Re: YASID "Sci-fi Books, Humans with Animal genes/modifications?"

On 3/14/2024 7:25 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

On 3/14/2024 12:27 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 3/14/2024 2:14 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

On 3/14/2024 11:52 AM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

YASID "Sci-fi Books, Humans with Animal genes/modifications?"
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https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1bcw0l7/scifi_books_humans_with_animal_genesmodifications/
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"I read a book maybe 10 years or more ago, set in a future where humanity had played with gene splicing/gene therapy to the point where it was entirely common to see people with animal attributes. There was a whole community of peoples who had Cat/Lion genes who had some feline features and some of their agility, people with snake genes that had some scaled patterns on their skin and had sensuous, smooth movements, and so on. I’ve been trying to find this book for YEARS, but I have no idea what it was called and can’t really remember the plot except that there was a conflict between “normal” humans and those who had their genes modified. Any help, suggestions, or even recommendations about similar books?"
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Is this to specifically exclude uplifted animals to human level sentience?

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The reddit thread covers this.
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 > I don't read Reddit.
Here are the comments to date (what a mess !):
Cordwainer Smith's Ballad of Lost C'Mell and Norstrilia, perhaps?
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Bioceramic
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3 days ago
· edited 3 days ago
This could be describing the Ousters from Dan Simmons' Hyperion series. Plus one of the main characters spent a few years as a goat man.
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Xeelee1123
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3 days ago
Could it be S. Andrew Swann´s Moreau Series?
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volunteeroranje
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3 days ago
Some of the revelation space universe (most The Prefect series and Chasm city) have similar descriptors and stuff. Not sure it’s central enough for your description but it’s present at least.
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Outrageous_Reach_695
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3 days ago
Thanks! Chasm City is the one I was trying to suggest in my response.
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Bleatbleatbang
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3 days ago
· edited 3 days ago
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Main character has cat genes and can purr.
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ShadowFlux85
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3 days ago
Not your book but some similar ideas in Adrian Tzaikovsky's works, both in children of time later books and the shadows of the apt series
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dblowe
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3 days ago
Sounds a lot like Cordwainer Smith’s”Underpeople”
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stimpakish
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3 days ago
Another vote for Cordwainer Smith's works others mentioned.
There are also similar elements in Linda Nagata's Bohr Maker (and series), to name one that hasn't been metioned yet.
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Ravenloff
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3 days ago
SM Stirling's Draka (drakensis sapien) used a little bit of this and that from terrestrial animals when they completely remade themselves genetically. Being a slave-owning "race", they were able to completely outpace western democracies in the biological sciences because they didn't shy away from human testing at all. Got a serf that's giving your plantation trouble? Send that tool-that-thinks to the Security Directorate.
The Draka books were amazingly well-written. A trilogy that basically sees a cold war from what we would consider as the objectively evil side of things. He followed that with the Nantucketer trilogy and for a while there I was willing to buy anything with his name as the author. After the first three books of the emberverse, though...kinda soured on him. I think he was making up for perceived liberties taken with the Draka books.
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FTLast
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3 days ago
Don’t give up on Mr Stirling entirely. The Peshawar Lancers is quite good, as are the two The Sky People books. The Black Chamber books have been quite entertaining as well.
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Ravenloff
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3 days ago
Read those, of course! And agreed though I wish the Lords of Creation had been finished. The endless and off the rails emberverse did me in though. All that build up...zero payoff.
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FTLast
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2 days ago
Yeah, I gave up on those, too. Stirling has a couple of hobbyhorses- food, martial arts and lesbians- that he overdoes. Throw in Wiccans… ugh.
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Ravenloff
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2 days ago
I'm glad you mentioned food, lol. His lists of food became ubertolkein. Personally, I think he got a lot of flak for the main protagonists in Stone Dogs and Drakan, tried to make up with Marion Alston/Swindapa in the Nantucketer trilogy, and then just kept going in that direction. I actually have had a couple of conversations with him, both online and in person, and we didn't agree either time :)
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codejockblue5
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3 days ago
There are five Draka books in total. The fourth book, Drakon, is the best. And the scariest with all of the genetic modifications finished in their universe.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671877119/
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Ravenloff
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3 days ago
Four novels, one omnibus, and a collection of shared universe shorts. What am I missing?
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codejockblue5
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3 days ago
You got them all. I did not even know about the omnibus. The fifth book is a book of short stories.
