Talking about the uplifted got me to thinking... what about the rest of Earth life? What's left in the Sol System? Earth appears to still support life but it looks like The Fall unleashed mucho collateral damage. Mars is described as partially terraformed, but I don't know if that means walk about largely unaided terraformed... and any way if a "hard sf" route is being taken it's fairly simple (and largely engineered) life selected to set the stage for the Edenic Paradise to come (currently in nicely filed cryogenically sustained genetic format I'd wager). Ditto for the habitats... maybe the larger hollowed-out asteroids can accomidate some man-sized or larger critters but you really need a planet to pull that off and still have elbow room for all sentients organic or not, so I'm guessing it's largely what can feed you, sustain oxygen, and maybe some ornamental critters. Exoplanets... there could be another story there... Transhumanity will probably need to bring in a lot more stock to set up a base biology, but sooner or later (assuming rudimentarily similar biota) there's going to be a war between ecologies for who calls the planet home and perhaps Transhumanity has some reservations about creating a sort of biological version of "The Fall" elsewhere. Any of this sound about right? One final thought... the Mercurial Scavanger character makes a comment about man uplifting "all of octopus-kind" does this mean that all (or perhaps octopus only) uplifts are also the only living representatives of the species that they came from?