Excerpted
from a letter by Greer Watson dated 2/May/2006
sent to Margaret Carter
(slightly revised)
And now to Sime~Gen demographics again.
I've finally finished the revised time series on the Genfarms at the time of
Zelerod's Doom. This is only the first time series, since
I can see a crying need for at least one other: the immediate post-Unity
period. However, what I have here describes the absolute maximum
Genfarm production.
What that means is this: prior to this period, there were about the
same number of Gens, though the proportions of the sexes was more natural
(natural being approximately 1:1 male:female). However, there were fewer
Simes. Indeed, initially, there were a lot fewer Simes.
As the numbers of Simes increased, it was necessary for the owners of the
Genfarms (“owners”, that is, from the Sime perspective) to revamp
the structure of their property, reorganizing the Genfarm villages, removing more
of the adult males, and regulating the breeding of the females. As a result,
they got a lot more hands-on in the running of the Genfarms.
The end result is almost what I describe here. Except that
the ultimate end result is for the Genfarms to be nationalized. I will
explain why, and how this is actually not as efficient as—and certainly
a lot less humane than—the traditional method of running the Genfarms as
family or corporate businesses. However, numbers first.
I'm going to start by dealing with figures in terms of the numbers per thousand.
This is quite common in population statistics. So I'm going to start
by looking at the outcome for every one thousand pregnancies that are brought to
term.
Thirteen of these pregnancies produce twins. (Higher multiple
births are a lot rarer; so I'm leaving them out.)
On the other hand, there are twenty-three stillbirths.
This means that we get 990 live births.
Of these children, almost half are girls and half boys. However,
the actual proportions are not quite half'n'half. More boy babies are born
than girls. I'm taking it at 48.8% girls and 51.2% boys. That
means, of the live births, there are 483 girls and 507 boys.
In the first year of life, the mortality rates for the sexes differ. Although
more boys are born, they are more susceptible to the various causes of infant
mortality. I'm going to use an average 20% mortality in the first year of
life; but I'm splitting the population by sex, with a 23% mortality rate for boys,
and a 17% mortality rate for girls.
For older children, I'm going to treat the sexes the same. I'm
taking a 10% mortality rate in the second year, a 5% mortality rate in the third
year, a 2% mortality rate in the fourth year, and a 1% mortality rate
thereafter.
This yields the following table:
TABLE 1
Age Distribution of Children of Gen Parents
By Sex Up to the Age of Ten
(per 1000 full-term pregancies)
|
|
%age Drop
|
Female
|
Male
|
Total
| |
|
483
|
507
| 990 |
at birth
|
-20%
|
401
|
390
|
791 | reach the age of 1
|
-10%
|
361
|
351
|
712
|
reach the age of 2
|
- 5%
|
343
|
333
|
676
|
reach the age of 3
|
- 2%
|
336
|
326
|
662
|
reach the age of 4
|
- 1%
|
332
|
323
|
655
|
reach the age of 5
|
- 1%
|
329
|
320
|
649
|
reach the age of 6
|
- 1%
|
326
|
317
|
643
|
reach the age of 7
|
- 1%
|
323
|
314
|
637
|
reach the age of 8
|
- 1%
|
320
|
311
|
631
|
reach the age of 9
|
- 1%
|
317
|
308
|
625
|
reach the age of 10
|
Now at this point things become more complicated. Children do not reach
puberty all at the same age; yet those who remain pre-pubertal will continue to die
of unrelated causes (illness and accident), so I have to take that into account in
calculating the figures.
Although it is tempting to use a simple normal curve, in fact the shape
seems to be somewhat different, with a steeper drop-off once the modal value has
been reached. I'm going to spread it over an eight year period, with most
of the children reaching puberty in the middle range, but some younger and some
older. I'll be using the following table to calculate the figures (for both
sexes, though the actual data is for girls):
TABLE TWO
Age Distribution of Girls Reaching Menarche
By Year
|
|
Year
|
Percentage of total
|
Percentage of remainder
|
1st year
|
3
| |
2.848
| |
2nd year
|
10
| |
10.423
| |
3rd year
|
21
| |
24.000
| |
4th year
|
28
| |
42.584
| |
5th year
|
23
| |
60.833
| |
6th year
|
11
| |
74.468
| |
7th year
|
3
| |
75.000
| |
8th year
|
1
| |
100.000
| |
|
I'm going to assume that girls start to reach puberty at age ten, and boys two
years later. Actually, this is one set of figures that is not based on
eighteenth or nineteenth century statistics: back then, kids reached puberty
a lot later than they do today, for a variety of reasons, not least of them being
nutrition. In fact, the average age of menarche could be as late as eighteen.
And that's the average!!
However, it's clear from the Sime~Gen books that the age of puberty
therein is based more on that of the mid to late twentieth century in North
America, i.e. the age range familiar to the authors. So I've set the
range to fit the books. Nevertheless, I have tried to adjust it a bit to bring
it a little more in line with history.
