Skewed gender ratios in SF

Works relating to skewed or skewing gender ratios.

Female Scarcity

• Marion Zimmer Bradley and John J. Wells (pseudonym 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 planet founded by men as men only world
• 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 moon)
• 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]
• Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go
• Cordwainer Smith, "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal" (1964) (females converted to males by colonists; colonists ultimately mutate into crazed haters of bi-sexed humanity)
• 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.)
• Elizabeth Bear, Carnival (2006) (disproportion seems likely but is not totally clear)
• 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.
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland. Three male explorers encounter a female-only society that reproduces via parthenogenesis.
• 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 ...
• Donald G. Jackson, "Hell Comes to Frogtown" (1988)
• Lee Killough, A Voice Out of Ramah (1978)
• 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.
• Doris Lessing, The Cleft (2007). A primordial all-female species starts producing males.
• 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.

• Wen Spencer. A Brother's Price.

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

• Brian Vaughn Y, the Last Man
• Élisabeth Vonarburg's In the Mothers' 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.

• Liz Williams' Banner of Souls (2004)

• 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)

Movies

• "Devil Girl from Mars" (1954) (Mars needs men, and Nyah comes to Scotland to get them)
• "The Sexmission" a 1984 Polish comedy science fiction film about a post-nuclear female-only world in which two male characters arrive

• Angels 2200 (plague wiped out most men)

Alternating Both

• Philip Wylie. The Disappearance

See also

• Woman-only worlds
• Skewed gender ratios
• All-woman worlds encounter men
• Category:Works featuring female-only worlds

Further reading

• The Last Man on Earth blog