Anti-Transhumanism in Roleplaying Games

[User3]

Seriously, what's the deal with this?

Exalted: People are damned before they are even born into their roles. A minority of people claim real ultimate power and the opportunity to change their own destinies but everyone else gets the short end of the stick.

And by short end of the stick, I seriously mean it. If you're not a hero, you are someone's slave. Some Dragon-Blooded asshole can role into your village and declare you and your entire family are concubines. Big deal, this happens all of the time in fiction.

But unlike other settings, if the Maidens didn't care for you to begin with, there's no way you can ever hope for a better life for you or your children. Ever. No matter how hard you try or how much you dream, you're stuck in a life of crushing poverty and misery. You don't even have the chance to dream about opportunity; the game system, the society, and even the laws of the universe prevent you from ascending.

What a shitty moral.

Shadowrun: This game is like Exalted, but on a lesser extent. The adepts, mystic adepts, and magicians are explicitly stated at character creation to be born, not made. And there's no chance of ever becoming one if you don't have the right genes.

However (in theory) the game doesn't try to screw you as far as the mechanics go. Super science and magic are about equal and both are necessary to do the things that you want.

But if you want super science and this form of ascension, there's a huge cost: your humanity, in the form of essence. Magicians don't have to pay this price. This is a huge, huge deal. Also, while this isn't a practical limit in >95% of games, there's eventually a limit to how robotic you can get. There's not a limit on magic.

Suck.

Dungeons and Dragons: Unlike Exalted, the game has the opposite problem. Mainly, the people who start out in this game as weak little snots end up the most powerful. In almost all game settings, the most powerful fighters/wizards/clerics were almost always people who started out pathetically weak and unnotable. The politics and heroics of the world are not decided by mind flayers, devils, or even dragons; in fact, starting out as a pathetic little human or halfling or whatever is actually an advantage in the long run.

While this game has the advantage that anyone can eventually become powerful enough to kill the entire pantheon of gods, it also has the marked disadvantage that people who don't completely give into violence and hatred and power get screwed. The game actively discourages any kind of betterment unless you or your forebearers engaged in huge amounts of suffering. While one adventure can make you filthy rich, if you're one of the masses of peasants and you don't want to pick up a sword or set someone on fire then you're completely screwed.

World of Darkness: I don't think I need to elaborate on this at all.


To recap: In D&D, you are forced to give up your morality. In Shadowrun, you imperil your humanity. In WoD and Exalted you don't even get a choice.

So what's the dealyo? The idea of ordinary people meeting and exceeding human limits to do great things is the very core of heroic fiction (and even RPGs if you think about it), yet these forerunners of gaming make almost every attempt to crush down everyone who's not a villain or part of the chosen few--and in some cases there's a huge cost in attempting to do this.

[User3]

Transhumanism is inherently focused on the "chosen few." Once you're raising everyone up, you aren't trans-human anymore. You've just raised the bar for everyone. And few "Transhumanists" really seem to want that to happen.

Seriously, universal improvement of humanity makes for a great end RP reward, but it gives no benefit to an RPG currently being played. You've just added 10 to everything.

Add to that that an idyllic utopia is just about the worst setting for a game (unless that utopia is threatened or false), and it becomes obvious why Transhumanism in the way you describe isn't so popular.

I honestly believe that we're going to reach "The Singularity" within the next century (probably much sooner), but I don't want to play an RPG set in a 'realistic' post-Singularity setting. For one, there's the incomensurability issue. For another, I think it very well might be a sort of utopia.
No, give me the illogical 'future' of Star Wars or CP2020 any day.

And as for the "giving up your humanity" issue, that's bullshit. A computer or a book is just as much a part of humanity as a fetus. Possibly moreso. We are what we create, and the only uniquely human creations on earth are our technologies. So if I became cybernetic, I would be becoming more human, not less so.

And sure, a lot of religious nuts don't see eye to eye with that, and think that to be "human" we have to be pathetic. Well, to continue their memes we sure as hell do have to be pathetic. The flames of hell don't burn very hot for an immortal, and neither do the prosaic pleasures of heaven entice (even ignoring the simple plea of logic, 'why God?').

Now that we know how little IQ the creation of a solar system and life take ('Why, they practically make themselves'), and we're begining to see how much of a better job we might do, the need for a Celestial Father (& oft-forgotten Mother) is pretty small.

