Trope-a-Day: Adam and Eve Plot

Adam and Eve Plot: The colonization of Valiár (Thirteen Colonies), in which the catastrophic failure that destroyed the majority of the colonists in cryostasis aboard the Swiftrunner left a first-in team half-a-dozen strong as the only people around – and it’s not like in subluminal colonization you get to turn around and go home. You colonize or you die.

Subverted inasmuch as they knew perfectly well that their genetic pool was in no way up to the job, even for such fine examples of genefixed Eldrae anthalis as they were. As such, after maximizing the genetic diversity that was available, it was time to send in the clones [1]; and Valiár today remains almost entirely populated by serially cloned descendants of the original set of archetypes.

[1] Yes, they could handle this differently NOW, but they could not THEN, and NOW NOW is based on THEN THEN.