Imagine, for a moment, that you are a computer program, perhaps an artificial intelligence, or perhaps an exact model of your very own mind. Regardless, you are a program that is aware of its own existence and its relationship to the world around it. Now imagine uploading that program… yourself, that is, to a laser transmitter, and beaming the data to a receiver on one of the moons of Jupiter. An exact copy of you is now on Europa. And the laser operator hits the delete key erasing the copy of the program here on Earth.
Where are you? Are you at the Exogenesis base on Europa? Or is that program merely a facsimile of you, while you await deletion on the computers of Earth? Who are you? Are you the program? The copy? Both?
Now imagine for a moment that you were born in a vat, an exowomb to be exact. You are flesh and blood, made up of DNA like your parents, or at least, the people who created you. But unlike them, they have significantly modified your physical nature. You can survive unaided in near vacuum. You are taller and designed to function better in Mars’ lower gravity. And you are no longer capable of producing children with other humans (that is homo sapiens sapiens).
What are you? Are you human? Are you something else? Do you owe any loyalty to the world that created you? What about the world you were created for?
Imagine you’re 136 years old, having lived through miraculous changes to the year 2100. Imagine you’ are a bioroid, a created being, a piece of property owned by another, a slave. Imagine you’re the computer of an interstellar vessel, an sapient dog, an “infomorph” a digital existence—a pet, companion and assistant to a human. Or a parahuman. Or a transhuman.
This is Transhuman Space, the long awaited book by David Pulver from Steve Jackson Games. The first in a series, it is a setting, a world book “Powered by GURPS.” GURPS Basic Rules and GURPS Compendium I are both required to play. GURPS: Bio-Tech, GURPS: Ultratech, GURPS: Ultratech 2, and GURPS: Space are all recommended for play. (Not to mention GURPS: Vehicles and GURPS: Robots to get the full value of the setting.) But while these supplements provide many rules for technologies similar to the ones in Transhuman Space, they lack the detail and, far more importantly, the consistent tone and world-view of Transhuman Space. This is a game setting that embodies the classic goals of science-fiction. It postulates a world, the solar system in the year 2100. It draws from modern trends in the sciences, politics and sociology to determine the state of affairs. And it presents a series of questions, relevant both to the world we live in today and the world we will inhabit tomorrow, for the reader to explore and consider.
Transhuman Space is a 208-page book that provides an overview of the setting, technology and characters. The book feels both packed with information and oddly sparse. There is the feeling that there is so much more, and that only the mere surface is provided. But while there is clearly more to come in future products, the core book does provide ample information to begin playing.
“Transhuman” refers to the state of passing from our current human bodies into… something else. In Transhuman Space that something else can be “parahumans,” regular humans who have changed or augmented their physical natures, sapient and/or sentient artificial intelligences, including “ghosts” or emulations of a human mind in a digital medium. Ghosts have all the memories and the personalities of the orginal, but are computer programs that can operate “cybershells” (robots) or even “bioshells” (bodies created in a process similar to cloning, but with brain development stunted). And some groups have even begun creating true “transhumans,” people in bodies designed to exist in alien environments such as the Martian atmosphere, the void of space and the micro-gravity of asteroid habitats, or underwater arcologies designed to exploit the open spaces of the sea.
The science of the setting is plausible, although of questionable likelihood. Some feel that certain advances come to slowly, others too fast. But given the assumptions the author makes (and makes fairly clearly through out the book) they are all reasonable. Even issues on the verge of possibility, such as miniature black holes trapped in asteroids in the distant Kuiper Belt, remain understated.
The primary scientific advances have been in computing, biology and genetics, and nanotechnology. Computer science has advanced to the point where artificial intelligences cannot only be purposefully created, but can occasionally emerge on their own. Computers are small enough to be placed in the tiniest of robots, and even in human bodies (or bioshells). Biology and genetics has allowed the creation of varied forms of humans. Parents can custom order their children. After birth changes to individuals can still be made. There are living rugs and clothes, living pleasure dolls, and even talking snacks. The human life span can be extended nearly indefinitely; disease is all but wiped out. And the advances in nanotechnology go hand in hand with biology. These microscopic robots are used for everything from cloning, to manufacturing, to national defense.
Transhuman Space provides plenty of new advantages, disadvantages and gadgets to represent these advances and the characters who benefit from them. Much use is made of advantages already listed in Compendium I and GURPS: Biotech. Various transhuman templates are provided, along with racial templates for various bioshells and cybershells. Regrettably, little space is given for character-type templates. And of the 200 pages, only four are directly addressed to styles of campaigns and setting specific advice.
The appendix does include a more workable version of the space combat system, evolved from GURPS: Space and tweaked specifically for Transhuman Space, and a simplified step by step system for designing space-faring vehicles. While the work necessary to creating such a vehicle may seem intensive, I found the guidelines very easy. Before I even finished the second chapter I had flipped to the back and designed a small interstellar yacht It took no longer than (GURPS) character creation and was a far simplified process than GURPS: Vehicles or GURPS: Space.
But it is not the chrome of technology that makes Transhuman Space stand out, but rather the reasonable extrapolation of current social trends. Little science-fiction, let alone science-fiction role-playing, has addressed social trends. Transhuman Space discuses the effect of aging on the setting. It speculates upon the rise of transnational alliances, as well as the rise of provinciality. It discusses memetics, a current favorite trend in speculative-fiction. Memetics is the study of ideas and their propagation. While the utility of memetics, even in the game world is unclear (the memetics skill provided seems redundant of other social skills used in GURPS) its inclusion in the setting help define and expand the game world. The section on memetics includes “memes” or ideas existing in the game world, political, social, paranoid, religious, all sorts of different things people of the time believe in.
Transhuman Space left me wanting more in both a good and a bad way. The setting thrilled me, and I wanted to know more about everything. But I also wanted more playable details, more vehicles, more technology and more specific adventures. It easily contains enough in order to start a campaign (not counting the core GURPS rulebooks, of course) but it clearly will require the additional books already planned by Steve Jackson Games in order to be made full use of.
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