Welcome to Unwritten's February blog event! Of course, this is the month of love, so I wanted to celebrate that theme as I've done in year's past. But this year, I've decided to add a scientific spin to it. All month long, talented authors from several genres will write about some aspect of love from their books as it relates to science. It could be social, psychological, biological, or anything in between. Our blog event is sponsored by "HMC by Kate", a fabulous independent jewelry crafter. Kate's giving away one of her very beautiful necklaces that I think fits our theme perfectly. She's also offering everyone who stops in a 10% discount on any item from her Etsy store. Be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of this post and check out her lovely offerings! Without further ado, please welcome our guest author:
Half-Human/Half-Alien
Reproduction by Jane Novotny, MD
Transcribed by P. E. Sibley
Mark Praed is the product
of interspecies breeding between a human male and an alien female from the
planet Kyree in the Steglos System. Kyreens are a humanoid race with DNA
similar to that of homo sapiens. To understand if Mr. Praed would be able to
father children, one must first understand the reproductive processes of
Kyreens.
Unlike human women who,
during every twenty-eight day cycle are fertile five to six days (ovulation),
Kyreen females are fertile every day of the Kyreen solar year (which is four hundred
forty-eight days long) unless pregnant. Females reach puberty at the average
age of fifteen, and fertility begins to taper off at the age of sixty, although
there are records of the occasional female giving birth into their early
seventies. It should also be noted the average life span of Kyreen females is
one hundred twenty Kyreen years (roughly one hundred sixty Earth years).
Eggs are stored in the tolaren, a single organ similar in
function to human ovaries. When the female is completely sexually aroused, an
egg is released from the tolaren into
the insolen or uterus. There it waits
for spermatozoon from a male.
Given the length of time a
female is fertile, one would presume the planet of Kyree has a population
problem. However, Kyreen males are fertile only three times within their long
solar year, and only for three days at each occurrence. In the past, the males
had no idea when those days of fertility would happen, although some reported
an increase in libido just before. Only in the last one hundred Kyreen years
has testing been possible.
If the egg is not
fertilized, it will pass through the uterus within three days, in the
equivalent of human menses. Kyreen females do not have regularly monthly
menstrual cycles as do human females.
The question of fertility
was raised in the case of my patient, Mark Praed. With parents of differing
species, he wondered if he might be sterile like a mule born of a donkey and a
horse.
Fertility tests confirmed
that he would be able to father children year round as do human males; sperm
counts were consistent throughout the Earth solar year. However, higher counts
were observed three times during the four hundred forty-eight days of the
Kyreen year (even though testing was performed on Earth). Odds of conception
would be higher if coitus occurred with a Kyreen female at any point in time.
Procreation with a human female by traditional intercourse would be possible
during the three Kyreen periods of higher fertility. To guarantee conception, in vitro fertilization would be the most
efficient course of action.
****
Bio:
For P. E. Sibley (a.k.a.
Pat Sibley) writing is a passion, or perhaps a compulsion.
She was born, raised, and
educated mostly in Orange County, California. A voracious reader as a child,
she became interested in writing early on. She wrote her first short story in
second grade about an ant. It ended rather abruptly when the ant was smashed by
a foot.
By the time she reached
her mid-twenties, she was living a near-gypsy existence, moving from one city
to another. She traveled to Europe several times (Scotland is the preferred
destination) and to the Middle East, and tried numerous occupations including
climbing telephone poles, picking oranges on a kibbutz in Israel, and managing
a bookstore.
She went back to school
for a Teaching Credential from Cal State University, Long Beach, doing her
student teaching in Hampshire, England.
She moved numerous times
more—mostly eastward and northward—to San Francisco and then Sierra Nevada Mountains
and now resides in rural Eastern Washington State with her husband, a
wolf-canine mix, a cattle dog, and a cat that believes she’s a dog.
ENTER TO WIN!
This beautiful handmade necklace from HMC by KATE
I thought it was an interesting article. I don't think I could survive a Kyreen Solar Year. It is interesting to think out of the box about reproduction.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Katherine. I did give it a lot of thought, especially as the 4th novel in the series (on which I am in the processing of editing) deals in part with Kyreen culture.
Delete