The result is the following table:
TABLE 3
Distribution of Children Reaching Puberty
By Age and Sex
(per 1000 full-term pregnancies per year)
|
|
Girls:
|
%age drop
(puberty + death)
| # lost
(puberty + death)
| Total
that are still children
|
| |
|
| 317 ten year olds
|
2.848 + 1.0
| | 9 + 3
| | 305 survive as children to age 11
|
10.423 + 1.0
| | 32 + 3
| | 270 survive as children to age 12
|
24.000 + 1.0
| | 65 + 3
| | 202 survive as children to age 13
|
42.584 + 1.0
| | 86 + 2
| | 114 survive as children to age 14
|
60.333 + 1.0
| | 69 + 2
| | 44 survive as children to age 15
|
74.468 + 1.0
| | 33 + 0
| | 11 survive as children to age 16
|
75.000 + 1.0
| | 8 + 0
| | 3 survive as children to age 17
|
100%
| | 3
| | none remain as children to age 18
|
|
||||
Boys: |
%age lost
(puberty + death)
| # lost
(puberty + death)
| Total
that are still children
|
| |
| | 308 ten year olds
|
0 + 1.0
| | 3
| | 305 survive as children to age 11
|
0 + 1.0
| | 3
| | 302 survive as children to age 12
|
2.848 + 1.0
| | 9 + 3
| | 290 survive as children to age 13
|
10.423 + 1.0
| | 30 + 3
| | 257 survive as children to age 14
|
24.000 + 1.0
| | 62 + 3
| | 192 survive as children to age 15
|
43.584 + 1.0
| | 82 + 2
| | 108 survive as children to age 16
|
60.833 + 1.0
| | 66 + 1
| | 41 survive as children to age 17
|
74.468 + 1.0
| | 31 + 0
| | 10 survive as children to age 18
|
75.000 + 1.0
| | 8 + 0
| | 2 survive as children to age 19
|
100%
| | 5
| | none remain as children to age 20
|
Putting all this together we come up with the following table. Remember,
this is a table showing the number of children on the Genfarm, using the
Sime definition of “child” as someone who has neither established
nor changed over. And this is the number per one thousand full-term
pregnancies. Children accumulate.
TABLE 4
Distribution of Gen-born Children
By Age and Sex
(per 1000 full-term pregnancies per year)
|
|
Age
|
| F
|
| M
|
|
Total
|
Age Group
| TOTAL
|
|
At birth
|
| 483
|
| 507
|
| 990
|
| | |
1 year old
|
| 401
|
| 390
|
| 791
|
| | |
2 year olds
|
| 361
|
| 351
|
| 712
|
| | |
3 year olds
|
| 343
|
| 333
|
| 676
|
| | |
|
|
| | | | | |
Infants/Toddlers
| 3,169
|
4 year olds
|
| 336
|
| 326
|
| 662
|
| | |
5 year olds
|
| 332
|
| 323
|
| 655
|
| | |
6 year olds
|
| 329
|
| 320
|
| 649
|
| | |
| | |
| | | | |
Young Children
| 1,966
|
7 year olds
|
| 326
|
| 317
|
| 643
|
| | |
8 year olds
|
| 323
|
| 314
|
| 637
|
| | |
9 year olds
|
| 320
|
| 311
|
| 631
|
| | |
10 year olds
|
| 317
|
| 308
|
| 625
|
| | |
|
|
| | | | | |
Older Children
| 2,536
|
11 year olds
|
| 305
|
| 305
|
| 610
|
| | |
12 year olds
|
| 270
|
| 302
|
| 572
|
| | |
13 year olds
|
| 202
|
| 290
|
| 492
|
| | |
14 year olds
|
| 114
|
| 257
|
| 371
|
| | |
15 year olds
|
| 44
|
| 192
|
| 236
|
| | |
16 year olds
|
| 11
|
| 108
|
| 119
|
| | |
17 year olds
|
| 3
|
| 41
|
| 44
|
| | |
18 year olds
|
| 0
|
| 10
|
| 10
|
| | |
19 year olds
|
| 0
|
| 2
|
| 2
|
| | |
20 year olds
|
|
None
| | |
| |
|
| | | | |
Establishment Age
| 2,456
|
| |
|
| | | | |
TOTAL
| 10,227
|
Please note once again that these figures are per one thousand full-term pregancies.
How this relates to the number of adult Gens on the Genfarm will, of
course, depend on the number of adult Gens—which in turn depends on the
frequency with which the women are expected to get pregnant and bear
children.
I shall return to this later.
Now the next step is to calculate the number of children who change over or
establish each year. Clearly this is worked out based on the number of
children who reach puberty—which we already have. I'm going to
use the ratio already fixed in canon, i.e. for children whose parents both
are Gens, one third will change over into Simes, and two thirds will establish as
Gens.
TABLE 5
Annual Distribution of Changeover and Establishment Cases among
Gen-born Children
By Age and Sex
(per 1000 full-term pregnancies per year)
|
|
|
TOTAL |
Sime |
Gen |
|
F |
M |
Total |
F |
M |
Total |
F |
M |
Total |
|
Age 10 |
9 |
0 |
9 |
3 |
0 |
3 |
6 |
0 |
6 |
Age 11 |
32 |
0 |
32 |
11 |
0 |
11 |
21 |
0 |
21 |
Age 12 |
65 |
9 |
74 |
22 |
3 |
25 |
43 |
6 |
49 |
Age 13 |
86 |
30 |
116 |
29 |
10 |
39 |
57 |
20 |
77 |
Age 14 |
69 |
62 |
131 |
23 |
21 |
44 |
46 |
41 |
87 |
Age 15 |
33 |
82 |
115 |
11 |
27 |
38 |
22 |
55 |
77 |
Age 16 |
8 |
66 |
74 |
3 |
22 |
25 |
5 |
44 |
49 |
Age 17 |
3 |
31 |
34 |
1 |
10 |
11 |
2 |
21 |
23 |
Age 18 |
0 |
8 |
8 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
0 |
5 |
5 |
Age 19 |
0 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
Total |
305 |
290 |
595 |
103 |
97 |
200 |
202 |
193 |
395 |
|
all dead |
|
|
(Please note that there are some rounding errors in these numbers.)
|
Now it is tempting to say at this point that we are done: that the Genfarm
produces 395 young Gens each year, and sends them off to the pens to be
killed.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
At this point we need to turn our attention to the adult Gens on the farm:
the breeders. How many of them are there?
Why do we need to know? Because each year some of them
die—just as some of the children die—from accidents, or illness, or
(for the women) in childbirth. And these deaths have to be made up for.
