![\"resized_Ky-Vatta-by-Lana-Klassen\"](\"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/resized_Ky-Vatta-by-Lana-Klassen.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nLike most everyone in the far distant future, Ky is a blend of what we think of as races,\u00a0 mostly along the old trade route from Turkey to India.\u00a0\u00a0 (Family just came home–more later…)<\/p>\n
Back again.\u00a0 No doughnuts…waaaah!\u00a0\u00a0 OK.\u00a0\u00a0 So when I first started writing large-scale SF–stuff that spanned multiple star systems, etc–I thought about which humans would go, and where, and how they would interact, and what they might look like down the centuries.\u00a0\u00a0 It seemed reasonable, given the probable cost of getting “there” (wherever “there” was)\u00a0 that at first you’d have the carefully-selected-astronauts (which are not all white or all from the same corner of this planet) and then you’d have the carefully-selected-colonists sent by either a) a government or b) a corporation for a particular place and planned activity, and then–assuming some very useful advances in transportation, and a lower cost as well–the deluge.\u00a0 There would be groups from the same area traveling together, settling together, but every new planet would be big enough to bring in more people from more other places.<\/p>\n
Many humans like to be with people like themselves.\u00a0 Some want to get away from people like themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 That will likely continue.\u00a0\u00a0 Human modification has already occurred here (prosthetics, including bionic “implants”) and the first CRISPR babies are expected within the next five years–babies genetically modified for one reason or another.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Once used, that science will escape controls and the “one reason or another” will get farther and farther from the original plan.\u00a0\u00a0 “Humods” as in the Vatta books already written are not beyond reach in another century, or sooner (assuming no cultural collapse…but I’m writing science fiction.)<\/p>\n
For each of the science fiction books set on other worlds,\u00a0 I chose existing or historical populations from specific regions and “ran them forward” to see what interesting things might happen.\u00a0 In Remnant Population<\/em>,\u00a0 Ofelia and her fellow colonists came from working class part-Native, part-European stock from former Spanish colonies\u00a0 from southern Mexico to central South America.\u00a0\u00a0 In the Serrano\/Suiza books, the Serranos were Spanish\/North African and the Suizas were central and eastern European. (The original rulers of Esmay’s home world were of northern European stock; the Families of the Familias Regnant include both European and African Seatholders, as does the Regular Space Service.\u00a0\u00a0 The Compassionate Hand is Mediterranean and with a little Asia Minor.\u00a0 And so on.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0 Vatta books include worlds that are now homogenous (self-selection) for origin, and others that are almost homogenous through mixing.\u00a0\u00a0 Both series include different religions, philosophies, forms of government, etc.<\/p>\n This image of Ky does not show the bulge of her implant.\u00a0 In most families, an implant is not considered a modification, because it’s like glasses or a cane–they see it as just an assist, not a radical change.\u00a0 An infant’s brain and skull are prepared for an implant early in life, with a nonworking balloon-like implant gradually “bulging” the skull in the right place; the first child-level implant is then installed before the child starts formal schooling.\u00a0\u00a0 However, though to most people on Slotter Key (and indeed on most of the world visited in these books) the implant bulge is so common as to be ignored, it might look so strange to people here and now that they’d fixate on her asymmetric skull shape.\u00a0 This image shows what’s important to me: she’s dark-skinned, dark-haired, a little hard to untangle the ancestral gene mix.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of the people on Slotter Key are some shade of brown, but certainly not all.<\/p>\n Interestingly, though designed humans, from humods like those in the books to the extreme ‘mods’ of “Chameleons” (set in the same universe but not directly connected to Vatta books.\u00a0 Yet.\u00a0 Maybe never)\u00a0 are all over the place,\u00a0 few are “modded” for skin color.\u00a0 Skin color is less an issue in most worlds (though, as shown, Gretna is one full of very white people who don’t like anybody else.)\u00a0 Eye color was a fashion at one time, so there are a lot of people with “exotic” eye color (purple, green, turquoise, etc.)\u00a0 with common brown skin.\u00a0 There’s just as much nastiness between groups, but most of it is not based on skin.\u00a0 Unless your skin doesn’t look human.<\/p>\n Stella, you recall, is described as a stunningly beautiful blonde.\u00a0 My mental image of her is that of a young woman I saw in college: north Italian, blonde with brown eyes, and the most perfect bone structure you can imagine.\u00a0 She stopped conversations when she entered a room.\u00a0\u00a0 (It wasn’t easy on her: she was also brilliant, and being seen as “the beauty” was a distraction she’d have preferred not to deal with.)\u00a0\u00a0 Stella was adopted by the specific Vattas who took her in, because Helen, her adopted mother, was lighter and some of her relatives (Greek, Balkan, and Italian heritage) were light-haired too.\u00a0 It made the relationship plausible.<\/p>\n So there’s Ky, intense, focused, and…now…in a situation that being Grand Admiral has not prepared her for.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I told you awhile back, I met a talented artist at KeyCon (Winnipeg) back in May of this year and commissioned her to do a portrait of Admiral Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, or Ky as most of us know her.\u00a0\u00a0 I think she did a great job.\u00a0 It took awhile, because she had to 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