Re: [FH] Pantropists and John Crimmins was ecofundamentalists

At 07:04 AM 11/17/02 -0600, you wrote:
>
>>If, on the other hand, the Pantropists look *just* like the Aliens
from
>the
>>movie of the same name, then I'm golden.  That probably stretching
things
>>just a little too much, though.
>
>Did they have just one planet? Might they have the variety if they've
>'homed' two or more worlds, with different conditions? Sorry, I
EXTREMELY
>fuzzy on their whole FH...

They're scattered over half a dozen planets, plus a few deep space
habitats.

The Pantropist philosophy centers on living in harmony with the planets,
which they consider to be living beings -- Lovelock's "Gaia Hypothesis"
taken to a very extreme position.  To this end, they find the very idea
of
terraforming to abhorrent, on the level of genocide, even in the case of
a
world with no life advanced beyond the bacterial stage.

Their extremism got them into trouble in two ways: first when they
stared
blowing up the corporate headquaters of companies involved in
terraforming
research, and then when they began genetically altering human beings
(forbidden under internation law), which lead to the creation of aquatic
humans.

Most of their leaders ended up under arrest, while the remainder fled
the
planet and took rfuge wherever they could. 

Early experiments involved adapting human beings to live in new
environments while still maintaining a humanoid form (thus the Encounter
Suit guys, who could just be, say, ammonia breathers) while the more
radical fringe have entirely discarded the human form and have been
designing people that will fit more-or-less seamlessly into alien
ecosystems.

*These* Pantropists don't look human at all, and probably aren't humans
in
any meaningful way.  Their societies are developing in some very unusual
(and a little disturbing) ways.

John Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com