Skewed gender ratios in SF

Works relating to skewed or skewing gender ratios.

Alternating Both

• Philip Wylie. The Disappearance

Female Scarcity

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

• Brunt, Captain Samuel. 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.

• Chandler, A. Bertram. Spartan Planet (1969)

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

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

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

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

• Lee, Rand B. "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)

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

• Martini, Virgilio. 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)

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

Male Scarcity

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

• Jayge Carr. Leviathan's Deep another all-woman world is encountered (and partially conquered) by men from earth.

• Joan Slonczewski A Door Into Ocean

• Anderson, Poul. Virgin Planet (1959) - an all-woman world (reproducing by a poorly-described parthenogenetic cloning) has been awaiting the coming of Man.

• Carr, Jayge. Leviathan's Deep (1979) - another all-woman world is encountered (and partially conquered) by men from earth.

• Ermayne, Laurajean [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]

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

• Forrest, Katherine. 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.

• Fletcher, Jane. The World Celaeno Chose (Dimsdale: London, 1999) - telepathically-induced parthenogenesis (3rd-party telekinesis)

• Gom, Leona. 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.

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

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

• Mushroom, Merril. 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 ...

• Russ, Joanna. 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.

• Slonczewski, Joan. A Door Into Ocean - an all-female aquatic race that reproduces by parthenogenesis. Encounters men.

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

• Wyndham, John. "Consider Her Ways" (1956)

• Young, Donna J. 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)

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

• Gom, Leona. 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.

• Pamela Sargent's The Shore of Women.

• Elizabeth Vonarburg's In the Mother's Country

• Weston, Susan. 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.

• Zanger, Molleen. The Year Seven (1993)

• Y, the Last Man