Otherwise the Genfarm would not be able to keep up production.
So every year some of the boys and girls who establish are kept back on the
Genfarm rather than being sent to the Pens. They become new
breeders.
Other young Gens are also kept back to replace breeders who are no
longer...mmmmmm...in acceptably full production, so to speak. However,
this does not affect the total number of Gens sent to the pens, since, for every
youngster kept on the Genfarm for this reason, a “worn-out” adult breeder is sent
to the pens in his or her place. Those numbers equal one another, which
makes no difference to deliveries to the pens.
Replacing dead breeders is another matter. The kids who replace them
are taken from the coffles without being replaced, thus diminishing the
total number delivered.
The number of dead breeders is some proportion of the total number of
breeders, which is why we need to know the total.
Here we have a problem. I see two possible models for Genfarms at this
point in the history of Sime Territory. One might be called the old-style
traditional model, and the other the new-style “efficiency”
model.
So here we need a bit of extrapolative Sime history. I say
“extrapolative” because most of it isn't documented in canon.
In one of my earlier letters, I suggested that Genfarms started as collections of
villages whose inhabitants paid tribute in some portion of their population to Sime
overlords, but whose lives were not otherwise much affected by Simes.
(This is suggested in the Chronology on the Sime~Gen site.)
It might perhaps be fairer to say that this is how Sime Territory itself
began. In other words, the early history of Sime Territory is the early
history of Genfarming.
Once upon a time, back in prehistory (or the Dark Ages), all the people of North
America lived in something resembling a primitive version of Gen Territory.
The total population was much smaller; and there were parts of the
continent that were thinly inhabited, if at all. But the population was
gradually increasing, and spreading out into the uninhabited territories.
People rarely lived in isolation. Why? Well, if a child
turned Sime and was not killed before changeover was complete—which,
though rare, did sometimes happen—he or she would kill one or both
parents and escape into the wild, to a bit of mountain or forest or desert, or some
Ancient ruin. And, from that hideaway, the next month, the young Sime
would come a-hunting. Having killed the other parent (the obvious
source), the month after that, the young Sime would go a-hunting again.
And, if the family lived isolated, no one would know that there was a Sime out
there until he or she came.
It would happen sometimes, of course. But, for the most part,
people would live in groups. That way, there would be people to get out
the dogs and the weapons, and track the young Sime down.
In other words, people would live in villages. Round about the
cluster of homes would be their fields, always within reasonable walking distance
so that they could be worked.
Occasionally, a young Sime would change over and escape, and the hunters would
not be able to find them. This would be especially true if the kid had the
sense to keep moving: to hunt this month from one village, and the next
month from another, and so on, so that no obvious pattern could be established.
Some might keep alive for a year or two this way, always moving on.
Very occasionally, two or three of these feral teenagers might even gang
up for company. And “gang” is the word: they
resemble nothing so much as a wild teen gang on a rampage.
Mostly, nothing would come of this in the long run. The lives of
young juncts are, as we know, quite short. This is partly because juncts
are naturally short-lived; but also because, until it was recognized that Simes need
to eat regular food in order to get vitamins and such, they generally didn't bother,
having no appetite to speak of (except for selyn, of course), so they suffered from
various nutritional deficiencies that shortened their lives drastically.
Furthermore, if they lived in an area where it snows, they would need
many more kills in the winter to get enough selyn to keep warm enough to stay alive. That
would increase the probability of a pattern being established—and they
would be just as trackable in the snow as any other predator, and less able (for
that reason) to turn on the people hunting them without being spotted.
That, by the way, suggests that most of the northern part of the continent
is Gen Territory.
Anyway, at some point, a bargain was made between one of these little Sime
gangs and a Gen village. Basically, it amounted to the Simes agreeing not
to hunt at random in the town if, at some regular interval (say, once a year), the
townsfolk provided them with X number of people. The number would
relate to the number of Simes in the band, being one month's kill. But it
would be a number low enough to seem feasible to the villagers.
Obviously, the same bargain would have to be made between the band and
other villages in the area. But several of them might well be willing to
parley with the Sime raiders in order to guarantee safety from random raids.
Especially once they see it works for Town A. (I mean,
geewhillikers, why should we put up with raids when they've found a way
out? Let's sign on!)
It would, of course, be important that the number be low enough to be
sustainable without stressing out the Gens in the town. But, since all the
young Simes came originally from one or another of the towns in the area (or
from similar towns in other areas), they would have a pretty fair idea what they could ask for.
After all, if there are only four or five Simes in the band, all it would
mean is that, once a year, you hand over to them the people locked up in the town
jail. If you are a douce decent farmer or a prosperous burgess, why should
you care about clearing out the troublemakers?
What it would take to get the thing rolling is either a kid with a stroke of
genius or someone in the town with the courage to approach the band and make
the suggestion. (Actually, that's a really cute idea: that the idea
originally came from some clever-clogs town mayor who thought he'd got a way
to keep his town safe at the expense of a few drunks and whores.)
So here we have the kernel of the first Sime Territory.
It must be recalled that, at this point in history, there is no one single Gen
territory, but rather a vast number of small groupings, rather like medieval Europe.
Into this, you now have some part of one of these little countries being
controlled to some degree by Sime overlords. Over time, though, the
pattern is either copied or extended until there are a fair number of these Sime
overlordships scattered around. In each instance, there would have to be
a “safe” area for the Simes to retreat to: each embryonic Sime Territory
would have to have, at its core, some region from which it would be sufficiently
hard to hunt them out that it would be cheaper (so to speak) to pay them off.
So, at the heart of each Sime Territory, you should find mountains, or
desert, or Ancient ruins, or some such.
