The Race
From Turtledove
[edit] Biology
The Race is reptilian, with a bone structure that differs slightly from that of humans. Their lifespans tend to be longer than humans.
They are sexually inactive for all but a few weeks of the year, at which point the females become fertile and emit pheromones which drive the males into a state of arousal strong enough to overcome all other priorities. Enraged males often fight over females. These fights are sometimes fatal. When females consume ginger, their hormonal cycles are disrupted and they become fertile and emit pheromones immediately.
After sex, females gestate their fertilized eggs for several weeks. After laying them in a suitable nesting spot, they abandon them. When hatchlings emerge, they do so with their motor skills fully developed but they are highly anti-social. They receive no parental care from either parent.
Ginger has a narcotic affect on both males and females of the Race, and as stated above, disrupts females' sexual cycles. Members of the Race can also become intoxicated from alcohol.
[edit] Culture
The Race holds their own language in high esteem and usually think lowly of human languages. They see change as something inherently bad, and are thus extremely conservative. They are technologically advanced, but embrace technological progress only at a glacial pace.
Race hierarchy is shown through body paint, which takes a role similar to that of badges and clothing in human society. The more complex one's body painting, the higher you are in the hierarchy.
The Race believe in imposing their culture on planets they annex.
The Race appears to be a hereditary autocracy with each new ruler the son of the last. In spite of this the Race have a great degree of personal freedom, as do their subjects. Due to distance the Emperor's power devolves to the government of the colonies for the most part, since all the colonies (especially Earth) are very far from the home system. The parts of Earth captured by the race were ruled by Atvar until the 1970s.
The Race appear to expand to gain space for themselves. It is noted that due to the lack of any usable FTL they are only able to reach nearby systems (most of which already have populations). The Race's technological conservatism means that after they developed their versions of Relativity theory they did not consider the possibility that there might be ways around it. In the 2030s, for example, they were shocked to learn that humanity had discovered a way to travel faster than light, and they were forced to begin a crash program to catch up. Assuming the Race cannot steal the technology, they estimate it will take at least 70 years to catch up with the humans. This will likely force seismic shifts in their culture as the Race fights to survive against the more advanced humans.
Because there is no biological impetus to care for one's hatchlings, and because sexual encounters are undertaken so casually when they occur and ignored for the rest of the year, the Race does not have a family structure. The only exception is the Emperor, who is guaranteed to be a son of his predecessor because emperors keep a personal harem whose members mate exclusively with him.
Despite their lack of family sentiment (which is one reason why tensions tend to run high between generations) adult members of the Race are not antisocial. Indeed, friendship is the most important relationship that the Race culture recognizes.
The Race practices emperor-worship.
Related
[edit] Technology
Despite interstellar travel, cryogenics, and various other technological advances (like tectonic plate manipulation) which are far beyond even our present level, the Race is often considered to have military technology similar to that of the 1990s. Landcruisers are tanks and killercrafts are supersonic aircraft (the latter were particularly deadly in the first day of the war). The Race's war technology did not change, even while on Earth. By the 1960s, human military technology was nearing parity on the ground, and beginning to make an impact in space. By the 2030s, the Race was badly outmatched and searching for a way to escape the disaster they found themselves in.
The Race's military technology had frozen a hundred thousand years before, when Home was politically unified and warfare ended. Subsequently the Race chose to reuse its old war machines only for conquest of other planets, and since these presented no military challenge, the Race's war technology stopped advancing. Under their unified government, the Race progressed extremely slowly, both technologically and socially. Upon invading Earth, they were amazed by humanity's rapid progress over a few hundred years. As a result, they were unprepared for the tenacity and skill that humans used in defending their respective territories -- and the quick victory they expected did not come to pass. Although the Race was able to conquer the Southern Hemisphere of Earth in the initial invasion, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany remained Earth's greatest free powers once they developed and deployed atomic weapons. Canada, Britain, and Japan also retained their independence, although the Race did not have full diplomatic relations with them.
The Race had previously conquered two other species, the Rabotevs and the Hallessi. These were extremely similar to the Race biologically, though ginger was not narcotic to them. The social differences between the three species were also very slight, although the two cultures in question were much more primitive than the Race when their planets were conquered.
As of the 2030s, the Race's technology had fallen behind that of humans, and with the human discovery of FTL, the Race was being forced to catch up.
Various theories have been advanced as to why the Race progresses more slowly than humanity. One is that the lack of large bodies of water on the Race's homeworld meant that all empires (before the unification of Home) were land-based, and so lacked the rapid expansion that sea-empires could create. Another theory is based on the fact that the Race does not have sexual selection, as they breed only in periodic orgies where the patriarchial line cannot be known (except for the Emperor). The Race are therefore not motivated by their sex drive, at least not in the same way humans are, and perhaps this lack of sex drive is related to their lack of innovation.
