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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