The population of each of these embryonic Sime Territories is an ever
changing one. Simes only live a few years. During that time, their
health is poor. This means that, although sexually active, few of the girls
get pregnant, and even fewer carry a child to term. If a baby is born alive,
its young mother probably abandons it; and, even if she tries to care for it, she
dies long before it grows up, so it probably starves.
Some young mothers may leave their infants on the doorstep of Gen farms,
or at orphanages or churches, or some such. Whether such foundlings are
taken in would depend, I suppose, partly on the local custom, and partly on
whether their origin is suspected. Some places, they probably kill all
foundling babies. Other places not.
But very few Sime mothers raise a child themselves to be old enough to
fend for itself. This means that the population of Simes is renewed through
changeover. In every generation, in every Gen town near a Sime territory
(even in those towns that do not pay tribute), a small number of adolescents
manage to escape being killed by their families and neighbours, and make it out
of town and up into the hills, where they join the local Sime band.
Now let's move on a few centuries. As it becomes obvious that a future
could exist in the hills, an increasing number of children in changeover
hide, rather than turning themselves in to their parents. This is obviously
going to happen most frequently in areas where there are treaties with a local Sime
raiding band. After all, why die if there's an alternative?
Whereas, initially, the young Sime survivors were probably the toughest,
feistiest, least domestic, and least socialized of adolescents, increasingly the range
of personality types is broadened. One consequence is that, increasingly,
there are Simes who are unsuited to the ranging, roving life of a band of Sime
raiders. Up in the hills or in the Ancient ruins, therefore, you get young
Simes settling down. They still need to have a source of selyn, of course;
but they can't go raiding villages where there is a treaty in effect, and they won't
go roving further afield, since they aren't that sort of people. Instead, they
trade. Kids who have skills as carpenters build shelters; kids who have skills
sewing or cobbling mend clothes and shoes; kids who have cooking skills
make...er, make....well, knowing Simes as we all do...make candy, or cookies, or
similar sweet goodies.
And they trade these with the original raider band (or the Simes replacing
the members of the original band) for Gens to kill each month.
This, of course, means that the raider band has to up the size of the tribute
demand. The villagers have to yield up more people than heretofore.
They've emptied the jails on a regular basis: now they empty the
workhouse. They take the halt, the blind, the witless, the old: if
you are elderly, you'd better be a good knitter, or take care of the little grandkids.
You'd better have grandkids: the next to go are those who
don't have relatives to protect them.
Then you tithe some of the healthy young men. The troublemakers,
of course—the ones who haven't landed in jail yet, but are just the sort who
would, sooner or later, so let's avoid the problem ahead of time.
Then you tithe your youngsters regularly. Rather like sending some
of your young men off to war. After all, they mostly don't come
back either.
At this point, the Simes to whom the regular tribute is sent are no longer a mere
raiding band. They are organized: they need to keep track of who
owes what, and who's paid. They are disciplined: of all the Simes,
they are the ones most in contact with the Gens, and it is essential that they not
break the treaties.
However, their total numbers are still not large; and now they are a
minority among Simes. Back in the heart of Sime Territory there is a
thriving little town, completely dependent for its existence on the groups of Gens
escorted under guard from the Gen towns as tribute. Increasingly, they
arrive in jail wagons with barred cages; and now they are stored temporarily in
pens in the Sime village until they are portioned out to the inhabitants when they
are in need in return for labour or goods.
It's simpler to stop potential escapes before they start. In
fact, the Gens sent as tribute are probably drugged by their fellow townsfolk.
It is, after all, in the town's best interest not to risk the treaty by losing
one of the tributees.
Yes: drugs are first administered to the pen Gens by their fellow
Gens themselves. Who else, after all, has access to drugs? Not a
bunch of runaway teenagers!
At some point, people in the new, wild frontier Sime town—those who
don't have labour or goods to trade—try to take Gens from the pen anyway.
Order is restored; and some form of town government is established by the
more responsible kids—those who have “jobs” of a sort, and
hence some status. They decide that everyone who contributes has a right
to a kill each month, but those who don't contribute don't get Pen Gens.
However, they also decide that the contribution doesn't have to be to the original
raider band, but to the community as a whole. Providing Gens is to be the
raider band's contribution to the public weal.
The raiders don't like it; but they are outnumbered. Against this,
of course, they have the monopoly on the Gens—unless they're replaced by
some of their fellows. In the end, they wind up getting paid in kind by the
community for their contribution, so things haven't changed that much.
Apparently.
However, the fundamental ethos of Sime society has been established:
contribute, and you have a right to a kill. And furthermore, since
the raiders have a monopoly on the overlordship of the Gen villages, and they get
paid for delivering Gens to the pens, they wind up accruing a fair amount of
wealth, even if it is, at this point, primarily paid in kind. Certainly, they
have status.
Throughout much of this period, there is conflict between those Gen towns that
pay tribute to local Sime settlements and those Gen territories that most
emphatically do not, whether because they have collectively decided that
such arrangements are immoral or unethical, or because, for geographical reasons,
paying tribute is unnecessary because it is relatively easy to track down Simes, and
hence hard for a raiding band to become entrenched. Naturally, there are
attempts to prevent the paying of tribute to Simes, whether because it is immoral
to deal with monsters, unethical to pick out some of their fellows to die at Sime
tentacles, or uneconomical to lose the taxes that the tributees might have paid.
Sometimes moral suasion is employed in the attempt to stop the paying
of tribute; sometimes they try force. If the village is part of a larger
territory, the capital may try to impose external control by making laws against
tithing: they may succeed, they may fail. In the latter case, the
village may secede; a small army may be sent; it may be slaughtered by the Sime
band. (After all, you have to protect your property.)
One way or another, contact between the areas that do and do not have
treaties with Sime bands gradually ceases. The Simes don't mind, since
it means that people from “their” towns cannot move elsewhere (though it should
be pointed out that, in this sort of society, mobility is generally pretty limited
anyway).
