pigs in space

[Alicia Henn]

The New York Times invited readers to write them a paragraph about whether eating meat was ethical. Interestingly, an argument was made that the survival of animals in the future depends on their tastiness.

"...like it or not, when we render this planet uninhabitable, we’re going to have to move to another, and the only thing that’s going to make anyone let animals into the spaceship is the chance to eat them."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/magazine/the-winner-of-our-contest-on-the-ethics-of-eating-meat.html?src=recg

Is anyone out there writing space opera? Are there food animals on board your ship?

Alicia

[Donald McCarthy]

I would suggest embryos would be a more viable options. A LOT more of them could be kept alive in some kind of stasis (Step back I'm going to SCIENCE!) and they would tax life support less.  If you're going for a generation ship then a viable breeding population would probably be best.  I envision such a ship as so large it would contain it's own stable ecosystem with natural selection driven evolution going on.  Make of that process what you will.

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[Alicia Henn]

Evolution could be cool, and probably inevitable, but once you got to your destination, you'd have animals well-adapted to life on a ship (or no animals left at all). The first year on the planet would make an awesome story, though. Sort of Dr. Doolittle meets Earth2.

Alicia

[David Ennocenti]

Sounds like the Damon Knight's Twilight Zone story "To serve man."

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Alicia Henn <queenca...@gmail.com> wrote:

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David Ennocenti
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[Alicia Henn]

http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/?currentPage=2

Cakewrecks did an homage to Star Wars Day (May the Fourth) on cakes, well mixed with Star Trek and other star-ish fiction. These beauts were done by professional bakers.

Live long and proper? 

Uhnnnnnn,

Alicia

[Donald McCarthy]

The evolution of miles long generation ship could be manipulated to match conditions on the target world. If it takes thousands of years to get their genetic tinkering and controlled environmental changes could be implemented to allow the animals - or people for that matter - to survive in a world quit a bit different from earth.

[Eric Scoles]

Living right now, it's hard to imagine anyone having the degree of vision required to put something like this into action. The best we've been able to manage so far is a 10,000 year clock.  

Anyway, this idea reminds me of 2 stories or story-cycles: 

First (probably most obvious) is Blish's "seedling stars" cycle, which basically involved re-engineering humans to suit the environment on the target world. It seems as though 'what is essential to humanness' was a really big question at the time. (I believe Fred Pohl's _Man Plus_ dates to about the same period.) There, though, there's active engineering, not evolution. 

Second, it brings to mind the '90s Sterling story "Taklamakan", and I'm torn to talk about it because the relation is a bit of a spoiler, but what the heck, it comes a third of the way through. The Chinese build fake "Generation Ships" in a cavern under the Taklamakan desert, and create environments inside them with artificial social and material pressures on the inhabitants, for reasons that aren't entirely clear (to the POV character -- who, incidentally, also has a walk-on in "Bicycle Repair Man") but probably in part involve harvesting new technology from them. Of course the inhabitants know nothing of their true situation, and the cavern is patrolled by highly adaptive and dangerous robots to prevent any escapees from getting back into their "ships" or out to the world above.

Sitting here it occurs to me that the Sterling story could be construed as being in part about absence of long-term vision. They can pull off a fake trip to another star for immediate purposes, but it doesn't seem to occur to anyone to try the real thing. 

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[Eric Scoles]

Also, the title reminds me of a McSweeney's story from a few years back -- can't remember the author -- but the POV character is the non-Muslim half of an animal husbandry team (I think she's Hindu) that keeps pigs and cows in an orbital station. I forget the mechanics exactly, but she's required to care for the pigs, and her (male) Muslim (& caucasian American) partner cares for the "clean" and high-status dairy cows. Somehow the pigs and cows are part of a commensal system, I forget how this works exactly, but if the pigs die off the whole system fails, and if the cows die off, the system is just financially non-viable. The summary makes the potential metaphors much more obvious than the story does. Will dig up reference if I can find the time.