Ungendered or ambiguously gendered characters

NOTE: Some of the explanations below contain spoilers.

• June Arnold . The Cook and the Carpenter

• L. Frank Baum.* The Land of Oz The young boy Tip is eventually revealed to be the Princess Ozma.
• L. Frank Baum. The Enchanted Island of Yew
• Marion Zimmer Bradley. Darkover Despite its inclusion in this list, Darkover is not generally known for its ungendered characters; it does feature homosexual characters, and also celibacy as a path to magical power
• Emma Bull. Bone Dance. Sparrow, the protagonist of Bone Dance appears to be a character whose gender the author is deliberately not revealing, but in fact Sparrow is something very different.

• Sarah Caudwell. Thus was Adonis Murdered, The Shortest Way to Hades, The Sirens Sang of Murder and The Sibyl in Her Grave.

• Candas Jane Dorsey. Machine Sex and Other Stories
• Candas Jane Dorsey. Dark Earth Dreams (discbook).
• L. Timmel Duchamp . "Welcome, Kid, to the Real World" in Tales of the Unanticipated, Spring / Summer / Fall 1996

• Greg Egan. Distress
• Kelley Eskridge. "And Salome Danced," in Little Deaths, edited by Ellen Datlow; Best Lesbian Erotica, edited by Tristan Taormino; Flying Cups and Saucers, edited by Debbie Notkin and The Secret Feminist Cabal The viewpoint character in this short story is a theatrical director, fascinated and confused by an actor who can audition for and play parts across the gender spectrum, inhabiting whichever gender seems appropriate at the time.

• Mary Gentle. Golden Witchbreed.

• Phyllis Ann Karr At Amberleaf Fair

• Ursula K. Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness
• Ursula K. Le Guin. "Coming of Age in Karhide," in New Legends edited by Greg Bear
• Ursula K. Le Guin. "Winter's King," in The Wind's Twelve Quarters and elsewhere.

On Karhide, all inhabitants are ungendered, except when in ''kemmer'', a pre-reproductive state which occurs in adults approximately one week every month. Adults may become male or female in any particular kemmer. If an adult in kemmer as a female becomes pregnant, she remains female long enough to bear and nurse the baby, and then returns to the natural ungendered state.

• Walt Leibscher. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Love?" in Strange Bedfellows, edited by Thomas N. Scortia

• Laurie J. Marks. Delan the Mislaid.
• Laurie Marks. The Moonbane Mage.
• Laurie Marks. Ara's Field.
• Vonda N. McIntyre. Dreamsnake. The character of Merideth is never given a gender identification.
• Judith Moffet . Time Like an Ever-Rolling Stream

• Melissa Scott. The Kindly Ones.
• Nancy Springer. Larque on the Wing. The protagonist switches gender early in this Tiptree Award-winning novel.
• Theodore Sturgeon. Venus Plus X. A planet in which people appear to have no gender.
• Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein. Nearly Roadkill.

• Élisabeth Vonarburg. Silent City.
• Élisabeth Vonarburg. "In the Pit," in Tesseracts 2, edited by Phylis M. Gotlieb and Douglas Barbour
• Élisabeth Vonarburg. "Bande Ohne Ende," in Tomorrow, 1/94, #3

• Jeanette Winterson. Written on the Body

• Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. "Allies," in Cautionary Tales All characters have gender-ambiguous names (like "Chris" and "Sandy") and none has an identified gender throughout the story.

Credits

A portion of this list was originally compiled by Laurie J. Marks as "Gender Ambiguity: A Seriously Incomplete Bibliography of Fiction in Which Gender Is Eliminated or Ambiguous" (1997 May 22) available at the feministsf.org website at http://feministsf.org/bibs/ambiggen.html