The Simes do, of course, consider themselves privileged to go a-raiding on
the Gen territories whenever the fancy takes them.
The Gen territories establish standing armies.
Eventually, there is a patchwork of small Gen-ruled countries, and small
Sime-ruled countries, with trade among the first group or the second
group, but not between them. From now on, their histories largely lie
apart, except for border conflicts.
We now have, in embryo, the Gen territories and Sime territories of the
books. At this point, there are a lot of each, all small. Over time,
they will amalgamate; but it will take centuries before there are as few as there are
in House of Zeor and Zelerod's Doom.
Nevertheless, from an objective perspective (say that of the proverbial
visitor from Mars), the new Sime territories would have looked remarkably like
the Gen territories. Nearly all the people living there would be Gens, or
the children of Gens. It is true that, for every fifteen or twenty towns or
villages of varying size, there would be one primitive little settlement inhabited
by a group of teenagers seemingly belonging to another species. But the
significance of this little village would be easily overlooked by our Martian
tourist.
In the scattered Sime villages, people were, by now, living a little longer.
Once they reached the Sime haven, young changeover survivors were safe from
pursuit. Many did not engage in activities likely to cause physical injury
or require frequent and heavy augmentation. Some might even, now and
then, take a snack of real food. For yes: by this time there was a
reason for there to be actual nourishment available.
More girls were having kids; and, although most still did not live to see
them grow up, some provision was made for feeding the orphans, or at least those
who were past infancy, and hence able to do some work for their meals.
It was their existence that meant that there had to be food in the village.
In fact, around the Sime villages there were now a fair number of children, most
of whom were orphaned early—almost always before the age of ten, and
usually before the age of five.
One by-product of this was the occasional kid who established as a
Gen—the first of the “prime kills” that were free for anyone's
taking. But, as the parents of the children in the village would always both
be Sime, two-thirds of the kids would change over. As a result, the Sime
population continued to increase.
Nevertheless, one should never forget that few Simes lived to be more than
twenty-five tops (our reckoning), and most didn't see twenty. The
“adults” in this world were kids by our standards. Despite
the familiar First Year learning curve, they lived and died without ever really
getting out of the years of adolescence. Simes society was therefore made
up of two groups: changeover survivors who remembered escaping a lynch
mob of family members, and orphans who barely remembered a mother who sang
lullabies to them in babyhood. At this time, having a family was a pretty
well alien concept in Sime society.
Except among one group.
Among all of these kids, the healthiest probably were the raiders. Why?
Because they were the ones who had the greatest amount of contact with
Gens—either the Gens of the towns, or the Gens tithed to them whom they
had to bring back to the Sime village, or the Gens in the pens, if they also kept
the pens. As we know, Simes who are in frequent contact with Gens are
affected by the large Gen appetite, and hence eat more. Simes who eat
more are healthier. Ergo the Simes who acted directly as the Gen
overlords were the healthiest of the Simes.
This means that they were the ones who lived the longest. They
were the ones most likely to have the greatest number of children and raise them
to adulthood themselves.
They were the first Simes to have real families. The first to have
heirs. The first to have dynasties.
I'm not sure how close we are to the days of First Channel at this
point; but I suspect we may not be far off. I get the impression that
families like the Farrises had been around for a few generations at this
point—but only a few.
Now, for a long time, the situation in the Gen villages ruled by Sime overlords
must have seemed very different from each side's perspective. The Gens
did not, I'm sure, consider themselves to be the Simes' property:
rather, they initially considered themselves equal parties in a treaty, though they
may later have come to consider themselves to be vassals. But I'm sure
the Simes fairly quickly took to considering the villages that paid tribute to them
to be “their” villages. They would have seen the villagers
to be “their” Gens.
Naturally, both the Gens and the Simes had their own agenda as well as
their own perspective. But, in some respects, the leaders of the
Gens—the prosperous farmers, the tradespeople, the mayor—must
have wanted the same sort of things the Simes did: stability, certainty,
safety. As I said a couple of letters ago, the Gens wound up self-selecting
for docility by tithing troublemakers to the Simes. They also must have
recognized that they needed surplus population to trade off for their own safety,
which meant they needed lots of surplus children—and the bottleneck in
child-raising is the woman, not the man. So they tithed the adolescent
boys, not the girls. This would lead to a population imbalance.
Yet, since all the girls would have to have babies in order to produce the
necessary surplus population, it would follow that they could not each have their
own husband, or some would be left unmarried. Given the probable
notions of morality in such a society, it is unlikely that the Gen towns would
accept single motherhood for these women: polygyny seems more likely.
All girls would be married, and married young. The men who
were not tithed to the Simes would have multiple wives.
Families would be large. Well, they'd be large anyway. (In
the eighteenth century, the average family had eight children.
That's the average. Some women had over twenty children.
I think the record is over thirty!) To ensure that families would get
even larger, women who proved infertile or had only one or two children would
become tributees to the Simes—and so would their children in turn.
Farmers have always selected their stock for fertility.
Please note that, in the early stages, this selection would be made by the
Gens not the Simes. They would be self-breeding for docility and
fertility.
How long would this situation continue? I have already suggested that,
because of isolation from Gen Territory, Genfarmlan developed into its own
dialect and, eventually, a separate language. (Or, more accurately,
languages: there would be different forms of Genfarmlan in each separate Sime
Territory.) Clearly, at the time of First Channel, the Simes who ran
the Genfarm must have been able to speak this language. Otherwise, it
would not have been feasible for Nerob to have been placed on the Genfarm when
he established. However, there is no reason to believe that most Simes
who did not live in Genfarming families knew how to understand Genspeak.
