The World Fantasy Award-nominated speculative fiction blog.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
SF Question
I was just wondering: is there a SF story out there that's been written that has aliens whose species has more than two genders? And perhaps copulation involves something like a threesome or even a foursome?
5 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Does Asimov's "The Gods Themselves" count for the first?
I'm not sure I know of anything remotely resembling the second.
seconding the gods themselves, and i like the gender differences in the left hand of darkness: male, female, and neutral :P
le guin's a fisherman of the inland sea also tells of a social system that allows for multiple partnerships (morning and evening, day and night, etc), though the species is still human.
can't think of any other title right now, sorry. maybe later.
Will check The Gods Themselves. I've read Left Hand of Darkness and for me it's still two genders (involved in the reproduction) rather than three (it's more even acceptable for me that it's one gender and then it later switches to whatever is needed).
I second The Left Hand of Darkness being more of a one gender construct that adapted to whatever the situation called for. What I took away from the novel was that gender was viewed as a single continuous spectrum rather than two distinct states of being as constructed by an external society. It's true that to shift from male to female or female to male, you'd have to pass through a "neuter" state but that's more transitional than static.
5 comments:
Does Asimov's "The Gods Themselves" count for the first?
I'm not sure I know of anything remotely resembling the second.
Try The Left Hand of Darkness.
seconding the gods themselves, and i like the gender differences in the left hand of darkness: male, female, and neutral :P
le guin's a fisherman of the inland sea also tells of a social system that allows for multiple partnerships (morning and evening, day and night, etc), though the species is still human.
can't think of any other title right now, sorry. maybe later.
Will check The Gods Themselves. I've read Left Hand of Darkness and for me it's still two genders (involved in the reproduction) rather than three (it's more even acceptable for me that it's one gender and then it later switches to whatever is needed).
I second The Left Hand of Darkness being more of a one gender construct that adapted to whatever the situation called for. What I took away from the novel was that gender was viewed as a single continuous spectrum rather than two distinct states of being as constructed by an external society. It's true that to shift from male to female or female to male, you'd have to pass through a "neuter" state but that's more transitional than static.
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