Designer Babies: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

{{quote|''"They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don't say that anymore."''|'''Vincent''', ''[[Gattaca]]''}}

 

 

 

 

See also the [[Evilutionary Biologist]] and [[Social Darwinist]].

== Anime & Manga ==

* That's a big part of the premise behind ''[[Saber Marionette J]]''.

* An interesting variant occurs in ''[[Simoun]]'', in which one of the enemy nations has replaced the traditional method of sex selection among the [[Human Aliens]] who populate the world: instead of everyone being female until 17, and choosing a sex then, the enemy nation assigns sexes to babies shortly after birth through hormones and surgery.

* ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' includes a more realist variation on the concept- the babies produced by Franz Bonaparta's program {{spoiler|including Johan and Anna/Nina}} are conceived in the normal way and carried by their own biological mothers, but their parents were handpicked by the program's supervisors and manipulated into falling in love.

* In ''[[Vandread]]'', humanity has split into a planet of all males called Tarak and a planet of all females called Mejare. DNA from a couple is manipulated to give a new baby. On Tarak, this means a factory birth, while on Mejare, the baby is implanted in the womb to be born normally. This makes them effectively a pair of [[One-Gender Race|One Gender Races]], though normal breeding could be resumed. Note that these are not the only colony worlds left, just the main ones we see.

* In ''[[Gundam Wing]]'', all of the Winner family's children {{spoiler|(except Quatre)}} were test tube babies, due to the then-current difficulties of natural birth in space.

* In the [[Needs More Love|(little known)]] anime ''[[Himawari]]!'', most of the ninjas, {{spoiler|including the title character}}, are test tube babies, designed to be perfect ninja.

* Ayanami Rei and Nagisa Kaworu from ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' fit this trope, minus the whole metaphysical mumbo jumbo that accompanies them and their superpowers, of course.

* An early example is ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' by Aldous Huxley, making it [[Older Than Television]]. Babies are "grown" here too (and "decanted" rather than "born"), though this was before the development of modern genetics, so they must resort to more complicated and organic means than flipping genetic switches to create their hereditary castes.

* [[Utopia]] Example: ''Herland'', by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The titular land is a [[Mary Suetopia|utopia]] because it is inhabited ''only'' by women, who can reproduce parthenogenically (without a male), and without genetic diversity/contamination, only pass amiable, peaceful, and otherwise perfect (boring) personality genes onto their offspring.

* Another 'utopian' example, is the city of Diaspar, the last bastion of humanity, in Arthur C. Clarke's ''Against the Fall of Night''/''The City and the Stars'', where humanity appears to have given up on sexual reproduction, in favour of an unimaginably massive database of personalities. Whenever a new person is to be born, a personality is downloaded into a created body, and assigned a couple to be its parents. When a person dies, they may choose what memories of theirs will be carried into their next incarnation, which may be ''millennia'' in the future, such is the size of the database, and those memories will become available to their new incarnation once it becomes an adult and has developed a truly unique personality through its childhood. 'Uniques', personalities seemingly generated during the creation process, do occur, but are viewed either as a wonderful accident, one of many little tricks to prevent stagnation, or as some great and possibly subversive plan by Diaspar's architects. Of course, {{spoiler|later on it turns out that there is a second remaining pocket of humanity, Lys, where humans have chosen to be born naturally, and die without the assurance of artificial reincarnation, living an Agrarian lifestyle and having over time developed empathic capabilities. Interestingly however, neither is presented as 'right', rather, as two distinct, viable versions of utopia. The part the book presents as ''wrong'' is the two cultures decision to totally isolate themselves from one another.}}

* In [[Woman On The Edge Of Time]], this is how the [[Mary Suetopia]] society reproduces. It's all but stated that this is a necessary sacrifice to eliminate the last vestige of gender discrimination. On the upside, a child is not only raised by the whole village, but get three parents to look after and nurture it. The society also tends to be a [[Free-Love Future]].

* In ''The Court Of The Air'', female slaves in Cassarabia ''wish'' their wombs were used to incubate this trope, and not the [[Biological Mashup]] monstrosities which the local bio-wizards dream up.

* In [[S.M. Stirling]]'s [[The Draka|Domination of the Draka]] series, the Draka, starting in the late 20th Century, gene-engineer their own babies for physical strength, speed and endurance, their serfs' babies for docility, all babies for intelligence. By the 25th Century humanity in the solar system has split into two distinct species, which by design are not interfertile: ''Homo drakensis'' and ''Homo servus.'' The ''drakensis'' are designed for war and survival, almost impossible to kill, do not age physically after the age of 25, and exude pheromones they can use to emotionally dominate ''servus'' and unmodified ''Homo sapiens.'' (They're also constantly horny, incredibly sexy, and universally bisexual.) A Draka female, ordinarily sterile, is still capable of bearing their own babies, if she takes a month to get her uterus up and running by biofeedback techiques, but it is considered perverse; all ''drakensis'' are gestated by implanting fertilized ova into ''servus'' host-mothers, or mechanical "orthowombs."