But I get the feeling that I'm completely missing your point.

[dbb]

The idea of "the Chosen One" is a repeated -- sort of beaten to death, actually -- theme in source literature, so I'm not surprised that it keeps recurring in games. Looking at my bookshelf:

Call of Cthulu is about totally ordinary people who struggle against cosmic evil for (generally) no greater reward than the satisfaction of having saved humanity. Usually they fail, but they do struggle, and there's nothing here that anyone else on the planet who wasn't similarly educated could do, including cast spells.

Dune, oddly enough considering the source material, is actually pretty decent by this standard -- except for the whole gender-restricted Bene Gesserit thing, and I don't think the BGs are in core anyway. Even they are more or less ordinary humans who happen to be extraordinarily well-trained.

Pendragon is somewhat problematic if you bring in the rules for PC wizards, but if you stick with everyone as a squire or knight it's quite good, and it even includes the whole "ascenscion" ideal via the Grail, while sticking fairly close to something that might be considered "moral". Of course, the whole notion of a feudal system somewhat undermines the egalitarian nature of things, but.

And that's about it, at least on my bookshelf. Just about every other game seems to include the notion that birth determines destiny in one way or another; there are surprisingly few games where sorcery is something you can just learn (you can in Everway, for instance, but Everway has its own problems on this score).

Interestingly enough, Iain Banks' "Culture" setting comes, I think, close to what Catharz is describing as a "post-Singularity" setting, remains somewhat egalitarian, and would make a decent RPG setting.

--d.

[Username17]

But if you want super science and this form of ascension, there's a huge cost: your humanity, in the form of essence. Magicians don't have to pay this price. This is a huge, huge deal. Also, while this isn't a practical limit in >95% of games, there's eventually a limit to how robotic you can get. There's not a limit on magic.

But there is a hard limit to how many spirits you can control, and there's no limit to how many robots you can command. Also, if oyu spend all your Essence as a cyborg, it's not even important to you, while a Magician who spends Essence gets kicked right in the nuts.

The Ascension is different for magical characters (who get the power to shoot bigger and bigger lasers out of their eyes) and cyborgs (who get direct neural control over larger and larger lasers mounted on satelites in geo synchronis orbit). But there's no specific upper limit for either one.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I think what you're fighting is that WoD is all Emo and 'oh my wretched fate!' while D&D is all about selfish cnsumerism.

While a few game settings have utopia - or just normalicy - as the goal, this is only because they're fighting the inherent selfishness of the players.

-Crissa

Mod Edit: Gratuitous political commentary deleted.

[Modesitt]

Before I start, let me make sure I understand what you're arguing. If I'm wrong here, please disregard the rest of my post: You are arguing that most major settings, including the World of Darkness setting, do not allow most people to improve their lot in life.

World of Darkness: I don't think I need to elaborate on this at all.

Mage: It can happen randomly to anyone, but it's very specifically stated as possible for Mages to actively force ANYONE to Awaken. Some Mages are working on Awakening everyone.

Werewolf: Yeah, you're screwed here. You're either born a werewolf or you're not.

Vampire: Anyone can become a vampire or ghoul. Theoretically, most of the population could become a vampire if the world was properly structured. Instead of raising animals for their meat we would be raising animals for their blood. In order to raise the animals some people would probably have to be ghouls. Some would view this as better than becoming a vampire. After all, ghouls get immortality, they can walk around in the daytime, they can sell their really tasty human blood to vampires for profit, and they get some minor supernatural powah.

[RandomCasualty]

Well I disagree about D&D. I see no reason why you have to give up your morality. Evil is so plentiful you can make a career out of destroying it. There's really no need to start razing peasant villages or eating babies.

As far as having special castes of better humans, I don't see anything wrong with that. Fantasy is full of special classes of people and unique beings like Exalted. Look at any comic book. Some people are Wolverine or Gambit and 99% of the people are common civilians.

And even in D&D, the majority of people just aren't going to be able to get the training to be fighters, monks, rogues or wizards, and sorcery is pretty much an innate talent. While it's generally glossed over as flavor text in D&D, backstory is going to mean stuff to everyone else, and as in real life some people are born into being knights and others are born into being rice farmers.

