Where do we go from here?
It's the effects where we get to really spread our wings. Once again, there is research to be done. Species, cultures, technologies, and more develop according to the surrounding conditions—and there are few environmental conditions more powerful than weather. Many writers, including myself, find looking into the scientific effects of the surroundings to be greatly inspiring. It gives us a leaping-off point for letting the fantasy elements, science fiction elements, and pure imagination out to play while still keeping us grounded in a reality that won't lose the readers.
The Humans
The humans on this planet may not exactly look like those on Earth. However, there are peoples on Earth who are quite well adapted to particular extremes in weather. Those would be a logical starting point to look at as far as what races we may have and why. One important choice to make right at the beginning since I'm following the theory of evolution is whether all humans come from the same initial stock or not.
I will keep them to a single base for a variety of reasons. For one thing, all humans today can interbreed. There are no races as far as I know that cannot produce children together, or only produce sterile children such as horses and donkeys producing mules and jennys. In order to interbreed at all (even to produce sterile children) there must be a common genetic ancestor. We don't need to take the time to lay out the entire evolutionary tree unless a particular story requires that knowledge—such as an ancient mystery.
What I intend to look at is the birthplace of Humanity and how the people spread from there, some settling in one place and other striking out to even farther homes. In a span of generations these actions can create different speech dialects. Given enough generations, entire new languages develop and losing access to the previous gene pool has started to produce a different look in the people. If the weather is considerably different, then this fact will further change as those best suited to survive in the new surroundings produce the most and healthiest offspring.
Look back at them in a thousand, two thousand, or ten thousand and you may have a whole new race, one so physically different to the previous group that they may feel unrelated. Some may leave to form new homes far away and continue the process. Along the
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