Dune had the Tleilaxu and 40k had all sorts of transhuman stuff

>>46028735
The general thing to do is to just give up trying to have things be science fiction unless the author actually knows what they're talking about. It saves a lot of effort when you just think of 99% of sci-fi as actually fantasy.

>>46028735

In many ways you are likely correct anon, one would have thought that widespread genetic engineering would lead to several human sub-groups. After all it is much cheaper to modify people than it is to terraform a world.

But here's the thing. As a reader player, you have to feel invested in the experience and that means that the world has to be relatable on some level. Make it to alien and people just turn off or don't understand, after all it's much easier to get into the head of Barry Scumbles, asteroid miner with a heart of gold than it is to really understand the life a post human with four eyes, two hearts and the ability to read someones mind instantly.

It also presents a challenge for the writer. After all how do you write about something so far outside of the conventional human experience. Very good writers can present this idea in an understandable way. Read Laline Pauls The Bees for a good example, the Bees in the book are regular garden honeybees, but they live in a gloriously weird theological dictatorship worshiping their queen.

40K writers run the gamut from okay to poor and also the setting is not exactly complex. Star Trek is limited by the budget and make-up department and as for Dune I think FH felt that post humanism wasn't a core theme of his book. In fact the whole point is was refining the 'essence' of the perfect human via Eugenics, rather than by large scale genetic engineering.

>>46028735
Star Trek had transhumans. They wiped themselves mostly out before humanity made it into space (the Federation has a FUCKED UP backstory, at least the Earth side) and humanity decided not to fuck with it any further. That's Khan's whole deal.

Moreover, Federation humans are, as a society, already 'unrecognizable'. That level of post-scarcity societal engineering is way beyond anything we can accomplish today, and it shows in the attitudes and hobbies of the people who work aboard those ships.

>>46028735
I don't find it odd, I find it entirely necessary.

I mean, who knows the mind of a human that isn't human, and who can convey that for others to understand reliably without a huge, specific knowledge base being required? People have a hard enough time just trying to understand people from another nation let alone super-capable humans of a future.

>>46028784
> It saves a lot of effort when you just think of 99% of sci-fi as actually fantasy.

This. Most sci-fi, isn't. And actual sci-fi is pissing hard to turn into stories and games, closest I can think of is the old GURPS: Transhuman Space. And that took a lot of hard limiting assumptions to keep everything comprehensible, like serious limits on computing, AI and so on. And it's really not an easy setting to get into because it is not something a player can just rely on their general assumptions about how things work.

>>46028762

sure, however Tleilaxu were working not via real genetic engineering but more of eugenic kind of way, thus their work was pretty "natural" in a way

as for 40k, the mutants are placed slightly above animals, AI are filled with demons and the techpriests hold their fetish under strict monopoly, generally 90 % of humanity are just avarage joes

>>46028997

In star trek people just went fiddling with genetics is bad m'kay

>>46028997
First contact with aliens was established as being in 2081 though, right?

I think just keep in mind the second part of sci-fi. It's supposed to be fiction for entertainment, so if you want catgirls with battle suits then have catgirls with battlesuits, fuck it you're supposed to be having fun not worry about being realistic or anything.

>>46028735
but OP, dune DOES have taboos over technilogical development. AI is one of the most illegal things and genetic engineering is seen as creepy at the very least

>>46028997
Except for the doctor from DS9 who is shown to be extremely good at his job and isn't a monster despite being a genetically modified freak.

Or the humans in that TNG episode "every ages fast" where they genetically modified a new breed of human that was telepathic, telekinetic, big, strong, handsome, long lived, super smart, never got ill and reached full grown status at age 7. Sure their immune system killed everyone they came in contact with but that was just one glitch in an otherwise perfect people.

Or the Danobilans or whatever Enterprise's doctor was one of who mentions that genetic modifications have been used extensively by his people to great beneficial effect.

It's even shown that other species, not including the Borg, use cybernetics with no real adverse effects.

It's just the Federation humans with massive crippling phobias and prejudices that they can't get over.

>>46029515

Whenever it was, it was way after the Eugenics Wars.