[Username17]

The primary D&D source material - Lord of the Rings - is extremely anti-egalitarian. Some people are the "right kind of people" and they are destined for greatness or kingships or whatever, and some people are "the wrong kind of people" and they are destined to be criminals or work for the Dark Lord and the rest of you are the meaningless masses of humanity and don't count for shit.

That's not a message that goes over well with modern people, but it's very hard to root out of fantasy gaming. That's the core message of the primary source material and people slip it in unconciously at every level.

Yes, you could havew a setting in which everyone had equal inherent worth - like the real world - and then the social system could be variously unfair or not and there would be villains and monsters to fight. Nothing is stopping you from doing that, but to many people that doesn't even feel like fantasy.

Because modern fantasy was penned in historical times by a man who wanted to harken back to a nostalgic view of aristocracy, many "key" elements of fantasy are essentially aristocratic in nature. It's not good, most people don't even like it, but it's there. And the only way to root it out is to, well, root it out.

You're basically going to need to start from scratch. New races, new magic systems, new social systems, new everything. All the "generic" fantasy elements in current use are based on aristocratic propaganda or the needs of miniatures battle systems from the 60s. Neither of those is particularly conducive to a pro-social message.

-Username17

[User3]

Each RPG has some version of "special". Some are more equal than others.

Take, for example, the World of Darkness. it has several routes to being special. These are:

A. Being hot. If you are hot and would look good with blood all over your face, then some vampire makes you into a vampire. They hang around high schools and college campuses looking for hot people to turn (or chat-lines for dirty talkers to turn into Nosferatu).

B. Being born awesome. Guess what, you are a werewolf because your parents were awesome. Here's a gift certificate with your silver spoon.

C. Being awesome. If you are just awesome, you Awaken. This only confirms your innate awesome-ness about how the universe should serve you.

Guess what? Somewhere in there is something fair for you.

DnD is also fair. Remember that XP is gained from overcoming challenges. Those challenges really can be "the Great Case of the Missing Pie." You can be a 10th level Rogue and have gained all your XP from disabling traps (they are CRed). DnD is more fair because to gain XP you only need to take risks and face challenges. In this way its actually the most fair of all the systems: simply by trying to test your skills against challenges makes you special. Being a certain level is really just function of being "adventurous". People who seek out challenges and experiences get more XP, meaning they have to seek out bigger challenges and tests. The guy who stays at home solving CR 1 "Mysterious Peeping Tom" adventures or CR 2 "Get on the Town Council" adventures is going to cap out pretty quickly.

The only problem with DnD is the NPC classes. It assumes that commoners are common, and thus must suck by definition....but then, it also assumes that some guys want to be Cleric 3/Warmage 2/Wizard 3/Wu Jen 3s and still be viable characters, so that could just be an unintentional facet of poor design.

In general, I think RPGs are quite optimistic in general. They assume that people can gain the skills they desire: thats fantasy right there. Just ask all the would-be rockstars in the world.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

The primary D&D source material - Lord of the Rings - is extremely anti-egalitarian. Some people are the "right kind of people" and they are destined for greatness or kingships or whatever, and some people are "the wrong kind of people" and they are destined to be criminals or work for the Dark Lord and the rest of you are the meaningless masses of humanity and don't count for shit.

Sort of. Yeah, the Numenoreans are just better than other people--stronger, wiser, longer-lived--but for all their greatness, they're dying out, destined to be replaced by the "lesser" races of men. And Middle Earth is saved by hobbits, the setting's equivalent of Joe Six Pack. However nostalgic Tolkien is for the aristocratic world of myth, he realizes that it's not possible to keep it and does a good job of deconstructing the foundations of those myths if you look close enough.

But the subtleties of the work are largely lost on fantasy gamers, who focus on the aspects of the books that hearken back to centuries of mythology and fairy-tales. These are primal ideas that weren't invented by Tolkien at all. Human beings are primates who love their dominance hierarchies. When you allow people to play heroes destined to rise to the top of the hierarchy, the allure is irresistible.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

Slight topic hijack:

Waitaminnit. Having never played White Wolf's Werewolf: The Whatevering, is it true there's no biting people and turning them into werewolves? No American Werewolf in London king of stuff?

Who writes this stuff?

[RandomCasualty]

1149851396[/unixtime]]Slight topic hijack:

Waitaminnit. Having never played White Wolf's Werewolf: The Whatevering, is it true there's no biting people and turning them into werewolves? No American Werewolf in London king of stuff?

