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:
“Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with ‘the world’; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous. Rather—speaking loosely and without trying to answer either Pilate’s question or Tarski’s—a version is to be taken to be true when it offends no unyielding beliefs and none of its own precepts.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)