Between thirty and thirty-five million dead in the Eugenics Wars

[Noddy]

Well, Khan and his siblings didn't have much luck creating their own Augments in the books. So they must have been made by Chrysalis, I suppose.

 

[Noddy]

Actually, the process by which Augments are created appears to vary drastically between the novels and TV episodes. In the books they seem to gestate normally in the womb, and don't require a "father", whereas the TV episodes depict the opposite. Take Udar, for example.

 

[Christopher]

^But the Augments in the ENT episodes were born in the 22nd century, maybe 170 years after the Chrysalis Augments. The embryos are the same, but the methods available for gestating them have advanced in the interim.

 

[Noddy]

Ah, but they were said to have been left over from the Eugenics Wars, placing their origin in the era of the books.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, that's what I'm saying. There is no difference in the embryos themselves. It's just that by the 22nd century, it was possible to gestate them in artificial wombs rather than surrogate mothers.

 

[Noddy]

I admit that it's been a long time since I last read Greg's books, but I'm pretty sure the augmented embryos were never "injected" into the wombs of surrogate mothers to gestate; they started off in the womb like ordinary foetuses.

Also, in the books, I don't think they required "fathers"; they could be conceived by just one parent. But please correct me if I'm misremembering.

 

[Christopher]

I admit that it's been a long time since I last read Greg's books, but I'm pretty sure the augmented embryos were never "injected" into the wombs of surrogate mothers to gestate; they started off in the womb like ordinary foetuses.

Also, in the books, I don't think they required "fathers"; they could be conceived by just one parent. But please correct me if I'm misremembering.

From The Eugenics Wars Book 1, Chapter 2:

The two dozen embryos arrayed upon the counter, each one no more than a few millimeters long and each suspended in a sterile dish containing an artificial growth medium of [Kaur's] own invention, were the end of a long and meticulous process of elimination and experimentation, expressly designed to create human embryos genetically superior to those created through the random genetic shuffling of ordinary reproduction.

The process had begun by inducing superovulation in all of the project's female volunteers, including herself. The large and divers assortment of eggs yielded by this procedure had been inseminated artificially and allowed to incubate at a temperature of precisely thirty-seven degrees centigrade, i.e., body temperature. Following fertilization, the eggs had been carefully examined for a wide variety of genetic defects or abnormalities, with all unsuitable eggs immediately terminated and disposed of.
...
Careful screening of hundreds of test samples had winnowed the selection down to a mere two dozen eggs, which had then been allowed to develop into the embryos currently awaiting Kaur's final inspection. Of those candidates, only those she judged suitable would be implanted in the surrogate mothers who had agreed to carry the babies to term.

So yes, they were implanted in surrogate mothers (who made no genetic contribution), and they did need fathers in the sense of sperm donors.

And it goes on to say:

One of these days we really have to develop some workable artificial wombs, Kaur reflected. That would place yet one more crucial stage of human development under deliberate scientific control, not to mention sparing the project the burden of having to constantly recruit new surrogate mothers.

 

[Noddy]

I'm guessing the 1800+ embryos were stashed away somewhere in secret by Dr Kaur?

 

[DimesDan]

Does it really matter? Due to there nature, the books and TV programmes will be inconsistent.

 

[Noddy]

Does it really matter? Due to there nature, the books and TV programmes will be inconsistent.

But the more the books can be made consistent with the TV episodes, the more they can still be enjoyed, IMO.