Who writes this stuff?

Yeah, white wolf's werewolf game is screwy. Basically the werewolves are supposed to be the good guys, and they don't infect others, instead they breed like everything else.

Werewolves are nature's protectors and pretty much aside from silver killing them, not much of the original werewolf mythology is followed.

[PhoneLobster]

The hobbits weren't "joe six pack" they were the perfect happy loyal peasant, inately unable to rebel, so simply minded and agonizingly rural that they were resistant against complex temptations like the curse of the one ring that would turn a born noble like gandalf in moments.

There is a difference. Middle earth wasn't saved by the underdog peasant rebelling against the master race, it was saved by the loyal dog peasant serving the master race to defeat the kingdom of upwardly mobile darkness that was rebelling against the master race.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Actually, D&D is pretty friggin transhumanist, at least as far as base classes go. There are no racial restrictions, there are no ability restrictions, and multiclassing is completly open. Someone who has been a Fighter for ten levels can suddenly decide to dedicate his life to a god without any previous inclination and that god will acknowladge him. Alternatly, he can suddenly decide to naturally cast magic, or become a barehanded combat specialist or learn how to tap his deeply repressed anger issues to become more powerful. Anyone can do this at any time. Hell, there's nothing in the rules that even stops someone with an 8 intelligence from becoming a Wizard, and he can't even cast the damned spells!.

The NPC classes are just for those who can't be bothered fulfilling their potental.

-Desdan

[User3]

Well I disagree about D&D. I see no reason why you have to give up your morality. Evil is so plentiful you can make a career out of destroying it. There's really no need to start razing peasant villages or eating babies.

You still have to kill things and take their things to advance in this game. While there are alternate ways to gain experience, you will eventually have to start jacking people up.

If you want to become the best medic in the world or cast magic so powerful that every homeless person ever will have shelter you are going to have to come repeatedly into contact with things you just might have to kill. There are systems of morality that would never allow an adherant to go down this path.

...

I admit that I don't know jack about WoD. You can stop talking to me about it now, because I won't know what you're talking about.

So much for making dismissive, smarmy remarks.

...

And even in D&D, the majority of people just aren't going to be able to get the training to be fighters, monks, rogues or wizards, and sorcery is pretty much an innate talent. While it's generally glossed over as flavor text in D&D, backstory is going to mean stuff to everyone else, and as in real life some people are born into being knights and others are born into being rice farmers.

In D&D the 3rd, people are screwed over by the social system and bugs in the system (such as multiclassing and epic), not by design intent.

With very, very few exceptions, anyone in this game can become as good as anyone else given enough time and murder.

There are some exceptions not caused by designer oversight (such as random rolling of stats) but they're minor in the long run.

...

Really, I'd like to see things become more like One Piece; in that setting, determination and creativity will eventually make you more hardcore than just being lucky. If you were already lucky then it is possible to become even more hardcore, but it doesn't mean that you're going to leave your non-lucky friends in the dirt.

[RandomCasualty]

1149964775[/unixtime]]
You still have to kill things and take their things to advance in this game. While there are alternate ways to gain experience, you will eventually have to start jacking people up.

If you want to become the best medic in the world or cast magic so powerful that every homeless person ever will have shelter you are going to have to come repeatedly into contact with things you just might have to kill. There are systems of morality that would never allow an adherant to go down this path.

Well, remember that D&D morality is different from real world morality. You really don't have pacifist religions in D&D like you do in real life, presumably because of a Darwinistic effect of natural selection. Remember that D&D is effectively a lawless setting for the most part, and killing is pretty acceptable.

And yeah, you do get experience from jacking people up, but that has nothing to do with good or evil. If you jack people up to protect the innocent, then you're good, and if you do so just to rob them, you're probably evil. You can make a career out of both. There's no real loss of morals.

Also, abstractly, you get CR for overcoming challenges, so technically if you were a pacifist and tried to convert people to your religion or whatever, you could be overcoming obstacles just by getting converts.

In D&D the 3rd, people are screwed over by the social system and bugs in the system (such as multiclassing and epic), not by design intent.

With very, very few exceptions, anyone in this game can become as good as anyone else given enough time and murder.

