> Over time, we could evolve a branch of humanity, "Homo ares"
These were called Belters (as in asteroid belt) in the excellent book series The Expanse, which is also an excellent sci-fi show available on Amazon.
These were called Belters (as in asteroid belt) in the excellent book series The Expanse, which is also an excellent sci-fi show available on Amazon.
The Belters lived in the Asteroid Belt, and were opposed to both the Terrans and the Martians. The Belters were the most different biologically because the gravity is so low, whereas the Martians got to enjoy the relatively high 1/3 g gravity of Mars.
That is, develop general AI with a sense of responsibility and filial duty to its parent species, and which won't turn us all into paper clips.
Then you have the Old Man's War universe where the soldiers have engineered bodies and synthetic blood that they have control over (they can explode mosquito like creatures that try to feed on them as an example).
B. V. Larson's Star Force series sees characters changed by both nano bots and specifically-grown intelligent (as a colony) vats of bacteria.
Many science fiction series involve brain backus. If I'm not mistaken Peter F. Hamilton has them in his Commonwealth Saga and the Altered Carbon books and show have it. As does the previously mentioned Old Man's War series by Scalzi.
Daniel Suarez's book (his near-future hard science fiction books are quite good) Change Agent involves lots of serious genetic engineering, including changing one's entire appearance (rather dangerously) with a virus.
I think if we can manage to stay alive long enough as a species, we will be able to at least do everything except for the nano bots and possible even those if we get some significant physics and computational breakthroughs.
As a pre-teen in the mid 1990's a friend and I wanted to turn ourselves into anthropormphic creatures not unlike the creatures in the Island of Dr. Moreau (I believe it was actually the 1996 film adaptation that gave us the idea) and figured somehow a bacteriophage could be created to alter a host at a cellular level but we figured you'd need to find a way to selectively edit genes (that now exists with CRISPR and the like), suppress the immune system to prevent death from it overreacting during the process, and control the replication rate so the body wouldn't burn up with fever or have some sort of energy issue. If a couple of bored pre-teens could think that up while playing a MUD one afternoon, someone someday is going to start really tinkering with humans at a serious scale. It's already being done by biohackers.
Pretty sure this was in some book in the Old Man's War series
I read entirely too much hard science fiction to remember what comes from where, it's why as much as I'd love to I'll never write a space opera. I'd constantly be afraid I was unintentionally plagiarizing multiple authors.