Thanks. I was trying to think of Varley earlier.
Jack L. Chalker wrote a lot of stories with gender oddness and transformation.
Venus Plus X, by Theodore Sturgeon.
He did in his Cthorr books. There’s an implant you can get in your brain that allows you to jump your consciousness into another person with the same implant. Lots of people jumping into opposite gender bodies in that series.
Gerrold was gay, though, which is probably not unrelated to him being more willing to play with gender roles in his stories.
The protagonist encountered a female alternate version of themselves. They fell in love and had sex, the female version became pregnant, then they fell out of love, and in the end hated each other. Then she gave birth to a boy and fell unconscious and he stole the child “(She will never know”) before leaving, then she gave birth to a girl and decided not to tell him (“He will never know”).
And in typical time travel shenanigans, those children were both their younger selves.
I expected them to use a male actor, but i was hoping for one who was less traditionally masculine looking. Surely murderbot looks androgynous. And also, i hopes for an actor less aggressively WHITE. Surely murderbot looked mixed race, of no obvious ethnicity. And there are American actors who could have carried off both of those traits.
Nm - ninja’d by Der Trihs
BTW, I was at a (Covid-era online) lecture by Bujold, and she claimed that one of her biggest regrets was making the Betan hermaphrodites’ preferred pronoun “it”, and that if she had written the books today they would probably have used “they”.
That’s definitely it; I remember in particular the line about worshipping children because it’s inconceivable that they’d obey them.
Thanks; and also to @Andy_L.
So, basically “By His Own Bootstraps”, then?
It’s not too uncommon for a science fiction author to write a book whose premise is exploring different sex/gender systems. What is unusual is a book about something else, where different sex/gender systems are just casually there in the background.
Oh, and I’m also wondering how it’ll go down when Miles’ new crew all learns the truth. He’s holding up the house of cards for now, but that can’t last indefinitely.
I read right through the entire series a few years ago. The first book I read was Falling Free as the prequel to the series. It isn’t part of the Vorkosigan saga, but it sets up the universe that the stories take place in. Falling Free is one of the best things Bujold ever wrote. It’s a homage to her engineer father as the plot centers around guerrilla engineering. It turns into an exciting heist/jailbreak caper. If you liked The Great Escape you’ll love Falling Free.
It’s about people born in zero-G who are genetically altered to have two more arms in place of legs. Feet are useless in zero-G and another pair of hands is more efficient. The Quaddies become obsolete once artificial gravity is invented, but they still exist. One of their descendants becomes a notable character in the Vorkosigan saga: a musician who with 4 hands can play like nobody else.
This discussion reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s The Gods Themselves. The aliens in the second part of the book have a plot-important three-gender system, so it’s not “just casually there in the background”; but it’s secondary to the main plot.
I’m also reminded of a Gordon R. Dickson short story The Odd Ones where gender being in the background is the plot twist in the story. A pair of advanced aliens of two different species watch a pair of humans setting up a small base on a wild planet, rather disapprovingly in the case of one of them because it considers it demonstrates them having “no moral fiber” to bring a “main” and “back up” explorer. After all, one of them is noticeably smaller, so obviously they are there just in case something happens to the larger “main” human.
The alien is exceedingly embarrassed to discover that humans are a two-gendered species, and that it had been observing a married couple while so totally misreading their relationship.
The Quaddies, including that musician, play an essential part of a later Miles story: Diplomatic Immunity. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers.
Highly derivative, as is true of a certain number of Gerrold’s earlier pieces.
Gerrold wears his Heinlein influences on his sleeve
Varley wears them on both sleeves. And his hat, and every other piece of clothing.
Agreed
See these articles on Heinlein’s influences on three folks
I just re-read H. Beam Piper’s Uller uprising, in which the Ullerans are a true hermaphroditic species. It’s not a major point in the plot, but there are some references to it as part of building the world for the book. For instance, the human general who is the main character talks about having to learn some new things when he first commanded a company of Ulleran troops, like detailing some non-coms to manage the company’s day care center.
Oh, and I’ve now finished Warrior’s Apprentice.
A lot of it is familiar from other works, except that’s just the old bit about “Shakespeare has so many cliches”: Those other works I’m thinking of all came after it. Bujold was clearly a major influence on, among others, David Weber and Howard Taylor.
The gut punch scenes - this is why I think it’s better to read in chronological order. There are things that happen in Barrayar that add weight and dimension to the hard stuff in Warrior’s Apprentice.
I find it hard to believe those would hit the same if you didn’t just read about them.
ETA: removed blurred spoilers because I was suddenly worried those scenes came later in the series and I might misremember when they did come.
Some key ones occur in the book set before Barrayar in fact, Shards of Honor.