The Venerean

The Venus Type is tall. Willowy and acrobatic too, where the Venereans use harpoons; which they will, if they be in the slightest bit sociable.

The best athletes over Venus reside in the flotilla. The flying planes (especially) would be taking on Amazonian tree-climbers.

The typical Venerean floaty farm will be low-pressure, warm, humid. A lot of it will be run by the Dutch. But some of it will require a more homey touch. Plants will trend Kenyan, New Guinea / Malagasy highland, Laos highland, high-Amazonian, high Central American. So will their tenders: Boers, Kenyans, Peruvians, Malagasy, Hmong, the Mam-K’iche sort of “Maya”.

Venereans will be a good deal more educated as well. The farmers, too, for all they are Neolithic. (And yes, this is a low-metallic canopy.) Enough that they know to abandon their Neolithic clannishness, at least in-group.

Beyond the in-group, I am unsure how close these communities mix. The Maya will be the proudest. I think the people will mix a bit beyond farm bounds however. They will want to share knowledge, especially on crops they share like coffee. The bees, certainly, are going to be subject to hybridizing experiments.

I expect upper body strength (read: for women) to be compensated by cybernetics and shielding. Harpooning remains a game of reflexes. When the reflexes slow down, it's time for the old folks' home. That home will be the farms, or back on Earth, or in orbit. So the flotilla's population skews late-teen to thirties Earth years.

LOG 1/1/2010 - The Venerean farming-type and its ethnicities was thought up back in 12 December. I considered the effect of a harpoon-culture when flying from DC to Denver 30 December, which ended up in that "farming bubbles" essay. I realised that the essay was getting long and messy, so I finally got to pulling out this publon, this morning.