* The inhabitants of Sulva (Earth's Moon) are said to be born this way in [[That Hideous Strength]]. Apparently they can only be turned on by [[Sex Bot|sexbots]] and therefore can't make babies the normal way.

* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s novel ''Friday'', human society has learned to grow custom-tailored humans and other creatures; these are known as "Artificial Persons" if they are superficially human and "Living Artifacts" if they are clearly not human. Both are subject to a great deal of [[Fantastic Racism]]; the eponymous protagonist is an AP and suffers from a crushing inferiority neurosis because of it.

* In ''[[Honor Harrington]]'', Manpower, Inc. specializes in these. Everything from technicians to miners to jugglers and ''entertainers''. Skrags in the backstory are a mix of Gattaca Baby and [[Transhuman]], with the nastiest containing so many artificial improvements they were sterile and long dead. Many characters are actually somewhat 'Genie' as Honor herself. But due to the horror of the Skrags, anything Transhuman is looked down on. The new Arc is a war between Transhumanists and baselines that started as a break in philosophy.

* In ''[[Infinity Beach]]'', genetic engineering is common. The main character, Kimberly, is a clone of her older sister Emily.

* [[SL Viehl]]'s ''[[Stardoc]]'' series follows a young female doctor named Cherijo Torin, who discovers in the first novel that she is a genetically-modified clone of her "father", who eventually wanted to marry her. That's right, not only did he want to [[Screw Yourself|screw himself]] (and later novels indicate that he already did that with his ''male'' clones) but he wanted to do it with someone he raised as his daughter. Cherijo (who name is, actually, an acronym meaning [[Fun with Acronyms|"Comprehensive Human Enhancement Research ID: J Organism"]]) discovers that she is immune to any disease, as her body actively fights against any foreign organism in her (which causes problems when she {{spoiler|gets pregnant}}), and has a [[Healing Factor]] (in a later novel, she is perfectly willing to throw herself from a big height in order to get a winged friend to save her, even though her colleague later points out that, while her body would probably heal, any brain damage would be permanent).

** Oh, and genetic engineering is forbidden in human space ({{spoiler|except by her "father", who has helped to pass the law and received special dispensation}}), and any "freak" is to be caught and executed as a [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|non-person]]. When the colony finds out that she is a clone, some of the [[Jerkass]] characters immediately start calling her "it", claiming that her "intelligence" is merely an imitation programmed into her.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* Ransik's villain motivation in ''[[Power Rangers Time Force]]'' is that, in the year 3000, he was a [[Mutants|mutant]] instead of a designer baby like everyone else, and was a pariah growing up. In fact, all of the [[Monster of the Week|Monsters of the Week]] are mutant accidents.

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Doctor's Daughter", {{spoiler|there's an entire society created by machines which spilt one persons cells into a sets of haploid cells and recombines them to make a new adult in seconds.}}

* In the ''[[Star Trek]]'' franchise, Earth suffers a terrible series of Eugenics Wars in the [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|near future]] between normal humans and genetic "augments." By the logic that "superior ability breeds superior ambition," these young [[ubermensch]] all tend to suffer a [[Take Over the World|Napoleon complex,]] leading them to war not just with mankind, but with each other. Humanity wins, with the lasting result that [[No Transhumanism Allowed|genetic engineering of human beings is outlawed and held in universal contempt for centuries afterward.]] The two most well known augments in Trek are Kirk's archnemesis Khan Noonien Singh; and [[Deep Space Nine]]'s doctor Julian Bashir, who was augmented illegally.

* In ''[[Century City]]'', a fertility specialist is sued for having his clients babies turn out gay.

 

 

** '''Humanity''' as a whole is moving towards this. By the twenty-second century, genetic engineering has advanced to the point where the [[We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future|majority of genetic disorders have been cured]]. Governments provide free screening and genetic modification to prospective parents, and as a result everything from near-sightedness to cystic fibrosis has been cured. While IVF is the preferred method of modification, it can also be done on embryos and newborns out of respect for personal belief.

* The Sivadians in [[OtherSpace]] have taken genetic modification in two directions. First, to create beautiful, intelligent, athletic offspring. Second, to create specialized slaves, designed to be [[Wolverine|the best there is at what they do]] to better serve their masters.

 

== Web Original ==

[[Category:Alien Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Television]]

[[Category:Designer Babies]]