Skewed gender ratios in SF

2006-07-15T04:38:44Z

64.222.92.149: /* Male Scarcity */ added Le Guin story & Richards book; fixed links

Works relating to skewed or skewing gender ratios.

==Alternating Both==

* Philip Wylie. [[The Disappearance]]

==Female Scarcity==
* Marion Zimmer Bradley and John J. Wells [pseud. for Juanita Coulson]. "Another Rib," Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1963.

* Captain Samuel Brunt. A Voyage to Cacklogallinia with a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs, and Manners of that Country (1727). Swift-esque satire; a man visits the moon and sees a happy all-male species that has no sex ...

* Lois McMaster Bujold. [[Ethan of Athos]].

* A. Bertram Chandler. Spartan Planet (1969)

* Thomas S. Gardner. "The Last Woman" in Wonder Stories (April 1932); republished in Moskowitz' When Women Rule (1972)

* Frank Herbert. The White Plague (not all women eliminated but many women killed / infertile)

* Jon Inouye. "Last Man," in A Night Tide (1976) [all women eliminated]

* Day Keene (pseud. for Gunard Hjerstedt, 1903-1969), & Leonard Pruyn. World Without Women (1960)

* Rand B. Lee. "Full Fathom Five My Father Lies," Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Feb. 1981; reprinted in Worlds Apart, ed. by Decarnin, Garber & Paleo (1986)

* Lucian. "True History" (approx. 175 A.D.; republished in The Works of Lucian of Samosata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905)) (only men living on the men)

* Amin Maalouf, 1949- . The First Century After Beatrice (1993; 1995)

* Virgilio Martini. The World Without Women (1936; Iesolo, Italy: Tritone, 1969; New York: Dial, 1971) [transl. by Emile Capouya]. Originally published as Il Mondo Senza Donne. [almost all women die from a mysterious disease]

* Neal Stephenson. [[The Diamond Age]] (near future world in which Chinese sex-selection has resulted in many girls being given away; an army of these girls has been raised)

* Sheri S. Tepper. Six Moon Dance (1998) (half of the female population dies at birth)

==Male Scarcity==

* Poul Anderson. [[Virgin Planet]] (1959) (sexist; an all-woman world (reproducing by a poorly-described parthenogenetic cloning) has been awaiting the coming of Man.)

* David Brin's [[Glory Season]] (world settled by separatists has been designed to have few men)

* Laurajean Ermayne [pseud. for Forrest J. Ackerman]. "[[The Radclyffe Effect]]," in The Science Fiction Worlds of Forrest Ackerman and Friends, Reseda, Calif., Powell Publications, 1969. [the women's reactions when the men disappear]

* [[Caroline Forbes]]. "London Fields" in The Needle on Full (1985) [the men have mostly died out, but then some men are discovered]

* [[Katherine Forrest]]. Daughters of a Coral Dawn. A race of human women leave earth to set up their own world. Eventually a ship from earth, with males & females, encounters this world. Two sequels.

* [[Jane Fletcher]]. The World Celaeno Chose (Dimsdale: London, 1999) - telepathically-induced parthenogenesis (3rd-party telekinesis). First in a series.

* [[Leona Gom]]. [[The Y Chromosome]]. The characters go out of their way to describe their reproductive method -- "ovafusion" -- as neither cloning nor parthenogenesis. Doctors are able to use this method to fuse two eggs together in a woman. Pregnancy and childbirth are normal and the child inherits both parents' genetic material.
:As it happens, there is a completely functional all-women world -- but a few men are hiding out. Since they are not incorporated into the main society in any fashion, this still qualifies as a woman-only world.

* [[Nicola Griffith]]. [[Ammonite]]. Women may psychically fertilize one another; pregnancy and childbirth are normal, and the child inherits both parents' genetic material.

* [[Sandi Hall]]. Wingwomen of Hera (Spinsters / Aunt Lute: 1987) - the women of Hera are a parthenogenetic race ...

* [[Ursula K. Le Guin]]. "[[The Matter of Seggri]]". Birth ratio of boys to girls has been skewed by disease, and society has changed as a result.

* Charles Eric Maine (pseud. for David McIlwain, born 1921) [[World Without Men]] (1958) (republished as ''Alph'' (1972) (sexist; a static world of lesbians may be saved by cloning a manly man)

* A. R. Morlan. "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1993) (in ''Full Spectrum 4'') (most men have died; women begin outdoing men at warfare)

* [[Merril Mushroom]]. Daughters of Khaton. Actually, it's not exactly clear that women are reproducing parthenogenetically, or if a plant is just making babies for them. The plant definitely seems to be doing it, but somehow by taking the genetics of the women ...

* [[Anne Rice]], ''[[Queen of the Damned]]''. Akasha wants women everywhere to rise up and kill most of the men because of their violence.

* [[Leigh Richards]]. [[Califia's Daughters]]. After a biological disaster, women outnumber men and men are prized above all things.

* [[Joanna Russ]]. [[The Female Man]]. The classic women-only world. Actually, there are several worlds portrayed, but one of them -- [[Whileaway]] -- is a women-only world. --. "[[When It Changed]]" (initially published: 1972, in Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison) (This was the first story published about Whileaway. In this story, Whileaway is "found" by men from Earth, who think it a tragedy that men have disappeared from the world 30-odd generations ago, and promise to rectify the situation. This story was a "dangerous vision": women have created a world and lived just fine without men; this was not a feminist utopia, but the women have done just fine and apparently not missed men at all. What kind of world do you have when you have only one sex? A world of people.
:Read The Female Man for more [[Whileaway]]; or read Nicola Griffith's Ammonite for another very human world in which neither the people on the planet nor the reader ever miss males. For more encounters between all-woman societies and men, see: Tiptree's "Houston, Houston, Do You Read" and Merril Mushroom's Daughters of Khaton.

* [[Pamela Sargent]]'s The Shore of Women.

* [[Joan Slonczewski]]. A Door Into Ocean - an all-female aquatic race that reproduces by parthenogenesis. Encounters men.

* [[James Tiptree, Jr.]]. "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (1976) - a spaceship of men encounters a future earth populated only by women.

* [[Élisabeth Vonarburg]]'s [[In the Mother's Land]]

* [[Susan Weston]]. Children of the Light. Post-holocaust US. Most men have mysteriously died; society is continued in small enclaves visited by government men who impregnate the women (and very young women). One young man is transported into this grim future and makes a life with the women and children of a small village.

* [[John Wyndham]]. "Consider Her Ways" (1956)

* [[Donna J. Young]]. Retreat: As It Was! (Naiad, 1979) (A long, long time ago, the human race is all women ... )

* [[Zana]]. "Man Plague," [[Sinister Wisdom]] [Berkeley, California], no. 34 (1988)

* [[Molleen Zanger]]. The Year Seven (1993)

* [[Y, the Last Man]]

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Skewed gender ratios in SF