Female reproduction without men (list of works)
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Parthenogenesis and Cloning
See Parthenogenesis
- David Brin. Glory Season (seasonal sexual reproduction as well as asexual reproduction by cloning)
- Suzy McKee Charnas' Motherlines and The Furies. Charnas' women introduced in Motherlines were genetically altered to reproduce parthenogenetically with starter sperm - which they get from intercourse with horses. The sperm contribute no genetic material but the semen is required to start a pregnancy. The offspring are clones of the mothers, called "motherlines."
- Sandi Hall. Wingwomen of Hera (Spinsters / Aunt Lute: 1987) - the women of Hera are a parthenogenetic race ...
- Jacqueline Lapidus. "Design for the City of Women," Heresies, no. 3 (Fall 1977). [society of lesbians with parthenogenetic reproduction]
- Sam Merwin. Sex War. (A conspiracy of women try and fail to create parthenogenesis by tricking a male scientist into doing it for them.)
- L. Neil Schulman. Rainbow Cadenza (Parthenogenesis is a reproductive option; one central character is parthenogenetic.)
- Joan Slonczewski's A Door Into Ocean - an all-female aquatic race that reproduces by parthenogenesis.
- James Tiptree, Jr. "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" - cloning; clone lines
Sexual reproduction (women only), e.g., "ovafusion"
- Jane Fletcher. The World Celaeno Chose (Dimsdale: London, 1999) - telepathically-induced parthenogenesis (3rd-party telekinesis); others in the Celaeno series.
- Katherine Forrest, Daughters of a Coral Dawn and Daughters of an Amber Noon; third novel in trilogy
- Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland.
- Leona Gom's 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.
- Nicola Griffith's Ammonite. Women may psychically fertilize one another; pregnancy and childbirth are normal, and the child inherits both parents' genetic material.
- Mary E. Bradley Lane. Mizora
- Tanith Lee. "Love Alters" (in Jen Green & Sarah Lefanu, editors, Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind, The Women's Press: 1985) (An unhappy love triangle in the not-too-far future when homosexuality is straight, and heterosexuality an embarrassing queerness. Ovafusion and spermato-fusion produce children in an undescribed process.)
- 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 ...
- Joanna Russ. The Female Man
- Joanna Russ. "When It Changed" (initially published: 1972, in Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison)
- Rochelle Singer's The Demeter Flower - fertilization with the aid of the Demeter flower
- Jean Stewart. Isis series. In the latter part of the 21st century, the women's colonies in the "Freeland" have developed a technology that allows ova-fusion between two women.
- Donna J. Young Retreat: As It Was! (Naiad Press, 1979) (A long, long time ago, the human race is all women ... )
Alternative Insemination
Men may produce the sperm, but sex with them isn't necessary for conception.
- 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. It's not exactly "insemination" either, since both parents are female; however, ovafusion is more-or-less AI with a sperm substitute.
- Lee Killough. A Voice Out of Ramah (1979). Women may request sperm from a man, and conceive either via sex or artificial insemination.)
- Anne McCaffrey. "Changeling" in Get Off the Unicorn (1977). Two people in a four-way marriage decide to have a child via artificial insemination.
- Rachel Pollack. Godmother Night. A lesbian couple has recourse to a turkey baster ...
- Sheri Tepper. The Gate to Women's Country. Women are artificially inseminated with selected sperm to achieve pregnancy. This is not, however, widely known, and women continue to have sex with men, believing that this is how they're impregnated.
- John Varley. The Gaean Trilogy, volumes 2 & 3: Wizard and Demon. A lesbian separatist society of "witches" uses artificial insemination, getting sperm from a sperm-bank on earth. Background to the novel, not essential to the plot, although it does come up again in volume 3.
- Kate Wilhelm. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976) Artificial insemination is used on the breeding women in the later clone society
Anonymous or Controlled Sex
Social arrangements in which men are present for coitus, delivering their sperm in the penis-in-vagina fashion, but aren't part of the pregnancy or raising the children.
- Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Ruins of Isis (more a fertility rite than a wild party / festival, but the rite is part of a festival ...)
- Diana Rivers. The books in the Hadra Series. Daughters of the Great Star (1992); The Hadra (1995); Journey to Zelindar (1987).
- Pamela Sargent, The Shore of Women.
- Sheri Tepper, The Gate to Women's Country. The putative fathers don't raise girl-children at all, and raise boy-children only after the age of 5. Conception occurs at periodic festivals.