SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Hi! I'm researching portrayals of pregnancy and alternative reproduction (ectogenesis, parthenogenesis, virgin birth, interspecies pregnancies, etc.) in sf. I'd love suggestions, both for primary sources and for critical/scholarly works that touch on this subject. Thanks!

One SF book with alternate forms of reproduction that leaps to mind is A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski.

i believe i have some anthology of SF short stories with precisely that theme ("Not of Woman Born" is what it think it's called).

Octavia Butler went back to reproduction at least a couple of times in her books. There is her short story Bloodchild, and reproduction (or post-apocalyptic human being's inability to reproduce without alien intervention) is a central element in her entire Lilith's Brood series.

There was a superb short story in Dozois' anthology from last year, about sentient space ships and how they reproduce with the help of rodent-like beings (one would assume that's the guys).

In the realm of television and movies, as i'm sure you're aware, there's a glut of this stuff. The Alien movies come to mind, as does that one with the naked woman trying to get laid in it from beginning to end (Species?). i think women getting pregnant while abducted by aliens was a central element in the X-Files. Ditto for the new Battlestar Galactica, where one of the whole points of the cylons is to trick human males into getting them preggers. & a theme that had also reappeared in Star Trek's various series, including an episode in the last (and chronologically first) of the series, in which the very masculine first mate (no pun intended) has sex without knowing it with an alien, and becomes pregnant.

If you'd like me to look into it a bit more (i.e. to give you the actual names of the books/stories) let me know.

You could try Nicola Griffith's "Ammonite" for parthenogenesis. I can't recall the mechanics of how it worked but a virus was involved if I remember correctly.

Lois McMaster Bujold makes extensive use of the uterine replicator in the Vorkosigan book, and has a society of people known as quaddies, created by gene-splicing to have arms where we have legs, to work in zero-gee more efficiently. I once read a short story about a planet where femininity was carcinogenic and men were changed to be the child-bearers, called 'The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal'.

Isaac Asimov had a very interesting premise in The Gods Themselves.

For the Soft Ones to turn into Hard Ones, three different types had to get together and become one.

Hard Ones couldn't breed, being too hard.

I'm so glad I posted this topic! These are incredibly helpful suggestions. I love this group.

I especially appreciate your tip about the Not of Woman Born anthology. It's not at my University's library, so I was missing it in my searches. It's pretty hard to find! I just ordered it from Amazon and can't wait to read it.

Interesting! Sherri Tepper's "Gate Into Women's Country" or something like that touched on an interesting Eugenics program. Heinlein's "Friday" has topics about if 'manufactured' babies have souls or should be banned from society. Piers Anthony did a series about alien reproduction--I think it was his "cluster" series--I can't remember for sure.

Bunny already came up with The Left Hand of Darkness. The androgynous inhabitants of Winter were actually humans whose genes had been modified when the planet was colonized. Supposedly, gender neutrality was supposed to eliminate conflict.

Glory Season has an interesting reproductive twist. This planet is run by women. They reproduce by cloning themselves. But, they have to have one baby with a man before they can start clonal reproduction.

In both books, the method of reproduction has interesting effects on the culture.

Heinlein Robert writes about couples 'having babies' & freezing them to raise later, as time & money permit, in Podkayne of Mars.

I don't think it's quite what you're looking for, but Larry Niven writes about humans being just the breeding stage of a species in Protector. Ingesting a specific tree leaf (? I think) at a specific age then turns a human into a sexless, but much more rational & powerful being - a Protector.

Excession by Banks has an interesting twist on pregnancy.

I don't know if this is quite what you are looking for, but Treason by Orsen Scott Card had some interesting views on genetic manipulation.

The more i think about it, the more procreation seems to be one of those standard things that get fiddled with in SF to indicate the difference between the SF reality and the reality we're all in stuck in. Perhaps not as common as spaceflight or aliens, but more common than psionics or time travel. Though not necessarily central to plots.

It would perhaps help us narrow down our suggestions if Jessica could give more information about how she is going to tackle this topic.

i had forgotten Motherlines, but i think it's probably an essential text to deal with. i have a brief text by the author on my site at http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/b...

i'd also strongly recommend taking a look at Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, which is probably the best example of reproduction being used as a the central piece in a dystopian SF novel.

And again, Octavia Butler deals with reproduction in several of her works.

I think Bujold is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to exploring alternate pregnancy technology.

Bujold is a person with apparantly eclectic ethics and that fascinates me. Anyway, her priamry sci-fi setting promenently features an artificial womb techonology that allows a fetus to be removed and reared outside the womans body. She explores the impact of this technology in several ways.

Most obviously, the fact that you can be a woman and fulfill your biological function as a woman without suffering through a pregnancy means that carreer women in her universe don't give up anything to have a family. There biological commitment to an infant is roughly the same as a man's, both in terms of impact on their own health and the amount of down time required to get a baby started. One very simple surgery to remove the small embryonic sac, and you can be a mother without taking months out of your life and risking death. It's a convention of the technology that its advanced to be sophisticated enough that not only is the infant not harmed, but enjoys a healthier pregnancy than they could in a normal womb.