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Ravenloff
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3 days ago
When I say he was my favoirte author, I meant it :) I talked my wife into spending our 10th anniversary on Nantucket so I could visit the sites mentioned in the trilogy. But I have to say again...was.
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codejockblue5
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3 days ago
Why was ?
David Weber is my favorite author with Robert Heinlein almost a photo finish with him. Then there is a quite a few with S. M. Stirling in the bunch along with Alan Dean Foster, John Varley, Martha Wells, Seanan McGuire, Lois McMaster Bujold, Steven Gould, John Ringo, Larry Correia, Andy Weir, Faith Hunter, etc.
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Ravenloff
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2 days ago
No Peter F Hamilton?? If you liked 90's/2000's Stirling, you would probably love PFH. Start with Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. I've definitely read me some Weber and strapped in for the entire Safehold series, but honestly...it's artillery porn with a huge cast ;) Would love for him to finish the Hell's Gate series. I only remember seeing two books there and no finale. I've got writer friends that collaborate with him here and there so I keep up to date. Can honestly say, though, while I do enjoy a lot of his work, I could never get into the Honorverse. No idea why.
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Ravenloff
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2 days ago
Oh...and to answer your question...he just leaned way too heavily into dead end story arcs and even with my ample suspension of disbelief, made choices, especially in the emberverse, that I just couldn't get beyond. Mainly the massive build-up to zero payoff thing, and then it just...kept...going...no thanks.
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codejockblue5
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2 days ago
For instance, I loved the first four books of The Emberverse (Dies The Fire) series. The next 5 or 6 ??? books, not so much. I have the next two books in my SBR.
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Ravenloff
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2 days ago
I got through their trip to Nantucket and back so I think that was six total. Didn't see any reason to continue after that.
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ImaginaryEvents
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3 days ago
I have a vague memory of a pantheroid as the best friend of a mc, maybe in the "Jak Jinnaka" series by John Barnes starting with The Duke of Uranium (2002)
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MegC18
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3 days ago
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga has a teenage mercenary with feline genes
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codejockblue5
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3 days ago
I thought Tara had wolf genes ???
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tegeus-Cromis_2000
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3 days ago
As others have suggested, Cordwainer Smith is the closest fit. There's also Brian Aldiss's An Island Called Moreau.
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Bquestnow
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3 days ago
Gridlinked by Neal Asher
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AlwaysSayHi
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3 days ago
The various 'adapts show up even more as the series goes on.
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Outrageous_Reach_695
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3 days ago
Were combat enhancements illegal?
Did one of the main characters have some sort of ocular upgrades?
(Also not pulling a title up for the book I'm thinking of. Thought it was something to do with 'rift', but that's a dead end.)
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Wolf_Daddy87
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3 days ago
Combat enhancements were not illegal, but modifications in general were looked down upon by the public at large. Kind of like Goths in the 90s… Looked down upon by society at large, but very popular within certain communities. And yes, ocular enhancements were a thing.
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ActonofMAM
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3 days ago
John Scalzi's "Android's Dream" has several humans with other mammalian genes, but we really only meet one of them.
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TungstenChap
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3 days ago
There is human/animal gene-splicing like you describe in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, either in Green Mars or Blue Mars: people routinely re-customize their genome for aesthetical purpose, to add tiger stripes for example, which manifest themselves after a few days following the splicing session
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Fr0gm4n
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3 days ago
It's certainly not the book you are looking for, but in a similar posthuman genre you might look into Bruce Sterling's Schizmatrix stories in his Shaper/Mechanist universe.
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unkilbeeg
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3 days ago
H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau.
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hvyboots
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3 days ago
This is 100% not the book you read, but if you want to read something more in the genre, then The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is right up your alley. It's more magical realism than science fiction (and takes place in the 1800s, I think) but it's definitely in that niche of literature.
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tykeryerson
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3 days ago
Definitely Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky
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B0b_Howard
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3 days ago
Sounds a bit like "Lucifer's Dragon" by Jon Courtenay Grimwood.
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Sovietgnome
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3 days ago
Elizabeth Bear featured similar human/animal hybrids, what she calls "moreaux," in her Edda of Burdens trilogy. I don't think it has the same human / non-human conflict you're looking for though.
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anonyfool
