Derin Edala

Ask Me Anything -- Sam Sareff

Added 2023-11-10 10:58:00 +0000 UTC

Why were you named Sam- was it a religious thing or a family thing or what?

Sort of both! Well, really, it was a family thing – I was named for my grandmother, who was named for her uncle. But she always used to joke that she was named after a god from the Nameless country that predated the Republic of Texas.

Everyone knows that the Nameless Country, being primarily Christian, worshipped Father Christmas (the father of ‘Jesus Christ’) who would bless everyone with gifts on his son’s birthday, but many people don’t know that they actually had a second, more consistently worshipped god, named Uncle Sam! So that was always my grandmother’s little joke, that we were named after a dead god from a mystery country.

If the Hylara colony ends up not needing/able to support turtles, do you have an alternate idea for that constellation?

Oh, I’m sure there will be turtles. If only as pets in terrariums. There’s no rcourse for old dna, no Earth to go back o; I’m sure we’ll fill Hylara with as many different kinds of animals as we possibly can.

I certainly hope our descendants don’t name their constellations after inanimate things. If they look up at the stars and see not a turtle but a living dome surrounded by exit airlocks, well. That would be a sad thing indeed.

Would you want to raise kids once you reach Hylara?

To be honest I’m not sure how much choice I’ll have in the matter. Children will be needed and we have thousands of embryos in storage for a reason. I imagine that children will be determined by the resources to support them that we have on hand. I’d love to raise some if it’s an option, but it’s all going to depend on how many we can realistically provide for, who’s likely to be the best child carers, and whose skills aren’t needed more elsewhere.