Genderless or Hermaphroditic Worlds
Some other fictional worlds feature societies in which everyone has more than one gender, or none, or can change gender. For example:
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) depicts a world in which individuals are neither "male" nor "female" but can have both male and female sexual organs and reproductive abilities, making them in some senses intersexual. Similar patterns exist in Greg Egan's novel Schild's Ladder and his novella "Oceanic" or in Storm Constantine's book series Wraeththu about an oogamous magical race arose from mutant human beings. John Varley, who also came to prominence in the 1970s, also often writes on gender-related themes. In his "Eight Worlds" suite of stories (many collected in The John Varley Reader) and novels, for example, humanity has achieved the ability to change sex at a whim. Homophobia is shown to initially inhibit uptake of this technology, as it engenders drastic changes in relationships, with homosexual sex becoming an acceptable option for all.
In Iain M. Banks's Culture series of novels and stories, humans can and do relatively easily (and reversibly) change sex.
Read more about this topic: Single-gender World
Famous quotes containing the word worlds:
“The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.”
—Edmund Waller (1606–1687)