On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 07:50:43AM -0700, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:
> So what happens to all the 'excess' males born in the 'center' (too
> far from the frontier)?

I was never even sold on the idea of a species having a single static
culture across even a dozen parsecs and a hundred years, let alone
thousands of both.  With even slightly different cultural assumptions,
there wouldn't be any such thing as excess males.  If you peek into
the cracks in the assumptions too much, it might all fall apart.

But then, I guess the premise of the whole question was "what if the
Aslan worlds never depart from the stereotype shown in published
material and just keep sending ihatei colony fleets spinward forever",
so I guess I'll stick with it anyway.

It seemed to me from published material that ihatei mostly go into
military service, and only a tiny minority are involved in invasion or
colony fleets.  If it weren't, then the number of such ships would be
enormously larger than published material indicates.

So in such core worlds, I would expect the already small minority to
just go to approximately zero.

> Wait, maybe they are packed into fleets of 'cold sleeper' vessels w/
> 'cargos' of males in low berths?  And when the finally get close
> enough to the frontier, the survivors form a typical iHatie fleet?

That's possible, but seems rather extreme and expensive compared with
other possibilities -- such as putting them in military forces rather
than low berths for decades, and getting some local benefit in the
event of conflicts with other clans.

It always seemed to me that the aggressive colonization was more a
decision by some nearby commander taking an opportunity than any
centralized effort to distribute population.

One thing I didn't factor into previous thinking was that a lack of
existing civilization on frontier worlds could actually act as a
deterrent rather than a lure.  Having to build everything from dirt
may not be as attractive as just displacing a few barely armed
non-Aslan settlers and using what they already built.

- Tim