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3 days ago
There is significant genetic modification in the Xenogenesis series by Octavia Butler and Old Man's War by John Scalzi but not in the way you describe, to reveal more would spoil stuff. People are mentioning Oryx and Crake, but that does not have conflict with genetically modified or even genetically modified humans IIRC, it's used for making diseases and cures and biological weapons and making new hybrid creatures that are not possible in our world or replacements for extinct species. Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series starts with genetically modifying animals to increase chances for terraforming planets but that morphs into much more.
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Fappy_as_a_Clam
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3 days ago
Not the book your looking for but this type of thing is all over Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space books
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CambodianDrywall
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3 days ago
Not your book, but the Koban series by Stephen Bennett are based on humans working towards genetic modifications in order to compete with an invading alien species.
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danklymemingdexter
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3 days ago
Surprised no one's mentioned Beasts, John Crowley's second novel. It's a bit overshadowed by Engine Summer and Little, Big now, but I really like it. Lion/human genetic hybrids, being hunted down by humans.
Yet to read anything by Crowley I've felt let down by.
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scythianraider
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3 days ago
Reading 'Plague Bird' right now, forget the author but he was one of the ones who helped uncover the Hugo scandal this year so his book was worth a buy to me.
As someone else mentioned, it's hard to beat Hyperion.
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UnculturedWomble
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3 days ago
Another in the "it's not this but" vein, but Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, people (criminals mostly) get partnered/spliced with animals to keep them under control in some way (the main character gets paired with a sloth). Looked down upon because of the negative connotations of it. I liked it when I read it years back.
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lrosa
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3 days ago
James Kahn's World Enough, and Time (1980) and its sequel Time's dark laughter (1982) are set in a post-apocalyptic future where genetic modifications allowed to create various kind of mythological creatures mixing human genome.
There is a third book of the series, Timefall (1987) but I didn't read it (yet).
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Bollalron
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3 days ago
Boy have I got a movie for you. I hope you like Rob Schneider.
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dan_dorje
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3 days ago
This is ringing some bells for me rn but I'm struggling to think of the story. Was the protagonist like a lonesome old unmodded guy trying to track down an ex or something like that?
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larry-cripples
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2 days ago
Could it be Babel-17?
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Wolf_Daddy87
Op ·
1 day ago
Thank you all for the great responses! Haven’t had a chance to look into all of y’all’s suggestions/recommendations, but you’ve definitely given me a lot to look for; much appreciated!
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codejockblue5
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1 day ago
I take it we did not find the book that you are looking for ?
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Wolf_Daddy87
Op ·
23 hr. ago
Haven’t had a chance to go through them all yet; maybe 🤔
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rodrigo-benenson
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3 days ago
A google search says that Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood might be the book you are looking for.
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anonyfool
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3 days ago
There's no conflict between the genetically modified and unmodified - there essentially cannot be due to certain things, and the genetically modified are not mixing with the normals until a critical plot event.
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SpoilerAvoidingAcct
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3 days ago
Oryx and Crake comes to mind.
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edcculus
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3 days ago
It’s definitely Animorphs.
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Agile-Dragonfruit-85
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3 days ago
Thundercats
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Wolf_Daddy87
Op ·
3 days ago
Not Animorphs, although I did love the series. The book I’m referring to wasn’t about people turning into animals, it was about humans that added traits from animals into their genome. Some of the changes were purely cosmetic, but some actually provided enhance abilities.
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edcculus
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3 days ago
lol, I shouldn’t have needed a /s on my post to be obvious it was a joke
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Sovietgnome
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3 days ago
Hey, it got a laugh out of me at least!
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rodrigo-benenson
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3 days ago
Perplexity.ai suggests:
"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood, which features genetic engineering and a post-apocalyptic setting. Another possibility is the "Uplift Series" by David Brin, which involves genetically improved animal.
If you're looking for recommendations on similar books, the Reddit threads in the search results offer numerous suggestions for works that involve genetic engineering as a central theme, such as "The Revelation Space series" by Alastair Reynolds, "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, and "The Sleepless Series" by Nancy Kress. Additionally, "The Mutant Project" by Eben Kirksey discusses the ethical and social implications of human genetic modification.
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