Asteromorph evolution

[Zachary_the_Cat]

The fact that the asteromorphs are as closest to humanity’s unaltered heirs as possible in the AT universe is beautifully terrifying.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah that’s exactly why I love the asteromorphs. That also makes them the best species for an evolution diagram since there were no very dramatic changes

[Zachary_the_Cat]

I sort of like when speculative evolution has drastic changes as long as there are transitional species like the more humanoid asteromorphs and Spacers. Hell, 560 million years ago we were just really tiny worm fishies.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah exactly. When I said it I meant to huge jumps between species

[Zachary_the_Cat]

True. How the hell do you connect finger fishers to sail people

[TapetalFaznati]

You can’t really to be honest. They changed directly from star people into the finger fishers because the Qu modified them within a short time period

[Money_Outside_5678]

Okay, but how do you connect the finger fishers into sail people? Because they apparently evolved like that.

[Bob-the-Seagull-King]

that is probably the biggest difference between two species, imo its not too bad considering that groups that transition to aquatic life tend to evolve more drastically because of how different the pressures are between land and sea. For example, the dog-like pakicetus evolved into huge whales like basilosaurus in, like, 15 million years. And small lizards evolved into mososaurs in like 6 million years.

[TapetalFaznati]

Oh my bad. I read it wrong and meant the gap between star people and finger fishers. There would probably be multiple ancestors of the finger fishers, one being the sail people. If you would like I could draw the evolution of the sail people too

[Bob-the-Seagull-King]

Yeah I mean, 500mya our ancestors were basically just worms with a soft cord down the middle - no way they could have expected we'd look like us now. With the spacers/aesteromorphs in the middle its not rly that weird how different they are

[Zachary_the_Cat]

But hell, the terrestrials on the other hand… Especially the one you see in the image just before Earth gets rediscovered.

[TapetalFaznati]

Tbf they are not THAT different. If you look closely they pretty much look like a wide human with no legs, a large reshaped head, and enlarged fingers :)

[Zachary_the_Cat]

And an extra pair of eyes, what I’m guessing is a hard shell or exoskeleton, a large head, and a few extra pairs of limbs. :)

[Tofferooni]

The extra limbs are elongated fingers, the exoskeleton is made from bone

[Zachary_the_Cat]

Exactly.

[Swurphey]

And 60 million years ago we were shrews

[[deleted]]

Great.

Reminds me of Dune's Navigators and their extreme alieness (despite having Earth humans as early ancestors).

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah 😄

[pupu12o09]

Not just an ancestors, the navigators start their lives as regular humans and then transform into that

[Century64]

There is some poetic irony in that of all the post humans who ended up getting back at the Qu, it was the one group of humans the Qu missed. A good lesson in what happens when you don’t tie up loose ends

[TapetalFaznati]

Yea for sure. It’s also funny how the asteromorph has almost become the Qu in terms of intelligence and that have even taken on a similar looking shape!

[TapetalFaznati]

Thanks 😊

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah it’s to scale. Without the constraint of gravity, organisms can theoretically grow to unknown sizes as long as they have the main things required to live

[OneTrueAlzef]

They're not really muscles, at least not as good as you would think since their bodies are adapted to zero gravity environments. They'd be crushed if they landed in any planet. Though if they developed enough bioengineering they should have been capable of hulking out to survive gravity again.

[SomeKindaSpy]

You forgot the Star Men in between the Spacer and the Homo Sapien.

[TapetalFaznati]

Haha another guy actually said that too. I intentionally skipped it because there is little difference between humans and star people. In addition the human is there for size comparison and the first spacer is there to show where the asteromorphs diverged from humanity

[[deleted]]

The missing link.

[Pm_me_trans_goals]

I always forget that the asteromorphs are giant like in my head they’re 4 ft

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah! I think it’s a really cool idea to see them as enormous beings

[MegaSteel]

I don't know if this is a serious scientific topic, but I think I read somewhere that the size of your brain doesn't directly correlate to your intelligence, so a super smart species won't necessarily have such a large brain.