Well, not really. Ability scores in general limit people to being crap, even if by some means they got the training. Consider that the average person is a collection of 10s and 11s. He really can't be any sort of caster (being able to cast 1st level spells at best). And as far as fighting goes, he probably won't survive very long. Even if he does, he's still inferior to any real character wtih real stats.

The wizard with 18 int base has much more raw potential than the 10 int guy who can only cast cantrips, and nothing the 10 int guy does is going to change that.

[User3]

DnD is also fair. Remember that XP is gained from overcoming challenges. Those challenges really can be "the Great Case of the Missing Pie."

I hear this a lot from people who try to claim that D&D can support a non-violence based advancement system.

People, AFAICR, there's only a few things in this game which gives a defined system of experience gain.

- Violence
- Taking care of traps
- Cerain restoration spells
- Certain artifacts and magic items

That's it. Any other system of XP gain is solely DM adjucation.

But wait! What about the example in the DMG that ended up in awarded experience without the death of one or more parties?

That is more DM adjucation. Remember that you get experience for encountering monsters and 'getting past' them, not for avoiding them altogether.

What that means I will never know. If you scry a dungeon to become aware of all of the sleeping inhabitants and just send a rogue with invisibility to take the safest route to treasure, do you get credit for all of those monsters? What if he took pains to run like a loon through every room where monsters were to see if they had anything in their nesting, still remaining undetected?

Those questions are up in the air and will differ from game to game, but the system clearly gives you experience if the same rogue used invisibility to kill all of those monsters with his violence.

[RandomCasualty]

1149969064[/unixtime]]
That is more DM adjucation. Remember that you get experience for encountering monsters and 'getting past' them, not for avoiding them altogether.

What that means I will never know. If you scry a dungeon to become aware of all of the sleeping inhabitants and just send a rogue with invisibility to take the safest route to treasure, do you get credit for all of those monsters? What if he took pains to run like a loon through every room where monsters were to see if they had anything in their nesting, still remaining undetected?

Well while it's true that different groups play it differently, this doesn't in fact mean the argument itself is bad. Some groups don't give you XP for setting off or avoiding a trap, others do. By the RAW you're supposed to get XP for both.

So long as you've considered to have overcome the obstacle, you should get XP for it. The only real grey area is what exactly you're trying to accomplish by overcoming the obstacle. If you're doing a straight dungeon crawl, then the objective is getting the treasure *in that room*. This basicaly means you must at least encounter the monster, but you can slip in undetected, get the treasure and get out. In a bigger adventure where your goal is "rescue the princess", Simply rescuing the princess may give you XP for at least all the obstacles in your way.

If the dungeon complex had some kind of alarm system where everyone would rally to defend the princess if you set it off, then that damn wel should be the entire dungeon you're getting XP for.

Now, most DMs won't allow this because they think it's cheap and unfair and they want to promote a style of combat to the game. Also most DMs don't allow the frenzied berserker either because they think it's too powerful. Some DMs only allow you to sneak attack once per round. But house rules don't change what the rules say.

[User3]

If you're doing a straight dungeon crawl, then the objective is getting the treasure *in that room*. This basicaly means you must at least encounter the monster, but you can slip in undetected, get the treasure and get out. In a bigger adventure where your goal is "rescue the princess", Simply rescuing the princess may give you XP for at least all the obstacles in your way.

The DMG doesn't say anything about non-trap/violence XP rewarding systems, other than the fact that some DMs can optionally choose to do it. But it also doesn't require DMs to award experience for goals achieved in a story.

Furthermore, there isn't even any real support or guideline on how to use this optional rule, unlike PrCs and artifacts. It's entirely in the hands of a DM, unlike using your violence.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

1149939430[/unixtime]]The hobbits weren't "joe six pack" they were the perfect happy loyal peasant, inately unable to rebel, so simply minded and agonizingly rural that they were resistant against complex temptations like the curse of the one ring that would turn a born noble like gandalf in moments.

There is a difference. Middle earth wasn't saved by the underdog peasant rebelling against the master race, it was saved by the loyal dog peasant serving the master race to defeat the kingdom of upwardly mobile darkness that was rebelling against the master race.

Whatever their motives, though, they did save the world. In doing so, they transcended their station. Furthermore, the first chapter of The Hobbit says that hobbits are still with us today, though well hidden, implying that they survived long after the Fourth Age of Middle Earth. Where are the Numenoreans and elves again?