It is true that the story suggests a greater degree of control over the
population of the Genfarm than I have sketched out so far. Whether this
exists more in the minds of the Simes than the actual daily lives of the Gens is,
of course, unclear from the story. It is obvious, though, that by the time
of First Channel at least some of the selection of Gens is being done by
the Simes, not by the Gens themselves. It is Rimon's father who decides
in the end to send Nerob to the pens. Furthermore, although the women
on the Genfarm are assigned to individual men, not held in common, the
assignment is clearly at least partly controlled by the Simes: Nerob is
asked if there is a woman he wants, and asks to have Kadi if she turns Gen.
I suspect that, historically, as the proportion of Gens being removed from
the villages increased, there was resistance, probably because the selection fell on
people who were considered traditionally exempt, quite likely because they
had—or were related to people who had—influence in the village.
(I suspect, for example, that the richer villagers did not expect their own
children to be tithed.) The resistance was quashed; and the Simes tightened
their control not only over that particular village, but put in similar controls in
other villages, lest the same happen elsewhere. Furthermore, by this time,
it is probable that the amalgamation of the smallest of the Sime territories had
already begun. Within each of the new larger Sime territories (i.e.
countries) there would therefore be a number of old raiding families, each getting
tribute from its own group of villages. Once rebellion started in one
family's lands, each of the families would take hard control of the daily running
of those villages that were under its control.
And what would that control consist of? Well, they would need to
know exactly how many Gens live in each village, with whom each is breeding,
and how many children they have. They would need this data in order to
determine how many (and which) Gens to send to the pens. It is at this
point that the old raiding bands truly became Genfarmers. When the term
came into popularity exactly, of course, I cannot say. It may even have
started as a joke: some Sime saying to another, “Hey, we farm them the
same as they farm cows and pigs. That's not a Gen town. It's a
Genfarm.”
Once the Genfarming families kept track of births, marriages, and deaths among
their property, they were effectively keeping records of breeding lines.
From this, it would an obvious next step to try themselves to breed their Gens for
characteristics of value to Simes—which would, oddly enough, include the
same docility and fertility that were of value to the tribute-paying Gens.
At this point, therefore, control of marriages would increasingly pass from the
Gens to the Simes, though with the matings (at least at first) made socially
acceptable within the Gen village by the gloss of ceremony. Arranged
marriages, in other words. Arranged polygynous marriages, to be
exact.
The Simes would also increasingly control the culling of the Gens to be
sent to the pens. In particular, they would choose to retain on the Genfarm
as breeding males only those young men whose mothers had lots of children.
Later on, as it became necessary to tithe girls as well as boys, they would
select to keep as breeders those girls who reached menarche early. There
is a potential reason for this that they might not realize, namely that girls who are
late to mature often have difficulty getting pregnant; but there is another reason
that I'm sure they'd understand: they could breed such girls sooner, and
thus get more babies from them.
Gradually, the proportion of male breeders would get smaller and smaller,
as it was realized that only a handful of men was actually needed to impregnate
the women. Also, the fertility of the women would get higher and
higher—not higher than the natural maximum figure for the species, but a
higher average figure, since the less fertile women would not be kept, nor
their daughters.
However, the Genfarmers would be ranchers of men, not miners of men.
By this I mean that they would treat their stock well, at least by their own
lights. We are talking about a family business, one that they would want
to run efficiently over the long term, since they would wish to pass it to
their heirs in good order. So I'm going to suggest that they would follow
certain basic principles in the running of their ranch...er, Genfarm.
-
Breeders nurse their infants for six months after giving
birth, during which time they are not bred again.
-
After that, they are mated with the male breeders until
they are pregnant. If they fail to do so within three months, they are culled.
-
Breeders who miscarry within the first trimester are given
three months to recover and then bred again. If they miscarry again,
they are culled.
-
Male breeders are expected to mate with the females four
times a day; but additional males are kept in stock against illness or non-fatal
accident, giving the patient time to recover. (This may sound like an adolescent
male's notion of heaven—but remember that it is every day, and he doesn't get
to choose the women. They could be twice his age or have a face like the
back end of a horse; but he'd still have to perform.)
-
Young females are not bred until two years after
establishing.
At this point the “guesstimated” numbers become a bit stronger on
the “guess”; but here goes!
In practice this means that, for every 1000 pregnancies brought to full term, the
Genfarm has 1500 adult female breeders. At any one time, 750 of the
women are pregnant, 500 are nursing, and 250 (who are also nursing) are being
bred to the males in the hope of getting them pregnant. For this purpose,
75 male breeders are kept.
Each year, eight women die in childbirth.
Each year, fifteen die of other causes (i.e. 1% of the 1500).
Each year, twenty-five women fail to become pregnant within three months
and are culled (i.e. 10% of the 250).
Most years, one of the men dies of natural causes or accident.
Each year, fifteen men fail to keep up their quota (for reasons other than
health-related causes from which they recover), and are culled (i.e. 20%
of 75). About a third of these are youngsters who prove to lack the
necessary libido; the others are in their late teens or twenties, and getting
“worn out”.
As a consequence:
Fifteen or sixteen of the boys who establish are not sent to the pens, but
are instead kept to replace the “worn out“ male breeders.
Forty-eight girls who establish are also kept at the Genfarm to become
breeders, replacing women who have died or been culled.
Since the girls are kept for two years before being bred, there are therefore
ninety-six virgin female breeders. One of these can be expected to die of
natural causes each year (1% of the total).
Therefore, another girl also has to be kept back to replace her. This
means a total of forty-nine girls is kept back each year: also, there are
actually ninety-seven virgin breeders.
Now let's put this together with the earlier figures. The Genfarm produces
(per 1000 full-term pregnancies), 202 Gen girls and 193 Gen boys each year.
