Help with building a society

The first question you need to address is: why? Why does this society demand such strict control over sexual reproduction? As far as I know, this sort of extreme measure is only necessary when a population is both very small and isolated.

The next question is: how small? Well, I've done some research on this myself and I came up with a rough minimum for homo sapiens of about 200. If anyone has better information, please post it. Anything less than that and you're really starting to lose diversity.

You handled both those questions well. 1400 is just fine. On to the tougher stuff.

Next question: tech level? In sufficiently advanced societies people are going to have access to effective, reliable contraceptive methods. Sexual intercourse itself wouldn't necessarily be taboo, but reproduction certainly would be. In a less advanced society, the act of sex itself would be taboo in many circumstances because it'd be likely to lead to conception.

Indeed, in the latter case, you might look into sex as a ritualized practice, perhaps performed only in the dressings of religious ceremony.

In all cases, the society would be absolutely obsessed with lineage. After all, it's the only sure way to prevent inbreeding. It's likely the society would not only trace lineage matrilineally, but that the government would be matriarchal.

Ha. Now I'm basically describing bits of a micro-society I invented.

Your story sounds like it has elements of Brave New World in it. Just sayin'.

I'd echo SP and say everything you're asking for depends on tech level.

What's the status of:
0) knowledge regarding genetics
1) Contraception
2) Genetic mapping/analysis
3) Physical records
4) Artificial insemination/test tube baby tech
?

You might want to check out the Founder Effect on genetics ( ie a small founder population seperate from the main population), genetic bottlenecks and the effect of both these on genetic drift.

Founder Effect


The Founder effect would be quite strong in a sample of only 1400, and would almost certainly lead to that population becoming quite distinct physically from the main population.

Depending on your tech level, you could have laws regarding breeding only with people whose DNA is X amount different to yours, taboos on marrying anyone in your family to X degree ( ie in the Uk you can marry a first cousin, you might want to make that wider, so you can only share say a great great grandparent)

Rewards: Well how about the more genetically diverse your pairing, the more children you are allowed to have, or financial incentives / increased resources available. If you feel really draconian, you can have the punishment for non diverse breeding similar to the Chinese 'one child' law. Forced abortions etc for those not diverse enough, or less food / sharing of resources.

Probably coupled with hatred and fear of "mutants" or abnormals to the point of infanticide -- as happens in Bujold's Barrayar,

The show, Farscape, did a very good job of this with the Peacekeepers. (Peacekeepers were a military culture.) Sex itself wasn't taboo, it was even in the regs to allow the troops to "lower body fluids". To them, it was just another form of recreation. (And they called it "recreation" rather than sex.) But they did have implants - stasis fields - in the female troops to prevent pregnancies from progressing while in the field. (The stasis lasted up to 7 years.) There was breeding duty for all troops to keep up the number of new "recruits". They also conscripted from their own colonies.

On the other hand, they also had regs/major cultural taboos against associating with "lesser" species, even to the point of being deemed "irreversibly contaminated" which was considered high treason. Having a child with someone not of their race (Sebeacean) was also considered bad. (The reason why was explained in the final mini-series, The Peacekeeper Wars.)

On the Breakaway Colonies, planets that broke away from the original government (the Peacekeeper High Command) thousands of years before, they had some sort of test that allowed them to check for genetic compatability. They'd drink a small vial of the stuff and go around kissing those they were attracted to. If there was no taste, they weren't compatable and never bothered having sex. But if it was sweet, they were genetically compatable. Watch the "Look at the Princess" trilogy of episodes in season two.

My culture unintentionally came up with their own solution - most of the population is gay, so reproduction occurs only once in a great while. Sex which can't produce any heirs could be the norm, while sex which COULD is restricted to mates chosen by the leaders of the society. Flouting the law could result in old-fashioned punishments similar to the pillary, some kind of dunking or scourging, genital-centered torture, or even forced sterilization if they repeatedly refuse to obey the law. You know, if you do some research on the activities of the Inquisition and the Witch Hunters of the middle ages, you'll find plenty of ideas for torture involving sexual organs (but you may want to steel yourself first).

Well, given a reasonable level of tech, the rulers need only implant reversible contraceptive devices in every member of the society at or before puberty. The contraceptive devices would only be "turned off" for a couple selected for breeding. The only problem would be "activated" people straying from their approved partners to other "activated" cheaters. There would need to be safeguards against this reprehensible behavior, as well as severe punishments for anyone who did manage to transgress anyway.