And your characterization of the hobbits as too simple-minded and docile to be tempted is off-base. First of all, hobbits are presented (either in The Hobbit or one of the LotR appendixes, I'm not sure which) as originally a warrior race before they settled down in the Shire. They're more resistant to the Ring than members of other races, noble or common, because they're tougher than they look, not because they're lapdogs. BTW, who are they supposed to be lapdogs to, anyway? At the time of LotR, they've been governing themselves in the Shire for around 1,400 years.

[PhoneLobster]

I stand by my hobbit characterization as accurate.

I also point out that Bilbo left the shire and essentially ascended from his station as a snack obsessed minor peasant manor boss to a member of the international nobility and its high flying pop star lifestyle.

And this was presented as a tradgedy.

And the hobbits from the lord of the rings were also gay lovers. Which is OK. But they should have let Mary pronounce his chosen cross gender name properly and wear a dress like we all know he wanted to.

[dbb]

Hobbits do indeed save the world, but, as is often the case in Tolkien, they save it in their own racially deterministic way. A hobbit hero is tough, persistent, stubborn, cheerful in the face of certain doom, and possessed of astonishing willpower. But he isn't a master swordsman -- that's for Numenoreans or humans. He isn't a doughty axe- or hammer-swinger -- that's for dwarves. And so on. So -- while they did indeed "transcend their station", as it were, they nonetheless transcended it in their own very specific way, and there is little evidence that any other options are available to them. I think that generally goes against what Lago was originally talking about.

All that said, I have to agree with AW -- mistaking hobbits for simple-minded and docile creatures is one of the classic blunders. In fact, it's a blunder that's actually committed in the books, and more than once -- and every last time the hobbits turn out to be rather less simple-minded and docile than the comfort of their erstwhile foes would allow. Check out the last few chapters of "Return of the King", where the hobbits rise up en masse and throw out Saruman and his gang of humans and half-orcs who've occupied the Shire -- hobbit snipers killing from ambush, hobbits fighting hand-to-hand with human thugs, et cetera. If they come across as simple and docile, it's because they live in a peaceful and uncomplicated place that doesn't require anything else, but it's made explicitly clear by Tolkien that that's not their only mode. As well he might have, given the none too subtle way he was using them as a metaphor for the British peasant classes.

--d.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Well, let's look at what Lago was talking about in the OP.

The idea of ordinary people meeting and exceeding human limits to do great things is the very core of heroic fiction (and even RPGs if you think about it)

I would argue that Tolkien's hobbit characters meet and exceed their limits to do great things. Granted, the way Lago talks for much of his post makes it look like he's obsessed with transcending your humanity by becoming a god or a robot, but that's not the only kind of transcendence. In fact, literature is full of a transcendence built on finding out what was really inside you all along, rather than becoming something else.

[dbb]

Yet again I have to agree and disagree ... but this time I mostly have to disagree. Tolkien's hobbits most certainly do exceed their limits ... in the sense of what they thought they were capable of doing before their adventures began. In terms of exceeding human limits (or in this case, hobbit limits), not so much. I would argue, on the contrary, that they save the world pretty much within the confines of their racial stereotype -- toughness, stubborness, persistence, and willpower. Of course, this is kind of a peculiar debate, because what hobbit limits are is mostly defined by Tolkien in the course of the adventures of exceptional hobbits under exceptional circumstances ... so who knows?

That's what I thought Lago was getting at -- since he initially went on about your destiny in Exalted being determined at birth and how Shadowrun mages are born, not made. I mean, heck, even ordinary human characters in Exalted can "exceed their limits" in the sense of being able to accomplish things they, or for that matter their best friends or the reader or whoever, never thought possible.

But the average Solar Exalted is still going to be able to kick their ass in fifteen different ways without breaking a sweat, and no amount of hard work or heroic adventure is going to change the gigantic head start such a character gets on said average human. It's totally possible that Lago was onto something else entirely, but that was what I thought he was after.

--d.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

You could be right. A lot of Lago's original post supports your interpretation. If that's what Lago's talking about, there's not much of that kind of "transhumanism" in fiction, either. Humans are often presented as saving the universe, but usually within the traditions of their own humanity. Either that, or they are just born better than others. The cyberpunk stories and other such things are exceptions rather than rules.