On the other side, there is a mysogynist culture in her universe that uses the technology to abandons women completely, adopts homosexuality, and raises all their (exclusively male) offspring in artificial wombs.

Iain M. Banks offers a different but I think ultimately similarly motivated take. Rather than achieving total biological parity through the use of artificial wombs, the denizens of his Culture society have genetically altered themselves to where they can choose to alter their birth gender by fairly simple act of will. Effectively, gender no longer exists genetically, and is entirely a matter of how their genes are expressed (over which people can exert conscious control). For all practical purposes then, gender as we know it ceases to exist - every one is both. Reproduction burdens are jointly shared by everyone depending on their mood and no one is any more responcible for having kids than they desire to be. Similarly, we gather than genetic manipulation has more or less erased other gender differences (such as the ability to develop upper body muscle mass or the relative strength of short term memory/spatial skills) etc. so other than what genitals you have at the moment what sex you are has no real impact.

This is incredibly helpful stuff. I agree with Kersplebedeb that reproduction seems to be a central theme in sf. I think that's one reason I'm surprised to find so little scholarly analysis of it (at least thus far). I'm finding a lot on hybridity and cyborgs, and a bit on eugenics, which are both related, but as far as reproduction and reproductive technologies in sci fi, I'm not finding so much in the academic journals. It's definitely getting to the point in the semester when I need to start focusing and narrowing, which is hard to do when I just want to read and write about everything :). At this point, I'm thinking I'll most likely write about ectogenesis/artificial wombs and how it changes roles of women. That said, this semester's paper is just the beginning of my master's program, and I plan on continuing this research for the next few years, hopefully exploring this topic in depth for my master's thesis. So, keep this discussion going!

Jessica: Glad to be of help.

If you are looking at 'baby in a jar' themes, I think you are pretty much academically obligated (whether you like it or not) to mention 'Brave New World'. I personally think its a bit overrated, but its going to be the story academic reviewers are familiar with and the one therefore that they will be most willing to accept as worthy of academic scrutiny. But to be honest, from my point of view I think you might as well mention the cloned Stormtrooper army in Star Wars as 'Brave New World'. Neither seems to me superior to the other in giving any real insight into anything. Sure, we might elimenate normal pregnancy and turn it into taboo subject/event, but it seems to me just as likely that a facist techno-wizard would produce an army of clones which are loyal only to him.

In either case, it's not exactly hitting us where we live or necessarily really examining the act of pregnancy itself rather than simply being a metaphor our general fears about statism.

As long as I'm mentioning clones, it's worth noting that Bujold features clones quite a bit in her work (in particular see 'Mirror Dance'), and in particular I really like that she realisticly has genetic clones not actually be clones of one another. (Hollywood gives people the impression that a cloned body involves a cloned mindstate as well, neglecting the fact that identical twins are naturally clones but clearly individuals often even in phenotype). Pregnancies involving clones (in or out of the womb) also show up in Cyteen and David Brin's 'Glory Season'.

There are experts in the field of feminist sf that could probably give you a lot of scholarly information on the subject. Batya Weinbaum at Femspec, Dr. Marleen Barr, and my publisher Timmi Duchamp at Aqueduct Press have all made a career out of critiquing sf with women's issues in mind. Take a look at the Femspec and Aqueduct Press websites. I don't think Marleen is online, but she might be. I believe she's currently with Brandeis. Let me know if you need help.

i agree Brave New World is a must-mention.

i think i read a good short story from the 1930s in the Extreme SF anthology with an artificial womb plot, i'll check when i get back home next week.

Historically/herstorically, probably worth mentioning the real fear that some people had circa 1980s when in vitro fertilization was still relatively new that the tech might be used to get rid of women. i have a book on my shelf called Gynocide i have never read but wehich i believe has that as a theme.

Woman on the Edge of Time has a theme of alternative reproduction in it, if it hasn't been mentioned yet.

It sounds like it is outside of where you'll be focusing this paper, Jessica, but Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead (2nd book in the Ender series) deals with a race of beings whose reproductive process is so "alien" to the human colonists that it is not even recognized as such and almost starts a war. The piggies, as the humans call them, have a multistep reproduction process that involves the death of the male, transformation of his corpse into a tree that is filled with little beings they call "the little mothers" -- to tell you the truth I can't really remember how it all worked. It is certainly an alternative method of procreation and the piggies were just as enthusiastic about it as most humans are about their own.

