Transgender Themes in Science Fiction

[Forkboy]

In the future, all sorts of things will be possible. One day we may even get jet packs and flying cars. We may also be able to re-shape our bodies in all sorts of interesting ways. It is not unexpected, therefore, to find sex changes featured in many science fiction stories. But just how relevant are such stories to real transgender people? Do these stories portray transgender experiences accurately? Could they help non-transgender people understand the issues somewhat better? Or is there something else going on?

Given the amount of science fiction that features sex changes, I'm not going to be able to cover anywhere near everything. I'm also going to restrict myself to books, which is what I know about. But hopefully I'll cover a range of different approaches to transgender issues and give you a good idea of what is out there.

http://www.bilerico.com/2008/09/transgender_themes_in_science_fiction.php

[Dr. Strange]

1. On a loosely related topic, I'm re-reading the Dune series...

and it's striking how distinct the genders are treated. Only females are capable of accessing the past memories (after going through the Agony). The Kwisatz Haderach(s) have to be male.

She ... was confronted immediately with a cellular core, a pit of blackness from which she recoiled. That is the place where we cannot look, she thought. There is the place the Reverend Mothers are so reluctant to mention — the place where only a Kwisatz Haderach may look.

There's no room for a spectrum--just male or female. Which is understandable for a series which was written starting in the 60s, but seems odd now. (At least to me.)

[phantom power]

2. John Varley tends to do a lot with sex changes.

[phantom power]

3. There was this novel I read a while back, where there were 6 human genders

Humans could develop into a spectrum of full-male to full-female, with hermaphrodite in the middle.

I wish I could remember the title, or the author. The hex-gendered pronouns were murder.

[comrade snarky]

4. Dang that sounds familiar

Was it Venus+X?

You can find some interesting takes on gender in Varley. I also enjoyed the appallingly titled Trouble on Triton by San Delaney. Anything by him is worth reading though I have to admit I still haven't finished "Dhalgren". It's compared to "Ulysses" for a reason.

There is some fiction that deals with variable gender, Zelaznys "Lord Of Light" played with the idea. Love the story but again like Dune it's dated in some attitudes. Greg Egan has some books and stories set in a post\transhumanist future where gender is completely outdated along with biological bodies. "Diaspora" is one I'd recommend if you don't mind trying to wrap your head around some really dry physics exposition.

LeGuin has written on this theme of course in multiple books. Octavia Butler as well, though at the moment I cant think of a single title.

<on edit>

Shoot!
Left out the best one of all. Angels Carters "Passion of New Eve". The main character is a man undergoes a forced sex change. If you haven't ever read any Carter run don't walk to the nearest good bookstore. I cant say more about it without revealing too much.

[comrade snarky]

5. And now that I look more closely at the linked article

There it is "Passion of New Eve" in the first couple of books mentioned.

How did I miss that?

[phantom power]

7. Hmm. It wasnt any of those. The one I'm thinking of was published in the 90s.

Or maybe early 00s.

[Dr. Strange]

6. Vonnegut did something like that in SlaughterHouse Five.

Tralfamadorians told him that they had identified seven different genders on earth, but five were only active in the fourth dimension: there could be no babies without male homosexuals, old women, and babies who had lived an hour or less.

http://www.bookrags.com/notes/sl5/PART6.htm

[phantom power]

8. Shadow Man, by Melissa Scott. Five genders, Nine sexual orientations.

http://www.lambdasf.org/lsf/books/reviews/shadow.html

[Babel_17]

9. Samuel R. Delany - Triton & other novels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany

http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/delany-samuel-r

"In Triton Delany creates an unlikable protagonist, Bron Hellstrom, who inhabits a world of ambiguous sexuality where surgery for sexual preference, race, or gender is a common occurrence. Delany deconstructs the traditional notion of utopia in this work and, characteristically, refuses to provide closure, signifying that an ideal world in which sexual differences are not only accepted, but expected, cannot be fully rendered."

http://www.library.uiuc.edu/wst/Transgender%20Bibliography/transbiblio.htm (References a ton of other stuff too)

Delany, Samuel R. 1996 (1976). Trouble on Triton : an ambiguous heterotopia. : Wesleyan University Press ; Hanover : Published by University Press of New England. 312 pp. "In a story as exciting as any science fiction adventure written, Samuel R. Delany's 1976 SF novel, originally published as Triton, takes us on a tour of a utopian society at war with our own Earth. High wit in this future comedy of manners allows Delany to question gender roles and sexual expectations at a level that, 20 years after it was written, still makes it a coruscating portrait of 'the happily reasonable man.' Bron Helstrom--an immigrant to the embattled world of Triton, whose troubles become more and more complex, till there is nothing left for him to do but become a woman...Alternately funny and moving, it is a wide-ranging tale in which character after character turns out not to be what he--or she--seems."