Nice to see an Albedo regular make an appearance.

Yaaaaaaaaaay!

I remember I was lucky enough to get the piece at a Westercon in 85.

The piece is still in my laughing place.

Wonderful.

Dea in Dat Dress. :) I had everyone's command attention...

Oh, that dress!

Fearless Backless.

Bust truster! Stuff a special lady into a special dress, and this happens.

So no longer digitigrade?

Dea wasn't. Maybe you're thinking of Jenna from Birthright?

Any reason why some of them were digitigrade and others plantigrade, or some had hair and others didn't? Was it a random genetic variation the creators couldn't quite eliminate, or were these variations intentional?

Having design fun. Both me and by extension, the designers. I had the idea of a little genetic flexibility for sports and hybrids, to create new lines.

So is the TVtropes Albedo page wrong, and the creators made the various Species to be commercial products? But then what is the Great Experiment? So confuse.... D:

Not surprised the the TV Tropes entries have errors, as does the various other web references. (I was never a Vietnam combat vet being a major one) First generation artifacts were used for special applications, like starship's ship's dogs. The idea was that there would be a few crew on board a ship that were sufficently different on a basic biological level to survive the totally unforeseeable, along with Spacers, special highly reworked humans, designed to live on space habitats and ships full time, immune to zero gee. Later, as the artifacts were proven to be safe and effective, they became available to the public. The Dog House stories center around that. The Great Experiment was to establish a whole separate civilization of artifacts to see how their society would evolve in the long term (centuries)

Huh.... I had always imagined a more significant reason for the Great Experiment other than "Let's throw a bunch of critters into this uninhabited galaxy and see what happens." Not that a social experiment on that scale isn't a grand undertaking.

Since I have your attention.... How does the Net play into all of this? Clearly it's monitoring the experiment, but why does it take such a role in shaping the lives of these critters? Wouldn't that kind of meddling in events contaminate the experiment by pushing the experiment toward a specific, desired result instead of allowing the society to evolve without outside influence? Are there experimental controls I'm not seeing here?

(Thanks for answering these questions, btw.... if there's a place where these stories are located and it would be easier to just send me there, point me to the nearest door and I'll come back to the room after I've read them all).

The Net is doing things to add stressors to the situation to see how resilient the society is. Keeping in mind that it is doing things to a tiny number versus a vast interstellar population. Like with the Erma clones. She and a few others have copies out and about to see what that particular genomic product might do in other environments.

Huh. So what is it the Creators ultimately expect to gain from all this data? Sounds like a combination of product testing and aimless curiosity. Are they looking to create a better society for themselves, or is this more of a scientific Truman Show-esque situation on a mass scale?

Product testing and aimless curiosity isn't far from the mark. There is another reason too, but I'm not telling. Yet.

Ah! Yes...

The lovely Dea. She was such a babe in the comics.