Of these, 153 girls are sent to the pens, and 49 are kept on the Genfarm;
and 177 boys are sent to the pens, and 16 kept on the Genfarm.
However, some of this is compensated for by the addition of culled
breeders. There are 25 culled female breeders, and 15 culled male
breeders.
This gives the following total:
TABLE 6 Maximum Annual Number of Gens Sent from Genfarms to the Pens
(per 1000 full-term pregnancies per year)
|
|
153 |
newly established girls |
177 |
newly established boys |
25 |
culled female breeders |
15 |
culled male breeders |
|
370 |
Total Pen Production |
|
Now this is for a traditional Genfarm—the sort of place the Farrises ran in
First Channel. However, it is important to remember that that's
quite a way back in history from the time of Zelerod's Doom (about four
centuries). So Rimon's father did not send this number of Gens to the
pens. There were a lot fewer Simes in those days; and he probably never
culled more than ten percent of this number. (Remember, these are figures
per thousand births. I have no idea how many thousands of Gens were on
the Farris Genfarm; but it could be 20,000 or more, spread out over several
villages and towns.)
The numbers above are the maximum output a Genfarm can
possibly have. And this has only become the situation on Genfarms at the time
of Zelerod's Doom.
However, there is another possible model for running a Genfarm. This is,
I suspect, one that would be increasing in popularity by the time of Zelerod's
Doom because, although it is actually less efficient, it gives the superficial
impression of being quite a bit more efficient—and does so in a way that
is significantly likely to impress people who don't know much about numbers,
don't know much about medicine, can't work conclusions from A to B to C, and
head straight for short term advantage.
In other words, it's going to appeal to politicians.
I suspect that, for most of the history of Sime Territory, Genfarms are run by
families. The “old families” of Simedom, so to speak.
Although Genfarms vary in size, they are all, relatively speaking, large
operations. I am not talking about small breeders, such as Pen
owners who breed a few excess females, or farmers who keep a Gen woman in
order to sell her babies. Cottage operations like that are something else
again. Real Genfarms are at least the size of counties, if not small
countries.
Genfarmers, therefore, have the sort of prestige of large ranchers in Texas
or owners of sheep stations in Australia. They are rich. They are
influential.
However, we all know the adage about the family that goes from rags to
riches to rags in three generations. Over time, some Genfarming families
go the same way. The Genfarm may be sold, perhaps to another
individual, or perhaps to a consortium. It may become a corporation:
big business: big money. But there is another possibility:
Genfarms in some areas may, so to speak, be nationalized. As the
population increases and the pressure on the Genfarms to produce more and more
Gens for the pens gets stronger and stronger, a political movement would develop
to reorganize Genfarms along more efficient lines. This movement would
be supported by a demogogic appeal to those who have poor arithmetic skills and
know nothing of demography.
It would, of course, be vigorously countered by big Genfarming
families and businesses. And they are rich, powerful, influential,
and—in their own way—even more highly efficient.
The alternative method of large-scale Genfarming follows these principles:
Female breeders are bred immediately after giving birth,
in the interests of maximizing the number of pregnancies.
Young females who establish and are kept as breeders are
immediately added to the breeding population.
-
Male breeders are expected to mate eight times a day;
and drugs are used to ensure that they meet their quotas.
As you might expect, the proportion of women who get pregnant immediately
after giving birth is lower than if they are allowed a recovery period; there is a
higher infant mortality rate because the babies aren't being nursed properly,
especially if milk production goes down during pregnancy; and, furthermore, there
is a higher rate of complications in pregnancy and childbirth, resulting in more
miscarriages and a higher peripueral mortality rate. As well, girls are less
fertile immediately after menarche, since their menstrual periods haven't stabilized.
And men who have sexual relations with that degree of frequency have
lower fertility, since sperm production goes sharply down, even if drugs manage
to keep other things up.
As a result, there are more breeders culled. They are, of course,
replaced by youngsters who have newly established. But you are caught
in a vicious cycle.
However, there are fewer adult Gens on the farm. And that
is what the public notices.
The “efficiency” model of Genfarm has 1000 breeding women to
produce the 1000 full-term pregnancies. You don't have the 500 nursing
mothers, just the 750 women who are pregnant and the 250 trying to get pregnant.
It has no virgin breeders. And it keeps only 35 men.
Let's look at what this means in terms of ratios. The traditional
Genfarm has 1500 women, 97 girls, and 75 men. That's 1672 adults.
(Also an awful lot of kids; but that's true of all Genfarms, however they're
run.)
The “efficiency” model has only 1035 adults.
Since both sets of figures have the same base figure of 1000 full-term pregnancies,
both Genfarm models actually produce the same number of young Gens
establishing each year: 202 girls and 193 boys.
The traditional version pulls 24 girls and 1 boy to replace breeders who have died.
(It pulls others to replace breeders who are culled; but as the culls
substitute for them, that doesn't affect the numbers.) This means that the
traditional version sends to the pens a total of 178 females and 192 males of
varying ages, or 370.
The efficiency version also has to replace people who die. The mortality
rate among the women because of childbirth complications has probably doubled;
but not the accident/illness mortality rate.
TABLE 7
Annual Mortality Among Gens Living on “Efficiency” Gen Farms
(per 1000 full-term pregnancies per year)
|
|
|
Mortality Rates |
|
Numbers |
| childbirth |
other |
|
childbirth |
other |
|
Female (n=1000) |
1.58% | |
1% | |
|
16 | |
10 | |
Male (n=35) |
-- | |
1% | |
|
0 | |
0 | |
This means that they have to replace 26 women who have died; but, in most years, they do not
have to replace any of the men. They are therefore able to send to
the pens a total of 176 females and 193 males of varying ages, or 369.
This is almost exactly the same number as the traditional Genfarm sends
to the pens.
