Super Beast Soldiers

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Subject: Super Beast Soldiers
Miles 2/27/2007 12:18:33 AM

What do you think of a military science fiction about a nation, who creates a race of half human half soldiers to fight in a war? Would this idea be excelent for a novel? (This is my idea, don't take it!) An army of half human half animal soldiers, called Super Beast Soldiers. I don't believe anyone made a story like this.

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smitty237 2/27/2007 12:32:40 AM

Soldiers are humans..................but I know what you mean. I'm not a big sci-fi fan, but the whole concept of genetically engineered super soldiers is an old idea. Most story lines involve genetically engineered humans or clones that are raised from birth to be soldiers (i.e., clone troopers from the Star Wars series, or Universal Soldier). As far as a human/animal hybrid soldier goes, I guess you could create a novel based upon that, but you would have to somehow address the difficulty of blending human and animal DNA, and then train whatever creature came from that to be a perfect, mindless, uncompassionate soldier (see The Watchers). Sorry.

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Jeff_F_F 2/27/2007 11:14:41 AM

An interesting concept. Not exactly new, but still interesting. One note is that although being able to use a bipedal posture is a major advantage in that one can hold weapons, being able to switch to a quadrupedal posture such as used by great apes allows better penetration of foliage than a bipedal stance, and allows a lower profile when moving at speed. Chimpanzees are also much much much stronger than humans so they could carry more gear, armor, etc. This might be because the leverage of their joints is designed for strength more than for speed, I'd do some more research before having human-chimp hybrids packing hundreds of pounds of gear *and* lobbing hand grenades hundreds of meters, but then only geeks like me would think of that, most will let you get away with it once your geneticists address the design of the chimp hand, which is currently incapable of the fine control needed to throw the way humans do.

There is a very tiny amount of genetic difference to deal with. Chimpanzees are also very agressive and warlike. Tossing rocks (generally two handed) and using clubs is commonplace and Google news reported last week that some chimpanzee troops have learned to use spears. Chimpanze warfare is guerilla or gang-style hit and run. They have fairly advanced communication ability at present. Give them human intellect and get their hands up to human sophistication and you are in business with potentially quite effective combat troops. With current intellect they mature much faster than humans so you don't really need to clone them. Increasing their intellect might require a longer period spent maturing though. You might not even have to hybridize them with humans, just tweak their genetic code a bit.

One note, if your troops have human intellect so they can use advanced technology they may eventually decide that they should be running the show. See the history of the Janissaries, which were the military caste of Turkey at one time, until they got uppity and had to be put down. Their human masters might assume that they are subhuman and not capable of things like intrigue and such, but chimpanzees appear to have a fairly sophisticated language and are capable of a full range of human political behavior, including deliberate lying and deception. We don't necessarily know how they communicate (at least a decade ago when I did research we didn't) but experiments have shown that they do.

A scientific magazine (Discover?) had an article on semian political behavior in the early 90s. If you are looking for it, the key word Machiavillian might help, I think it was part of the title. The main thrust was that the more intellegent the ape the more sophisticated the level of manipulation and deception shown in political behavior. Some scientists theorize that the need to be better at manipulating and avoiding manipulation drove the growth of human intellegence, with Bill Clinton and Carl Rove as the inevitable results. They think that using tools, reasoning, and such is merely and useful byproduct, which might have interesting implications for your book.

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Miles A video game 9/11/2007 4:52:12 PM

What if I make Super Beast Soldiers a video game instead?

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VeritechSkyline 10/31/2007 4:31:58 AM

An RPG called Rifts, created by Kevin Siembieda addresses the animal man super soldier scenario. The empire of man in North America called the Coalition experimented with all sorts of animal hybrids and concluded only the dog species was reliable, as they are naturally loyal pack animal. Other hybrid species ended up running off at the first chance of escape joining mutant gangs. The real story to such a scenario is the social status of these beasts, are they seen as equals to there human masters, property of the government or worshiped as heroes and saviors of mankind. In Rifts they are treated as a slave race created by man for man to do dangerous jobs where a human might die, thus send in the dog. Another hybrid story took the shape of a graphic novel that exploded onto main stream with cartoons, toys, movies, lunchboxes? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles deplicts an ?accidental? mutation which left these creatures living in the sewers only to leave to save the earth. Even if hybrids were created tomorrow there rights would be limited at best as humans have a natural tendency to view anything nonhuman or less human as less intelligent or even instilled without a soul. I encourage you Miles to push your idea to limit and create a novel on this subject their can never be too many books and your spin can only add to the genre.

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Miles 10/31/2007 4:43:40 PM

Well my idea for this game is going to be a first person shooter. The player choose different main character beast soldiers and follow through one story line about a group of humans trying to destroy a computer control world empire. I'm going to write the story of the game and a game bible. And hopefully in the future, it will be a big blockbuster. I'll let you know when I finish the story.

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