The Zacharians

"'Travel beyond the Solar System was just beginning.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, p. 378.

Since this is the Technic Civilization History, we know that that was early in the twenty second century, when genetic treatment was eliminating heritable defects like cancer and schizophrenia. Geneticists Matthew Zachary and Yokiki Nomura set out to create a race to lead interstellar humanity. The optimum specimen of humanity, not superhumanity, would be intelligent, psychologically stable, physically strong, resistant to disease and quick to recuperate with functions, coordination and organs at least normal if not better.

They produced an ancestral cell, divided it, made the second cell male, grew the foetuses exogenetically, then adopted and raised the infants, Izanami and Izanagi, who became the parents of the new race which preserves itself by marrying only internally. Inbreeding does not produce defects "'...when there are no defects in the parents.'" (p. 381) DNA-scanning detects mutated embryos which are removed, brought to term elsewhere and given for adoption, superior human beings though not Zacharians.

The Founders knew biology but not sociology. Ordinaries, not only not accepting the Zacharians' leadership but resenting their exclusiveness, retaliated with discrimination and persecution. "'The collapse of the Polesotechnic League removed the last barrier...'" to institutionalized intolerance expressed in discriminatory laws in many societies. (p. 382) Those Zacharians who did not merge into the population founded a homeland on Zacharia Island on the planet Daedalus. They defended Daedalus during the Troubles, making a treaty of autonomy with the other colonists, which was only slightly modified by the Terran Empire. Having given up any claim to leadership of humanity, they have become just one among many ethnic groups but one that is economically active, selling art and technology, both locally and on an interstellar scale.

They name themselves after Terrestrial deities. Their community is small and homogeneous enough not to need bureaucracy or government. Elders run public business and all adults participate in decision-making if necessary. Education is domestic and informal.

This Zacharian history has occurred against the backdrop of the Breakup, the Polesotechnic League, the Troubles and the Terran Empire. Thus, it has paralleled, or indeed added a previously unknown dimension to, the History of Technic Civilization that we have already known by reading all the previous volumes of the series.

The Game Of Empire is deceptive, seeming to be a light weight coda to the Dominic Flandry series but in fact containing much new, understated, information about the planets Imhotep and Daedalus and this group of Daedalans called the Zacharians.