eat corn on the cob. Or rice!

There are some schools of alternative healing thought that claim some of our painful ailments (such as arthritis) are a consequence of us eating fruits or vegetables that we are not adapted for, or to which some of us are allergic. My mother cured very painful arthritic swelling in her hands by giving up all produce in the tomato families. Other people have a problem with potatoes. (Some have a problem but don't know it.)

In Insufficient Mating Material, the hero and heroine are marooned on an island on an alien world, and they have to test food and deal with the possibility that the heroine might not have a tolerance for some of the fruits and vegetables growing there.

Why do I think roots are a problem? Carrots are easy, and you can eat them raw if you want to. Parsnips look like big carrots only white... but you really do have to cook them. Watch out for onions and shallots, because they look like tulip bulbs. There are different roots that look alike. Take ginger root and Jerusalem artichoke. They are both about the shape and size of a small, pudgy hand, with gnarly, stub-tipped fingers, root filaments like fleshy hairs, and are beige-gray.

On our world, some plants do not want to be eaten, especially by the roots (!) so they evolve to be poisonous. What happens in your alien world?

For those interested in research, or obsessed with plausible alien anatomy --and possibly inspired by the fact that a carrot fresh from the ground does not necessarily look "carrot shaped"-- M.I.T. (an eminently respectable place of scholarship) sells --or used to sell-- a to-scale, and anatomically correct poster called "Penises of the Animal Kingdom".

I thought the plural was Penes, but I suppose a few people wouldn't get the point.

And having Googled that, because none of the three of my dictionaries within easy reach gives any guidance on what a proper person should call multiple schlongs, I'm off to pursue other lines of romantic alien research.

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry
Insufficient Mating Material
"racy, wildly entertaining futuristic romance" ~Writers Write