Sorry, I'm a little late joining in this discussion (great topic!) - here are some 'alternative methods' of reproduction I can recall:

On TV - StarTrek:Enterprise has an episode featuring Trip (the engineer) getting involved with the fate of a #3 sex - that is the species has male, female and #3, and #3 is only needed for breeding (and kept for their function and shuffled around as needed.) To carry it over to a book, I remember reading a short story in an old anthology by SF 'masters' about the same concept - a race with male and female, where a third gender is needed in order to procreate. In this case, is was because of the extreme toxicity of the planet and the colonists developed the third gender of someone who could safely carry a baby to term, and they used some kind of fetus transference to swap the baby of the third gender's with the baby of the female. The immunity carried with the fetus, allowing both to be carried to term. Weird stuff, huh? = ) I'll see if I can find the book's info for you.
I think it's interesting that when a third sex is needed for reproduction, they are either honored and cherished, or are considered an asset, a virtual slave - two sides of the spectrum - but in neither case are they just another person, who happens to be a third sex. Generally I think the writers make them relatively scarce, it would be interesting to see what a society would look like if the third gender was just as common as the other two...

Besides Brave New World, which I think is fascinating, because it involves both genetic engineering (not cloning, so I don't think it's interchangable with Star Wars) and artificial wombs and the tremendous effects on society, there is also The Braided World, by Kay Kenyon, where the human-looking aliens reproduce using pools for the males to release sperm in and then females who want to get pregnant swim around in them - kind of a 'fish factor' of reproduction.

I second the recommendations for the *really* alien reproduction of the 'piggies' in Speaker for the Dead, and Door into Ocean for parthogenesis.

Sounds like a fun topic - I'd love to read your paper when its done! Maybe you can post a link to it here? (if you put it online) Good luck with the paper!

Sue, thanks for your tip about Aquaduct Press. I was browsing the books and came across this description of Timmel Duchamp's story in "Plugged In." Sounds like a great fit for my research!

In L. Timmel Duchamp's ''The Man Who Plugged In,''Howard Nies becomes the first male to plug into a Siemens Carapace. And as an ad in the February 2013 issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology notes, the Siemens Carapace is ''a prenatal cradle of caring'' at the cutting edge of technology, ''made of the finest, strongest, most lightweight materials ever produced. Its clean, round lines and soft, silvery matte finish can t fail to reassure both the parents and the gestational carrier who wears it that the child within is getting better care and protection than any naturally gestated child.''

Interesting. I haven't read that story. I'll have to check that out myself.

Thanks!

Ha! Motherlines! I read that so long ago, but some of it has always stuck with me. I think the way they generate conception was such a creepy and fascinating idea. I have been thinking of trying to find it and re-read, but could NOT come up with the name or author. I didn't know it wasn't a stand alone book, so now I will definitely look for them both to read together. Motherlines got me thinking about individual personal characteristics, and gave me the strength to be ok with the way *I* am, and not allow myself to be dismissed because I couldn't develop something 'missing'.

Check out Greg Egan's Diaspora - the genesis of the "Orphan" is a great example of an AI/post-human/hybrid amalgamated conscious construct. Talk about planned parenthood.

Weber's Honor Harrington series uses artificial uteri. Most mentions are towards the latter part of the series.

And I agree, Ethan of Athos by Bujold is very, very centered aroudn A-Us.

Lisa,

Motherlines was written by Suzy McKee Charnas. It was part of an excellent series and the first truly radical feminist sci-fi books I read in college. They left a lasting impression on me as well.

I don't have time to read through the previous 30 comments (at Thanksgiving and the nephews want this computer more than me) but I recall a scifi book in which personality transfer to other bodies was done, and some of the target bodies were tri-sexual or even mechanical, and I recall the book discussed many aspects of, ahem, reproduction. I seem to remember the primary character ended the book, growing old as some strange alien lifeform that seemed like a piano.

If this is what you want, I can try to track down the author/title.

Butler is a good choice, try this (free podcast of a short story): http://www.drabblecast.org/2013/10/31...
(males being impregnated by female alien)

Short Story Progentior by Philip Curval (male pregnancy and female feeding male to child)

Also, try Philip Jose Farmer's short story collection Strange Relations (specifically the novelettes My Sister's Brother and Daughter)


If non human entities are ok try
- Neal Asher's Skinner and some of his other books (loads of strange alien creatures and strange reproduction going on there)
- Ballantyne's Capactiy (very strange non biological reproduction here)

Gender swapping: Iain M Banks's Culture citizens can change sex by will, often do during their lives and can arrest pregnancy at will (kind of suspended animation of the embryo in utero). The former in most of his culture cycle books, the latter specifically in Excession. Also, the main aliens in Player of Games have 3 genders which acts as an interesting vehicle to discuss sex, equality, gender and race issues.

related, but maybe a bit off topic:
- The female man by Joanna Russ, Delany's Stars in my pocket like grain of sand and Ann Lecki's Anciliary Justice trilogy all have an interesting use of pronouns (i.e. everyone is 'she' except, in Delany's book where gender-specific pronouns are used in the context of sex). The former two books focus specifically on perception of gender. Lecki's books also focus on the issue of virtual reproduction (a bit like ballantine) i.e. consciousness spread across multiple entities

For a non fiction article you might want to check out
Possibly (not sure what's in here about sexuality but there might)
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D...