In The War of the Worlds, H G Wells' narrator speculated that the squid-like Martians were actually a distant evolutionary descendent of a humanoid species. He suggested that the growth of technology and the ability of technology to replace biological functions with far more efficient synthetic augmentation would trigger an evolutionary drift towards optimisation of the form to only those aspects of the biology that were critically needed. This was, in the Martians' case, the brain, the senses and the hands (which evolved into the clustered tentacles).
The Martians, Wells put it "... were heads, just heads".
What is the relevance to this thread? Wells went on to speculate about a form of life that would 'put on bodies' according to need, these bodies being distant conceptual descendants of something as simple as the bicycle or walking stick. This could be applied to the idea of this topic. Imagine a human reduced to its most indivisible component - the brain and possibly the spinal cord, that could be transferred between various specialised chassis depending on need and the being's wishes.
One of the "villain" races in E.R. Burroughs' Barsoom series was made up of big brained heads with spider legs that could induce specially made headless bodies to put them on their necks so they could walk around. Yeah, they were way creepy, especially when one of them sexually assaulted one of the heroines.
One of the "villain" races in E.R. Burroughs' Barsoom series was made up of big brained heads with spider legs that could induce specially made headless bodies to put them on their necks so they could walk around. Yeah, they were way creepy, especially when one of them sexually assaulted one of the heroines.
I always find remarkable how many villain alien species in old pulp SF are into (from their PoV) bestiality.
Because everybody knows human women are far more alluring than any other species!
And yet John Carter was dumb enough to believe that Carthoris was really his kid. The fact that his wife laid an egg wasn't enough to clue him in to the fact that they were genetically incompatible.
Most disabled people wouldn't need a remote VR surrogate with the tech that is available. Witness Clinton and his cybernetic replacement hand. For those that don't have missing limbs and are unwilling to go through amputation and replacement they could easily have powered frames that allow them to move about freely.
Because everybody knows human women are far more alluring than any other species!
Of course, Barsoomian females may be super hot and half naked, but they're not really human, since they lay eggs.
Burroughs was one weird dude.