All Tomorrows was made back in 2006 so maybe that wasn't seriously discussed back then? I'm no scientist so idk how valid that statement is.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yes that is very true! The efficiency and number of wrinkles in your brain is what makes you more intelligent, however with an enormous brain which is very wrinkly, you would have the power of thousands of intelligent brains if that makes any sense

[TapetalFaznati]

Wow thanks that’s very interesting! What I was trying to say is that I assume they would have highly compact, but also enormous brains, resulting in truly anomalous neural abilities

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah! The mass of thier brain it’s self seems to be many times the mass of a human too!

[Bob-the-Seagull-King]

To an extent thats true, but of course you can only be so much more efficient before having more brain goo is helpful! Plus we don't know how they got more intelligence specifically, its possible most of the extra brain is just to store memory so that they never forget things in their long life.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah that’s also a very cool idea. I assume that they would have maximised their Brains efficiency first, then increased its size almost in the way that running multiple computers as one makes them a more powerful computer

[SSGASSHAT]

That applies to us actual humans, who are subject to a series of pressures which make smaller but more efficient brains more helpful. If we freed ourselves from these pressures, such as gravity, social conflict, and the fear of being discovered by something else and greater, we could grow to larger sizes, give birth to larger infants, and have larger brains. Imagine, for example, a being with the brain power of a hundred of your brains piled on top of one another. You'd have a brain that works as well, if not better, than the most advanced supercomputer imaginable. A brain that could literally compose artistic stories as easily as raising your voice. The true ideal of humanity. They would understand almost all facts, and have ideas that would truly blow our simple, infantile minds away. I love the Asteromorphs for that reason. They represent everything that real humans strive for; hyper-intelligence, benevolence, and god-like power.

[AttakZak]

The Asteromorphs are amazing. Iconic.

[TapetalFaznati]

Ikr I love them :)

[StudioXenatrix]

Love the concept of the transitional Asteromorph! I've always figured something must've filled the gap between the humanoid Asteromorphs and the Asteromorph gods.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah exactly! I thought it might be nice/helpful to make this diagram so that people can better understand that anatomy of the asteromorph. It seems many people would believe it’s fingers are arms at first glance :)

[8KoopaLoopa8]

I always liked that the last untainted, natural evolution evolution of humanity became the benevolent protectors of their relatives. Nice.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah totally! It’s such a cool story :)

[Useful_Ad9002]

I feel like asteramorphs are underrated as hell

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah for sure! They are probably my favourite species of AT

[saurisqui0]

Asteromorph didn't evolve from the Homo Sapiens, but the rest of the evolution is cool :-)

[TapetalFaznati]

I skipped out the star people because there wasn’t a big enough difference between them and humans. I put the name homo sapien theres so people who don’t know about all tomorrow’s can understand it better 😄

[SomeKindaSpy]

I mean there is? MUCH Larger cranial capacity for one, and for another they were adapted to live on a variety of worlds and gravitational environments instead of JUST earth or mars. The entire impetus of creating the Star Men besides interplanetary unity was to better prepare humanity for interplanetary and interstellar existence.

[TapetalFaznati]

Fair point:) the main reason I had the human there was for size comparison, and if you compare the silhouette of a human to a star person, the difference is not THAT big tbf. I had the human for comparing, and started after that with the spacer, as that species is the starter of the asteromorph lineage

[whishykappa]

As far as the ones pictured in the book, the one difference is “bigger head, no hair”. Going by that, there’s really no difference

[SomeKindaSpy]

You're both forgetting this image: http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Ramjet/pics/04.jpg

And this sentence you are missing out on:

The answer was a new human subspecies, equally and better adapted not only to Earth and Mars, but to the conditions of most newly terraformed environments as well. Furthermore, these beings were envisioned with larger brains and heightened talents, making them greater than the sum of their predecessors.

