Yeah, you're not the first person to notice this particular rub. We've had some pretty good discussions about it and there's a lot of valid thoughts. First off, there's probably several ways to produce new offspring in the EP 'verse, but the culture of any given hab or alliance probably limits those modalities depending on their values and mores. For example, in the Jovian Republic it's limited to man-on-top-get-it-over-with-quick classic sexual reproduction. Out in the Scum barges you may have communities sleeving nascent AGIs into infant splicer sleeves grown from community contributed DNA and gene sequences. And that's just the most normal thing I could think of. This is just me spitballing and theorizing, but I think the vast majority of people, regardless of their current sleeve, keep a digital copy of their original genome (if they are so lucky to have it) compressed within their consciousness backup. It's not that big of an assumption. If you have the capacity to store untold tens of petabytes of date (your personality), then you can spare a couple gigs for your personal DNA. This is preferably a genefixed (Splicer) version of your DNA. It's just good to have on file and you never know when you might get nostalgic for your original body. So, whenever you find a partner or romantic interest that you want to make a baby with, you both go down to your favorite boutique clone farm, provide your respective DNA files, and have the gene cruncher shuffles you up the genome for a new fetus and sets it to incubating. Then, when that baby grows up, they can keep their DNA on file for when they get resleeved and so on and so forth. So for making a baby the old fashioned way with a new sleeve, I figure that the hypercorps have a built in form of obsolescence for their morphs that can sexually reproduce. That is, their somatic sells will always be Fury or Olympian, or whatever but they only produce sperm or ova that have Splicer traits. That way, you don't get people running around mating Furies and Olympians to make super morphs. It also keeps their particular methods for making a biomorph meet the standards of their archtype a proprietary secret. Then there's the whole "let's merge our forks!" stuff you can do to make new personalities, but I'm trying to stay within the OP's questions concerning sexual reproduction,

Well, I got the genetic obsolescence through reproduction idea from real life. Genetically modified crop companies are not producing modified wheat that can produce seeds (something standard hybrid crops don't do), but the seeds revert to standard wheat without any modifications. So guess in super future sci-fi land you can do that with morphs.

Two humanoid biomorphs do the nasty and have a baby. No matter which morph types they are, this would result in a Flat baby. The random combination of fixed genes wouldn't result in a gene-fixed baby. The main alternative would be similar to today's [i]in vitro[/i] fertilisation. The couple goes to a doctor, donates their genetic material, and the gene-fixing happens before the egg is implanted in the female. This results in a Splicer baby that looks like them. It might be possible to implant another morph type in the womb instead of using the couple's genetic material. In this case though, the baby wouldn't look like them (because the genetic material comes from an outside source), and depending on the morph type, might be more difficult to raise. It would also be more expensive for this procedure. In the EP universe, I don't think that people are all that concerned about continuing their genetic line. Those that are can have a Flat or a Splicer that looks like them (their current morphs anyway). Those that don't care can pay more to have a designer baby if they want. That's the way I see it, anyway...

browwiw wrote:

So for making a baby the old fashioned way with a new sleeve, I figure that the hypercorps have a built in form of obsolescence for their morphs that can sexually reproduce. That is, their somatic sells will always be Fury or Olympian, or whatever but they only produce sperm or ova that have Splicer traits.

But if that's a problem for you, I know this gene hacker on Locus... he'll make a skin culture from you and change it into sperm. Of course the DNA will still be watermarked and your child will bear proofs of your copyright infringement in its genotype but at least it will look like its moma.

browwiw wrote:

Well, I got the genetic obsolescence through reproduction idea from real life. Genetically modified crop companies are not producing modified wheat that can produce seeds (something standard hybrid crops don't do), but the seeds revert to standard wheat without any modifications.

Is that so ? I thought the GM crops were simply sterile. I never heard they could produce 'normal' seeds. I would be interesting in the details if you have more informations, the technique must not be trivial !

Then there is the non biological children making. What about merging two diffrent individuals, Mates provide a Fork for the merge. Naturally some modifikations is needed to make them compatible. Or searches for compatable "mate". But the end result is to produce a offspring and a diffrent individual; while still having heritage. Certain SciFi (not naming examples due to spoiling) explore that concept.