Worldbuilding/The Big Idea

[kaylarudbek]

So I have been playing around in my head with the idea of human cloning and slavery for the past twenty years, ever since I started reading Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, I was dating a Southern man (New Orleans and Virginia) and I went to a Jesuit law school. The overall concept is The US Civil War In Space, with the Union of Civilized States being pluralistic in religion, race, etc (basically the blue states/Beta Colony) versus the neo-Confederacy (aka slaveholding South/fundamentalist Protestant/red states). There is war, there is smuggling, there is human trafficking of people from the UCS to the neo-Confeds, the neo-Confeds don’t acknowledge anyone as human unless they are a body birth of someone of the correct skin color. I think I may finally settled on some protagonists. Any interest in this setting or suggestions for research starting points?

Comments

[castiron]

Thinking about this from your earlier post: in this setting, would a baby who started out in utero but had to be transferred to a replicator due to extremely premature labor or a medical condition (Miles, for example) count as human or non-human?

[kaylarudbek]

Depends on whether you’re in the UCS or the neo-Confederacy (UCS says yes, human, neo-Confederacy likely to say no). One of the ideas I’m playing with for the heroine is having her be a secret clone of a captured UCS officer (and being passed off as granddaughter of the captured officer; Gran is trying to work as a deep cover spy for UCS and was captured/“married” by a neo-Confed minor nobleman)

[sraun]

Sounds interesting!