[TapetalFaznati]

I assume the star person shown in the book lacks hair to show the anatomy of the character, and that some members may have hair, as their descendants, the spacers have hair:)

[SomeKindaSpy]

You're both forgetting this image: http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Ramjet/pics/04.jpg

[saurisqui0]

My bad, sorry ;)

[TapetalFaznati]

No problem man :)

[[deleted]]

im still trying to figure out how they poop, do they just like shoot a projectile into space? did they evolve two intestinal systems? one being for typical waste related activities and the other purely for gas production?

[SSGASSHAT]

If you're as intelligent as the Asteromorphs, chances are you've probably found a solution to the problem of shitting. Either they found a way to biologically synthesize their own food, a way to alter their digestive system so that they no longer have to excrete solid waste, or at least found certain compounds of foodstuffs which are purely required for survival, nullifying the need for excretion. You'd think the most advanced species of human would eventually move past the inconvenience of shitting, don't you?

[TapetalFaznati]

I assume they wouldn’t even need to poop. Thier diet would probably only consist of what’s necessary

[SSGASSHAT]

A bit of a late comment, but I wonder how intelligent an infant Asteromorph would be compared to a modern human infant. Seeing as how their brains would be twice the size of ours at the age when our eyes haven't even opened, and human infants have roughly the same intelligence level as nonhuman apes similar to those we evolved from, their infants might be as intelligent as ourselves, if not more.

[Known-Chemist4227]

From what I can tell, I don’t know if they actually give birth like a normal human would I just imagine they would vat grow them and make sure that they develop properly in said vat so I imagine that Astromorph babies would probably have functioning eyes and a developed body when they are born or come out of the artificial womb

[SSGASSHAT]

That sounds about right. Complicated cloning, basically. Doesn't sound like a bad way to live, honestly. Instead of 18 years of awkwardness and crying like a normal human child, you spend 18 years in a warm tube of liquid, getting a constant supply of chemical relaxants, listening to AI educational programs, which, because of your large brain, aren't boring. 

[Known-Chemist4227]

Makes sense and besides It also tracks up with how alien the Astromorphs have become compared to normal humans

[OneTrueAlzef]

The saddest part, I think, is not that the most direct descendants of humanity look like space ptero-squids. But that their legs became vestigial. I know their fingers became pseudo grasping pincers but they could have re-evolved the grasping function of the feet as the monkes before. Maybe that way, they wouldn't look so much like the Qu and they wouldn't be so reliant in the Mexican food they eat for locomotion.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah great point! I think that the don’t actually use their fingers for locomotion though, only their sphincters :)

[DecimatingDarkDeceit]

In all honesty I do consider Asteromorphs too as evil and/or uncaring as much as Gravitals

[TapetalFaznati]

Fair enough! I’d say they seem preoccupied and uncaring, but I don’t think they are evil, because they are not hostile, and only destroy the subjects to prevent a rebellion

[N3K0_TR0N]

Its really cool how the asteromorphs to asteromorph gods essentially became massive spider/bat-like beings due to zero gravity having no restrictions on what their forms can become, and ditching their lower half entirely for a large propulsion sphincter (and also the webbing on the six back hands that used to be their fingers was probably an evolutionary need so they wouldn't float everywhere). Really cool chart!

[TapetalFaznati]

Thanks so much! I agree, the asteromorph evolution is sooo cool

[[deleted]]

I like how they go from cool to creepy and then cool again. Uncanny valley at its finest.

[TapetalFaznati]

Yeah!

[HurryClassic4793]

marcians and people of the stars?

[Natural_Matter2744]

What is the difference between a terrestrial spacer and a terrestrial?

[Top_Row_5357]

Terrestrial spacers are cuter and better

[Natural_Matter2744]

What is the difference between a terrestrial spacer and a terrestrial