Humanity first achieved working cold fusion technology in the year 2000, jumpstarting an era of space exploration and colonization. This push to develop technology to live on places other than Earth was driven in part by urgency regarding Earth’s changing climate, which was being heated gradually by a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere created as a byproduct of hydrocarbon-burning industry.
While the wealthy financed off-world habitation and gradually moved away, material conditions and climate change continued to worsen on Earth. As global temperatures increased, regions of Earth became inhabitable to humans and sea levels rose 300 meters, triggering a massive refugee crisis and the failure of coastal infrastructure around the globe. Systemic intervention was blocked again and again by corrupt power structures and corporations who had already left Earth and had no incentive to spend time and money mitigating the mess they had left behind. Many saw the disaster as a “natural” solution to overpopulation on Earth.
In 2138, this tension finally came to a breaking point between US colonies on Mars and the continental United States, beginning the Second American Civil War. Allies were drawn into either side of the conflict with wealthy parties of many different nations seeking to control spreading dissent on Earth, among transit workers on Luna, and in the mining colonies of the outer solar system. This culminated in orbital bombardment of several highly populated regions of the USA, Russia, and China.
Although off-world colonies had a lot of financial power, they were ultimately relatively fragile and dependent on lifelines of mined material from the outer planets and resources provided from Earth’s biosphere. Supply line choking to prominent stations in orbit of Earth, cloud colonies on Venus, and Martian surface colonies began to seriously strain the resources of the off-world powers. The nail in the coffin for the war was armed worker revolts directly on American Martian soil and Russo-Chinese Venusian skies. In 2143, the former United States and Russia had shattered into a collection of independently controlled territories scattered between 4 different planets, and the war was over.
In 2145, a United Nations summit met on Earth to address the state of human space after the war and the climate crisis on Earth. Luna and Jovia were declared independent autonomous polities and the use of hydrocarbon fuels on Earth was almost universally banned.
After WW3, the genetech industry faced a large wave of public scrutiny and calls for regulation on more extreme designer baby body types and “company” GMH. Company GMH were clades created specifically for the private labor market, such as tailed spacers. Although these clades were generally not forced into labor on paper, in practice they were often financially and institutionally pressured into preferred private labor positions, or designed with bodies that made it inconvenient to work in fields outside those intended by investors. In modern times company GMH clades are nigh-universally banned under criticisms of being modern slavery; but creation of clades for civic or scientific projects or designer baby marketing campaigns remain controversially less regulated.
As part of the post-WW3 scrutiny, a set of legal guidelines for GMH bodies was introduced by international human rights organizations, and acknowledged by the UN. These guidelines are:
GMH who do not fall into these guidelines are considered off-model, and the parties responsible for the undesirable result can face legal consequences. Severity of the penalty depends on the degree of intent and negligence, meaning labs that can prove that the off-model results were a result of nurture, or unforeseeable accidents usually only walk away with a slap on the wrist and minor fines.
These rules also apply specifically to natal labs and genetic scientists designing GMO humans in laboratories from scratch; and not to adult humans consenting to body modification. Laws about the extent to which biomodders are permitted to alter themselves with surgery, lab grown limbs, and cosmetic gene therapy vary regionally.
The most commonly spoken languages in human space are English, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, and Hindi. The story mostly takes place in Anglophone space, and there are a couple of regional variants.
Jovian English
Jovian English is the dialect of English spoken in the outer solar system. It is a descendant of Martian English and the two are very similar, although accent, slang, and word usage varies enough to make them distinct.
Jovian English has three sets of singular third person pronouns. She/her/hers for assumed female humans; he/him/his for assumed male humans; and they/them/theirs; which is used for humans of unknown gender, assumed non-binary or unisex humans, or aliens (who regardless of sex comparisons, are usually considered different genders than human male and female). The extremely frequent use of they as a singular pronoun has led to the common use of a slang word "th'all," a contraction of "they all," meaning the same thing as a plural they. Its possessive form is th'all's.
Martian English
Martian English more closely resembles the American English it descended from, and is spoken in the two countries on the surface of Mars that used to be U.S. States. There are other Anglophone regions of Mars that speak English dialects closer to the countries that their regions are affiliated with, but they tend to be influenced by Martian English because there is much greater lag between Earth than Mars locals.
Martian English speakers refer to some sophonts and technology differently than Jovians. Centaurs are called tigerhorses, wormhole generators are called gates, and bug ferrets are called gateworms.
Martian English shares the she and he of Jovian English, but disagrees on the neutral singular. They is not commonly used as a singular pronoun outside of cases of a hypothetical human or human of unknown gender, for assumed non-binary or unisex humans xe/xem/xers is preferred (x pronounced as a "Z"). Aliens, who are also assumed non-gendered, get their own singular pronoun group: xey/xem/xeirs.
"X" pronouns are fairly popular in tailed spacer communities and can be found in several different forms there, including both the Martian variants, xe/xim/xis, and xe/xer/xers.
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GMH Social Impact
The pre-natal route involves the altering of an individual’s genetics and in-utero conditions before they are born in order to design the desired look or function. This can be as small as disease prevention or eye color, or it can be extremely radical body changes, limited only by humans rights laws requiring some features (like hands, legs, skull, brain, overall size, and sexual characteristics) remain within certain boundaries so that the resulting person can function in regular society. These laws and the morality of creating GMHs is hotly debated in universe.