However, taken as a ratio of the adult population on the farm, there is a major
difference. The traditional farm sends 370 to the pens, but has 1672 adults
it doesn't send on. That's a ratio of 22:100 or about 1:5.
The “efficiency” model sends 368 to the pens, with only 1035 that it
doesn't send on. That's a ratio of 35:100 or about 1:3.
Superficially, it must look as though the traditional Genfarm is
“hoarding” Gens.
In fact, both models produce more or less
the same number to send to the pens. The difference lies in the number
reserved for breeding. Nevertheless, to the uneducated eye, it must look
as though the Genfarms have a lot of “extra” Gens who could
be—should be—sent to the Pens. If there is even
a hint of a shortage, one would expect calls for confiscation, if not outright raids
against the “hoarders”. It wouldn't just be the Householdings that would
be threatened by mob panic: the big Genfarms would suffer, too.
Anyway, at the moment this is as far as I've got with calculations. But it's
very important to remember that these are, essentially, Zelerod's
“Doom” figures. This is the maximum possible
output of the Genfarms.
Right up to the Doom point, Genfarms would not be producing to
capacity. They would have more men. The women would have fewer children; and
they would not be culled when they stopped having babies, but would be left to raise them.
Also, there would be more elderly people on the Genfarms, provided they were
otherwise productive.
The situation described here is the ultimate development of the
Genfarm, something that is only happening to in the twenty to fifty
years before Unity (the period from before House of Zeor on to
Zelerod's Doom). Once full capacity is reached, of course, Doom
happens inevitably. However, it is important to note that Zelerod's predictions were
based on the increase in Sime population; but, in fact the crisis in Zelerod's
Doom was precipitated earlier than that point by a catastrophe affecting
the Gen population: i.e., famine caused by drought.
Oh, one more thing. Since each Sime needs twelve kills a year, the 370
Gens sent to the pens will sustain about 31 Simes. That means that it takes
1000 full-term pregnancies a year to sustain 31 Simes. And, for the
traditional Genfarm, it takes 1672 adult Gens to produce those 1000 full-term
pregnancies needed to sustain the 31 Simes—a ratio of 54:1. More
or less.
And that's even before we start counting in the pre-Gen children! (And
remember, Sime families are a lot smaller, so there are proportionately fewer
pre-Sime children.)
On a traditional Genfarm, there are 1672 adult Gens who are kept for
breeding purposes; but there are 10,227 pre-Gen children (of whom a third will
actually turn out to be Sime). That is a total population of 11,899.
But it means that there are over six times as many children as adults. Of
course, given the Sime definition of “child”, some of the breeders
are actually younger in years than some of the “children”; but that's
another matter.
The Genfarm has 3169 infants and toddlers. There are, in other
words, almost twice as many babies as there are adults to care for them.
There are 2456 children of establishment age (i.e. over ten).
A third of them will turn Sime; but no one knows who or when.
The Gens will have to be protected from them—but they number half as
many again the number of breeders, and a lot more than the relative
handful of Genfarm staff. These kids will have to be kept separate from
the rest of the people living on the Genfarm. They will very likely need
to be kept drugged, especially at night. (I discussed this in a previous
letter, along with its consequences for the survival of changeover cases.)
There are 4502 children between the ages of four and ten—old
enough to be put to some sort of work, and young enough to be safe from
changing over. That's more than two and a half times the number of
adults. They comprise 44% of the total child population, or 38% of the
total population.
I said that Genfarming was babyfarming, didn't I?
And all of this to sustain the lives of a mere 31 Simes.
Numbers. Don'tcha love 'em?
Ooops. You need my sources!
1. Larkin, Jack. “‘No Force Can Death
Resist‘: Reflections on Child and Infant Mortality in American
History.“ 2000. Old Sturbridge Village Online Resource
Library.
http://www.osv.org/learning/DocumentViewer.php?DocID=1967.
General range of figures on infant mortality.
2. Radical Statistics, Vol 74. “Infant mortality rates
by sex, England and Wales, 1928-98.”
http://www.radstats.org.uk/no074/article4c.htm.
I used the stats for 1928-30, which are separated for girls and boys, as a measure
of the relative difference in the mortality rates for the two sexes in the first year
of life. My actual figures are higher, since I'm reckoning on eighteenth or
early nineteenth century mortality rates, not early twentieth century rates.
3. The Multiple Births Foundation.
http://www.multiplebirths.org.uk/media.asp
Assorted data on multiple births, from which I had to select a figure for twins.
As most breeders on Genfarms are young, this means not taking
one of the figures for older women; but the rate of twinning actually varies from
country to country.
4. International Journal of Epidemiology. “Community-based prevention
of perinatal deaths: lessons from
nineteenth-century Sweden.”
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/29/3/542
Data on stillbirths.
5. Death rate from puerperal causes in New Haven CT.
(Sorry: no URL. I didn't
note it down at the time, mea culpa; and, when I was writing this and
googled for the site, I couldn't find it again.)
I used the rate of deaths per 1000 births for 1876-78. It's higher than the
rate for a good midwife in the eighteenth century, but lower than some
of the other rates (which range up to 29 per 1000 births). I'm assuming
that there has been breeding for healthy births by sending as tribute the daughters
of women who die in childbirth.
6. Pediatrics, Vol. 107, Issue 6.
“Attainment of Significant Pubertal Markers in Females.”
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/vol107/issue6/images/medium/pe0614993001.gif
I used the curve for the age of menarche, but adjusted the ages to fit the range of
ages of establishment/changeover given in the stories.
(Actually I looked at a lot more, some of which simply reinforced the choice of
figures I picked. Others were useless—but that's true of all research,
and even more true when you're simply doing it on line, googling stuff up.)
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Addenda to the two letters
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