Yeah, the more developed planets of the Nexus have an environment that removes nearly all the possible reasons for abortion, aside from "No, really, I just want to kill the fetus". The level of possible pre- and post-conception genetic modification implied is eyebrow-raising.
Nearly everything seems "fixable", which in and of itself is a little creepy. For instance, the Donna transformation implies that Beta Colony can successfully adjust mental self-image from male to female and possibly even sexual orientation.
Heck, even "I wanted a girl" is fixable. Odd thought.
Beta Colony in particular seems a Lake Wobegon of a sort: "and all the children were above average". Like Barrayar, it's aggressively pro-natal but in a different way.
All successful space-colonizing cultures have to be much more pro-natal than modern Western Civ, and in that sense fundamentally divorced from the reality a lot (though not all) of the readers are living in. I'm not surprised some people are made uneasy by that.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-05-16 03:46 am (UTC)Nearly everything seems "fixable", which in and of itself is a little creepy. For instance, the Donna transformation implies that Beta Colony can successfully adjust mental self-image from male to female and possibly even sexual orientation.
Heck, even "I wanted a girl" is fixable. Odd thought.
Beta Colony in particular seems a Lake Wobegon of a sort: "and all the children were above average". Like Barrayar, it's aggressively pro-natal but in a different way.
All successful space-colonizing cultures have to be much more pro-natal than modern Western Civ, and in that sense fundamentally divorced from the reality a lot (though not all) of the readers are living in. I'm not surprised some people are made uneasy by that.