Supporters view designer babies of this type to be morally allowable because no human consents to being born, being born with six legs isn’t an offense to a fertilized egg any more than being born with the regular amount is. Detractors cite the fact that changing a baby from the genetic default opens them up to possible discrimination and poor treatment wildtype babies do not face, and potentially increases the cost of their medical care both in giving them unique anatomy but because unforeseen medical issues later in a GMH’s life aren’t uncommon. There’s also concern from many activists about the interaction of GMHs and capitalism, where GMHs existing is seen largely as a result of late 21st century capitalism shifting the Overton window on human cloning for its own financial benefit at the expense of human welfare, and this kind of designer baby is only seen as acceptable in current societies because of the current existence of other humans who have already been altered in this way. Even GMHs themselves tend to have pretty varied views on the legality and morality of making more GMHs.
The whole issue is further confused by the fact some GMH groups are now established populations that can produce offspring the Regular Way with the same traits. Additionally some genetically altered traits, like non-standard hair, skin, and eye colors and patterns can be passed onto children with wildtype partners, and are now floating around in the ostensibly “wildtype“ human gene pool.
Do GMHs that don’t fit their “purpose” deal with discriminatory behavior (I.e. Gillie not being in entertainment or Shyam not working in space)?
Yeeeep, usually because getting a job in those areas is a free ride for them from birth, and the choice to not go down the incentivized career path can make outsiders suspicious of your motives or jealous in a weird “you could have had it so easy!” way. Going down the incentivized path just means weird jealousy behavior of the “you had it so easy!” flavor, and dealing with the fact that you were born to be a commodity for a company or government yet they still made you “choose” to work for them.
The situation with GMHs is, morally speaking, rather fucked.
GMHs are made for a lot of different reasons by people with lots of different goals and intentions. How they are treated varies wildly in RttS’s ‘present’ and in the past. Arguably, GMHs becoming more common has increased WT human prejudice, because they went from rare scientific/medical oddities to ubiquitous societal groups that have been around for centuries. Easier to form complex grudges and hateful ideas about them that way
GMHs are usually raised by volunteer parents, foster parents, or the family that commissioned them. Occasionally they are raised by a research group, but usually the people involved in their engineering are kept to the sidelines, as more of a doctor/medical assistant. There are some worse setups out there but they are usually pretty illegal
True for both fiction and real life, sapients looking to be assholes will pick targets who are more likely to be vulnerable. Someone who is visibly from a marginalized class, outside your social bubble, or culturally deemed “ugly” or “imperfect” is an easier target. People who are less openly rude but still bigoted will also treat you less favorably and won’t offer you the same opportunities they afford the people they prefer. By concealing the fact she is an “off-model” GMH outside of personal life, Gillie can dodge a lot of overt and covert aggression from these types.
Most of the bigots Gillie is avoiding are other humans. But, skimmer avians are more likely than any of the other aliens to harass GMHs, and not just “off-model” ones (as many cannot recognize the difference).
The reason is a little esoteric: There’s a cluster of old skimmer religions that states in doctrine that there was originally one avian species, and then after a fall from grace they were split into multiple imperfect species (the current lineup: skimmer, polar, pygmy, flightless, and diver). The story varies but usually the original avian was a skimmer or strongly resembled one, and the other avians are “pieces that came off of them.” This myth was used a lot on their planet to justify colonialism and treatment of the other members of their genus as lesser beings. Though avians in general have secularized during their space age, the story still has a lot of cultural power. For example, one of their biggest scientific controversies is whether or not skimmer avians “evolved first,” which on an ocean planet is very hard to find fossil evidence for one way or another.
WHAT does this have to do with GMHs? Well, in the eyes of a lot of avians, humans are falling from grace in real time– enacting the beginning of a mythic history that has created a lot of strife on their planet. Non-skimmers tend to be sympathetic to GMHs, some feeling as though they have a shared victimhood; and skimmers tend to see GMHs either as a Big Mistake that is going to result in major conflict (an opinion which they share with a fair amount of humans), and/or a place to project their racist anger at other avians that won’t get them in trouble (with other avians). It’s a mess!
Biomodders
Post-natal changes, or bio-modding, is a whole other kettle of moral fish. It’s almost always done at the request of consenting adults, and is close in spirit to modern extreme body modification. There are limits to what can be modded– most plastic surgeons are only willing to culture and swap out soft tissue, and gene therapy is usually required during the healing process for grafts to be accepted. Muscular additions are a bit of a crapshoot because there’s not telling how well the brain will adapt to and learn to control new muscle tissue. The feelings between bio-modders and designer GMHs are often slightly hostile… while a GMH doesn’t elect to look the way they do and can be at risk for prejudiced treatment, a bio-modder opts into almost the same situation for few reasons other than aesthetic preference.
GMO Pets and Agriculture
There is a viral dance craze in Runaway to the Stars "modern day" (approx. 2325), because what is society without a viral dance craze. It began on Martian social media and then spread to the rest of the human internet via the extranet social platform Megaforum.
It is called "The Whop."
It takes some skill to whop quickly without losing your balance, and videos of skilled whoppers dancing in increasingly ridiculous and inconvenient locations has plagued the human internet for years now. It has a resurgence every time a new bubble of human space discovers and spreads it.
There is also a two-person version of The Whop:
Two-person whopping is extremely popular among children, much to the dismay of their elders. If you don't pay attention and keep time with the other party, it's extremely easy to slap them square in the face. Video compilations of people getting injured while whopping abound. School nurses have seen many victims of the viral dance, sent in with bruises and bloodied noses after whopping too hard.