In This Perfect Day, Ira Levin posits a world-wide society in which "brotherly" behavior is imposed on the populace by a combination of genetic engineering and mandatory "treatments," which are cocktails of sedative and impulse-suppression drugs. Because the ultimate goal is for genetic engineering to create perfect behavior independent of drugs, reproduction is carefully controlled. Members already susceptible to control through treatments are taught absolute obedience to the dicates of the society from babyhood. The treatments themselves suppress sexual urges and deliver contraception. Members' movements are constantly tracked by UniComp, a computer that is the supposed impartial dictator of all that is to be.

Unwanted births seemed to be pretty much unknown in this society, given the wide variety of controls. Because Levin knew there would be no story without an exception to the rule, he posited that some individuals are resistant to treatments and could, with ingenuity, find their way to isolated communities of other "incurables."

If your story requires the possibility of unsanctioned breeding, you would need to leave a loophole in the society's precautions. That would probably be a bigger plausibility challenge than the controls in a high-tech society.

Not that one should underestimate the control that low-tech societies could exert through religion, taboos and ostracism.

Communities in real life deal with this issue all the time.

In low-technology cultures that live in small groups, there are usually powerful taboos about having sex with someone in your extended family/clan/sept/lineage/totem/moiety, and thus very little inbreeding.

The real inbreeding issues come from isolated groups within larger societies with laxer taboos--European royalty, for instance, or Hutterites in Canada.

I think cultural pressure would be perfectly effective, as it has been with many low-tech tribal societies in our world.

chevbrock said:

Your story sounds like it has elements of Brave New World in it. Just sayin'.

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Actually, it sounds a lot like Plato's Republic. Seriously.

I wouldn't have a problem with the time scale per se, Rosemerry, but I do wonder, if they've spent that long in space, why any of them would want to become planetbound again. It's long enough that they might as well just be a spacer civilization of some sort.

Has any culture survived 550,000 years?

That puts it pretty firmly in the "unbelievable" camp.

I might propose... and this is just thinking out loud... a semi-stasis condition for the travelers, such that their bodily processes are slowed to (say) 0.1% of normal. They are still awake, they still function, but they will subjectively experience only 550 years of the flight. This has implications for anything mechanical, which would continue to function at full speed, so they could be surrounded by advanced technology and still be reduced to a primitive level of culture.

Just an idea. YMMV. Take it and run if you want, or dowhutchalike.

Just grab 'em in the biscuits.

rosemerry said:

Thanks again for all the replies. I gave out reppies.

I have another question. Is staying 550,000 years in space to unbelievable? I know that execution is everything but is this idea just way to out there to be doable? I was told the timespan was unreasonable but he doesn't read a whole lot so I'm tossing this one out there for you guys.

Thanks again for the great responses.

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Five hundred and fifty thousand years is well over fifty times the length of recorded history on Earth. What possible story arc could take that long?
Also, a light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles. Twenty light-years would be 117,313,920,000,000 miles. A voyage time of 550,000 years gives 213,298,036 miles per years or a speed of 24,349 miles per hour. The Space Shuttle only needs to go 17,285 mph for a typical orbit, why is your colony ship moving so slowly?

CDarklock said:

Has any culture survived 550,000 years?

That puts it pretty firmly in the "unbelievable" camp.

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I guess I wouldn't necessarily assume one culture, thus wouldn't have a problem with this aspect of it, assuming that the group did change over time.

I must, however, have missed the "20 light years" of travel, so I would have a problem with the speed.

Well, two things.

a) they could go a lot faster than 24,349 miles per hour before having lightspeed issues.
b) if they're going at close-ish to lightspeed, time will slow down for them. But they might become infinitely small and massive around the time that has an actual preceptible effect, which would make it useless; I don't know the math.

Atomic Rocket's page on slower-than-light travel may be of some use. The site is a goldmine of detailed explanations about the real physics behind science fiction concepts. That page discusses generation ships and other ways to get humans to a distant planet without FTL.

The rest of the site, especially artificial gravity, engine types, etc, may be of some use to you in designing your ship. (Take his future language page with a grain of salt, though. Conlang nerds (and I say this with love, because they're My People) are pretty much incapable of fair and balanced discourse about which conlangs are best for what. We'll always tell you that our language is the absolute best and the others all suck, because that's the only way we can justify to ourselves all the time we spent learning it).

Someone drew a connection between this thread and The Republic.

I'm really not seeing it. Explainify.

All I can say is, whatever you do, make sure taxes are involved.

CDarklock said:

Has any culture survived 550,000 years?

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How would we know if a culture could survive that long? The first historical records on Earth are less than 8,000 years old; the earliest events related in oral histories seem to date from that timeframe as well (based on hypotheses about astronomical and climate conditions referred to).

So it's all speculative, which is the point of speculative fiction.

Perhaps the males are made to give samples of semen, and when sufficient is gotten, are all sterilized. The semen can be brought out and used when needed, and people could have sex as much as they please.